I'm not going to hold my breath, but it at least seems reasonable that the planets are aligning nicely to make an Apple tablet seem releasable.
Yeah, I'm kind of surprised Apple doesn't have a tablet out. I'd like something that's a combination of a Macbook Pro and a Watcom tablet. That way I would be able to carry just one thing instead of two, a laptop and a tablet. If they don't release something like this I'd like to see Watcom release a thin tablet that can run off a battery and has a display built in.
I know a family where the mom has dreamed for 6 years of owning a blender (~$30 from Walmart), but hasn't been able to afford it. Do you even think of a blender as an amenity?
I don't think of a blender as something I need or will use, so I don't have one. And though I hope the family you know can improve their circumstances, I knew and worked with some homeless people. While between jobs and in college I worked some through day labor pools, where you go in early in the morning and sign up to work then wait until they pick you to go somewhere to work. While working there, you could say I was an oddball there as I was in college, I met and worked with some who literally slept on the streets, under bridges, or or in some woods.
the mother has had a entry level mail room job at a good company for ages, but she can't afford nice 'business' style clothing and so she has been repeatedly passed over for real jobs she's trained and qualified for because they feel she doesn't project a 'business image' they want. All because she can't afford to buy blouses and pants from even JC Penny's let alone 'Old Navy' or something like that.
I don't know if she has looked into it but there might be some non profit organization, or thrift shop, she may be able to get good even if used cloths from. A roommate I had years ago went to a Catholic social services org where he got help with clothing and food even though he wasn't Catholic himself.
She also is unlikely to ever get a better paying job and never end the cycle without marrying someone who could support her. However how many men would really want a wife that has 2 kids and is close to 30 years old? How many men that age are still unmarried if they wanted a family...? How many could afford to support her even if they meet criteria 1 & 2? I'll keep the answer short: Not many.
"how many men would really want a wife that has 2 kids and is close to 30 years old?" It may seem a nitpick but I have a problem with the word "want". Change the question to "who would marry a 30 year old with two children", heck change it to a 45 year old and I might very well marry her. If I loved her and I felt ready for it I would ask. Then again since growing up I've wanted four children, two that were mine and two that I'd adopted. However I'm getting to the point where I'd rather just adopt instead. That is if I had the financial capability, which I don't have. More than 10 years ago I had an accident it would of been better if I had died from, according to the docs it's a "miracle" I lived, and I've been on disability since. I hate it, not working, but I have no idea what type of work I can do with my injury. I'm not directly physically handicapped, instead I am a survivor of a TBI, Traumatic Brain Injury. However I don't believe I could do much physical labor, and my memory is bad. And as for being or getting married, I'm over 40 and though I've never been married I do want to get married and have a family. However some medical research I've heard of is that the older the parents are when they have a child the more likely it is the child may have health problems. I have two problems with this, one is I think it's be irresponsible to bring a child who won't be healthy into the world if you, well I, know this. And two I don't know if I'd even be able to take care of a family.
Many government services (like having a military) are not directly used by the majority of people.
Whether they know or recognize it every US citizen uses the military. Of course, maybe what we need now is what Thomas Jefferson said, the "blood of patriots and tyrants", a new revolution.
Congress should instead just focus on implementing a 1% national sales tax on everything... Then, they could wipe out the income tax and seriously downsize the IRS
Somehow I feel like they'd be more than happy to accomplish Step 1.
Step 2, I'm not so sure about.
Congress would dump step 2. SO, instead the order needs to be turned around:
Step 1: Abolish income tax.
Step 2: Institute a national sale stax.
When you buy something from out-of-state, there is generally no "sales tax" collected.
No matter what state I was in when I bought something I still had to pay sales tax on it. The only tyme anything like this I faced was when I was in Germany, there I had to fill out a form so I didn't have to pay the VAT, Value Added Tax. Most of the tyme I went ahead and paid the tax as it wasn't worth taking the tyme to fill out the forms.
For example, it's pretty difficult for most people to buy an Apple computer locally (defined as 45 minutes away or less), or BluRay recorder for your PC, or anything from Bose, or a Palm LifeDrive, Canon DSLR or pretty much anything else that is new and expensive.
I'm not sure where you are but I know of at least two locally owned and operated businesses that sale Macs, one of them is 10 maybe 15 minutes walk for me. And they specialize in Macs. Now a Canon DSLR, like the EOS 1Ds Mark II, or maybe the 5D might be a little harder though there's a store I know that probably will order one. Then again I haven't even seen either one of these stocked in national stores. Now what I am having trouble finding in local stores is a DL DVD RW drive I can install in my Linux box. I may end up ordering one.
Check out any new gadget article on Slashdot. Nobody talks about buying it locally.
I have and do talk about buying locally. I have stated at least a few tymes that I am a member of two local coops that support both organic and local producers, Lakewinds Coop, and The Wedge Coop.
What I'm saying is that the states are activly discouraging investment from companies, because that might force those companies' customer's to pay state sales tax. (E.g. there was talk back when Amazon never charged any sales tax except CA that if they built a new data center in state X, that residents of X would have to start paying tax on their Amazon purchases, which discouraged Amazon from brining that investment in)
Ok, I see what you're saying. If a business has to collect and pay sales tax if it were to open a location in the state then this would discourage them from opening any location i the state.
2) Everyone wants lower taxes, but the current setup clearly creats a loophole where I'm encouraged to buy out of state because I can get it "tax free".
You're not really getting it tax free, not if it has to be shipped. The shipping company has to pay a tax on the fuel they use and this is incorporated into the shipping costs. And sometymes the cost including shipping is more than instate purchases with sales tax would be. I found this out more than once, twice I've bought things from Amazon only to find it later in a store selling for less. Now I look for the prices in several stores before I order from Amazon.
I only made $2, NY lost $7) or worse for me.
Wrong, NY collected the fuel tax from the shipping company, unless the fuel was bought in Jersey. While it isn't $7, to say NY lost all of it is wrong. On the other hand NY's costs are lower and shouldn't need more revenue as the tax on fuel should be enough to pay for the roads. And from what I've heard NY has both high income tax and high sales tax, so it's no wonder people would rather not pay more tax.
The biggest, IMHO, is that switching to them ends up taxing people's savings - especially retirement savings - twice. It was taxed once, at various rates, while it was was being squirreled away. Then it gets taxed again, at confiscatory rates, when it is spent.
Sales tax does not tax savings, it only taxes spending. When it is spent it changes from savings to spending money. Actually income tax should be abolished and replaced with a national sales tax.
Right now is especially nasty, since you've got the entire baby boom just reaching retirement age. They've already been massively soaked by the Social Security pyramid scheme to give bread and circuses to previous generations - amid constant predictions that it would collapse when THEY retired.
If you want to save Social Security then what you should do is get rid of all those immigration laws. Let all of those "illegal immigrants" to legally work and pay the SS tax. After the Immigration Reform act of 1996 the Social Security Administration issued dummy SSNs to "illegals" and using these SSNs immigrants were able to get jobs and pay income and SS taxes. Using these SSNs $50 billion has been paid by the immigrants using them into SS thus helping to keep it solvent. And because the numbers are dummies, the immigrants using them can never use them to collect Social Security.
So they had to build their own retirement nest-eggs on top of it
Social Security was never meant to replace retirement savings, it was only meant to be a safety net. Everyone should save for retirement. If an 18 year old person saves and invests just $2000 a year for 7 years, until they reach 25, and keep it and all dividents and interest invested by the tyme they are 65 with an ROI, Return On Investment, of 10% per year that $14,000 invested will grow to almost $1,000,000. Ah, the miracle of Compound Interest.
And: Sales taxes zap the lower income earners harder than the upper (since the lower-income people are working hand-to-mouth and need to spend pretty much all of it,...
This is wrong. That I know of not one state has a sales tax on food and some don't tax clothing. If the poor are spending money on more than just clothing, education, food, and shelter then they are keeping themself down. If you're poor, once you have paid for the "essentials" of life you should using the rest of the money to improve your life by seeking an education or investing. If instead you are buying the next iPod then you only have yourself to blame.
What I don't understand is why vendors aren't required to charge sales tax on out-of-state sales, collect the money, and then give it to the state in question.
Why should venders be required to tax out of state purchases?
The current system is stupid on the face of it, since now
most states only tax commerce for corperations which have
a actual physical presence in that state, it encourages
companies to not setup any investment in states where they
do a high volume of sales.
Are you saying it is stupid that online stores don't have to collect sales tax? If so why should they have to to collect and pay state's sales tax? As far as I'm concerned there sholdn't be any sales tax on online purchases. If what is purchased is a physical item then taxes are already paid for when it's shipped, ie the shipper has to pay tax on fuel which pays for the roads used. Any other tax is just a money grab by the states.
How so? Smith is maintaining that your right to a luxury vehicle trumps the right of someone less fortunate to eat. Simply because he doesn't believe you will choose the luxury vehicle over your fellow man doesn't change that.
Can you point to one quote wherein Adam Smith says a life of luxury trumps life? Seems to me you can't have a life of luxury if you can't live.
You are picking a young market. That hardly tells us anything about where a free market ends up. Landline phones started with a series of patents and men with clubs so lets look elsewhere for mature markets. How about soda, tobacco or credit cards.
Ok, let's look at soda. My favorite soda is Steward's Ginger Beer though it used to be something like Oldtime Ginger Beer. Dealing with tobacco, I smoke mostly Nat Sherman's Touch of Clove. As for credit cards in a typical week I may get three or four offers from different companies. Some are American Express, Dinner's Club, Discover, MasterCard, or VISA. I have also had credit cards issued by retail chains. There is no shortage of companies that issue credit cards, actually it pisses me off I get so many offers. To make it harder for someone to steal my id I end up shreading and or burning all of these offers, simply credit card companies make it too easy to steal id. What's worse, at least where I live, is that less than one out of ten people even check id when handed a card or bank check. I know of only one place that consistently checks id, my bank. They even go a step further, when my sister writes a check to me, from a different account at the same bank, the bank calls her to make sure she gave me the check. My brother-in-law gets pissed they call.
IIRC, It actually helped kill of the instamatic. Yeah, they were hugely profitable, but they could not get their sales volume up. In fact, they plummeted. Nobody wanted to pay the top dollar that Polaroid was charging. The way to maximize their profits would have been to allow kodak to continue and to get a cut of each film sold. But Polaroid elected not to do that.
Yea, all too frequently businesses do stupid things. One I see Kodak doing now is exiting the film market, they are switching all of thier cameras over from film to digital. Me, though I'd like to get a DSLR, I don't want to get rid of film, and a lot of pro photographers feel the same. Actually I'd like to get a medium format camera with two backs, a film and a digital back. Though I love using computers I also love working in darkrooms.
When I refer to 'means' I am referring to the common usage. Wealth and/or financial leverage. The employer has the financial advantage and because of this employer and employee relationships are entirely advantageous to the employer. This allows the employer to exploit the employee to gain further financial advantage.
Ah, no matter how much money they have, it means nothing to employers if no one wants wants to work for them. Employers may have the advantage of money but the employee has the advantage of providing labor and without labor the employer has nothing to sell. I don't know about you but prior to an accident I had years ago I was quite able to go out into the wilderness and survive without a paycheck. I knew how to garden growing up, and I still love it. I fished and hunted and knew how to preserve what food I got. I also grew up learning what was edible in the forest, swamps, or Everglades (I grew up mostly in Florida). I also knew how to erect shelter so I could of lived without having an income, money. In other words I grew up learning to be as self sufficient as I could be.
'if you really believe this, I suggest you read Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments . His first sentence in it is '
And that in no way contradicts what I said. In fact it implies that people want to see others do well and would ethically if left to their own devices. About that I can say nothing beyond that history has yet to show any groups of humans that by and large behave this way.
Ooh but it does contradicts your statement that Adam Smith advocated "that you have a right to your luxery vehicle despite the consequences to others." Caring about and taking care of others as Smith advocated is totally different than driving a luxury vehicle despite the consequences.
Hence, a free market does not lead to competition it leads to a lack of real competition.
How many choices of landline phone service do you have? Now compare it to how many choices of cellphone service you have. While there is no competition for landline service, it's a government granted monopoly, many places have at least two competitors to choose from for cellphone service. And because of this cellphone service is cheaper unless the phone is used alot, then again if it is used a lot but it's used for long distance it's still cheaper. The only phone I have is a cellphone, though I don't use it much most of my airtime is long distance which the service provider does not charge for and I pay less than when I had a landline. Though the cellphone market isn't truely a free market it is a lot more open than landline service and is cheaper for many. VOIP is also having an impact on phone service.
True free trade is like every other aspect of life. It is a survival of the fitest competition that is advantageous to the fit and to the detrement on the unfit. In the case of economics a free trade environment puts the power in the hands of those with means. One good example of this is the employer and employee relationship in 'right to work' states. There is little or no government intervention and the since the employer has the greatest means and therefore is more fit the employer exploits the unfit to become even more fit.
First, right to work laws by their very nature are an interevention in free trade otherwise the laws wouldn't exist. Having said that though I Googled "right to work" and went through the results without finding a paper that had the cons of these laws. So I then added "pro con" and still didn't get any result, of the ten results on the first page I went through 9 of them but didn't check the tenth one because it was about the abortion debate, that said what the cons of right to work laws are though some gave what are the pros. Now can you provide a link to a research paper that supports your belief that right to work laws only benefit those with the means (and what you mean by "means")?
Direct competition is to the benefit of the consumer and therefore not in the best interest of market leaders.
Agreed! And you don't have real competition if you don't have a free market. Any market with restrictions, other than those that enforce contracts and such, is not a free market. Neither is a market free that has any barrier other than financial, know how, and ability to enter. The closest we come to a free market in the US is in FOOS, or in the illegal drug trade.
Adam Smith believed that the only right that is certain is the right to keep the things that you earn and accumulate. What that means is that Adam Smith and the principle of capitalism supports that idea that you have a right to your luxery vehicle despite the consequences to others.
If you really believe this, I suggest you read Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments. His first sentence in it is "How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it."
Patent monopolies are government granted monopolies and in direct contradiction to the founding principles of the nation. That said without any government intervention at all monopolies are the inevitable conclusion of capitalism. Monopolies in turn provide the wealthy with a safe way to guarantee they only become wealthier. It goes without saying that where there are monopolies there is no competition and therefore no benefit to the consumer.
Capitalism works on the assumption of individual human greed and jealousy as a driving motivator. People sugar coat it by phrasing it differently but that is what is boils down to. Under capitalism the right to accumalate personal wealth regardless of consequence to others is absolute.
This might be true of today's brand of capitalism, however what we have today is more of a corporate aristocracy. With few exceptions true free trade capitalism improves economics for everyone. The father of capitalism, Adam Smith, was even opposed to patents, patents are a government granted monopoly and he was against both government and monopolies. At first Thomas Jefferson was also against patents. However eventually his friend James Madison convinced him that patents could encourage progress by giving inventors and investors the financial incentive to create new things. And despite the fact that many slashdotters work on or contribute to open source projects money is a primary reason people create new stuff. Indirectly this even applies to some who contribute to FOOS projects. By working on, and having your name appear as a contributor, you're displaying your skills to employers, or if you work for yourself or your own business, for potnetial clients.
It is time to delete the patent system, then we delete Microsoft too.
No, don't get rid of patents, instead reform it. First software shouldn't be patented period. Neither should business methods or algorithms. Next make the term of patents last not more than 14 years with a possibility of a 14 year extension. Actually I'd say 7 years however not all of the cost of all research leading to patents can be justified with only a patent limit of 7 years, maybe not even 14.
And when they pay, they must account for that payment in..... their company accounts.
Buy a share or two and take a look.
Indirectly I do, er did own corporate stocks, but it's all in bonds right now, and used to get the annual corporate reports. If I don't understand something I can ask, and have, my sister who's a CPA, Certified Public Accountant, or her husband who's a CFP, Certified Financial Planner to explain something.
As for a payment on the balance sheet, it could be made to look like a payment on an insurance policy.
Falcon
Ooh btw the money is in bonds right now because a lot was lost because of the dotcom bust, Enron, WorldCom, and other disasters. Being in bonds the last few years the money is almost back up to what it was before the crash and criminal activity.
OTOH, publicly traded companies are required to list all liabilities including those from law suits or potential law suits. If they are hushing it up, they may be violating exchange rules or SEC regs.
Which is why MS is able to get away with bullying. A business may pay MS to make lawsuits "go away", once they pay MS the possibility of a lawsuit filed against them by MS goes away. It's when they don't buckle under that they have to report the possibility of a lawsuit filed by MS.
M$ can't bully Uncle Sam. If they are extorting companies, I'm sure that their legal counsel is secretly complaining to the DOJ.
Oh but MS has bullied, er bought off, the government. The Clinton admin's Department of Justice had MS on the ropes. Then comes along the Bush admin and they let MS off without even a slap on the wrist. What puzzles me about this is that Texas was one of the first state governments to file a lawsuit against MS and they filed while Bush was governor of Texas.
If you patent a mechanical device and someone infringes on your patent to sell me a knockoff, you can sue them and make them stop selling it, but you can't sue me and make me stop using the one that I bought.
Something like this happened years ago. Kodak came out with an instamatic camera, one that ejected the photo paper when a picture was taken then slowly develops. Polaroid had a patent on this and sued Kodak, Kodak lost and was required to either issue a refund for those who bought the camera or exchange the camera for a Polaroid camera. The only reason to keep the camera was as a collector's item, they wouldn't be able to use it because Kodak could not sell the photo paper and the camera was incompatible with Polaroid's paper. Something similar probably would happen here with software. While a user might decide to keep it they very well may find they can't get support for it, at least not legally.
I have no idea which one I meant. My history is not as sharp as it could be. I have vague memories about learning that some very old company call the East India Trading Company was one of the most powerful organizations on the planet at one point so I decided to shoot from the hip (so to speak) in a slashdot reply.
Well, both British and Dutch East India Company were powerful for thier tyme. Not many know that Netherland was a powerful colonizer, as was Portugal actually. For instance both colonized Timor northwest of Australia. The Dutch colonized west Timor and Portugal East Timor. Both also had colonies in Africa, the Afrikaners in South Africa were descendents of Dutch. In Latin America while Spain colonized the western part of the continent by agreement Portugal colonized the eastern part. Therefore Spanish is the official language from Colombia down the Pacific coast to Chile while Brazil on the Atlantic coast, and the biggest country in South America, has Portugese as the official language.
Falcon
Oh, you may of noticed I capitalized "East" above in reference to Timor whereas I left the "w" in "west" small. Timor is the name of the island and East Timor is a sovereign nation whereas west Timor is part of the nation of Indonesia which was formed after the Dutch left.
Great. With you and all the other people that can afford to pay for a copy and who know how to install an OS, or even what an OS is, and who aren't locked into Windows for some applications or purposes that should boost Apple's market share about 3%, while completely killing the 50% of their revenue they get from hardware sales.
No, they'd be playing the same game as MS. The Dells and eMachines would offer OS/X on their boxes, just like they offer Windows and are starting to offer linux.
Yea, that's why BeOS is still in business, because they were able to get OEMs to preinstall BeOS on PCs. NOT! MS requires those OEMs that want a cheap Widnows OS to pay for a Windows license for every PC sold whether it is installed or not. What OEM is going to include a rival OS when they still have to pay MS? MS is a convicted monopoly period!
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not going to hold my breath, but it at least seems reasonable that the planets are aligning nicely to make an Apple tablet seem releasable.
Yeah, I'm kind of surprised Apple doesn't have a tablet out. I'd like something that's a combination of a Macbook Pro and a Watcom tablet. That way I would be able to carry just one thing instead of two, a laptop and a tablet. If they don't release something like this I'd like to see Watcom release a thin tablet that can run off a battery and has a display built in.
FalconI know a family where the mom has dreamed for 6 years of owning a blender (~$30 from Walmart), but hasn't been able to afford it. Do you even think of a blender as an amenity?
I don't think of a blender as something I need or will use, so I don't have one. And though I hope the family you know can improve their circumstances, I knew and worked with some homeless people. While between jobs and in college I worked some through day labor pools, where you go in early in the morning and sign up to work then wait until they pick you to go somewhere to work. While working there, you could say I was an oddball there as I was in college, I met and worked with some who literally slept on the streets, under bridges, or or in some woods.
the mother has had a entry level mail room job at a good company for ages, but she can't afford nice 'business' style clothing and so she has been repeatedly passed over for real jobs she's trained and qualified for because they feel she doesn't project a 'business image' they want. All because she can't afford to buy blouses and pants from even JC Penny's let alone 'Old Navy' or something like that.
I don't know if she has looked into it but there might be some non profit organization, or thrift shop, she may be able to get good even if used cloths from. A roommate I had years ago went to a Catholic social services org where he got help with clothing and food even though he wasn't Catholic himself.
She also is unlikely to ever get a better paying job and never end the cycle without marrying someone who could support her. However how many men would really want a wife that has 2 kids and is close to 30 years old? How many men that age are still unmarried if they wanted a family...? How many could afford to support her even if they meet criteria 1 & 2? I'll keep the answer short: Not many.
"how many men would really want a wife that has 2 kids and is close to 30 years old?" It may seem a nitpick but I have a problem with the word "want". Change the question to "who would marry a 30 year old with two children", heck change it to a 45 year old and I might very well marry her. If I loved her and I felt ready for it I would ask. Then again since growing up I've wanted four children, two that were mine and two that I'd adopted. However I'm getting to the point where I'd rather just adopt instead. That is if I had the financial capability, which I don't have. More than 10 years ago I had an accident it would of been better if I had died from, according to the docs it's a "miracle" I lived, and I've been on disability since. I hate it, not working, but I have no idea what type of work I can do with my injury. I'm not directly physically handicapped, instead I am a survivor of a TBI, Traumatic Brain Injury. However I don't believe I could do much physical labor, and my memory is bad. And as for being or getting married, I'm over 40 and though I've never been married I do want to get married and have a family. However some medical research I've heard of is that the older the parents are when they have a child the more likely it is the child may have health problems. I have two problems with this, one is I think it's be irresponsible to bring a child who won't be healthy into the world if you, well I, know this. And two I don't know if I'd even be able to take care of a family.
FalconMany government services (like having a military) are not directly used by the majority of people.
Whether they know or recognize it every US citizen uses the military. Of course, maybe what we need now is what Thomas Jefferson said, the "blood of patriots and tyrants", a new revolution.
FalconCongress should instead just focus on implementing a 1% national sales tax on everything ... Then, they could wipe out the income tax and seriously downsize the IRS
Somehow I feel like they'd be more than happy to accomplish Step 1.
Step 2, I'm not so sure about.
Congress would dump step 2. SO, instead the order needs to be turned around:
Step 1: Abolish income tax.
FalconStep 2: Institute a national sale stax.
When you buy something from out-of-state, there is generally no "sales tax" collected.
No matter what state I was in when I bought something I still had to pay sales tax on it. The only tyme anything like this I faced was when I was in Germany, there I had to fill out a form so I didn't have to pay the VAT, Value Added Tax. Most of the tyme I went ahead and paid the tax as it wasn't worth taking the tyme to fill out the forms.
Falcon"The state also requires its residents to report purchases made over the Internet and pay taxes on them"
States can't enforce it, it's all voluntary.
FalconFor example, it's pretty difficult for most people to buy an Apple computer locally (defined as 45 minutes away or less), or BluRay recorder for your PC, or anything from Bose, or a Palm LifeDrive, Canon DSLR or pretty much anything else that is new and expensive.
I'm not sure where you are but I know of at least two locally owned and operated businesses that sale Macs, one of them is 10 maybe 15 minutes walk for me. And they specialize in Macs. Now a Canon DSLR, like the EOS 1Ds Mark II, or maybe the 5D might be a little harder though there's a store I know that probably will order one. Then again I haven't even seen either one of these stocked in national stores. Now what I am having trouble finding in local stores is a DL DVD RW drive I can install in my Linux box. I may end up ordering one.
FalconCheck out any new gadget article on Slashdot. Nobody talks about buying it locally.
I have and do talk about buying locally. I have stated at least a few tymes that I am a member of two local coops that support both organic and local producers, Lakewinds Coop, and The Wedge Coop.
FalconWhat I'm saying is that the states are activly discouraging investment from companies, because that might force those companies' customer's to pay state sales tax. (E.g. there was talk back when Amazon never charged any sales tax except CA that if they built a new data center in state X, that residents of X would have to start paying tax on their Amazon purchases, which discouraged Amazon from brining that investment in)
Ok, I see what you're saying. If a business has to collect and pay sales tax if it were to open a location in the state then this would discourage them from opening any location i the state.
2) Everyone wants lower taxes, but the current setup clearly creats a loophole where I'm encouraged to buy out of state because I can get it "tax free".
You're not really getting it tax free, not if it has to be shipped. The shipping company has to pay a tax on the fuel they use and this is incorporated into the shipping costs. And sometymes the cost including shipping is more than instate purchases with sales tax would be. I found this out more than once, twice I've bought things from Amazon only to find it later in a store selling for less. Now I look for the prices in several stores before I order from Amazon.
I only made $2, NY lost $7) or worse for me.
Wrong, NY collected the fuel tax from the shipping company, unless the fuel was bought in Jersey. While it isn't $7, to say NY lost all of it is wrong. On the other hand NY's costs are lower and shouldn't need more revenue as the tax on fuel should be enough to pay for the roads. And from what I've heard NY has both high income tax and high sales tax, so it's no wonder people would rather not pay more tax.
Remeber, TNSTAAFL.
Where does a free lunch enter this?
FalconThe biggest, IMHO, is that switching to them ends up taxing people's savings - especially retirement savings - twice. It was taxed once, at various rates, while it was was being squirreled away. Then it gets taxed again, at confiscatory rates, when it is spent.
Sales tax does not tax savings, it only taxes spending. When it is spent it changes from savings to spending money. Actually income tax should be abolished and replaced with a national sales tax.
Right now is especially nasty, since you've got the entire baby boom just reaching retirement age. They've already been massively soaked by the Social Security pyramid scheme to give bread and circuses to previous generations - amid constant predictions that it would collapse when THEY retired.
If you want to save Social Security then what you should do is get rid of all those immigration laws. Let all of those "illegal immigrants" to legally work and pay the SS tax. After the Immigration Reform act of 1996 the Social Security Administration issued dummy SSNs to "illegals" and using these SSNs immigrants were able to get jobs and pay income and SS taxes. Using these SSNs $50 billion has been paid by the immigrants using them into SS thus helping to keep it solvent. And because the numbers are dummies, the immigrants using them can never use them to collect Social Security.
So they had to build their own retirement nest-eggs on top of it
Social Security was never meant to replace retirement savings, it was only meant to be a safety net. Everyone should save for retirement. If an 18 year old person saves and invests just $2000 a year for 7 years, until they reach 25, and keep it and all dividents and interest invested by the tyme they are 65 with an ROI, Return On Investment, of 10% per year that $14,000 invested will grow to almost $1,000,000. Ah, the miracle of Compound Interest.
And: Sales taxes zap the lower income earners harder than the upper (since the lower-income people are working hand-to-mouth and need to spend pretty much all of it,...
This is wrong. That I know of not one state has a sales tax on food and some don't tax clothing. If the poor are spending money on more than just clothing, education, food, and shelter then they are keeping themself down. If you're poor, once you have paid for the "essentials" of life you should using the rest of the money to improve your life by seeking an education or investing. If instead you are buying the next iPod then you only have yourself to blame.
FalconWhat I don't understand is why vendors aren't required to charge sales tax on out-of-state sales, collect the money, and then give it to the state in question.
Why should venders be required to tax out of state purchases?
FalconThe current system is stupid on the face of it, since now most states only tax commerce for corperations which have a actual physical presence in that state, it encourages companies to not setup any investment in states where they do a high volume of sales.
Are you saying it is stupid that online stores don't have to collect sales tax? If so why should they have to to collect and pay state's sales tax? As far as I'm concerned there sholdn't be any sales tax on online purchases. If what is purchased is a physical item then taxes are already paid for when it's shipped, ie the shipper has to pay tax on fuel which pays for the roads used. Any other tax is just a money grab by the states.
FalconHow so? Smith is maintaining that your right to a luxury vehicle trumps the right of someone less fortunate to eat. Simply because he doesn't believe you will choose the luxury vehicle over your fellow man doesn't change that.
Can you point to one quote wherein Adam Smith says a life of luxury trumps life? Seems to me you can't have a life of luxury if you can't live.
You are picking a young market. That hardly tells us anything about where a free market ends up. Landline phones started with a series of patents and men with clubs so lets look elsewhere for mature markets. How about soda, tobacco or credit cards.
Ok, let's look at soda. My favorite soda is Steward's Ginger Beer though it used to be something like Oldtime Ginger Beer. Dealing with tobacco, I smoke mostly Nat Sherman's Touch of Clove. As for credit cards in a typical week I may get three or four offers from different companies. Some are American Express, Dinner's Club, Discover, MasterCard, or VISA. I have also had credit cards issued by retail chains. There is no shortage of companies that issue credit cards, actually it pisses me off I get so many offers. To make it harder for someone to steal my id I end up shreading and or burning all of these offers, simply credit card companies make it too easy to steal id. What's worse, at least where I live, is that less than one out of ten people even check id when handed a card or bank check. I know of only one place that consistently checks id, my bank. They even go a step further, when my sister writes a check to me, from a different account at the same bank, the bank calls her to make sure she gave me the check. My brother-in-law gets pissed they call.
FalconIIRC, It actually helped kill of the instamatic. Yeah, they were hugely profitable, but they could not get their sales volume up. In fact, they plummeted. Nobody wanted to pay the top dollar that Polaroid was charging. The way to maximize their profits would have been to allow kodak to continue and to get a cut of each film sold. But Polaroid elected not to do that.
Yea, all too frequently businesses do stupid things. One I see Kodak doing now is exiting the film market, they are switching all of thier cameras over from film to digital. Me, though I'd like to get a DSLR, I don't want to get rid of film, and a lot of pro photographers feel the same. Actually I'd like to get a medium format camera with two backs, a film and a digital back. Though I love using computers I also love working in darkrooms.
FalconWhen I refer to 'means' I am referring to the common usage. Wealth and/or financial leverage. The employer has the financial advantage and because of this employer and employee relationships are entirely advantageous to the employer. This allows the employer to exploit the employee to gain further financial advantage.
Ah, no matter how much money they have, it means nothing to employers if no one wants wants to work for them. Employers may have the advantage of money but the employee has the advantage of providing labor and without labor the employer has nothing to sell. I don't know about you but prior to an accident I had years ago I was quite able to go out into the wilderness and survive without a paycheck. I knew how to garden growing up, and I still love it. I fished and hunted and knew how to preserve what food I got. I also grew up learning what was edible in the forest, swamps, or Everglades (I grew up mostly in Florida). I also knew how to erect shelter so I could of lived without having an income, money. In other words I grew up learning to be as self sufficient as I could be.
'if you really believe this, I suggest you read Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments . His first sentence in it is '
And that in no way contradicts what I said. In fact it implies that people want to see others do well and would ethically if left to their own devices. About that I can say nothing beyond that history has yet to show any groups of humans that by and large behave this way.
Ooh but it does contradicts your statement that Adam Smith advocated "that you have a right to your luxery vehicle despite the consequences to others." Caring about and taking care of others as Smith advocated is totally different than driving a luxury vehicle despite the consequences.
Hence, a free market does not lead to competition it leads to a lack of real competition.
How many choices of landline phone service do you have? Now compare it to how many choices of cellphone service you have. While there is no competition for landline service, it's a government granted monopoly, many places have at least two competitors to choose from for cellphone service. And because of this cellphone service is cheaper unless the phone is used alot, then again if it is used a lot but it's used for long distance it's still cheaper. The only phone I have is a cellphone, though I don't use it much most of my airtime is long distance which the service provider does not charge for and I pay less than when I had a landline. Though the cellphone market isn't truely a free market it is a lot more open than landline service and is cheaper for many. VOIP is also having an impact on phone service.
FalconTrue free trade is like every other aspect of life. It is a survival of the fitest competition that is advantageous to the fit and to the detrement on the unfit. In the case of economics a free trade environment puts the power in the hands of those with means. One good example of this is the employer and employee relationship in 'right to work' states. There is little or no government intervention and the since the employer has the greatest means and therefore is more fit the employer exploits the unfit to become even more fit.
First, right to work laws by their very nature are an interevention in free trade otherwise the laws wouldn't exist. Having said that though I Googled "right to work" and went through the results without finding a paper that had the cons of these laws. So I then added "pro con" and still didn't get any result, of the ten results on the first page I went through 9 of them but didn't check the tenth one because it was about the abortion debate, that said what the cons of right to work laws are though some gave what are the pros. Now can you provide a link to a research paper that supports your belief that right to work laws only benefit those with the means (and what you mean by "means")?
Direct competition is to the benefit of the consumer and therefore not in the best interest of market leaders.
Agreed! And you don't have real competition if you don't have a free market. Any market with restrictions, other than those that enforce contracts and such, is not a free market. Neither is a market free that has any barrier other than financial, know how, and ability to enter. The closest we come to a free market in the US is in FOOS, or in the illegal drug trade.
Adam Smith believed that the only right that is certain is the right to keep the things that you earn and accumulate. What that means is that Adam Smith and the principle of capitalism supports that idea that you have a right to your luxery vehicle despite the consequences to others.
If you really believe this, I suggest you read Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments . His first sentence in it is "How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it."
FalconPatent monopolies are government granted monopolies and in direct contradiction to the founding principles of the nation. That said without any government intervention at all monopolies are the inevitable conclusion of capitalism. Monopolies in turn provide the wealthy with a safe way to guarantee they only become wealthier. It goes without saying that where there are monopolies there is no competition and therefore no benefit to the consumer.
Capitalism works on the assumption of individual human greed and jealousy as a driving motivator. People sugar coat it by phrasing it differently but that is what is boils down to. Under capitalism the right to accumalate personal wealth regardless of consequence to others is absolute.
This might be true of today's brand of capitalism, however what we have today is more of a corporate aristocracy. With few exceptions true free trade capitalism improves economics for everyone. The father of capitalism, Adam Smith, was even opposed to patents, patents are a government granted monopoly and he was against both government and monopolies. At first Thomas Jefferson was also against patents. However eventually his friend James Madison convinced him that patents could encourage progress by giving inventors and investors the financial incentive to create new things. And despite the fact that many slashdotters work on or contribute to open source projects money is a primary reason people create new stuff. Indirectly this even applies to some who contribute to FOOS projects. By working on, and having your name appear as a contributor, you're displaying your skills to employers, or if you work for yourself or your own business, for potnetial clients.
FalconIt is time to delete the patent system, then we delete Microsoft too.
No, don't get rid of patents, instead reform it. First software shouldn't be patented period. Neither should business methods or algorithms. Next make the term of patents last not more than 14 years with a possibility of a 14 year extension. Actually I'd say 7 years however not all of the cost of all research leading to patents can be justified with only a patent limit of 7 years, maybe not even 14.
FalconAnd when they pay, they must account for that payment in..... their company accounts.
Buy a share or two and take a look.
Indirectly I do, er did own corporate stocks, but it's all in bonds right now, and used to get the annual corporate reports. If I don't understand something I can ask, and have, my sister who's a CPA, Certified Public Accountant, or her husband who's a CFP, Certified Financial Planner to explain something.
As for a payment on the balance sheet, it could be made to look like a payment on an insurance policy.
Falcon
Ooh btw the money is in bonds right now because a lot was lost because of the dotcom bust, Enron, WorldCom, and other disasters. Being in bonds the last few years the money is almost back up to what it was before the crash and criminal activity.
OTOH, publicly traded companies are required to list all liabilities including those from law suits or potential law suits. If they are hushing it up, they may be violating exchange rules or SEC regs.
Which is why MS is able to get away with bullying. A business may pay MS to make lawsuits "go away", once they pay MS the possibility of a lawsuit filed against them by MS goes away. It's when they don't buckle under that they have to report the possibility of a lawsuit filed by MS.
FalconM$ can't bully Uncle Sam. If they are extorting companies, I'm sure that their legal counsel is secretly complaining to the DOJ.
Oh but MS has bullied, er bought off, the government. The Clinton admin's Department of Justice had MS on the ropes. Then comes along the Bush admin and they let MS off without even a slap on the wrist. What puzzles me about this is that Texas was one of the first state governments to file a lawsuit against MS and they filed while Bush was governor of Texas.
FalconIf you patent a mechanical device and someone infringes on your patent to sell me a knockoff, you can sue them and make them stop selling it, but you can't sue me and make me stop using the one that I bought.
Something like this happened years ago. Kodak came out with an instamatic camera, one that ejected the photo paper when a picture was taken then slowly develops. Polaroid had a patent on this and sued Kodak, Kodak lost and was required to either issue a refund for those who bought the camera or exchange the camera for a Polaroid camera. The only reason to keep the camera was as a collector's item, they wouldn't be able to use it because Kodak could not sell the photo paper and the camera was incompatible with Polaroid's paper. Something similar probably would happen here with software. While a user might decide to keep it they very well may find they can't get support for it, at least not legally.
FalconI have no idea which one I meant. My history is not as sharp as it could be. I have vague memories about learning that some very old company call the East India Trading Company was one of the most powerful organizations on the planet at one point so I decided to shoot from the hip (so to speak) in a slashdot reply.
Well, both British and Dutch East India Company were powerful for thier tyme. Not many know that Netherland was a powerful colonizer, as was Portugal actually. For instance both colonized Timor northwest of Australia. The Dutch colonized west Timor and Portugal East Timor. Both also had colonies in Africa, the Afrikaners in South Africa were descendents of Dutch. In Latin America while Spain colonized the western part of the continent by agreement Portugal colonized the eastern part. Therefore Spanish is the official language from Colombia down the Pacific coast to Chile while Brazil on the Atlantic coast, and the biggest country in South America, has Portugese as the official language.
Falcon
Oh, you may of noticed I capitalized "East" above in reference to Timor whereas I left the "w" in "west" small. Timor is the name of the island and East Timor is a sovereign nation whereas west Timor is part of the nation of Indonesia which was formed after the Dutch left.
if they wanted to.
How's that?
FalconGreat. With you and all the other people that can afford to pay for a copy and who know how to install an OS, or even what an OS is, and who aren't locked into Windows for some applications or purposes that should boost Apple's market share about 3%, while completely killing the 50% of their revenue they get from hardware sales.
No, they'd be playing the same game as MS. The Dells and eMachines would offer OS/X on their boxes, just like they offer Windows and are starting to offer linux.
Yea, that's why BeOS is still in business, because they were able to get OEMs to preinstall BeOS on PCs. NOT! MS requires those OEMs that want a cheap Widnows OS to pay for a Windows license for every PC sold whether it is installed or not. What OEM is going to include a rival OS when they still have to pay MS? MS is a convicted monopoly period!
Falcon