You mean we can make the north/south bridge, memory controller, and graphics chipsets discrete components again without a performance impact? And a new PCI standard that includes 4 copper pins for power plus several optical pins for data, with expansion cards being roughly as low-latency and high-bandwidth as on-CPU-dye integrated chipsets? How about system RAM access at almost L2 cache speeds?
It's actually about $15,000 higher than that, because you can take a housing deduction amounting to 16% of the maximum exclusion, which this year is $95,000, or your actual housing expenses if higher. If you make under $95k and you're present in a non-US country 330 days of the year, you're tax-exempt. If you make over $95k you theoretically pay taxes; but really you just file the minimum $15k deduction, giving you up to $110k tax-free. If you make more than that, you set up a foreign shell corporation.
You've got to remember that all those rules are easily dismissed by converse. There's always a trade-off, you can make something faster but it becomes hotter, or more expensive, or less durable... lies. You can demonstratably make something expensive, slow, high-power, and low-durability by extremely inefficient process.
In economics people like to discuss job creators and wealth movement, trickle-up and trickle-down, the loss of businesses, poor people and rich people... but they fail to understand wealth. Take the "shop locally" thing... if you have a local bookstore versus Amazon, people tell you to shop locally because it "keeps the money in the community." Problem is the local bookstore is crap, they order from the big publishers and distributors, etc; some folks argue Walmart or B&N are as bad as Amazon and not like a local bookstore, but their stores still pay local taxes on their income, they still pay rent, hire sales people, and order from the same distributors.
Now let's say you order from Amazon because it's $10 cheaper. That money leaves the local community, but $10 stays... you're $10 wealthier. The local bookstore has terrible selection and is expensive... it goes out of business. Meanwhile you've got a local farmer's market and you shop there with the extra $10 you have. That's wealth creation: you have the same goods (a book) plus more money ($10) to buy other goods (fresh food). If this is the general trend, the Farmer's Market garners that much more business, expands, and replaces the local book shop's place in the community--the community demand for a farmer's market was higher than a local bookstore, the community is now wealthier.
The same principle applies to the manufacture of goods. If you're doing something sloppy, develop a refinement. We didn't get to 3GHz CPUs by overclocking a 486 by 100 times and slapping on a big fan and heat sink; we streamlined the process to be 100 times more efficient, then paid the extra expense to downsize the process, took a smaller efficiency hit, jacked up the CPU speed, and added a big fan. Truth be told, we could run these things at half the speed and find that they last forever, they're a lot faster than the old 486, and they need all of a tiny little heat sink and maybe a fan (maybe not). Instead of building 32nm, we could continue to build 60nm and not pay the expense--but the 60nm equipment has gotten better and we get fewer bad chips and fewer defects and so much longer component life. We're there, we just threw more chips in 'cause we had 'em.
Essentially, we got faster, cheaper, and lower power, all at once. Then, we cranked up the speed, put more dollars into cutting-edge technology, and things became faster, hotter, and more expensive. We've gained wealth, though--we've gained it and we've spent it to get even more speed. We had all of speed, power consumption, and cost, and we paid the cost and power consumption gains back in and opted for even more speed. In the end, though, the output's still bigger than our original input.
We violated the silly "can't have everything" law every step of the way.
So, cheap, easy-to-manipulate materials and a process compatible with modern fabrication techniques and machinery? As opposed to exotic, expensive metal ceramics requiring different processes and separate facilities? That's kind of revolutionary. It's like having all this propane gas that you liquefy, and then discovering how to modify engines by shaping steel components slightly different (i.e. a compound machine) to use propane gas instead of liquid fuel. (We actually have experimental gasoline engines that diesel up to 40mph; eventually we'll have engines that can run on diesel fuel or petrol...)
Your reference for potatoes shows a pretty high number for "dietary fiber"--resistant starch is effectively dietary fiber, but it's present between 4% and 23% in potatoes, and the 23% number is reachable by boiling and then freezing and then re-heating--and then vitamin C (in damn near everything), a little protein, and a small amount of iron and calcium.
And here I assumed Hostess cupcakes were made out of wheat... they're about on par, with more fat, less carbs, and half the calories, about equal nutritionally and less bad for you than a potato. The Dr. P. still has less sugar.
Can try This([24]), useful information summarized on Wikipedia, to cover increased uptake with glucose:
Studies show the greatest absorption rate occurs when glucose and fructose are administered in equal quantities.[24] When fructose is ingested as part of the disaccharide sucrose, absorption capacity is much higher because fructose exists in a 1:1 ratio with glucose. It appears that the GLUT5 transfer rate may be saturated at low levels, and absorption is increased through joint absorption with glucose.[25].
According to USDA, fruits and vegetables tend to contain as much or more fructose than glucose; thus an argument that humans are not supposed to consume fructose (or sucrose) is essentially an argument for a primarily carnivore diet. However, the GLUT5 transporter carries fructose primarily, and the GLUT2 carries both glucose and fructose, so it seems unlikely that human diet ever really excluded fructose much. Honestly humans will eat fruit and vegetables--it doesn't run away.
Fructose metabolism is affected by insulin, but fructose consumption doesn't cause an insulin reaction. Glucose consumption does. Consuming fructose with glucose changes (improves) the metabolism. This is sensible, evolutionarily, because fructose is supposed to be present with glucose; apples have twice as much (67% fructose to 33% glucose), but most everything else is 1:1 or 1:3 or 0.9:1 or so. Not so much an advantage that should have developed, but rather just not a detriment and so the discovery that fructose is easier to absorb and process in the presence of glucose isn't inherently offensive to the senses, since it just wouldn't present a problem usually unless 80% of your diet is apples.
In any case, 85% fructose HFCS isn't natural or easy on the system. 55% is less offensive. A 50-50 mix is better. Agave nectar is psychotic. Sucrose is odd because it's actually absorbed directly into the blood stream and goes to the pancreas (unless inverted by acid and heat), whereas starch is broken down by enzymes in saliva and stomach.
By the by, glucose is poisonous. You don't want to dump that much straight sugar into your blood stream; fructose going to the liver is probably a good buffer technique. That is, however, conjecture more intended to stimulate thought.
a victim of the circumstance of murdering his wife, making an ass of himself, then finally accepting a sentencing bargain and leading prosecutors to where he buried the body?
If he returns to the US, he has to stand trial for all US crimes he's violated. Sex with an underaged (under 18) person (even if local law says younger is age-of-consent), use of illegal substances, anything that violates US federal statutes.
That's not actually true. If you live primarily outside of the country and earn income primarily outside the country, you aren't liable for taxes. If your income is earned primarily inside the country--if you work for a USA-based contractor and you're in another country doing the work--you pay taxes. Sometimes. It really depends.
You seem to confuse our governments first world problems which are trivial at best with real issues in a central american country.
You have no clue what a corrupt government is.
You're sitting in a hospital, having a routine check-up done. You're in a hospital rather than a regular doctor's office because they need the equipment... the tumor went malignant before they detected the cancer, and now your testicles no longer function, you can't get an erection, you're not sterile. The cancer spread... everywhere. All of your organs are dying. Occasionally you have a loss of lucidity or feeling, but you're numb to pain. The damage is slow, though.. you'll live for another decade, maybe six years at worst. Your life is mostly functional, although you can't exert yourself, your lungs aren't very functional, sometimes you black out, and you could have a stroke or heart attack at any time.
Somebody points at the poor shithead in the next bed, moaning, crying, reaching out, screaming in delusion as the cancer eats away at his body. He's in constant pain, and has only a few weeks to live; they should probably just lynch him now, it'd be more humane.
Clearly, you have no clue what cancer is. You're not in any pain and you've got years ahead, quit bitching about your so-called illness.
Well, you're wrong. If you're in China, due process is a special privilege. Don't believe me? Go to China and join a government protest. See how the President's son gets escorted out by smiling unarmed riot police, while the rest of you mooks get run over with tanks and beaten with bamboo rods? That's because you're not specially privileged.
You can cry about "fundamental human rights" all you want, but you're still getting fisted by a giant gorilla in a country that doesn't have a special piece of paper creating those imaginary rights.
funny thing is sea levels are slightly higher around the equator. An average 1 meter rise means like a few centimeters at best around New York, and Florida underwater.
No, not a new vehicle every 10 years. My last oil change was 18 months in between, because it took me that long to drive 5000 miles and I didn't feel like going out to 7000 (over a year gets iffy). I bought the car several years ago with 45k on it, it's not yet reached 65k... I've averaged 4500 miles per year.
I ate out for roughly 1/3 of my meals and spent under $200 total on food in one month.
My computer doesn't suspend to RAM and I run it 24/7. Free time can be spent taking random odd jobs or doing volunteer work to expand my considerable basis of experience--when I was unemployed, I considered getting a job at a bakery just for the experience baking. Mass transit is common here, and most places I want to go I can reach by bicycle or light rail; driving is not expensive when you don't cross-country, though a motorcycle would be cheaper...
I have a HDCP plan now, which means my deductible is $1500. Everything is essentially out-of-pocket. This is cheap.
Potatoes provide no nutrients except in the skin. Fructose is harmless in the presence of glucose--sucrose is metabolized essentially identical to glucose, and the HFCS in soda is 55/45 rather than the 85/15 mostly-fructose stuff. Uptake of fructose is reduced outside the presence of glucose, and then the liver process it differently without glucose (and inefficiently).
Essentially, potatoes are worse than soda. Hostess Cupcakes provide more nutrition than mashed potato.
Uh. I have a house I just bought 2 weeks ago and an apartment. I'm exiting the $750/mo apartment (plus $60/mo garage, plus $100/mo utilities). The $500/mo mortgage will go away in less than 3 years. The $7000 car loan goes first, I've had it for too long and should have paid it off years ago, terminate $378/mo.
At age 27, my expenses come down to $200/mo food, $100/mo gas/electric, $60/mo phone, $5/mo water, $50/mo internet, $50/mo car fuel, plus $71/year in property taxes (this may go up to around $300/year) and $1400/year in car insurance. $7000/year in expenses gives me 71 years, but by this time social security informs me I've got enough "credits" that after 59 1/2 I'll be bringing in $1100/mo. So I can make it to age 92 on the minimum if I get half a mil. I can make it to Social Security spending MORE THAN HALF my money on discretionary spending, and then have more money than I need.
Adjust for inflation, and for income from interest at 1.9% on a 7 year CD at PenFed giving $9500/year, and for potential rate increases (rates are damn low right now).
Let's face it, I could have retired at age 18 on half a mil, if I had any sense. It would have just been a squeeze.
Dunno, I know a lot of non-techs that moved en masse from iPhone to Galaxy S3 and were like OMG THIS IS SO MUCH BETTER!!!!!! and they're crazy Mac users that have Macbooks.
You mean those rich, rich assholes with millions of dollars in debt, private aircraft, golden yachts, helipads installed at their twelfth and thirty-eighth vacation homes in foreign countries, and $6 million salaries don't spend their money? Why don't they retire if they have enough money to pay their debts and keep funding their expenses for the forseeable twelve lifetimes? If I had half a million, right now, I'd retire and still be rich when I died.
Fortunately, those people are not in charge of their salaries. The board of directors is. Besides, most of the income up in that range comes from capital gains, not from actual salaries.
The board would vote to raise their multi-million-dollar salaries, too. The CEO is on the board, usually. They need to provide a contractual incentive to keep a hired CEO, and a sudden salary cut from $20M after taxes to $2M after taxes is not attractive. The CEO of Ford, for example, makes $29 million, which I can't find numbers for; but plenty of that is cash bonus, which is taxed as "income" i.e. salary that's not called salary.
Their executive Bill Ford received $2 million salary, $1.5 million cash bonuses, and $11 million of stocks and options and other awards in 2011, which amounts to $14.5 million. You know how that's taxed? Stocks aren't capital gains; when you're handed stock, that's income. When that stock becomes worth twice as much, that's capital gains. It's income at its price of transfer, the difference is direct capital gains. I mean to say if you get $100 of stock at $10/share with a 20% discount, you get that stock at $8/share, so 12.5 shares instead of 10; but you still get 12.5 shares of $10/share stock, taxed as $100 of income and $25 of capital gains. When you sell the stock, the price it was conferred at is filed with the IRS as taxable income; the movement is filed as capital gains. That means you file $100 of income, but you might file it 5 years from now instead of immediately.
So let's recap. Let's say that this guy got $2M in salary, $1.5M cash bonus, and $11M of stock. That stock doubles in price so it's worth $22 million. In taxes, he pays income on $14.5M and capital gains on $11M--a big chunk, for certain, but not quite "most". Also, doubling stock consistently would be a pipe dream; usually it goes down, and you can cut the losses off your income... $11M and it becomes worth $9M, he can take $2M deduction at capital gains (i.e. 15% instead of 35%), which is kind of a raw deal as compensation goes (he's getting over-taxed).
By the by, if you don't hold the stock for at least 2 years, it's taxed 100% as income. Sell your oldest lot first, and build up enough stock to be always selling old stock. That's no way to make money playing the makret; if the market crashes, you lose more in capital losses than you'd save in taxes gaming it by taking the stock at a 100% deduction as your pay. And selling stock is a pain in the ass--you can't do it at any conveniently strategic time without publicly declaring why you think it's a good idea to sell first (insider trading laws).
More taxes will lead to more abuse. Big capital gains taxes will neuter the stock market, but we're better off without it. Big income taxes will result in big executive salaries.
The thing is that there is a feature now where when you type in "Coffee maker", Unity can show you coffee makers instead of just searching for apps in the Ubuntu App Store (called 'apt', mostly free apps), related to coffee makers. That's a feature. To do that, they have to search Amazon, or Frugal, or something. People are bitchy because when they punch in a search it goes to Amazon now, which is somehow terrifying because Big Evil Corporatism!
There's all kinds of stretch arguments here. "What if I search for my social security number?" "Divorce filings!" "Name of my girlfriend 'cause I want to see her boob pics I have..." Uh okay? What heinous crimes will be committed with this information? Why is your social security number a filename? You posted that you're getting divorced on Facebook like two months ago and you've been talking about it on your 'wall' ever since.
Nobody is "entitled" to anything. That's why we have guns... if you can buy them, keep them, not commit any crimes with them, and not allow the government to talk you into letting them take them away. Fail any of that, and you can't have guns, no matter what "inalienable rights" you think you're "entitled" to. If you can't keep peoples' noses out of your shit, you're not going to have a "private life" either.
The point is that everybody should be an anti-social hermit and that businesses are evil. Privacy issues stem from businesses that used to flash lights and banners at you screaming 'HERE ARE ENGAGEMENT RINGS!" changing to a model where they predict if you're male, decide if you're likely to be in a relationship, if you're probably married or not, and then go, "Hey we saw you looking at paternity things, looks like you're a single guy, hey look, engagement rings!" and if not they show you truck tires because you spend 80% of your time on a fucking truck forum. Your wife is angry because people are trying to sell her things for baby instead of truck tires.
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You mean we can make the north/south bridge, memory controller, and graphics chipsets discrete components again without a performance impact? And a new PCI standard that includes 4 copper pins for power plus several optical pins for data, with expansion cards being roughly as low-latency and high-bandwidth as on-CPU-dye integrated chipsets? How about system RAM access at almost L2 cache speeds?
It's actually about $15,000 higher than that, because you can take a housing deduction amounting to 16% of the maximum exclusion, which this year is $95,000, or your actual housing expenses if higher. If you make under $95k and you're present in a non-US country 330 days of the year, you're tax-exempt. If you make over $95k you theoretically pay taxes; but really you just file the minimum $15k deduction, giving you up to $110k tax-free. If you make more than that, you set up a foreign shell corporation.
You've got to remember that all those rules are easily dismissed by converse. There's always a trade-off, you can make something faster but it becomes hotter, or more expensive, or less durable... lies. You can demonstratably make something expensive, slow, high-power, and low-durability by extremely inefficient process.
In economics people like to discuss job creators and wealth movement, trickle-up and trickle-down, the loss of businesses, poor people and rich people... but they fail to understand wealth. Take the "shop locally" thing... if you have a local bookstore versus Amazon, people tell you to shop locally because it "keeps the money in the community." Problem is the local bookstore is crap, they order from the big publishers and distributors, etc; some folks argue Walmart or B&N are as bad as Amazon and not like a local bookstore, but their stores still pay local taxes on their income, they still pay rent, hire sales people, and order from the same distributors.
Now let's say you order from Amazon because it's $10 cheaper. That money leaves the local community, but $10 stays ... you're $10 wealthier. The local bookstore has terrible selection and is expensive... it goes out of business. Meanwhile you've got a local farmer's market and you shop there with the extra $10 you have. That's wealth creation: you have the same goods (a book) plus more money ($10) to buy other goods (fresh food). If this is the general trend, the Farmer's Market garners that much more business, expands, and replaces the local book shop's place in the community--the community demand for a farmer's market was higher than a local bookstore, the community is now wealthier.
The same principle applies to the manufacture of goods. If you're doing something sloppy, develop a refinement. We didn't get to 3GHz CPUs by overclocking a 486 by 100 times and slapping on a big fan and heat sink; we streamlined the process to be 100 times more efficient, then paid the extra expense to downsize the process, took a smaller efficiency hit, jacked up the CPU speed, and added a big fan. Truth be told, we could run these things at half the speed and find that they last forever, they're a lot faster than the old 486, and they need all of a tiny little heat sink and maybe a fan (maybe not). Instead of building 32nm, we could continue to build 60nm and not pay the expense--but the 60nm equipment has gotten better and we get fewer bad chips and fewer defects and so much longer component life. We're there, we just threw more chips in 'cause we had 'em.
Essentially, we got faster, cheaper, and lower power, all at once. Then, we cranked up the speed, put more dollars into cutting-edge technology, and things became faster, hotter, and more expensive. We've gained wealth, though--we've gained it and we've spent it to get even more speed. We had all of speed, power consumption, and cost, and we paid the cost and power consumption gains back in and opted for even more speed. In the end, though, the output's still bigger than our original input.
We violated the silly "can't have everything" law every step of the way.
So, cheap, easy-to-manipulate materials and a process compatible with modern fabrication techniques and machinery? As opposed to exotic, expensive metal ceramics requiring different processes and separate facilities? That's kind of revolutionary. It's like having all this propane gas that you liquefy, and then discovering how to modify engines by shaping steel components slightly different (i.e. a compound machine) to use propane gas instead of liquid fuel. (We actually have experimental gasoline engines that diesel up to 40mph; eventually we'll have engines that can run on diesel fuel or petrol...)
Your reference for potatoes shows a pretty high number for "dietary fiber"--resistant starch is effectively dietary fiber, but it's present between 4% and 23% in potatoes, and the 23% number is reachable by boiling and then freezing and then re-heating--and then vitamin C (in damn near everything), a little protein, and a small amount of iron and calcium.
And here I assumed Hostess cupcakes were made out of wheat... they're about on par, with more fat, less carbs, and half the calories, about equal nutritionally and less bad for you than a potato. The Dr. P. still has less sugar.
Can try This([24]), useful information summarized on Wikipedia, to cover increased uptake with glucose:
Studies show the greatest absorption rate occurs when glucose and fructose are administered in equal quantities.[24] When fructose is ingested as part of the disaccharide sucrose, absorption capacity is much higher because fructose exists in a 1:1 ratio with glucose. It appears that the GLUT5 transfer rate may be saturated at low levels, and absorption is increased through joint absorption with glucose.[25].
According to USDA, fruits and vegetables tend to contain as much or more fructose than glucose; thus an argument that humans are not supposed to consume fructose (or sucrose) is essentially an argument for a primarily carnivore diet. However, the GLUT5 transporter carries fructose primarily, and the GLUT2 carries both glucose and fructose, so it seems unlikely that human diet ever really excluded fructose much. Honestly humans will eat fruit and vegetables--it doesn't run away.
Fructose metabolism is affected by insulin, but fructose consumption doesn't cause an insulin reaction. Glucose consumption does. Consuming fructose with glucose changes (improves) the metabolism. This is sensible, evolutionarily, because fructose is supposed to be present with glucose; apples have twice as much (67% fructose to 33% glucose), but most everything else is 1:1 or 1:3 or 0.9:1 or so. Not so much an advantage that should have developed, but rather just not a detriment and so the discovery that fructose is easier to absorb and process in the presence of glucose isn't inherently offensive to the senses, since it just wouldn't present a problem usually unless 80% of your diet is apples.
In any case, 85% fructose HFCS isn't natural or easy on the system. 55% is less offensive. A 50-50 mix is better. Agave nectar is psychotic. Sucrose is odd because it's actually absorbed directly into the blood stream and goes to the pancreas (unless inverted by acid and heat), whereas starch is broken down by enzymes in saliva and stomach.
By the by, glucose is poisonous. You don't want to dump that much straight sugar into your blood stream; fructose going to the liver is probably a good buffer technique. That is, however, conjecture more intended to stimulate thought.
a victim of the circumstance of murdering his wife, making an ass of himself, then finally accepting a sentencing bargain and leading prosecutors to where he buried the body?
If he returns to the US, he has to stand trial for all US crimes he's violated. Sex with an underaged (under 18) person (even if local law says younger is age-of-consent), use of illegal substances, anything that violates US federal statutes.
That's not actually true. If you live primarily outside of the country and earn income primarily outside the country, you aren't liable for taxes. If your income is earned primarily inside the country--if you work for a USA-based contractor and you're in another country doing the work--you pay taxes. Sometimes. It really depends.
You seem to confuse our governments first world problems which are trivial at best with real issues in a central american country.
You have no clue what a corrupt government is.
You're sitting in a hospital, having a routine check-up done. You're in a hospital rather than a regular doctor's office because they need the equipment... the tumor went malignant before they detected the cancer, and now your testicles no longer function, you can't get an erection, you're not sterile. The cancer spread... everywhere. All of your organs are dying. Occasionally you have a loss of lucidity or feeling, but you're numb to pain. The damage is slow, though.. you'll live for another decade, maybe six years at worst. Your life is mostly functional, although you can't exert yourself, your lungs aren't very functional, sometimes you black out, and you could have a stroke or heart attack at any time.
Somebody points at the poor shithead in the next bed, moaning, crying, reaching out, screaming in delusion as the cancer eats away at his body. He's in constant pain, and has only a few weeks to live; they should probably just lynch him now, it'd be more humane.
Clearly, you have no clue what cancer is. You're not in any pain and you've got years ahead, quit bitching about your so-called illness.
Well, you're wrong. If you're in China, due process is a special privilege. Don't believe me? Go to China and join a government protest. See how the President's son gets escorted out by smiling unarmed riot police, while the rest of you mooks get run over with tanks and beaten with bamboo rods? That's because you're not specially privileged.
You can cry about "fundamental human rights" all you want, but you're still getting fisted by a giant gorilla in a country that doesn't have a special piece of paper creating those imaginary rights.
Most of us live in America so we know.
funny thing is sea levels are slightly higher around the equator. An average 1 meter rise means like a few centimeters at best around New York, and Florida underwater.
No, not a new vehicle every 10 years. My last oil change was 18 months in between, because it took me that long to drive 5000 miles and I didn't feel like going out to 7000 (over a year gets iffy). I bought the car several years ago with 45k on it, it's not yet reached 65k... I've averaged 4500 miles per year.
I ate out for roughly 1/3 of my meals and spent under $200 total on food in one month.
My computer doesn't suspend to RAM and I run it 24/7. Free time can be spent taking random odd jobs or doing volunteer work to expand my considerable basis of experience--when I was unemployed, I considered getting a job at a bakery just for the experience baking. Mass transit is common here, and most places I want to go I can reach by bicycle or light rail; driving is not expensive when you don't cross-country, though a motorcycle would be cheaper...
I have a HDCP plan now, which means my deductible is $1500. Everything is essentially out-of-pocket. This is cheap.
Potatoes provide no nutrients except in the skin. Fructose is harmless in the presence of glucose--sucrose is metabolized essentially identical to glucose, and the HFCS in soda is 55/45 rather than the 85/15 mostly-fructose stuff. Uptake of fructose is reduced outside the presence of glucose, and then the liver process it differently without glucose (and inefficiently).
Essentially, potatoes are worse than soda. Hostess Cupcakes provide more nutrition than mashed potato.
Uh. I have a house I just bought 2 weeks ago and an apartment. I'm exiting the $750/mo apartment (plus $60/mo garage, plus $100/mo utilities). The $500/mo mortgage will go away in less than 3 years. The $7000 car loan goes first, I've had it for too long and should have paid it off years ago, terminate $378/mo.
At age 27, my expenses come down to $200/mo food, $100/mo gas/electric, $60/mo phone, $5/mo water, $50/mo internet, $50/mo car fuel, plus $71/year in property taxes (this may go up to around $300/year) and $1400/year in car insurance. $7000/year in expenses gives me 71 years, but by this time social security informs me I've got enough "credits" that after 59 1/2 I'll be bringing in $1100/mo. So I can make it to age 92 on the minimum if I get half a mil. I can make it to Social Security spending MORE THAN HALF my money on discretionary spending, and then have more money than I need.
Adjust for inflation, and for income from interest at 1.9% on a 7 year CD at PenFed giving $9500/year, and for potential rate increases (rates are damn low right now).
Let's face it, I could have retired at age 18 on half a mil, if I had any sense. It would have just been a squeeze.
Dunno, I know a lot of non-techs that moved en masse from iPhone to Galaxy S3 and were like OMG THIS IS SO MUCH BETTER!!!!!! and they're crazy Mac users that have Macbooks.
Unfortunately now a certain number of customers won't come to the store if there are douche bags.
Because it's not functional or because you're squicked?
This method of punching violent patrons in the face has been passed down the Armstrong line for generations!
Which they have because they do not spend it.
You mean those rich, rich assholes with millions of dollars in debt, private aircraft, golden yachts, helipads installed at their twelfth and thirty-eighth vacation homes in foreign countries, and $6 million salaries don't spend their money? Why don't they retire if they have enough money to pay their debts and keep funding their expenses for the forseeable twelve lifetimes? If I had half a million, right now, I'd retire and still be rich when I died.
Fortunately, those people are not in charge of their salaries. The board of directors is. Besides, most of the income up in that range comes from capital gains, not from actual salaries.
The board would vote to raise their multi-million-dollar salaries, too. The CEO is on the board, usually. They need to provide a contractual incentive to keep a hired CEO, and a sudden salary cut from $20M after taxes to $2M after taxes is not attractive. The CEO of Ford, for example, makes $29 million, which I can't find numbers for; but plenty of that is cash bonus, which is taxed as "income" i.e. salary that's not called salary.
Their executive Bill Ford received $2 million salary, $1.5 million cash bonuses, and $11 million of stocks and options and other awards in 2011, which amounts to $14.5 million. You know how that's taxed? Stocks aren't capital gains; when you're handed stock, that's income. When that stock becomes worth twice as much, that's capital gains. It's income at its price of transfer, the difference is direct capital gains. I mean to say if you get $100 of stock at $10/share with a 20% discount, you get that stock at $8/share, so 12.5 shares instead of 10; but you still get 12.5 shares of $10/share stock, taxed as $100 of income and $25 of capital gains. When you sell the stock, the price it was conferred at is filed with the IRS as taxable income; the movement is filed as capital gains. That means you file $100 of income, but you might file it 5 years from now instead of immediately.
So let's recap. Let's say that this guy got $2M in salary, $1.5M cash bonus, and $11M of stock. That stock doubles in price so it's worth $22 million. In taxes, he pays income on $14.5M and capital gains on $11M--a big chunk, for certain, but not quite "most". Also, doubling stock consistently would be a pipe dream; usually it goes down, and you can cut the losses off your income... $11M and it becomes worth $9M, he can take $2M deduction at capital gains (i.e. 15% instead of 35%), which is kind of a raw deal as compensation goes (he's getting over-taxed).
By the by, if you don't hold the stock for at least 2 years, it's taxed 100% as income. Sell your oldest lot first, and build up enough stock to be always selling old stock. That's no way to make money playing the makret; if the market crashes, you lose more in capital losses than you'd save in taxes gaming it by taking the stock at a 100% deduction as your pay. And selling stock is a pain in the ass--you can't do it at any conveniently strategic time without publicly declaring why you think it's a good idea to sell first (insider trading laws).
More taxes will lead to more abuse. Big capital gains taxes will neuter the stock market, but we're better off without it. Big income taxes will result in big executive salaries.
The thing is that there is a feature now where when you type in "Coffee maker", Unity can show you coffee makers instead of just searching for apps in the Ubuntu App Store (called 'apt', mostly free apps), related to coffee makers. That's a feature. To do that, they have to search Amazon, or Frugal, or something. People are bitchy because when they punch in a search it goes to Amazon now, which is somehow terrifying because Big Evil Corporatism!
There's all kinds of stretch arguments here. "What if I search for my social security number?" "Divorce filings!" "Name of my girlfriend 'cause I want to see her boob pics I have..." Uh okay? What heinous crimes will be committed with this information? Why is your social security number a filename? You posted that you're getting divorced on Facebook like two months ago and you've been talking about it on your 'wall' ever since.
Nobody is "entitled" to anything. That's why we have guns ... if you can buy them, keep them, not commit any crimes with them, and not allow the government to talk you into letting them take them away. Fail any of that, and you can't have guns, no matter what "inalienable rights" you think you're "entitled" to. If you can't keep peoples' noses out of your shit, you're not going to have a "private life" either.
The point is that everybody should be an anti-social hermit and that businesses are evil. Privacy issues stem from businesses that used to flash lights and banners at you screaming 'HERE ARE ENGAGEMENT RINGS!" changing to a model where they predict if you're male, decide if you're likely to be in a relationship, if you're probably married or not, and then go, "Hey we saw you looking at paternity things, looks like you're a single guy, hey look, engagement rings!" and if not they show you truck tires because you spend 80% of your time on a fucking truck forum. Your wife is angry because people are trying to sell her things for baby instead of truck tires.
I've never taken a vacation. I got weekends off. There was that 5 months I was unemployed...
I'll inform your next of kin when you take a fatal book to the head.