The question is who wants which/both. There will be arguments (I a sure of, there always is) that the VAT will put an undue burden on the poor. I have the feeling that this will actually get some people to pay more due to the loss of loopholes. Also, we would see a vast reduction in the size of the IRS. No pesky forms to file.
Without patents, a little guy can invent something, and then a big guy can come along and copy it. Not having paid for the research into it, they can probably sell it for less too. Result - Little guy goes out of business and big guys keep selling product for $$$.
Patents can protect the small guys from the big guys.
Been there, done that. One place pissed me off so much, the next time I went there I payed with about 30 something of them. The stamp machine would give you change greater than $1 in susan b's. so i put in $30.15, bought the 15 cent stamp and walked away with the 30 susan b's for the place. (I had some fun with those).
Way OT, but this is one of my interests. Personally, for taxes, I'd like to see a completely flat tax (no deductions, no minimum earnings) on all income. That way it can't be abused. The problem with having a minimum amount earned in order to pay taxes, is that all of a sudden anyone who earns below that doesn't care what the tax rate is. They can then be 'bribed' through the government services for their vote. Also, every couple of years it would have to be moved up (and more hotly debated contention) to account for inflation. Add into that, that the move can be delayed or shrunk to have an effective tax increase. (Problem with our brackets now).
If you want a progressive tax, then the best I can come up with would be this. The tax on all income less than the median earnings is taxed at exactly half the rate of any income above that. I.E., lets say the median is $40,000 the tax rate for any income up to that would be %15. Any income above that $40,000 would be taxed at %30. Still, no deductions.
Deductions are what create all these crazy problems in the first place. And you have to tax eveyone or they end up not caring where the money goes (or say, tax the rich more).
Sounds like you think I am talking about the spammer. I am talking about the child molester in the parent post. If you'd've met victims of child molesters, you'd feel the same way.
Uh.. Molestaion != Rape. Physically there is a difference. Psychologically there is not much. (just pointing out the difference) Personally if it was up to me, the guy would be dead. (Also why I do not like the idea of 'Parole')
In his encyclical Humani Generis (1950), my predecessor Pius XII has already affirmed that there is no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of the faith regarding man and his vocation, provided that we do not lose sight of certain fixed points.
I'd just like to point out: Interesting how people on the right seem to forget this. Interesting how people on the left seem to forget this. Interesting how some say one can not believe in both god and evolution.
I have yet to hear of any church saying "War with Iraq is good". I have only heard about them speaking against it. Next complaint against organized religion please.
you already answered yoruslef: Popular presentation of evoltuion, including what I was taught in high-school biology, are so dumbed down as to be incorrect.
What is legal is not always moral (hiring a prostitute to cheat on your significant other in vegas [where prostitution is legal], or cheating on your sig other in general [especially when maried]).
What is moral is not always legal (depends on your specific morals here [same above, but I hope we can agree on that one]).
it is cheaper and more efficient to combine your purchasing power.
This is why co-ops get together to buy something from one of a variety of poeple. This only works when you have multiple sources of service to choose from. It also only works when you can leave the provider at the end of a set number of years.
this is one of the concepts behind publicly funded infrastructure and what makes governments the leading purchasers in most industries. try building your own roads and see if you get a better deal on the asphalt than your municipal/state government.
Roads are not applicable to this, nor are most others. governments supply things such as roads and public infrastructure where it would be prohibitively expensive to have/maintain seperate systems. Can you imagine the hassle in having multiple sewer, water or road systems all having to operate side by side whithout interconnecting? That would be an appropriate analogy for why they are in those parts.
They work simply because you can't reasonably have more than one system in the same area. Right now, we have 3 systems in many areas for internet all operating simultaniously. DSL, Cable and dial-up.
big business has a definite interest in preventing your government from screwing up their profitibality projections for your city.
Government has no reason to upgrade the networks and make them better or more efficient. Look at the worst corruption scandals in government, and you will see it has been where it is providing a service that no one else can because they are appearing to charge the least. Getting the gov involved will give them a sole monopoly and lead to higher prices for internet. You may just not realize it because taxes are paying for it.
ps i wish people still read that everything i needed to know i learned in kindergarten book. sharing and helping others is good for you. it is, in fact, the good old american way.
Sharing is a good thing, when it is VOLUNTARY. Forced sharing is THIEVERY. He who robs peter to paul will always have the support of paul.
My solution to this would be to have it set up as an independant company, in it's charter it is a non-profit. Whoever uses it, pays for it. Whoever doesn't use it, doesn't pay for it. You don't pay for other people to get phone service, water, sewer, electriciy or cable tv. You don't pay for others to get something which is even less of a necessity like internet. You want to set up your own charity for this? Fine. But don't make other people pay for your good will.
Who said anything about exclusivity? There will be competition. Among SBC and other companies. This bill is to stop the government from using tax dollars to supply a service that has no bearing on life or limb. VOR is paid for by taxes on Aviation fuel (again, those who use, pay). The airports are maintained through use fees the airlines pay. Most were built by private companies.
If you think it is unfair that they don't have internet access, get them a free AOL disk. Other than that, why not complain about how you have to pay for phone service, cable TV, satelite TV, pay per view, video rental and several other things while you are at it?
There are technologies that can handle this using a mere 64kbps in total (e.g. multicast) but they're not widely adopted/available (side note - why??)
First, because only one service can really be using a single multicast address at a time. And there are a limited number of them. Second, you have to get everyone in the path to allow that multicast address. This involves the internet backbone providers (mainly those telecoms like SBC everyone keeps complaining about) and all the internet companies allowing that multicast address through their firewalls and routers. They generally do not allow them due to the bandiwidth problems (read up on how multicast works in detail for more on this), the spamming/virusing potential (send a virus to all computers at once instead of one at a time), and that most people do not use it.
Multicast is generally used only 'in house' when needed since it is sent to every computer on the entire network. (initially, at least, or always if misused)
So how much of your taxes is going to make it fully available? I sugest doing a cost comparison of which is cheaper for you. A) To fund public WiFi or B) buy your own. Don't forget that if you buy your own, you are still funding the wifi.
The tax was already collected. Let's see that it gets put to good use
A) you're assuming that they wouldn't pay for this by raising taxes.
B) you're assuming that I or the citizens wouldn't rather have lower taxes instead.
C) you're assuming that we would go with SBC instead of some other company providing internet. This law is not about giving SBC a monopoly over wifi internet, it is about preventing the government from getting into wifi internet. Bug difference.
We use taxes to support a lot of our infrastructure for good reason. One of those good reasons is to assure that everybody has access to it.
Water costs you money by how much you use, electricity costs you money by how much you use, flying you pay for, roads are funded through the gas tax (aka how much you drive aka use the road).
None of those are paid for by taxes (except for gas/airport which tax people who use them). You wanna have the government supply internet? Fine. Just don't use taxes. Have them charge a fee to those who use their internet service. Don't charge those of us that are using someone else or no one at all.
The goal is to provide information to people who wouldn't normally be able to access to it.
If they can't afford the internet access, they probably can't afford the computer either that is required to go with it. Internet access is $10-$40 depending on what you get and who you get it from. I'd be surprised if a wireless network can beat that in total cost. Equipment+repair+electricity+people+customer service.... Additionaly, if you want to "provide information to people who wouldn't normally be able to access it", isn't that what they libraries are for? So that they can access it at the computers in the libraries? That way they won't even have to afford the computer.
It's not anti-competitive because people still need cable or DSL if they want their own IP address, a more reliable connection, a web server, or just more bandwidth... if they don't need these things then DSL/cable wouldn't be worth it to them anyway.
If they don't need those things, then they would probably be fine on a dial-up of some sort. And since I have seen dial-up sold for $10-$20, and as I said above that I doubt this will cost less than that a month, It is anti-competitive because you are providing it to people using tax dollars without giving them a choice to contribute to it or not. It also raises the cost of the other services. If I am paying $20 a month for wireless (through taxes) and I want a faster connection (lets say $40 a month cable), that means I am paying $20 for internet I don't use and the $40 for the cable I do use so I am paying $60 a month. If I don't want the wireless, I shouldn't have to pay for it. No comparison to police or fire services here. If I don't want wireless, lack of it is not going to endanger me in anyway. Where as lack of those other two will.
Free Wi-Fi is no more wrong than having free public libraries... or more relevantly, free internet at public libraries.
Free internet at the public libs requires you to go there and gives you limited time and limits what you can do. You cant files that take a long time to dload, play online games, surf for porn (in most places) or any of a variety of things. Also, most people that use it don't have a computer in the first place, (Most, not all I said) and therefore would not benefit from having the municipal wifi.
What is the difference between providing your citizens with encyclopedias for reference at libraries, and access to Wikipedia via municipal Wi-Fi?
Because, among others, you aren't limiting them to just Wikipedia and other equivalents that are available online. Also, if that is your point, why bother giving them internet at all when they can just go to the library and look it up? I could also add to this, what is the difference between providing them free cable TV access at the library vs. via municipal cable TV? (and yes, I do know libraries that provide basic Cable TV in them)
I will admit that I have purchased fewer books because I have had access to public libraries, but bookstores still have their place. Sometimes I would really rather own a book than check it out for a week.
Irrelevant to the discusion at hand. You do not go out and buy internet access whenever you feel like it. You subscribe to it. You can't buy cable/DSL access for 3 weeks. Two completely different models. Otherwise, Cable Companies would complain about tape/dvd rentals at blockbuster and the library. Additionaly, libraries can not carry every book that the bookstores do. Nor can they obtain everybook through their sharing program. With internet access, you are replicating the entire service in full. The only difference fo the average user is speed.
This service provides very basic internet access, and anybody who wants more than that will pay for it. SBC should not be any more worried than your local bookstore.
"very basic internet access" is pretty much the same as "
Todays general-purpose CPUs cannot be classified as RISC or CISC anymore, because these terms were coined in pre-superscalar days.
Having gone over this with my microprocessor proffesor, I have wondered if we should call the x86 'CRISC'. It makes some wierd kindasense when you think about it. Course, would the operators then be 'CRISCO's? (Complex Reduced Instruction Set Computer Operators/Owners)
Tell ya what, I was gonna write somethin about this, but I'll say this instead since I found some ineteresting stuff here. Link to historical spending. It's what every president has been using in both parties for a while so it is as trustworthy as we can get. They give both outlays in dollars, FY2000 dollars, % of GDP and percentage of total spending. The highest spending % wise on military was during WWII. Unless you want to be saluting a swastika right now (and assuming you weren't on Hitlers to exterminate list), I would say that was money well spent. There were other peaks as well. Lets work through it ourselves and see what we come up with.
I personally am going to use the FY 2000 dollars as that takes inflation into account so I don't have to bother calculating it. Once I have compared that with the % of military outlays I can figure out their portion of the debt. Unfortunately, one thing I can't find out easily is how much the military spending has helped the economy. (I know it's a lot, just don't know how much [look at growth in GDP compared to growth in military spending vs. other departments]).
Anyway, those are the raw numbers I sugest we use and work through. Though one thing about that 80% that is impossible (50% MAYBE). The miltary has only for 3 years ever been above 80% of the outlays, 1943-1945. For the past 11 they have been under 20%, and past 30 years under 30%. Military spending has been no where near what they have generally mad it out to be. Although I would love to see how they got their numbers (in detail).
car payment/cost of car: would have had to buy it either way
Insurance: Same if I drive 20 miles or 42.2 (already had this conversation with the insurance agent when I switched)
depreciation: doesn't matter to me, I'm keepin hte car till it's cheaper to buy a new one. Probably 11 years from now.
Parking: Cheaper at work (free) than metro (3.75 a day)
licensin, registration: Same either way if I drive to train station or work.
Maintainence: Negligible for this commute
Yeah, I know about this time differnece. No schedule for the trains though, I wish there was. The trains just come approximately every som many minutes, or are supposed to. But every now and then the wait is up to 15 minutes, on a raised platform out in the open (cold+wind+wet=bad). Problem is, the thing just stinks. Washington DC area metro is terrible. And they charge more during rush hour than during regular times.
For some people, they like the convienience. When I started driving all the way I was surprised. So are the others.
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but I know deep down they'll try to keep both.
The question is who wants which/both. There will be arguments (I a sure of, there always is) that the VAT will put an undue burden on the poor. I have the feeling that this will actually get some people to pay more due to the loss of loopholes. Also, we would see a vast reduction in the size of the IRS. No pesky forms to file.
Sounds like a VAT (value added tax) it is. AKA a'consumption' or 'sales' tax.
Without patents, a little guy can invent something, and then a big guy can come along and copy it. Not having paid for the research into it, they can probably sell it for less too. Result - Little guy goes out of business and big guys keep selling product for $$$.
Patents can protect the small guys from the big guys.
Been there, done that. One place pissed me off so much, the next time I went there I payed with about 30 something of them. The stamp machine would give you change greater than $1 in susan b's. so i put in $30.15, bought the 15 cent stamp and walked away with the 30 susan b's for the place. (I had some fun with those).
Now, replace your notions of "income"-based tax with a consumption-based one
I believe you should look up the VAT (value added taxt) that the UK and (i think) most of the EU uses.
P.S. I like your attitude.
Way OT, but this is one of my interests. Personally, for taxes, I'd like to see a completely flat tax (no deductions, no minimum earnings) on all income. That way it can't be abused. The problem with having a minimum amount earned in order to pay taxes, is that all of a sudden anyone who earns below that doesn't care what the tax rate is. They can then be 'bribed' through the government services for their vote. Also, every couple of years it would have to be moved up (and more hotly debated contention) to account for inflation. Add into that, that the move can be delayed or shrunk to have an effective tax increase. (Problem with our brackets now).
If you want a progressive tax, then the best I can come up with would be this. The tax on all income less than the median earnings is taxed at exactly half the rate of any income above that. I.E., lets say the median is $40,000 the tax rate for any income up to that would be %15. Any income above that $40,000 would be taxed at %30. Still, no deductions.
Deductions are what create all these crazy problems in the first place. And you have to tax eveyone or they end up not caring where the money goes (or say, tax the rich more).
Sounds like you think I am talking about the spammer. I am talking about the child molester in the parent post. If you'd've met victims of child molesters, you'd feel the same way.
Punishment for first degree murder is 25 to life (with the option the death penalty in some states). Where are you getting less than 9 years from?
Uh.. Molestaion != Rape. Physically there is a difference. Psychologically there is not much. (just pointing out the difference) Personally if it was up to me, the guy would be dead. (Also why I do not like the idea of 'Parole')
All of the non-hippie religious organizations I have dealt with
And which would these be? Pope John Paul II spoke out against the war in Iraq. I'd hardly call the Catholic Church hippies.
In his encyclical Humani Generis (1950), my predecessor Pius XII has already affirmed that there is no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of the faith regarding man and his vocation, provided that we do not lose sight of certain fixed points.
I'd just like to point out: Interesting how people on the right seem to forget this. Interesting how people on the left seem to forget this. Interesting how some say one can not believe in both god and evolution.
P.S. Thanks for the link.
I have yet to hear of any church saying "War with Iraq is good". I have only heard about them speaking against it. Next complaint against organized religion please.
How did we go so wrong here?
you already answered yoruslef: Popular presentation of evoltuion, including what I was taught in high-school biology, are so dumbed down as to be incorrect.
Must be higher than DS-3 then. I know the 300mbit figure is correct, not positive about the DS-3 part.
What is legal is not always moral (hiring a prostitute to cheat on your significant other in vegas [where prostitution is legal], or cheating on your sig other in general [especially when maried]).
What is moral is not always legal (depends on your specific morals here [same above, but I hope we can agree on that one]).
it is cheaper and more efficient to combine your purchasing power.
This is why co-ops get together to buy something from one of a variety of poeple. This only works when you have multiple sources of service to choose from. It also only works when you can leave the provider at the end of a set number of years.
this is one of the concepts behind publicly funded infrastructure and what makes governments the leading purchasers in most industries. try building your own roads and see if you get a better deal on the asphalt than your municipal/state government.
Roads are not applicable to this, nor are most others. governments supply things such as roads and public infrastructure where it would be prohibitively expensive to have/maintain seperate systems. Can you imagine the hassle in having multiple sewer, water or road systems all having to operate side by side whithout interconnecting? That would be an appropriate analogy for why they are in those parts.
They work simply because you can't reasonably have more than one system in the same area. Right now, we have 3 systems in many areas for internet all operating simultaniously. DSL, Cable and dial-up.
big business has a definite interest in preventing your government from screwing up their profitibality projections for your city.
Government has no reason to upgrade the networks and make them better or more efficient. Look at the worst corruption scandals in government, and you will see it has been where it is providing a service that no one else can because they are appearing to charge the least. Getting the gov involved will give them a sole monopoly and lead to higher prices for internet. You may just not realize it because taxes are paying for it.
ps i wish people still read that everything i needed to know i learned in kindergarten book. sharing and helping others is good for you. it is, in fact, the good old american way.
Sharing is a good thing, when it is VOLUNTARY. Forced sharing is THIEVERY. He who robs peter to paul will always have the support of paul.
My solution to this would be to have it set up as an independant company, in it's charter it is a non-profit. Whoever uses it, pays for it. Whoever doesn't use it, doesn't pay for it. You don't pay for other people to get phone service, water, sewer, electriciy or cable tv. You don't pay for others to get something which is even less of a necessity like internet. You want to set up your own charity for this? Fine. But don't make other people pay for your good will.
Who said anything about exclusivity? There will be competition. Among SBC and other companies. This bill is to stop the government from using tax dollars to supply a service that has no bearing on life or limb. VOR is paid for by taxes on Aviation fuel (again, those who use, pay). The airports are maintained through use fees the airlines pay. Most were built by private companies.
If you think it is unfair that they don't have internet access, get them a free AOL disk. Other than that, why not complain about how you have to pay for phone service, cable TV, satelite TV, pay per view, video rental and several other things while you are at it?
There are technologies that can handle this using a mere 64kbps in total (e.g. multicast) but they're not widely adopted/available (side note - why??)
First, because only one service can really be using a single multicast address at a time. And there are a limited number of them. Second, you have to get everyone in the path to allow that multicast address. This involves the internet backbone providers (mainly those telecoms like SBC everyone keeps complaining about) and all the internet companies allowing that multicast address through their firewalls and routers. They generally do not allow them due to the bandiwidth problems (read up on how multicast works in detail for more on this), the spamming/virusing potential (send a virus to all computers at once instead of one at a time), and that most people do not use it.
Multicast is generally used only 'in house' when needed since it is sent to every computer on the entire network. (initially, at least, or always if misused)
I don't know about them, but PBS has 2 DS-3s (over 300mbits) and they are operating at close to 100% capacity.
So how much of your taxes is going to make it fully available? I sugest doing a cost comparison of which is cheaper for you. A) To fund public WiFi or B) buy your own. Don't forget that if you buy your own, you are still funding the wifi.
The tax was already collected. Let's see that it gets put to good use
A) you're assuming that they wouldn't pay for this by raising taxes.
B) you're assuming that I or the citizens wouldn't rather have lower taxes instead.
C) you're assuming that we would go with SBC instead of some other company providing internet. This law is not about giving SBC a monopoly over wifi internet, it is about preventing the government from getting into wifi internet. Bug difference.
We use taxes to support a lot of our infrastructure for good reason. One of those good reasons is to assure that everybody has access to it.
Water costs you money by how much you use, electricity costs you money by how much you use, flying you pay for, roads are funded through the gas tax (aka how much you drive aka use the road).
None of those are paid for by taxes (except for gas/airport which tax people who use them). You wanna have the government supply internet? Fine. Just don't use taxes. Have them charge a fee to those who use their internet service. Don't charge those of us that are using someone else or no one at all.
To break down the argument point by point:
The goal is to provide information to people who wouldn't normally be able to access to it.
If they can't afford the internet access, they probably can't afford the computer either that is required to go with it. Internet access is $10-$40 depending on what you get and who you get it from. I'd be surprised if a wireless network can beat that in total cost. Equipment+repair+electricity+people+customer service.... Additionaly, if you want to "provide information to people who wouldn't normally be able to access it", isn't that what they libraries are for? So that they can access it at the computers in the libraries? That way they won't even have to afford the computer.
It's not anti-competitive because people still need cable or DSL if they want their own IP address, a more reliable connection, a web server, or just more bandwidth... if they don't need these things then DSL/cable wouldn't be worth it to them anyway.
If they don't need those things, then they would probably be fine on a dial-up of some sort. And since I have seen dial-up sold for $10-$20, and as I said above that I doubt this will cost less than that a month, It is anti-competitive because you are providing it to people using tax dollars without giving them a choice to contribute to it or not. It also raises the cost of the other services. If I am paying $20 a month for wireless (through taxes) and I want a faster connection (lets say $40 a month cable), that means I am paying $20 for internet I don't use and the $40 for the cable I do use so I am paying $60 a month. If I don't want the wireless, I shouldn't have to pay for it. No comparison to police or fire services here. If I don't want wireless, lack of it is not going to endanger me in anyway. Where as lack of those other two will.
Free Wi-Fi is no more wrong than having free public libraries... or more relevantly, free internet at public libraries.
Free internet at the public libs requires you to go there and gives you limited time and limits what you can do. You cant files that take a long time to dload, play online games, surf for porn (in most places) or any of a variety of things. Also, most people that use it don't have a computer in the first place, (Most, not all I said) and therefore would not benefit from having the municipal wifi.
What is the difference between providing your citizens with encyclopedias for reference at libraries, and access to Wikipedia via municipal Wi-Fi?
Because, among others, you aren't limiting them to just Wikipedia and other equivalents that are available online. Also, if that is your point, why bother giving them internet at all when they can just go to the library and look it up? I could also add to this, what is the difference between providing them free cable TV access at the library vs. via municipal cable TV? (and yes, I do know libraries that provide basic Cable TV in them)
I will admit that I have purchased fewer books because I have had access to public libraries, but bookstores still have their place. Sometimes I would really rather own a book than check it out for a week.
Irrelevant to the discusion at hand. You do not go out and buy internet access whenever you feel like it. You subscribe to it. You can't buy cable/DSL access for 3 weeks. Two completely different models. Otherwise, Cable Companies would complain about tape/dvd rentals at blockbuster and the library. Additionaly, libraries can not carry every book that the bookstores do. Nor can they obtain everybook through their sharing program. With internet access, you are replicating the entire service in full. The only difference fo the average user is speed.
This service provides very basic internet access, and anybody who wants more than that will pay for it. SBC should not be any more worried than your local bookstore.
"very basic internet access" is pretty much the same as "
Todays general-purpose CPUs cannot be classified as RISC or CISC anymore, because these terms were coined in pre-superscalar days.
Having gone over this with my microprocessor proffesor, I have wondered if we should call the x86 'CRISC'. It makes some wierd kindasense when you think about it. Course, would the operators then be 'CRISCO's? (Complex Reduced Instruction Set Computer Operators/Owners)
Tell ya what, I was gonna write somethin about this, but I'll say this instead since I found some ineteresting stuff here. Link to historical spending. It's what every president has been using in both parties for a while so it is as trustworthy as we can get. They give both outlays in dollars, FY2000 dollars, % of GDP and percentage of total spending. The highest spending % wise on military was during WWII. Unless you want to be saluting a swastika right now (and assuming you weren't on Hitlers to exterminate list), I would say that was money well spent. There were other peaks as well. Lets work through it ourselves and see what we come up with.
I personally am going to use the FY 2000 dollars as that takes inflation into account so I don't have to bother calculating it. Once I have compared that with the % of military outlays I can figure out their portion of the debt. Unfortunately, one thing I can't find out easily is how much the military spending has helped the economy. (I know it's a lot, just don't know how much [look at growth in GDP compared to growth in military spending vs. other departments]).
Anyway, those are the raw numbers I sugest we use and work through. Though one thing about that 80% that is impossible (50% MAYBE). The miltary has only for 3 years ever been above 80% of the outlays, 1943-1945. For the past 11 they have been under 20%, and past 30 years under 30%. Military spending has been no where near what they have generally mad it out to be. Although I would love to see how they got their numbers (in detail).
car payment/cost of car: would have had to buy it either way
Insurance: Same if I drive 20 miles or 42.2 (already had this conversation with the insurance agent when I switched)
depreciation: doesn't matter to me, I'm keepin hte car till it's cheaper to buy a new one. Probably 11 years from now.
Parking: Cheaper at work (free) than metro (3.75 a day)
licensin, registration: Same either way if I drive to train station or work.
Maintainence: Negligible for this commute
Yeah, I know about this time differnece. No schedule for the trains though, I wish there was. The trains just come approximately every som many minutes, or are supposed to. But every now and then the wait is up to 15 minutes, on a raised platform out in the open (cold+wind+wet=bad). Problem is, the thing just stinks. Washington DC area metro is terrible. And they charge more during rush hour than during regular times.
For some people, they like the convienience. When I started driving all the way I was surprised. So are the others.