I like diving in Bermuda. It's east of the Carolinas, but in the Gulf Stream. Closest landfall is Rhode Island, but that doesn't mean much for its climate.
Yea, the Gulf Stream makes Bermuda seem tropical.
Diving off Grand Cayman was more spectacular, but I didn't enjoy visiting the rest of the island nearly as much as Bermuda,
Did you checkout the caves and canyons? There are some good caves or c-notes to dive in in the interior. Of course they aren't great if you're claustrophobic.
I only get to do a little diving as the rest of my family doesn't (yet!).
After growing up in Florida my sister finally got her dive certification in her 30s. The following year she moved to Minnesota, where the closest open water is Lake Michigan. And that's something like 100+ miles away. At least she has her cert though, although I've scuba dived I don't have mine. I came close but didn't get it, in college I took a scuba diving class but I wasn't able to get to the open water checkout dive, a couple of hundred miles away. At the tyme I didn't have a vehicle, my transportation was my bike. And I didn't arrange a ride with someone else in the class in tyme.
Why install more software when you can use a Hosts file to block ads? Not only that but if you're a prude and want to block porn as well, or any other url, a Hosts file will do it.
I want to own not rent. I also want to be able to use it anywhere I can take my laptop. What I don't want is to have to be always connected to use software. Personal computers were created so people could run software locally and not be connected to a timeshare mainframe.
D you mean the Bahamas? Bermuda is a lot more east than south of New England. In the Caribbean the Caymans is among the best diving. Of course that's subjective.
my point is that 250gb is more than enough. per month
It may be enough for you for all tyme but it's not enough for everybody forever. I admit though I spend at least several hours a day online I don't think I come anywhere near 250GB, I doubt I use 100GB a month. But then again I don't download and upload a lot of large files. I think the closest I came, er will come, is when I ran the update for my OS and software. But that was only a few hundred MBs.
If I were to move there I'd want to be somewhere between Nashua and Portsmouth, near the coast if not on it. Unfortunately finance makes that an impractical choice.
Well, you are picking the most expensive part of the State, save maybe a house on Winnipesaukee. There's a contingent of FSP'ers in Grafton, which is pretty cheap.
Well I grew up in Florida and I love the coast. Though I didn't live on the cost itself, 30 minutes drive east and I'd be on an Atlantic beach. Or an hour's drive west and I'd be on a beach on the Gulf. At either one I could go scuba diving, though the best place for scuba in Florida is off of Key Largo, a few hundred miles away.
How much did Australian businesses get for building out broad band but didn't? US businesses were given billions of taxpayer dollars to build out broadband but only a few have built any at all. Verison is slowly building out FiOS, fiber to a neighborhood splitter, but not many other businesses are building out broadband. They cried they needed public money to build out broadband but did nothing with the money given to them other than pad their profits.
New Hampshire is the logical choice seeing as it's state motto is Live Free or Die". The project itself is pretty new, I think it started somewhere around 2003 or 2004.
I applied early decision to a College in western NH
If I were to move there I'd want to be somewhere between Nashua and Portsmouth, near the coast if not on it. Unfortunately finance makes that an impractical choice.
The leg up Amazon has is that because it has "affiliates" run the local presence
Nothing or nobody is preventing local businesses from opening their own online store. I knew two people who had their own book stores, both stores were in converted houses a few blocks from each other. Once the web started becoming popular they opened online stores themselves. One of them ended up spending more tyme on her website, and made more money from it, so she sold the physical store to someone else but kept her online store. The other person uses her website to draw people to her physical store, though she still sales online. Ten years after she went online her stores, physical and online are still there, it's the Spiral Circle(you can see the converted house in some photos on the website). I bet her store is doing better than when she just had the physical location. I've talked to people there who drove 100+ miles to get to the store after they found it online.
Um, the one country I know of with close to free market medicine has by far the highest medical costs.
Would that country happen to be the US? Though most people don't know or realize it the US there is no free market in health or medical care. John McCain's proposal would bring it closer though. During World War II the US federal government passed wage control laws, employers weren't allowed to offer employees more pay. However this created a problem for employers, prospective employees demanded more than they could pay. To make up for this the government allowed employers to offer health insurance to employees and gave businesses that did tax breaks Some who's employer does not offer insurance, many can't afford it, and those who are self employed do not get those tax breaks. However McCain's plan would allow everybody to get tax breaks when they buy their own insurance. Employer provided health insurance can cost the employer thousands of dollars. However with these breaks employers could pay employees more, say $3000 which should be less than health insurance cost some employers, so more people could shop for private insurance policies, and with more people thus shopping insurance policy issuers would lower their prices. People complain about competition in the labor pool, such as complaining when US employers offshore outsource jobs to China but they refuse to admit the same mechanism will work for health insurance as well.
Also with a free market more neighborhood walk-in clinics could be opened. Instead of a clinic needing a bunch of doctors when they are open, some Nurse Practitioners and Physician assistants can be practice medicine under fewer physicians reducing costs. People could also form Health Coops easier.
All of these would help reduce the cost of health care.
A free market in medicine has an incentive for you to be sick so you are handing over money
Just as people go into engineering or IT because they want to, people also go into medicine because they want to. Not everybody has a profit motive for going into medicine.
In a free market medicines that don't cure but simply prolong life expectancy are the most desirable drugs.
In a free market it's the patient's decision on what drugs to take, and with drug data available they can make their own informed decision. For instance when I was given prescriptions from my doc, I'd ask the doc questions about the drug. Then I'd look it up in the Physicians Deck reference, PDR. After knowing more about a drug, if I wanted to I could ask more about side effects or about other drugs if I still had questions. In other words I actively participated in my own health care.
Free Market economics is not magic pixie dust. Milton Friedman was almost entirely correct about his observations, The usefulness of his conclusions vary based to what type of world you want to live in.
I agree a free market isn't pixie dust. However I distrust business a lot less than I distrust government. Except maybe tobacco I know of no business or industry that has killed more people than governments have. In the 20th century alone governments have killed more than 70.8 million people. I seriously doubt businesses have killed a fraction of that. That I know of the largest case, number of people dying at one tyme, because of a business is Union Carbide's accident, which was not an accident, in Bhupal, India which killed about 20,000 according to the wiki article.
I don't want to see drug dealers and hookers on my street corner,
And I don't want people locked up when they aren't harming anyone else, especially
unless Congress changes the law, each State cannot collect ANY tax on internet purchases. No one is breaking the law by not reporting the tax. However, the States are breaking Federal law.
States can however require state residents to declare how much they ordered from out of state, whether from catalogs or online then pay a use tax on that amount.
..and enforces property rights. You want the deed to your house to mean something, you need the government that issued it to be funded. That means taxes.
That means property tax not sales tax.
The government also builds roads and other vital infrastructure.
Roads should be paid for by taxes on vehicles and user fees on fuel. The only other infrastructure government should be involved in, other than Right of Ways or easments, is water and sewage. And those should be paid for by the users. Also they may want parks or other open spaces but those shouldn't cost much.
Is government too intrusive? Verily. Can we get rid of it? Not before Universal Enlightement.
Then it will go to Congress and they will pass new laws allowing these taxes
They would need a constitutional amendment, not merely a "new law."
Use taxes have already been taken to the US Supreme Court and the court ruled they were constitutional. Use taxes couldn't be discriminatory, ie sales tax and use tax had to be the same, but they are constitutional.
Sales tax at least in Utah is remitted directly back to the city and pays for police, fire and other emergency local services.
That's, police, fire, and other emergency services, what property tax is for. Sales tax shouldn't be used to pay those. And that's if a user doesn't pay, once I got a bad cramp I my abdomen and someone called an ambulance. Though I had medical insurance then I was still charged for the ambulance, about $700.
This is a way to close a loophole the online retailers are using to give themselves a leg up over brick and mortar stores.
What leg up does an online retailer have over a brick and mortar store? Whereas a physical store can build the cost of shipping into the price of an item many online store add shipping costs to the order. And shipping costs may be more than the sales tax.
I wondered that as well. I know Jeffersonian Democracy states for liberty and small government but not what the Madisonian Model was. They are almost the same though the Madisonian model focuses specifically on the presidency.
I found it interesting the Madisonian Model article lists Jimmy Carter as a Madisonian President.
Like everyone else they hold their nose and vote for the lesser. Though Bush the Lesser
In 2000 I specifically voted against Bush by checking off Gore. Instead of voting for the person I wanted as president I voted for what I thought was the lesser bad. Afterwards I sweared never to do that again.
why didn't Ron Paul get much support in the primaries? Several reasons for that, but I think the main ones are that he opposed the war
Many others opposed the war as well.
and opposed the nannystate
Many others oppose the nannystate as well.
and alienated the theocons.
Many also opposes the theocons. Put it all together many oppose the war, the nannystate, and the theocons. If every state had open primaries, so everybody could vote for the best person, Ron Paul would have gotten more votes. If my state had had an open primary I would have voted for Ron Paul myself, but because I am registered No Party Preference I was not able to vote in the primary.
Either way is arbitrary. One way is complicated, one way is simple. Taxes collected would average out the same, so of course governments chose the complicated way.
It would only average out the same if each state has the same sales but they don't.
Slashdot Mirror
I like diving in Bermuda. It's east of the Carolinas, but in the Gulf Stream. Closest landfall is Rhode Island, but that doesn't mean much for its climate.
Yea, the Gulf Stream makes Bermuda seem tropical.
Diving off Grand Cayman was more spectacular, but I didn't enjoy visiting the rest of the island nearly as much as Bermuda,
Did you checkout the caves and canyons? There are some good caves or c-notes to dive in in the interior. Of course they aren't great if you're claustrophobic.
I only get to do a little diving as the rest of my family doesn't (yet!).
After growing up in Florida my sister finally got her dive certification in her 30s. The following year she moved to Minnesota, where the closest open water is Lake Michigan. And that's something like 100+ miles away. At least she has her cert though, although I've scuba dived I don't have mine. I came close but didn't get it, in college I took a scuba diving class but I wasn't able to get to the open water checkout dive, a couple of hundred miles away. At the tyme I didn't have a vehicle, my transportation was my bike. And I didn't arrange a ride with someone else in the class in tyme.
Falcon
Why install more software when you can use a Hosts file to block ads? Not only that but if you're a prude and want to block porn as well, or any other url, a Hosts file will do it.
Falcon
250G is a huge amount of data.
Why would anyone need more than 64 KB of memory?
And what's wrong with SAAS anyway?
I want to own not rent. I also want to be able to use it anywhere I can take my laptop. What I don't want is to have to be always connected to use software. Personal computers were created so people could run software locally and not be connected to a timeshare mainframe.
Falcon
And why should those of us who live alone subsidize 9 people paying paying the same price as one of us?
Why should somebody be limited when they were sold an unlimited plan? Fact is is that broadband providers messed up when they sold unlimited plans.
Falcon
I think you must be thinking of a different set of Republican candidates than I am
But many people opposed the war.
Falcon
I save it for trips south. Bermuda is perfect. :)
D you mean the Bahamas? Bermuda is a lot more east than south of New England. In the Caribbean the Caymans is among the best diving. Of course that's subjective.
Falcon
my point is that 250gb is more than enough. per month
It may be enough for you for all tyme but it's not enough for everybody forever. I admit though I spend at least several hours a day online I don't think I come anywhere near 250GB, I doubt I use 100GB a month. But then again I don't download and upload a lot of large files. I think the closest I came, er will come, is when I ran the update for my OS and software. But that was only a few hundred MBs.
Falcon
If I were to move there I'd want to be somewhere between Nashua and Portsmouth, near the coast if not on it. Unfortunately finance makes that an impractical choice.
Well, you are picking the most expensive part of the State, save maybe a house on Winnipesaukee. There's a contingent of FSP'ers in Grafton, which is pretty cheap.
Well I grew up in Florida and I love the coast. Though I didn't live on the cost itself, 30 minutes drive east and I'd be on an Atlantic beach. Or an hour's drive west and I'd be on a beach on the Gulf. At either one I could go scuba diving, though the best place for scuba in Florida is off of Key Largo, a few hundred miles away.
Falcon
How much did Australian businesses get for building out broad band but didn't? US businesses were given billions of taxpayer dollars to build out broadband but only a few have built any at all. Verison is slowly building out FiOS, fiber to a neighborhood splitter, but not many other businesses are building out broadband. They cried they needed public money to build out broadband but did nothing with the money given to them other than pad their profits.
Falcon
Ah, you moved to the Free State Project state.
Yeah, it's about time those guys caught on. ;)
New Hampshire is the logical choice seeing as it's state motto is Live Free or Die". The project itself is pretty new, I think it started somewhere around 2003 or 2004.
I applied early decision to a College in western NH
If I were to move there I'd want to be somewhere between Nashua and Portsmouth, near the coast if not on it. Unfortunately finance makes that an impractical choice.
Falcon
The leg up Amazon has is that because it has "affiliates" run the local presence
Nothing or nobody is preventing local businesses from opening their own online store. I knew two people who had their own book stores, both stores were in converted houses a few blocks from each other. Once the web started becoming popular they opened online stores themselves. One of them ended up spending more tyme on her website, and made more money from it, so she sold the physical store to someone else but kept her online store. The other person uses her website to draw people to her physical store, though she still sales online. Ten years after she went online her stores, physical and online are still there, it's the Spiral Circle(you can see the converted house in some photos on the website). I bet her store is doing better than when she just had the physical location. I've talked to people there who drove 100+ miles to get to the store after they found it online.
Falcon
Um, the one country I know of with close to free market medicine has by far the highest medical costs.
Would that country happen to be the US? Though most people don't know or realize it the US there is no free market in health or medical care. John McCain's proposal would bring it closer though. During World War II the US federal government passed wage control laws, employers weren't allowed to offer employees more pay. However this created a problem for employers, prospective employees demanded more than they could pay. To make up for this the government allowed employers to offer health insurance to employees and gave businesses that did tax breaks Some who's employer does not offer insurance, many can't afford it, and those who are self employed do not get those tax breaks. However McCain's plan would allow everybody to get tax breaks when they buy their own insurance. Employer provided health insurance can cost the employer thousands of dollars. However with these breaks employers could pay employees more, say $3000 which should be less than health insurance cost some employers, so more people could shop for private insurance policies, and with more people thus shopping insurance policy issuers would lower their prices. People complain about competition in the labor pool, such as complaining when US employers offshore outsource jobs to China but they refuse to admit the same mechanism will work for health insurance as well.
Also with a free market more neighborhood walk-in clinics could be opened. Instead of a clinic needing a bunch of doctors when they are open, some Nurse Practitioners and Physician assistants can be practice medicine under fewer physicians reducing costs. People could also form Health Coops easier.
All of these would help reduce the cost of health care.
A free market in medicine has an incentive for you to be sick so you are handing over money
Just as people go into engineering or IT because they want to, people also go into medicine because they want to. Not everybody has a profit motive for going into medicine.
In a free market medicines that don't cure but simply prolong life expectancy are the most desirable drugs.
In a free market it's the patient's decision on what drugs to take, and with drug data available they can make their own informed decision. For instance when I was given prescriptions from my doc, I'd ask the doc questions about the drug. Then I'd look it up in the Physicians Deck reference, PDR. After knowing more about a drug, if I wanted to I could ask more about side effects or about other drugs if I still had questions. In other words I actively participated in my own health care.
Free Market economics is not magic pixie dust. Milton Friedman was almost entirely correct about his observations, The usefulness of his conclusions vary based to what type of world you want to live in.
I agree a free market isn't pixie dust. However I distrust business a lot less than I distrust government. Except maybe tobacco I know of no business or industry that has killed more people than governments have. In the 20th century alone governments have killed more than 70.8 million people. I seriously doubt businesses have killed a fraction of that. That I know of the largest case, number of people dying at one tyme, because of a business is Union Carbide's accident, which was not an accident, in Bhupal, India which killed about 20,000 according to the wiki article.
I don't want to see drug dealers and hookers on my street corner,
And I don't want people locked up when they aren't harming anyone else, especially
unless Congress changes the law, each State cannot collect ANY tax on internet purchases. No one is breaking the law by not reporting the tax. However, the States are breaking Federal law.
States can however require state residents to declare how much they ordered from out of state, whether from catalogs or online then pay a use tax on that amount.
Falcon
..and enforces property rights. You want the deed to your house to mean something, you need the government that issued it to be funded. That means taxes.
That means property tax not sales tax.
The government also builds roads and other vital infrastructure.
Roads should be paid for by taxes on vehicles and user fees on fuel. The only other infrastructure government should be involved in, other than Right of Ways or easments, is water and sewage. And those should be paid for by the users. Also they may want parks or other open spaces but those shouldn't cost much.
Is government too intrusive? Verily. Can we get rid of it? Not before Universal Enlightement.
Some of the USA's Founding Fathers were believers in the Age of Enlightenment.
Falcon
Then it will go to Congress and they will pass new laws allowing these taxes
They would need a constitutional amendment, not merely a "new law."
Use taxes have already been taken to the US Supreme Court and the court ruled they were constitutional. Use taxes couldn't be discriminatory, ie sales tax and use tax had to be the same, but they are constitutional.
Falcon
Sales tax at least in Utah is remitted directly back to the city and pays for police, fire and other emergency local services.
That's, police, fire, and other emergency services, what property tax is for. Sales tax shouldn't be used to pay those. And that's if a user doesn't pay, once I got a bad cramp I my abdomen and someone called an ambulance. Though I had medical insurance then I was still charged for the ambulance, about $700.
Falcon
This is a way to close a loophole the online retailers are using to give themselves a leg up over brick and mortar stores.
What leg up does an online retailer have over a brick and mortar store? Whereas a physical store can build the cost of shipping into the price of an item many online store add shipping costs to the order. And shipping costs may be more than the sales tax.
Falcon
nobody with half a brain thinks that Barack Obama is the most liberal member of the Senate.
Only if Barak Obama was a Liberal. I'd vote for him then, but I won't support him now because of his choice of Biden as his running mate.
Falcon
I wondered that as well. I know Jeffersonian Democracy states for liberty and small government but not what the Madisonian Model was. They are almost the same though the Madisonian model focuses specifically on the presidency.
I found it interesting the Madisonian Model article lists Jimmy Carter as a Madisonian President.
Falcon
Like everyone else they hold their nose and vote for the lesser. Though Bush the Lesser
In 2000 I specifically voted against Bush by checking off Gore. Instead of voting for the person I wanted as president I voted for what I thought was the lesser bad. Afterwards I sweared never to do that again.
Falcon
why didn't Ron Paul get much support in the primaries? Several reasons for that, but I think the main ones are that he opposed the war
Many others opposed the war as well.
and opposed the nannystate
Many others oppose the nannystate as well.
and alienated the theocons.
Many also opposes the theocons. Put it all together many oppose the war, the nannystate, and the theocons. If every state had open primaries, so everybody could vote for the best person, Ron Paul would have gotten more votes. If my state had had an open primary I would have voted for Ron Paul myself, but because I am registered No Party Preference I was not able to vote in the primary.
Falcon
Because one state or the other IS going to collect a sales tax. The decision is entirely arbitrary, but seller-based is MUCH simpler than buyer-based.
Simpler doesn't make it right or fair.
Falcon
Either way is arbitrary. One way is complicated, one way is simple. Taxes collected would average out the same, so of course governments chose the complicated way.
It would only average out the same if each state has the same sales but they don't.
Falcon
The entire mess could be avoided if taxes were collected based on the seller's location
Why should the state the seller is in be the one to collect any tax? The seller more than likely is already paying a state income tax.
Falcon
New York State can't tax a purchase made in Texas (or wherever Amazon is located)
So does that mean Texas can change the tax instead? Because right now no one is paying the tax, and that's not correct.
Why is it not right? Because less tax is paid? And taxes are good?
Falcon