Most of the people at work with a Mac can bring up a virtual machine running Linux.
I have a VM linux and a VM XP up and running under OS X the majority of the time. I do server support through the linux VM (same version of linux the servers run under, simplifies some things, particularly pre-release testing), and I do Windows software development in the XP VM. meanwhile, OS X handles my web browsing, document work, personal databases (OmniOutliner... my favorite program ever), music (both listening in iTunes and performing... Logic Pro is awesome), my RSS feeds, my notes, my IM, my auroral monitoring application, my photography (Aperture)... this is all on a multiple monitor, 8-core machine with 8 GB, and it never chokes.
One thing I don't do on this machine is games -- I have PS3, XBox 360, Wii, and earlier versions of those platforms in the home theater, and that's where I game, period. I don't have to worry about some game manufacturer destabilizing my OS (any of them), or what video card I have, etc., yet I have awesome gaming capability on a great display.
My setup is kind of expensive, but then again, it earns me many times its costs over and over again, so it seems to me that the expense is completely justified. I get to stay home most of the time, work in shirtsleeves with a cat on my lap, and enjoy high performance in pretty much just the places I need it.
Contemplating going to a single-OS box, even one I'm very familiar with, like one with the linux we run, seems like stepping back several years. Can't see any reason I'd ever want to do so. And as for the web or the iPad taking over (and yes, I have an iPad and use it a lot), no. Not a chance. Perhaps the iPad's distant descendant, but the iPad... it's "something else", though a very nice something else. In its current form, it has no more chance taking over the computer's role than electric cars have of taking over a Fender guitar amplifier's role.
Well, let's see. Jesus says "Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets.", and he says that the law doesn't change. Furthermore, Jesus says that the law doesn't change even after heaven and the earth pass away (which hasn't happened yet.) Jesus does not say "you don't have to do anything that the OT says" anywhere (and if he had, the other Jews would have probably crucified him themselves.)
You, on the other hand, say you no longer have to obey the law.
Let's see. You or Jesus. Within the bounds of the NT and your inability to read... I'm going to go with Jesus on this one. The NT is fully in effect according to Jesus. He says so specifically. So get ye over to Leviticus and start reading, chum.
Jesus said "Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. 18 For assuredly, I say to you, wtill heaven and earth pass away, one 2jot or one 3tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. "
In other words, you eat shellfish... you're screwed.
I'm guessing you weren't on AA Flight 11 nine or so years ago.
The correct solution to that was to harden the cockpits. The incorrect solution was to spend a trillion dollars crushing the rights of US citizens, and another trillion dollars attacking two countries that had no nationals involved in the attack. Two trillion. So far. While our economy is in trouble.
You're in an environment you actually like working in and the time flies as you become engrossed in your job.
Yes?...maybe you should get engrossed in the Apple TV v2, then. Because it sucks. No DVi support, can't hook to more than one iTunes library, it produces wavy, distorted images on many HDTVs, the remote is a nightmare to select passwords on (and bless them, they've made the device so you constantly have to feed it IDs and passwords), the TOSlink audio locks it up, it has no rational buffering strategy (and this, for a streaming device), the provided support is inconsistent with the device (for instance, the Apple v2 support page says "press up plus menu to switch video modes"... there is no "up" key, just four identical dots, but I guess really that's no problem because pressing the dot the manual describes as "up" along with the menu key does NOTHING anyway.) The video sharing does nothing, the entry marked "computers" can only find one at a time (and it never *did* find my Mac Pro, and yes, I have the right version of iTunes on it), it's clueless about more than one AppleID/account in the same household...
I dunno, man. I think someone over there isn't all that "engrossed."
The whole hipster blogosphere will cream itsself over the slightest hint of what Apple will do or not do.
Considering Apple's present market capitalization, I'm afraid you've mischaracterized where the interest is coming from. It's only the most valuable technology company in the world, you know. So what it does demands attention; both from the technology sector in general, and of course from its customers.
So your argument is that when something is for a good cause, it should be done as a matter of charity?
No, can't really see that, either. The labels have an incentive, a financial one, to protect their IP interests. They want assistance from Google. Google is willing to do so, for a fee. So the whole thing is an economic arrangement. If the labels think they can recover X, while paying Google X-Y, then it should be a no-brainer. If not, then Google prices itself out of the market, and makes no money off the label's little problem. I'm a fan of IP law, personally, though I think it's a little out of hand, duration-wise.
So your argument is that identifying people who are pirating music is... evil?
Not sure I buy that one. In the US, at least, this is best dealt with at the level of the legislature. If you don't like the way it is, (I guess you want music to be inherently free?) find enough like-minded people and change it. Or (and I know this is crazy talk, but...) just don't pirate music.
I'm sorry, where did I say that a corrosive dictatorship was a better thing?
Oh, right, right. I didn't.
perhaps you're even right (at best partly imho, but hey), but it's still better than a tiny contingent at the top stealing everything
Hmm. Some (not very up to date) data for you: In the US, as of 2007, the top 1% of households (the upper class, about 3 million people) owned 34.6% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 50.5%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 85%, leaving only 15% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers).
I find these figures to be rather unlikely in terms of mapping to some reasonable metric of fairness, given the general Gaussian nature of most interesting characteristics such as intelligence, creativity, artistic strengths, etc. But that is just my opinion.
Honestly, I don't think it'll sort itself out until we have robots to do the grunt work and energy costs are effectively zero. So I'm not holding my breath.
I think it's rather disingenuous, since it presumes that either middle/lower income groups *are* spending a smaller portion of their income on non-essentials than the upper class/wealthy
Ok, Mr. Middle class. Bought a yacht lately? Ferrari? Lambo? 300-acre estate? Diamond over a caret? When's the last time you took the family on a whirlwind tour of Europe? Got a Suzuki Hayabusa in the garage? How many airplanes do you keep in your private hanger? And how many of those are jets? Did you buy that Soviet fighter for your collection? You do pay standard rates for your butler, right? I did notice he wasn't very good. You should upgrade. And the gardener? How is your charity outflow spreadsheet looking these days? The indoor Olympic pool, you solve that mold problem, or are you going to just build a new one? Say, dinner at Ducasse? $145 a plate (w/o wine, of course) for the least expensive thing on the menu... but reservations are a problem. Your 8-core computer has eight 30-inch monitors, right? I know mine does, jeez, that's just basic operating area, after all. (Actually, I have two presently, neither of which reach 30", but hey.) Been skiing this year? Scuba diving? Swimming in Brazil? (I mean, of course, bikini scouting, but nudge-nudge, we call it swimming, of course.) How's that walk-in sized amethyst cathedral in the entryway serving as an icebreaker? Me, I just have a 300 lb single smokey quartz crystal, but sadly, I dug it up locally, didn't have to pay for it. On the plus side, I *was* on vacation at the time, so I do have some bragging rights.) How's the painting collection? Did you win that Monet at auction? it'll go great next to your other impressionist originals. Me, of course, I'm into sculpture. Nothing like a Rodin in the library to set the mood. Oh, I meant to ask, how is your horse stable project getting along? The vet, the trainer, the stable boys, you get all those salaries ironed out? Of course, what was I thinking. So, let's talk about your Rolls. That sure is a pretty car. But I think ZZ top has it right; if you don't have high heels and stockings gracing the passengers... well, it's just a car. Speaking of which, those high end escorts... are they really worth the money? Damn, those women look fine. I wanted to take one out, but the only real gap in the calender was the one where I'd planned to take that ride to space; $200k you know, and they're really, really booked, so I think I'm going to have to put the ladies off a bit. Let me know how they work out for you. If that works out, I think I'll cadge a trip off the Russians to the space station, and see if my supply of anti-emetics is up to the task. I mean, hey, space station... how cool is that. And are you going in with everyone else on the VLA/SETI project? $50 million buy-in, is all, and you get your name on the bottom of a dish! And with that, I have to go... my chartered submarine to Monte Carlo is about to leave, and I don't want to delay it... being late to the tables is so... gauche.
Yessir, it's good to know that the middle class are the ones buying/doing all that, and that the rich just don't spend more than they do. No evidence, etc.
Wait, where's my clue-bat?
People want to have (and can or should be able to afford) cell phones, internet access, trips to visit the family, vacations, etc., and none of that is particularly extravagant by modern standards,
[stares]
So, your argument is that lower income people "deserve" the same things as if they were upper income people, regardless of actual income, so exempting their basic costs doesn't help?
I dunno, brother, I tend to feel that above subsistence, you're entitled to what you can pay for. That's where the incentives to learn up and work hard come from. If there are no such incentives, economically speaking, things go south.
And frankly, I think that your idea of trips and vacations being "deserved" items isn't
But really, you're so concerned about taxes, I don't see much concern about making people aware of how the money is being spent to their well-being. Or even just wasted. Wouldn't it be nice to see that too?
Sure. We could talk about the $737 billion wasted on the Iraq war; or the $354 billion wasted on the war in Afghanistan; or the $20 billion or so a year wasted on the war on drugs (of course that's just the feds, local and state account for about another $30 billion.) Or we could talk about the $22 billion in foreign aid we give away. Or the $60 billion a year spent on the prison system, which largely incarcerates people who are only "guilty" of consensual, personal acts. Wait, I know, we could talk about the $16.5 billion in earmark (pork) spending this year; or perhaps you'd like to talk about the 6.4 billion dollars in patent snafus yearly? Hey, here's a fun one: 737 US military bases outside the country, with a (surely low) estimated cost to date to the taxpayers of $127 billion dollars. Or maybe we should talk about "homeland security", you know, the organization that exists to ignore your rights and scare the hell out of the cits, all the while never addressing the actual problem that cropped up in 2001: vulnerable cockpits. Because that's cost about $1 trillion thus far.
On the other hand, we do have a (falling apart) space program, some of the worst primary and secondary education in the developed world, a population that thinks some magic guy in the sky will take care of them, a government that lies to the citizens as a matter of course, politicians that are strictly tools of the corporations and the wealthy, a constitution that is roundly ignored by the legislature, judiciary, and executive, stone-age marriage laws, and of course instead of the electric cars we should have had long ago, we have a deep layer of petroleum on the bottom of the gulf of Mexico, courtesy of the legislature giving the oil companies pretty much anything they want, no matter how risky it is.
You want more, right? Well, if you travel with $10 grand or so, they'll take it, they won't give it back, and that's the end of it. No recourse, no recompense, no warrant, no nothing. That little think was 100% stimulated by your tax money, paying for idiots working in our courts. And of course there is eminent domain, where your land can be taken because the other guy will, presumably, pay more taxes than you. Yessir, more tax-funded goodness.
There's more - and plenty of it - but how about you? What has the government done with my taxes that you think I should know about, but haven't mentioned?
That's only true if sales taxes apply to everything. If sales taxes do not apply to basic living needs -- food staples, toilet paper, diapers, medicine, X heat, X water, X electric per person, one car per worker, etc. -- then they are not regressive. And that's precisely how they should be structured, if they were to replace the current system, which is also highly regressive (the plumber isn't going to get a tax break because your money is more precious to you.)
With sales taxes applied sensibly, it should be possible to live, pay almost no taxes, and save, even if you're at the lowest income bracket. If you just make them arbitrary, then it'll be a mess that takes poorer people to the cleaners, just as the current swamp of tax regulations is.
The technology needed to manage a reasonable sales tax system is here now; it would be a huge boon if we implemented it to replace the rest of tax law, and that includes the IRS. But we won't, and you know why? Because the current system favors the wealthy and the corporate, and they exclusively control the legislatures.
So we are to infer that you crippled or killed people who were not threatening to cripple or kill you?
Anyone who is threatening to cripple or kill a member of my family is in precisely the same class as someone who is threatening to cripple or kill me.
but if you are using force out of proportion to the threat, you are not engaged in legitimate self-defense.
What you're doing here is quoting the law. The law is a very poor arbiter of "appropriate" in these instances; the idea that I stick a knife to your lady's (or your) throat, you disarm and immobilize me until the cops eventually show up, and we're done -- that's moronic. The more so for the fact that if the resolution is left to the system, I'll have another opportunity to do it to someone else (or you and yours, again) very shortly.
If you are in a position where you know a person is committing unprovoked violence against others, you have an obligation to solve the problem, the more so since society has demonstrated repeatedly and definitively that it will not do so. Not solving the problem is not advanced thinking; it's simply moral cowardice.
They can and do "control what you do personally or consensually" because they have the [power] to do so.
There, fixed that for you. You're a little confused about the difference between power and authority. Power is the ability to do something; authority is the right to do something.
They can exist together or in isolation. But they don't mean the same thing at all.
You mean, like when you get your W2 and fill out that pesky 1040? Yeah, I already know what I pay in taxes.
If that's how you figure it, you're not even close.
For instance, if you pay $100 for plumbing, but the plumber has to give $30 of that to the feds for his taxes, do you think the plumber is going to do $100 worth of work for you? No. He's only getting $70, and so that is the very MOST he going to do for you -- he'll do less, in fact, because otherwise he will not make a profit.
So, if you pay 30% taxes, then you had to earn $142.85 to pay the plumber $100, for which you got less than $70 worth of services. In the end, $142 of your dollars bought something less than $70 worth of services.
People are generally unaware of this, because we don't see the plumber's taxes; that info is hidden. Each purchase we make of goods and service has a significant, but variable, hidden siphon of funds going on to the government, directly affecting how much actual work your money does for us.
Sometimes they even manage to tax our purchases more than once; for instance, a death tax taxes funds and goods we already bought when we try to pass them on, making them that much more expensive, or, to look at it another way, devaluing your money even further.
So... perhaps you do know what taxes are doing to you. But most people really don't. It's because it isn't all that obvious. What some tax reformers want is that it be made obvious, generally by consolidating the process (taxation) into one event - for instance, a national sales tax that would replace the other taxes, or other, similarly transparent ideas. The trick to it all is making it fair, and determining what "fair" means in the context of people who are barely making it as compared to those at the other end to whom taxes are irrelevant to them making it, and all those in between, for whom taxes variously affect their lives.
Trickle-down: When an already wealthy entity receives money, it becomes more and more conservative with it. It invests it outside the core business (diversification) or it squirrels it away (hoarding), sometimes in the form of non-cash (art, land, etc.) What it doesn't do is turn around and shower that money on the workers, or the consumers, of the products it is currently selling. This trickle down idea is a myth, a myth started and maintained by those whose only goal is to collect as much of everyone else's money as possible.
Credit: The function of credit is to expand the gap between the wealthy and the poor, by transferring money from the poor to the wealthy. Here's how it works. At some interest rate, $100 is made available to the poor by the wealthy. The poor pays back $110. That $100 then is actually worth $90 to the poor, but $110 to the wealthy. At the end of the transaction, the wealthy have more money. The poor, however, have less, although they have $100 worth of goods, with a probable resale value of far less, should they try and exchange them for cash. It is worth noting that in general, they goods they purchase they also buy from the wealthy. The result of the credit process is a continuous transfer of money from the poor to the rich - never the other way, unless the debt repayment is defaulted, and even then, statistically speaking, this doesn't slow the process down much.
This is why the libertarian idea of corporate freedom is bunk. Corporations are not people; if we compare them honestly to persons, they're a lot more like psychopaths. No society that lets them run free can remain healthy; the US is one recent example; when unregulated, jobs are sent overseas, healthcare is not provided, products are not made to last, warranty and service are only given under profound duress, copy protection, software differentiation, IP hoarding and other anti-consumer practices become not just common, but the standard for behavior.
The libertarian outlook has major value in that area where it recognizes the liberties and freedoms of people, and says that government should have no authority there. When those freedoms are extended to corporations, the libertarian ideal turns immediately into a nightmare, one not all that unlike the one we're currently experiencing. Corporations are not people. They completely lack empathy, sympathy, compassion, courtesy, loyalty, and honor. They are, quite literally, psychopaths. Given the strengths of a legal person, they will act along the same lines of the worst criminals society has ever known. All the while smiling to your face.
Do you have one monitor in the center, and the other to the side, or both off-center ?
I have the landscape one front and center, and the portrait one to the left.
Do (or do you not) find it annoying to not have the screen right in front of you (and your keyboard)?
No. Two things; first, if one particular monitor is going to be the center of my attention for a while (and consequently the other a tool palette and otherwise secondary), I roll my chair about a foot and a half and I'm directly in front of the correct monitor. Second, I move the keyboard and mouse, which are wireless. This takes about two seconds altogether, plus maybe ten...twenty seconds to swap windows around, and I'm good to go in the new position.
Does anyone who uses multiple monitors get a neck ache from constantly looking to the left or the right?
I don't know about "anyone", but I don't. I get up every half hour and stretch just as a matter of course, and I have an excellent chair. I am also looking among more than two monitors (five, usually... I keep tags on our servers via a dedicated stats display, there's one for monitoring auroral conditions, and there is a security monitor with 16 live camera feeds on it.) This means my neck gets a decent workout no matter where I'm sitting, nothing extreme, but enough to keep me from being locked into one viewing angle and getting stiff.
The only change I've been contemplating lately is the addition of two more monitors. I'd like to set up two landscape, one over another, and two portrait, one left and one right.
The Supreme Court of the United States disagrees with you
They're the criminals here -- they have a considerable stake in disagreeing with me. However, the constitution is entirely on my side.
These are the very people who think they can re-define "shall make no law" as "hey! Let's make a law!", and "shall not infringe" as "hey! Lets infringe!", and "interstate commerce" as "intrastate commerce", and "shall make no ex post facto laws" as "hey! let's make some ex post facto laws!", and so forth.
The US Supreme Court is a den of oath-breaking, constitution violating, unauthorized and illicit operators.
I may not be able to do anything about it, but I can certainly observe it. It's right there to see. The constitution defines the role of the legislature, judiciary and executive. When they step out of those roles, they're acting in an unauthorized manner. Only the constitution gives them any authorization to do form a framework to do anything, and further, it locks them out of many types of actions; no law that steps outside those authorizations, or enters into areas forbidden, is actually valid. It is an unauthorized, and therefore illegal, exercise of coercive force.
You can quote law and judicial opinion until you grow hair on your palms, but the fact is, those offices were never authorized to operate in a vacuum. They have well defined roles within which they may operate in an authorized manner. When they claim otherwise, they are no longer operating as a legitimate arm of our authorized government: They are acting as a ruling force, despotic, coercive, and arbitrary.
Well, I think perhaps you shouldn't hold your breath waiting. We're kinda short on cash right about now.
No, it's ok. We'll just borrow it from China, and England can use the money to buy more Chinese surveillance cameras for their streets, then the citizens will get drunk at roundball events and beat the living hell out of each other on camera, and they'll have justification to buy more cameras, and all we have to do to see the country implode completely is drink more tea. Yup, It'll work out fine.
There is no authorization in the constitution for laws that control what you do personally or consensually. The criminals, as Mark Twain told us, are in the legislature.
And as long as the government is out of compliance with the constitution, the government is a criminal organization. Law-breakers and oath-breakers, both.
Slashdot Mirror
I have a VM linux and a VM XP up and running under OS X the majority of the time. I do server support through the linux VM (same version of linux the servers run under, simplifies some things, particularly pre-release testing), and I do Windows software development in the XP VM. meanwhile, OS X handles my web browsing, document work, personal databases (OmniOutliner... my favorite program ever), music (both listening in iTunes and performing... Logic Pro is awesome), my RSS feeds, my notes, my IM, my auroral monitoring application, my photography (Aperture)... this is all on a multiple monitor, 8-core machine with 8 GB, and it never chokes.
One thing I don't do on this machine is games -- I have PS3, XBox 360, Wii, and earlier versions of those platforms in the home theater, and that's where I game, period. I don't have to worry about some game manufacturer destabilizing my OS (any of them), or what video card I have, etc., yet I have awesome gaming capability on a great display.
My setup is kind of expensive, but then again, it earns me many times its costs over and over again, so it seems to me that the expense is completely justified. I get to stay home most of the time, work in shirtsleeves with a cat on my lap, and enjoy high performance in pretty much just the places I need it.
Contemplating going to a single-OS box, even one I'm very familiar with, like one with the linux we run, seems like stepping back several years. Can't see any reason I'd ever want to do so. And as for the web or the iPad taking over (and yes, I have an iPad and use it a lot), no. Not a chance. Perhaps the iPad's distant descendant, but the iPad... it's "something else", though a very nice something else. In its current form, it has no more chance taking over the computer's role than electric cars have of taking over a Fender guitar amplifier's role.
I mean OT, of course, as did Jesus.
Well, let's see. Jesus says "Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets.", and he says that the law doesn't change. Furthermore, Jesus says that the law doesn't change even after heaven and the earth pass away (which hasn't happened yet.) Jesus does not say "you don't have to do anything that the OT says" anywhere (and if he had, the other Jews would have probably crucified him themselves.)
You, on the other hand, say you no longer have to obey the law.
Let's see. You or Jesus. Within the bounds of the NT and your inability to read... I'm going to go with Jesus on this one. The NT is fully in effect according to Jesus. He says so specifically. So get ye over to Leviticus and start reading, chum.
Matthew 5:17-19:
Jesus said "Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. 18 For assuredly, I say to you, wtill heaven and earth pass away, one 2jot or one 3tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. "
In other words, you eat shellfish... you're screwed.
The correct solution to that was to harden the cockpits. The incorrect solution was to spend a trillion dollars crushing the rights of US citizens, and another trillion dollars attacking two countries that had no nationals involved in the attack. Two trillion. So far. While our economy is in trouble.
Yes? ...maybe you should get engrossed in the Apple TV v2, then. Because it sucks. No DVi support, can't hook to more than one iTunes library, it produces wavy, distorted images on many HDTVs, the remote is a nightmare to select passwords on (and bless them, they've made the device so you constantly have to feed it IDs and passwords), the TOSlink audio locks it up, it has no rational buffering strategy (and this, for a streaming device), the provided support is inconsistent with the device (for instance, the Apple v2 support page says "press up plus menu to switch video modes"... there is no "up" key, just four identical dots, but I guess really that's no problem because pressing the dot the manual describes as "up" along with the menu key does NOTHING anyway.) The video sharing does nothing, the entry marked "computers" can only find one at a time (and it never *did* find my Mac Pro, and yes, I have the right version of iTunes on it), it's clueless about more than one AppleID/account in the same household...
I dunno, man. I think someone over there isn't all that "engrossed."
Well, ok, yeah, you certainly have a point there, but in spite of that, some worthwhile stories do get through.
Considering Apple's present market capitalization, I'm afraid you've mischaracterized where the interest is coming from. It's only the most valuable technology company in the world, you know. So what it does demands attention; both from the technology sector in general, and of course from its customers.
And *I* love people who love to eat kittens; they taste like long pig. Mmmmm, bacon.
So your argument is that when something is for a good cause, it should be done as a matter of charity?
No, can't really see that, either. The labels have an incentive, a financial one, to protect their IP interests. They want assistance from Google. Google is willing to do so, for a fee. So the whole thing is an economic arrangement. If the labels think they can recover X, while paying Google X-Y, then it should be a no-brainer. If not, then Google prices itself out of the market, and makes no money off the label's little problem. I'm a fan of IP law, personally, though I think it's a little out of hand, duration-wise.
So your argument is that identifying people who are pirating music is... evil?
Not sure I buy that one. In the US, at least, this is best dealt with at the level of the legislature. If you don't like the way it is, (I guess you want music to be inherently free?) find enough like-minded people and change it. Or (and I know this is crazy talk, but...) just don't pirate music.
I'm sorry, where did I say that a corrosive dictatorship was a better thing?
Oh, right, right. I didn't.
Hmm. Some (not very up to date) data for you: In the US, as of 2007, the top 1% of households (the upper class, about 3 million people) owned 34.6% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 50.5%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 85%, leaving only 15% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers).
I find these figures to be rather unlikely in terms of mapping to some reasonable metric of fairness, given the general Gaussian nature of most interesting characteristics such as intelligence, creativity, artistic strengths, etc. But that is just my opinion.
Honestly, I don't think it'll sort itself out until we have robots to do the grunt work and energy costs are effectively zero. So I'm not holding my breath.
Ok, Mr. Middle class. Bought a yacht lately? Ferrari? Lambo? 300-acre estate? Diamond over a caret? When's the last time you took the family on a whirlwind tour of Europe? Got a Suzuki Hayabusa in the garage? How many airplanes do you keep in your private hanger? And how many of those are jets? Did you buy that Soviet fighter for your collection? You do pay standard rates for your butler, right? I did notice he wasn't very good. You should upgrade. And the gardener? How is your charity outflow spreadsheet looking these days? The indoor Olympic pool, you solve that mold problem, or are you going to just build a new one? Say, dinner at Ducasse? $145 a plate (w/o wine, of course) for the least expensive thing on the menu... but reservations are a problem. Your 8-core computer has eight 30-inch monitors, right? I know mine does, jeez, that's just basic operating area, after all. (Actually, I have two presently, neither of which reach 30", but hey.) Been skiing this year? Scuba diving? Swimming in Brazil? (I mean, of course, bikini scouting, but nudge-nudge, we call it swimming, of course.) How's that walk-in sized amethyst cathedral in the entryway serving as an icebreaker? Me, I just have a 300 lb single smokey quartz crystal, but sadly, I dug it up locally, didn't have to pay for it. On the plus side, I *was* on vacation at the time, so I do have some bragging rights.) How's the painting collection? Did you win that Monet at auction? it'll go great next to your other impressionist originals. Me, of course, I'm into sculpture. Nothing like a Rodin in the library to set the mood. Oh, I meant to ask, how is your horse stable project getting along? The vet, the trainer, the stable boys, you get all those salaries ironed out? Of course, what was I thinking. So, let's talk about your Rolls. That sure is a pretty car. But I think ZZ top has it right; if you don't have high heels and stockings gracing the passengers... well, it's just a car. Speaking of which, those high end escorts... are they really worth the money? Damn, those women look fine. I wanted to take one out, but the only real gap in the calender was the one where I'd planned to take that ride to space; $200k you know, and they're really, really booked, so I think I'm going to have to put the ladies off a bit. Let me know how they work out for you. If that works out, I think I'll cadge a trip off the Russians to the space station, and see if my supply of anti-emetics is up to the task. I mean, hey, space station... how cool is that. And are you going in with everyone else on the VLA/SETI project? $50 million buy-in, is all, and you get your name on the bottom of a dish! And with that, I have to go... my chartered submarine to Monte Carlo is about to leave, and I don't want to delay it... being late to the tables is so... gauche.
Yessir, it's good to know that the middle class are the ones buying/doing all that, and that the rich just don't spend more than they do. No evidence, etc.
Wait, where's my clue-bat?
[stares]
So, your argument is that lower income people "deserve" the same things as if they were upper income people, regardless of actual income, so exempting their basic costs doesn't help?
I dunno, brother, I tend to feel that above subsistence, you're entitled to what you can pay for. That's where the incentives to learn up and work hard come from. If there are no such incentives, economically speaking, things go south.
And frankly, I think that your idea of trips and vacations being "deserved" items isn't
Sure. We could talk about the $737 billion wasted on the Iraq war; or the $354 billion wasted on the war in Afghanistan; or the $20 billion or so a year wasted on the war on drugs (of course that's just the feds, local and state account for about another $30 billion.) Or we could talk about the $22 billion in foreign aid we give away. Or the $60 billion a year spent on the prison system, which largely incarcerates people who are only "guilty" of consensual, personal acts. Wait, I know, we could talk about the $16.5 billion in earmark (pork) spending this year; or perhaps you'd like to talk about the 6.4 billion dollars in patent snafus yearly? Hey, here's a fun one: 737 US military bases outside the country, with a (surely low) estimated cost to date to the taxpayers of $127 billion dollars. Or maybe we should talk about "homeland security", you know, the organization that exists to ignore your rights and scare the hell out of the cits, all the while never addressing the actual problem that cropped up in 2001: vulnerable cockpits. Because that's cost about $1 trillion thus far.
On the other hand, we do have a (falling apart) space program, some of the worst primary and secondary education in the developed world, a population that thinks some magic guy in the sky will take care of them, a government that lies to the citizens as a matter of course, politicians that are strictly tools of the corporations and the wealthy, a constitution that is roundly ignored by the legislature, judiciary, and executive, stone-age marriage laws, and of course instead of the electric cars we should have had long ago, we have a deep layer of petroleum on the bottom of the gulf of Mexico, courtesy of the legislature giving the oil companies pretty much anything they want, no matter how risky it is.
You want more, right? Well, if you travel with $10 grand or so, they'll take it, they won't give it back, and that's the end of it. No recourse, no recompense, no warrant, no nothing. That little think was 100% stimulated by your tax money, paying for idiots working in our courts. And of course there is eminent domain, where your land can be taken because the other guy will, presumably, pay more taxes than you. Yessir, more tax-funded goodness.
There's more - and plenty of it - but how about you? What has the government done with my taxes that you think I should know about, but haven't mentioned?
No. You see, in your example, you are thinking that it's "fair."
But it was never a question of "fair" -- it's only a question of what is really happening. Transparency.
And the answer to that is, generally speaking, you're taxed twice, and your actual tax rate (given the 30% example rates) is about 50%.
The double dipping is perfectly real. Is it fair? That's a matter of opinion. The aggregate tax rate, however, is not.
That's only true if sales taxes apply to everything. If sales taxes do not apply to basic living needs -- food staples, toilet paper, diapers, medicine, X heat, X water, X electric per person, one car per worker, etc. -- then they are not regressive. And that's precisely how they should be structured, if they were to replace the current system, which is also highly regressive (the plumber isn't going to get a tax break because your money is more precious to you.)
With sales taxes applied sensibly, it should be possible to live, pay almost no taxes, and save, even if you're at the lowest income bracket. If you just make them arbitrary, then it'll be a mess that takes poorer people to the cleaners, just as the current swamp of tax regulations is.
The technology needed to manage a reasonable sales tax system is here now; it would be a huge boon if we implemented it to replace the rest of tax law, and that includes the IRS. But we won't, and you know why? Because the current system favors the wealthy and the corporate, and they exclusively control the legislatures.
Anyone who is threatening to cripple or kill a member of my family is in precisely the same class as someone who is threatening to cripple or kill me.
What you're doing here is quoting the law. The law is a very poor arbiter of "appropriate" in these instances; the idea that I stick a knife to your lady's (or your) throat, you disarm and immobilize me until the cops eventually show up, and we're done -- that's moronic. The more so for the fact that if the resolution is left to the system, I'll have another opportunity to do it to someone else (or you and yours, again) very shortly.
If you are in a position where you know a person is committing unprovoked violence against others, you have an obligation to solve the problem, the more so since society has demonstrated repeatedly and definitively that it will not do so. Not solving the problem is not advanced thinking; it's simply moral cowardice.
There, fixed that for you. You're a little confused about the difference between power and authority. Power is the ability to do something; authority is the right to do something.
They can exist together or in isolation. But they don't mean the same thing at all.
If that's how you figure it, you're not even close.
For instance, if you pay $100 for plumbing, but the plumber has to give $30 of that to the feds for his taxes, do you think the plumber is going to do $100 worth of work for you? No. He's only getting $70, and so that is the very MOST he going to do for you -- he'll do less, in fact, because otherwise he will not make a profit.
So, if you pay 30% taxes, then you had to earn $142.85 to pay the plumber $100, for which you got less than $70 worth of services. In the end, $142 of your dollars bought something less than $70 worth of services.
People are generally unaware of this, because we don't see the plumber's taxes; that info is hidden. Each purchase we make of goods and service has a significant, but variable, hidden siphon of funds going on to the government, directly affecting how much actual work your money does for us.
Sometimes they even manage to tax our purchases more than once; for instance, a death tax taxes funds and goods we already bought when we try to pass them on, making them that much more expensive, or, to look at it another way, devaluing your money even further.
So... perhaps you do know what taxes are doing to you. But most people really don't. It's because it isn't all that obvious. What some tax reformers want is that it be made obvious, generally by consolidating the process (taxation) into one event - for instance, a national sales tax that would replace the other taxes, or other, similarly transparent ideas. The trick to it all is making it fair, and determining what "fair" means in the context of people who are barely making it as compared to those at the other end to whom taxes are irrelevant to them making it, and all those in between, for whom taxes variously affect their lives.
Trickle-down: When an already wealthy entity receives money, it becomes more and more conservative with it. It invests it outside the core business (diversification) or it squirrels it away (hoarding), sometimes in the form of non-cash (art, land, etc.) What it doesn't do is turn around and shower that money on the workers, or the consumers, of the products it is currently selling. This trickle down idea is a myth, a myth started and maintained by those whose only goal is to collect as much of everyone else's money as possible.
Credit: The function of credit is to expand the gap between the wealthy and the poor, by transferring money from the poor to the wealthy. Here's how it works. At some interest rate, $100 is made available to the poor by the wealthy. The poor pays back $110. That $100 then is actually worth $90 to the poor, but $110 to the wealthy. At the end of the transaction, the wealthy have more money. The poor, however, have less, although they have $100 worth of goods, with a probable resale value of far less, should they try and exchange them for cash. It is worth noting that in general, they goods they purchase they also buy from the wealthy. The result of the credit process is a continuous transfer of money from the poor to the rich - never the other way, unless the debt repayment is defaulted, and even then, statistically speaking, this doesn't slow the process down much.
This is why the libertarian idea of corporate freedom is bunk. Corporations are not people; if we compare them honestly to persons, they're a lot more like psychopaths. No society that lets them run free can remain healthy; the US is one recent example; when unregulated, jobs are sent overseas, healthcare is not provided, products are not made to last, warranty and service are only given under profound duress, copy protection, software differentiation, IP hoarding and other anti-consumer practices become not just common, but the standard for behavior.
The libertarian outlook has major value in that area where it recognizes the liberties and freedoms of people, and says that government should have no authority there. When those freedoms are extended to corporations, the libertarian ideal turns immediately into a nightmare, one not all that unlike the one we're currently experiencing. Corporations are not people. They completely lack empathy, sympathy, compassion, courtesy, loyalty, and honor. They are, quite literally, psychopaths. Given the strengths of a legal person, they will act along the same lines of the worst criminals society has ever known. All the while smiling to your face.
I have the landscape one front and center, and the portrait one to the left.
No. Two things; first, if one particular monitor is going to be the center of my attention for a while (and consequently the other a tool palette and otherwise secondary), I roll my chair about a foot and a half and I'm directly in front of the correct monitor. Second, I move the keyboard and mouse, which are wireless. This takes about two seconds altogether, plus maybe ten...twenty seconds to swap windows around, and I'm good to go in the new position.
I don't know about "anyone", but I don't. I get up every half hour and stretch just as a matter of course, and I have an excellent chair. I am also looking among more than two monitors (five, usually... I keep tags on our servers via a dedicated stats display, there's one for monitoring auroral conditions, and there is a security monitor with 16 live camera feeds on it.) This means my neck gets a decent workout no matter where I'm sitting, nothing extreme, but enough to keep me from being locked into one viewing angle and getting stiff.
The only change I've been contemplating lately is the addition of two more monitors. I'd like to set up two landscape, one over another, and two portrait, one left and one right.
They're the criminals here -- they have a considerable stake in disagreeing with me. However, the constitution is entirely on my side.
These are the very people who think they can re-define "shall make no law" as "hey! Let's make a law!", and "shall not infringe" as "hey! Lets infringe!", and "interstate commerce" as "intrastate commerce", and "shall make no ex post facto laws" as "hey! let's make some ex post facto laws!", and so forth.
The US Supreme Court is a den of oath-breaking, constitution violating, unauthorized and illicit operators.
I may not be able to do anything about it, but I can certainly observe it. It's right there to see. The constitution defines the role of the legislature, judiciary and executive. When they step out of those roles, they're acting in an unauthorized manner. Only the constitution gives them any authorization to do form a framework to do anything, and further, it locks them out of many types of actions; no law that steps outside those authorizations, or enters into areas forbidden, is actually valid. It is an unauthorized, and therefore illegal, exercise of coercive force.
You can quote law and judicial opinion until you grow hair on your palms, but the fact is, those offices were never authorized to operate in a vacuum. They have well defined roles within which they may operate in an authorized manner. When they claim otherwise, they are no longer operating as a legitimate arm of our authorized government: They are acting as a ruling force, despotic, coercive, and arbitrary.
No, it's ok. We'll just borrow it from China, and England can use the money to buy more Chinese surveillance cameras for their streets, then the citizens will get drunk at roundball events and beat the living hell out of each other on camera, and they'll have justification to buy more cameras, and all we have to do to see the country implode completely is drink more tea. Yup, It'll work out fine.
There is no authorization in the constitution for laws that control what you do personally or consensually. The criminals, as Mark Twain told us, are in the legislature.
And as long as the government is out of compliance with the constitution, the government is a criminal organization. Law-breakers and oath-breakers, both.
Yes, and they are. "Reasonable doubt" isn't a sane standard for fighting fires.