This is why we tax corporations. Either is identical, right?
No, they are not identical. Some of the shareholders are high income individuals taxed at a high marginal rate. Others are poor families that put some money in an ESA to send their kid to college. At an individual level, ESA gains are tax free. But if you tax at the corporate level, before distribution, the savings of the poor are taxed at the same rate as the fat cats.
Yes, and income that is unearned should arguably be taxed MORE than income that comes from labor rather than less.
Raise taxes on investment too much, and the investment goes elsewhere. Most other countries already have lower taxes on capital gains than America does.
it turns out that having a very long, very pointy spear is a handy thing to have when it comes to foreign policy
The problem with having a long pointy spear is that you start to think every problem can be solved by poking it.
Which foreign policy objective has our pointy spear helped us solve lately?
Defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan? Kicking Assad out of Syria? Keeping China out of the South China Sea? Stopping the Russian annexation of Crimea? Preventing Kim Jong Un from building nukes?
That trillion dollar spear doesn't seem to be doing much good.
The point is not that American meddling is unique, but that it is STUPID and COUNTERPRODUCTIVE.
By speaking out on behalf of the protesters, we are helping the government paint them as unpatriotic stooges working for the benefit of Iran's enemies.
You're free to offshore your entire company to Somalia. Lets see how that works out ok ?
Lower corporate taxes doesn't mean zero taxes. The "sweet spot" for government is about 35-40% of GDP. Less that that, and infrastructure and essential services are not properly funded. More than that, and enterprise and opportunity are stifled.
We need bridges, roads, and ports. But those can be paid for with excise taxes on those who use them.
We need a coast guard. We don't need a blue water navy in the Indian Ocean.
Aid for the poor is most effective when directed toward increasing opportunities rather than making poverty more comfortable.
We need law and order. We don't need drug and vice laws that fill a massive prison system that accomplishes little other than increasing recidivism.
Just do whatever you feel like doing. One thing I have learned as I aged, is that all the stuff I worried about when I was young turned out to not really matter very much.
Tomorrow, I am going to sleep late, have a leisurely brunch, and then go hiking with my dog.
What? Western Union, maybe (I'm clueless about what their actual fees are so can't speak there), but sending by bank is pretty damn cheap.
Not cheap at all if there is a currency change. Also, Western Union, and the American banking system in general, are restricted from doing business in many areas of the world.
My company employs a graphic artist that lives in Karachi, Pakistan. Bitcoin is by far the easiest and cheapest way to pay her.
Remember that the USD is backed by the 'faith and credit' of the government
Also remember that the US government has 21 trillion USD of debt and thus has an enormous vested interest in inflating away that debt by devaluing the dollar.
Just last week, we tossed another $1.5 trillion of debt onto the pile with the new tax cut. How much "faith and credit" do you have in Donald Trump?
If you don't get it hot enough, it produces large amounts of Doixins which are not nice at all.
Burning PVC can produce dioxin.
Burning polyethylene, polypropylene, and polystyrene produces CO2 and water.
Sort out the vinyl, and almost everything else will burn clean.
You can burn the vinyl too if you keep the temperature high, and/or mix in some powdered limestone to suck the chlorine out of the flue gas. If you are mixing the plastic with coal, then you will need the limestone anyway to scrub out the sulfates.
China now produces plenty of waste of their own, and they are struggling to handle their own volume of garbage.
The only labor intensive part is the separating. I spent 4 months in China last year (2017), and the garbage sorting requirements are strict, with fines for failure to comply. It seemed like everyone was sorting properly, at least where I was living (Shanghai/Pudong).
There's always Africa, right?
Cheap labor is only part of the problem. You also need the industrial infrastructure to process and use the recycled plastic. A big advantage in China, is that the production of plastic is very close to the demand for it.
It would have been nice if China had phased out their recycling more slowly, to give the rest of the world time to adapt.
The real solution is not recycling, but reduction in the use of so much plastic crap in the first place. Many things I buy have more packaging than product.
Defective pixels stuck to "on"? Extremely annoying.
"Stuck on" is extremely rare for OLED. "Stuck off" is common, and most big screens will have a few. But as you say, you won't even notice unless you are OCD enough to look for them.
I saw a big OLED monitor at Costco. It looked really nice. Very bright vivid colors, and the black was totally black. It was also really expensive, so I will wait. I predict that within 5 years, LCD monitors will be in the dustbin of history. Once OLEDs reach price parity, no one will want an LCD.
The more likely answer is the $15 per hour full time i mentioned above.
Unlikely, since the income cut off for the bottom quintile is $24k. A full time job at $15/hr would put that household into the 2nd quintile.
The chart doesn't make it clear, but I think they are extrapolating part time work into the full time equivalent.
It is also important to remember that the chart is about "income" and not "wealth". The people at the very bottom of the income pile tend to be extremely wealthy people that happened to have a bad year with their investments. For instance, in 2008, both Bill Gates and Warren Buffet lost BILLIONS in value, and had lower income for that year than almost any other Americans. It is not clear if these outliers are excluded (does "income" include only "earned" income?) but if not, they can skew the statistics.
If so, I'd love to know what you consider good about the system in the past that no longer applies today.
The Electoral College system encourages candidates to focus on broadening their appeal rather than deepening it. In the past, these helped to reduce regionalism, which was a major problem up to and through the civil war.
Today, that doesn't help much, since the political divide is no longer between regions, but rather an urban/rural divide within regions.
The law applies to social networks with "at least 2 million members". Note the absence of any qualifier such as "active".
You are quoting the BBC article, not the law.
Very few German laws are written in English.
The law uses the term "Nutzern" which is more accurately translated as "user" than as "member", and the the "at least 2 million" refers to users IN GERMANY, not worldwide.
Slashdot Mirror
This is why we tax corporations. Either is identical, right?
No, they are not identical. Some of the shareholders are high income individuals taxed at a high marginal rate. Others are poor families that put some money in an ESA to send their kid to college. At an individual level, ESA gains are tax free. But if you tax at the corporate level, before distribution, the savings of the poor are taxed at the same rate as the fat cats.
Yes, and income that is unearned should arguably be taxed MORE than income that comes from labor rather than less.
Raise taxes on investment too much, and the investment goes elsewhere. Most other countries already have lower taxes on capital gains than America does.
it turns out that having a very long, very pointy spear is a handy thing to have when it comes to foreign policy
The problem with having a long pointy spear is that you start to think every problem can be solved by poking it.
Which foreign policy objective has our pointy spear helped us solve lately?
Defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan?
Kicking Assad out of Syria?
Keeping China out of the South China Sea?
Stopping the Russian annexation of Crimea?
Preventing Kim Jong Un from building nukes?
That trillion dollar spear doesn't seem to be doing much good.
Sounds like a good application for blockchain technology ... and I say this only partly in jest.
The point is not that American meddling is unique, but that it is STUPID and COUNTERPRODUCTIVE.
By speaking out on behalf of the protesters, we are helping the government paint them as unpatriotic stooges working for the benefit of Iran's enemies.
We really need to learn when to just STFU.
That's valid if you are satisfied with being mediocre.
You are going to end up mediocre whether you worry about it or not.
When you are older, you will realize this.
yep, right, so you have no roads, no electricity, no laws, no justice, no security, no water
These things are not where most government money is spent.
It is silly to justify spending trillions of dollars on prisons and wars just so we can also get some potholes filled.
As long as hypothermia means "my lungs are freezing", then yes.
Some sharks don't have lungs.
Cold is Weather, Hot is Climate.
Temperature trends that continue for years are climate.
Temperature trends that last for a week are weather.
You're free to offshore your entire company to Somalia. Lets see how that works out ok ?
Lower corporate taxes doesn't mean zero taxes. The "sweet spot" for government is about 35-40% of GDP. Less that that, and infrastructure and essential services are not properly funded. More than that, and enterprise and opportunity are stifled.
We need bridges, roads, and ports. But those can be paid for with excise taxes on those who use them.
We need a coast guard. We don't need a blue water navy in the Indian Ocean.
Aid for the poor is most effective when directed toward increasing opportunities rather than making poverty more comfortable.
We need law and order. We don't need drug and vice laws that fill a massive prison system that accomplishes little other than increasing recidivism.
Google spends money on AI research, robotics, parallel computing, and information access.
The government spends money on wars, prisons, corporate welfare, and subsidies for a bloated and wasteful healthcare system.
I prefer that Google keeps as much money as they can.
So, basically, don't do anything.
Just do whatever you feel like doing. One thing I have learned as I aged, is that all the stuff I worried about when I was young turned out to not really matter very much.
Tomorrow, I am going to sleep late, have a leisurely brunch, and then go hiking with my dog.
Another way that google exerts control over the sheep every day and every way.
Perhaps. But a map app really isn't an appropriate forum for bitching from disgruntled ex-employees. Nobody using a map is looking for crap like that.
It is backed by the US economy.
Inflation goes up when the economy is booming. During the Great Depression, deflation was a serious problem, and the value of the dollar soared.
The strength of the economy and the value of the dollar are negatively correlated.
What? Western Union, maybe (I'm clueless about what their actual fees are so can't speak there), but sending by bank is pretty damn cheap.
Not cheap at all if there is a currency change. Also, Western Union, and the American banking system in general, are restricted from doing business in many areas of the world.
My company employs a graphic artist that lives in Karachi, Pakistan. Bitcoin is by far the easiest and cheapest way to pay her.
Remember that the USD is backed by the 'faith and credit' of the government
Also remember that the US government has 21 trillion USD of debt and thus has an enormous vested interest in inflating away that debt by devaluing the dollar.
Just last week, we tossed another $1.5 trillion of debt onto the pile with the new tax cut. How much "faith and credit" do you have in Donald Trump?
If you don't get it hot enough, it produces large amounts of Doixins which are not nice at all.
Burning PVC can produce dioxin.
Burning polyethylene, polypropylene, and polystyrene produces CO2 and water.
Sort out the vinyl, and almost everything else will burn clean.
You can burn the vinyl too if you keep the temperature high, and/or mix in some powdered limestone to suck the chlorine out of the flue gas. If you are mixing the plastic with coal, then you will need the limestone anyway to scrub out the sulfates.
China now produces plenty of waste of their own, and they are struggling to handle their own volume of garbage.
The only labor intensive part is the separating. I spent 4 months in China last year (2017), and the garbage sorting requirements are strict, with fines for failure to comply. It seemed like everyone was sorting properly, at least where I was living (Shanghai/Pudong).
There's always Africa, right?
Cheap labor is only part of the problem. You also need the industrial infrastructure to process and use the recycled plastic. A big advantage in China, is that the production of plastic is very close to the demand for it.
It would have been nice if China had phased out their recycling more slowly, to give the rest of the world time to adapt.
The real solution is not recycling, but reduction in the use of so much plastic crap in the first place. Many things I buy have more packaging than product.
Defective pixels stuck to "on"? Extremely annoying.
"Stuck on" is extremely rare for OLED. "Stuck off" is common, and most big screens will have a few. But as you say, you won't even notice unless you are OCD enough to look for them.
I saw a big OLED monitor at Costco. It looked really nice. Very bright vivid colors, and the black was totally black. It was also really expensive, so I will wait. I predict that within 5 years, LCD monitors will be in the dustbin of history. Once OLEDs reach price parity, no one will want an LCD.
The more likely answer is the $15 per hour full time i mentioned above.
Unlikely, since the income cut off for the bottom quintile is $24k. A full time job at $15/hr would put that household into the 2nd quintile.
The chart doesn't make it clear, but I think they are extrapolating part time work into the full time equivalent.
It is also important to remember that the chart is about "income" and not "wealth". The people at the very bottom of the income pile tend to be extremely wealthy people that happened to have a bad year with their investments. For instance, in 2008, both Bill Gates and Warren Buffet lost BILLIONS in value, and had lower income for that year than almost any other Americans. It is not clear if these outliers are excluded (does "income" include only "earned" income?) but if not, they can skew the statistics.
If so, I'd love to know what you consider good about the system in the past that no longer applies today.
The Electoral College system encourages candidates to focus on broadening their appeal rather than deepening it. In the past, these helped to reduce regionalism, which was a major problem up to and through the civil war.
Today, that doesn't help much, since the political divide is no longer between regions, but rather an urban/rural divide within regions.
The law applies to social networks with "at least 2 million members". Note the absence of any qualifier such as "active".
You are quoting the BBC article, not the law.
Very few German laws are written in English.
The law uses the term "Nutzern" which is more accurately translated as "user" than as "member", and the the "at least 2 million" refers to users IN GERMANY, not worldwide.
There appear to be at least 4 million Slashdot accounts
There may be that many accounts, but there are no where near that many active users. Slashdot readership is way down from the peak.
Very few. Most poor households have zero full time workers. Most people earning minimum wage are 2nd or 3rd earners in middle class households.
That's a pretty bold claim. How about some evidence?
Citation #1: Income inequality by household demographics
The average household in the bottom quintile had 0.43 people earning income. The average household in the top quintile had 2.04 people earning income.
Citation #2: Key facts about the minimum wage
The average household income of a minimum wage earner is $53,000 per year.
Only 2 percent of full-time workers earn the minimum wage.
Two-thirds of minimum wage earners receive a raise within a year if they stick with the job.
Only 9 percent of adults living below the poverty line work full time.
How many of those jobs are sub-poverty level?
Very few. Most poor households have zero full time workers. Most people earning minimum wage are 2nd or 3rd earners in middle class households.
Has the middle class been increasing or shrinking.
Increasing. During 2016, 0.8% of households moved out of poverty and into the middle class. 2017 is expected to be even better.