Given that you clearly do not know what the term "well regulated" meant in 1791
I know exactly what it means. And the authors are clear that having a well regulated militia is necessary. Are you foggy about that, somehow?
They're also very clear, having stipulated that, just like with their British overlords had one, they're going to have a continually armed and well regulated military... that they're not (UNLIKE their previous British overlords) going to let the necessary existence of that entity be an excuse to deprive the rest of the people from keeping and bearing arms.
telling people what the people who wrote the document *intended* is borderline delusional
What? They authors themselves, in a huge parade of letters, recorded debates, and supporting documents, explain exactly what they were thinking when it comes to the constitution and every one of its amendments. Those amendments didn't just cryptically appear and get signed, they were talked to death in congress and documented personal discussions, mused about in journals and letters, and openly debated. It was very clear they considered the personal right to own firearms to be paramount, and distinctly separate from the collective need to keep a well-regulated militia ready to go. Despite their allergy to a standing army of some flavor (having seen what they'd seen), they knew it was necessary to have that capacity always in place.
The existence of it being necessary, they knew that the temptation was going to be there for someone in military or civilian executive/legislative power to skew towards making that militia/military the only holders of armed power. Remember that the constitution is all about minimizing government power, and the amendments are there to remind everyone that even though they should know well enough from the structure of that charter that personal liberties are a hands-off affair, there are some areas (like political expression, assembly, arms, the sanctity of one's home, etc) that it was worth explicitly laying out as beyond the reach of government control. The linguistic construction of the second amendment may fall oddly on modern earns, but it really is simpler than most people seem to think: "The existence of an armed organization is necessary, but don't assume that the government's power to form and run such an organization gives the government the power to deny the people the right to themselves be armed."
Yes, "militia" had a very specific meaning at the time. Their urge to use that word was a reflection of how distasteful they found the notion of a large standing federal military (that being too close to their experience with British power). And it's precisely BECAUSE the assumed that the states and even more granular local powers would be taking on the responsibility to have armed groups under their control that they made the individual's right to be personally armed a fundamental, nationally protected right - to prevent a local government from becoming locally tyrannical (and likewise federally).
I don't think the early American government believed it could be specific and have these amendments stand the test of time (and they've been proven right over and over.)
Do you foresee a situation where the right to free expression or the right to assemble perhaps should be considered just a little too dangerous, and we should consider taking that away?
If so, you can start the process of putting a new amendment in place, one that kills of the First. While you're at it, you can try the same with the protections proclaimed by the Second (or the Fourth, if you think that's also a "living" amendment that's worth scrapping), but you're not going to get the supermajority and ratification needed to make any of that happen.
Since you're apparently an expert in the colloquial interpretation of 18th century American English, could you please explain what this part of the 2nd amendment means?
You're looking at the language and purpose of the amendment incorrectly. To translate its essence into more modern parlance, if would go something like: "Because it's always going to be necessary to have a trained and equipped military organization ready to defend the country, the government - in the interests of not allowing the government to have a monopoly on the tools of defense - shall not prevent citizens who are not in the military from having arms."
The people who wrote that amendment still had a very bad taste in their mouths from living under a monarchy that DID reserve the power to capriciously allow only the military to keep and bear arms. Knowing that a military/militia is necessary, they used the second amendment to be VERY clear that they considered the fundamental right to keep and bear arms to be NOT exclusive to the military. Just like the considered the freedom to speak to be not under the control of the government.
Bullshit. Unless you can point to real evidence this is true, you're just guessing.
What? How do you think that coupons actually work, anyway?
1) You present a coupon, and you pay less cash at the point of sale than you otherwise would have. This is not a mystery. It's the whole point. If it's the retailer's own coupon, then they are basically putting the item on sale in exchange for having a trackable form of marketing. If it's a manufacturer's coupon, then the retailer is participating in a mechanism wherein the manufacturer and retailer have worked out a back-channel compensation scheme for the retailer having collected less cash during the transaction. This is also not a mystery.
2) When you present the retailer with a bogus retailer coupon, you're getting a discount that's disconnected from one of the key reasons they issued the coupon in the first place: to understand which marketing methods are the most constructive. When you present the retailer with a bogus manufacturer's coupon, one of two things happens: the retailer eats the loss, or the manufacturer does. Again, why are you acting like this is some strange unknown? Or, are you just hoping that someone there's a third magical possibility that makes it just fine to rip off businesses with fake coupons? Yeah, I thought so.
Is short, this "informative" post is nothing but a guess.
What you mean is that you have no idea how retail operations and promotional marketing work, but you vaguely want it to be true that ripping off stuff through the use of bogus discount coupons is a "victimless crime" blah blah blah, so you're going to pretend that basic information is unknowable, as moral cover. Hint: you're not as clever as you think you are.
I think there should be a no carrier in there somewhere.
Which wouldn't matter a bit if the machine is flying waypoints using its own internal flight controller. That's how mine work: you inform the machine of the flight plan using a ground station, and then it does off and does its thing, whether or not you can talk to it along the way. Loss of, say, Verizon's signal wouldn't make a bit of difference.
Both. The retailer takes on the overhead costs of handling the coupon. They are then collecting less money at the register, but never seeing the expected promotional kick-in from the defrauded manufacturer... unless the manufacturer wants to continue to provide the retailer with promotional money for fake promos that never actually happened. All sorts of back-and-forth with the accounting, tax implications, distorted reporting - just bad for everyone all the way around.
You only have to make a spectacle of arresting a few and applying the existing $10,000 fine + jail time, and word gets out. Sort of like most people understand that even though you can climb the White House fence, it's a Really Bad Idea.
Meanwhile, in ten years, every tourist in DC will have a selfie drone
Which would be fine, except the DC FRZ (flight restriction zone) is a 30-mile circle around the Capital within which it is illegal to fly ANY remote control device of any kind. Includes "drones" as well as those toy RC helicopters at the mall kiosks, and the sort of RC planes that people have been flying around for many decades. Some tourist flying a quad in DC is in for a very rude awakening, as has already happened.
Yea, but a cell phone signal flying over the south lawn is a pretty clear indicator that you have an issue
Wouldn't matter. Do you understand how small the White House grounds are, and how fast even a modest quad can fly when it means business? I've got one that can do over 40mph. That would cover the distance from the sidewalk in front of the White House to the middle of the typical speech-giving area of the Rose Garden in well under 8 seconds. A drone flying waypoints - with no need for a human controller nearby or watching - could be moving that fast well before it gets to the White House fence, and be coming in 200' overhead, be above a high-profile press event in seconds, cut power and drop like a stone spewing a mist of cesium or a nice cloud of serin or laden with a nice little brick of C4, and it would be on the ground in the middle of that speech/ceremony so fast you'd have no ability to do something about it. Except maybe light it up with some sort of automated buckshot gatling gun, right in the middle of a busy urban area.
This is going to result in a lot more events being held indoors.
Yeah. Except, it's the EU countries that went the austerity route that are now in the best shape, financially. And their people see that, and vote to reinforce the politicians that made that wise choice. Government largess can't make the economy grow when the government is too corrupt, and the people too indifferent (or too used to getting away with) to pay the taxes that will let the government throw around huge sums of money. "Stimulus" spending with borrowed money is right up there with sacrificing chickens or doing a magical dance when it comes to fixing what's actually wrong with places like Greece. The problem is cultural, and has been that way for decades. The Nanny State mentality is bad enough, but trying to keep it going when at the same time the entire nation plays games with tax collection so they can all lie to themselves about it is a recipe for... contemporary Greece.
Does the average worker have a retirement investment account?
I suppose that depends on how you define "average." In the US, over 52 million people participate in 401k plans. That's in addition to those who have other retirement vehicles (like IRAs, etc). Almost all of those funds are tied up at least in part in mutual funds. Probably most people who aren't working aren't contributing to such a plan, though many who are out of work still have money sitting in them. Alas, we have over 90 million people who aren't participating in the labor force - the highest number since the 1970's. In more recent times, when more people had jobs, there was a much more common interest in how one's mutual funds were performing, because more people were actively slicing off a piece of each paycheck to invest therein. That tended to make more people aware of, and interested in how it all works.
It amazes me how nutty people get over "terrorists" when the roads are like a civilized version of Mad Max. People constantly die every day. Tens of thousands of lives unnecessarily lost every year just to automobile accidents. I feel like I'm the only rational person when I experience a certain apprehension every time I get behind a wheel, knowing that while racing through space in a multi ton coffin, even a small mistake could send me careening to my death.
The difference is that while you are indeed taking a small risk every time you get on the road, you have the luke-warm comfort of knowing that just like, you the vast majority of other people on the road don't want to die themselves, or see you die. Doesn't mean they're all as careful as they should be, and some are indeed belligerent and dangerous on the road, though they are the minuscule exceptions. Most accidents are the result of inattentiveness in one form or another, or poor judgment.
People, on the other hand, who do things like blow up train loads of passengers in London or Madrid, or who try to blow up an aircraft on final approach over Detroit, or who park a car bomb in Time Square... they're trying to kill you. It feels different because it is different. We all internalize certain risks, but bristle - very reasonably - when we learn of someone who, out of malice, wants to kill you and everyone else nearby. A dead kid is awful. But there's something substantially different between a kid on a sidewalk getting killed by an out of control car, and a kid like the one in Boston, who had his guts blown out by someone who stood there, looked right at him, and decided to set his IED down on the sidewalk right next to him.
In other words, you're looking for the people doing the baseline, basic research to be better at demonstrating the importance of their work in the grant marketplace.
which perhaps others would do if grants were fairly distributed
Translation: everybody who wants grant money should get it. There should be an infinite supply of other people's money so that everyone engaged in their own pet field of research should be able to do whatever they want, indefinitely, without worrying about demonstrating to anyone else that what they're working on is more interesting, more useful, or even sane, compared to the next guy's project. That would be truly fair. The guy looking to synthesize unicorn DNA from horses and narwhals should definitely get some funds diverted his way from that jerk across the hall in the other lab who's working on that stupid HIV vaccine. Because otherwise it's NOT FAIR.
And it is LONG past time for America to tax delivered items.
You mean, increase the taxes on delivered items, right? Because most states already have sales and use taxes, some of them quite high. We'll ignore for the moment those states that have decided they'd rather cover their overhead through things like property taxes or other income taxes, forgoing sales taxes.
If you order a new computer display from an out-of-state vendor, your state's taxes are still owed. Think that just because a business located in some other tax jurisdiction isn't working on behalf of your state to collect and remit your state's taxes on your purchase that somehow you're off the hook? Just wait until you're audited by your state, and you'll find yourself paying those taxes and substantial penalties.
It's not "long past time" for a change, because the situation you want is already in place. If you have a complaint, it should be about your fellow local state citizens who are cheating on their sales and use tax obligations. That's between them and their state government, not between your state government and a business that's located and chartered (and paying taxes) in another state entirely.
This is simply because an increase in profits will certainly not result in an increase in wealth for individuals that make up the "labour" part of society
Which is exactly why your average worker with a retirement plan investing in mutual funds and other investments might want to wake up and realize that they, too, own parts of large profit-making companies - and they, too, will have the return on those investments impacted by the taxes the invested-in companies bear.
If a business could deal with a 10% increase in tax by raising prices to make higher profits than why are those prices not already being charged and those higher profits already being made?
Because they have competition, which puts pressure on them to keep prices low enough to attract, rather than repel customers. How is this not obvious to you? Everyone should run a retail business for a year or two so they can learn some basic facts, thus making them a far more constructive person for the rest of their lives.
A change in the tax law impacts every business that operates under that law. The way a business structures its pricing has to take into account cost pressures that impact the entire market of retailers (their competition) so they can make judgments about what will leave them in a competitive position on prices. Business owners wrestle with that topic every single day, and are acutely aware of what factors put pressure on them (and only them) and on their entire market segment. Overhead they take onto themselves, for their own convenience (say, operating in a slightly more expensive part of town) is something they may decide not to reflect in their pricing, knowing that the better location will increase volume. Overhead costs (like a bump in taxes) that impacts everyone in their market will result in higher prices across the board. This isn't just a theoretical, you can watch it happen every day.
SAVINGS, on the other hand, are seldom passed on to the consumer.
What are you talking about? We've never been in a more competitive environment. You have at your fingertips more information about price and availability and the quality of various retailers' services than ever before in human history. Retailers who don't react to that bright light of consumer comparison shopping lose sales to those that do. It's exactly because Amazon (and Costco, and everyone else) use their well-oiled operations and buying power to keep prices down that brings in long-term, repeat customers. Modern retail shoppers are notoriously well-informed and fickle - retailers who aren't competitive are serving a quickly vanishing audience.
so they are going to stop cheating the UK out of taxes owed
Cheating? Are you saying they were actually operating outside of the tax law?
You know they weren't. The law has now changed, and they're changing their operations and accounting to reflect that change. Their competition has to do the same thing.
bribes changed hands before the immoral laws were passed
Please provide specific examples of this illegal activity. Don't you think that prosecutors would like to have your evidence?
Or are you referring to documented campaign donations, just like millions of people and organizations make to support those with whom they align themselves? If you like a candidate or cause that says they're going to do [X] to Teh Eeeeevil Businesses, do you consider providing that candidate with your support as they try to get elected to office... a bribe? No? I see.
And, as expected, this wasn't a mental health issue. This was a pre-planned extortion exercise involving more than one person in holding the victims captive, torturing their son, and arranging for a pile of cash to be delivered. Accomplices, helping out this trained welder who new the family in question would be good targets because he used to work for the victim's company.
What are you talking about? The police say this was a planned event carried about by more than one person. He didn't "snap," he set up a captivity/torture scenario in order to try to extort $40K in cash from a former employer, and had help from accomplices. You're going to have to find another way to feel sorry for the crew that did this.
so you are saying that republicans were lying in their report about Benghazi?
No, I'm saying that the Obama administration, with the direct involvement of Hillary Clinton, was lying - deliberately, repeatedly, for weeks - about what happened. In order to influence the imminent election.
Slashdot Mirror
And if you write a review that includes my entire fucking novel?
That wouldn't pass the Fair Use smell test, so it's a pointless rhetorical question.
Given that you clearly do not know what the term "well regulated" meant in 1791
I know exactly what it means. And the authors are clear that having a well regulated militia is necessary. Are you foggy about that, somehow?
... that they're not (UNLIKE their previous British overlords) going to let the necessary existence of that entity be an excuse to deprive the rest of the people from keeping and bearing arms.
They're also very clear, having stipulated that, just like with their British overlords had one, they're going to have a continually armed and well regulated military
telling people what the people who wrote the document *intended* is borderline delusional
What? They authors themselves, in a huge parade of letters, recorded debates, and supporting documents, explain exactly what they were thinking when it comes to the constitution and every one of its amendments. Those amendments didn't just cryptically appear and get signed, they were talked to death in congress and documented personal discussions, mused about in journals and letters, and openly debated. It was very clear they considered the personal right to own firearms to be paramount, and distinctly separate from the collective need to keep a well-regulated militia ready to go. Despite their allergy to a standing army of some flavor (having seen what they'd seen), they knew it was necessary to have that capacity always in place.
The existence of it being necessary, they knew that the temptation was going to be there for someone in military or civilian executive/legislative power to skew towards making that militia/military the only holders of armed power. Remember that the constitution is all about minimizing government power, and the amendments are there to remind everyone that even though they should know well enough from the structure of that charter that personal liberties are a hands-off affair, there are some areas (like political expression, assembly, arms, the sanctity of one's home, etc) that it was worth explicitly laying out as beyond the reach of government control. The linguistic construction of the second amendment may fall oddly on modern earns, but it really is simpler than most people seem to think: "The existence of an armed organization is necessary, but don't assume that the government's power to form and run such an organization gives the government the power to deny the people the right to themselves be armed."
Yes, "militia" had a very specific meaning at the time. Their urge to use that word was a reflection of how distasteful they found the notion of a large standing federal military (that being too close to their experience with British power). And it's precisely BECAUSE the assumed that the states and even more granular local powers would be taking on the responsibility to have armed groups under their control that they made the individual's right to be personally armed a fundamental, nationally protected right - to prevent a local government from becoming locally tyrannical (and likewise federally).
I don't think the early American government believed it could be specific and have these amendments stand the test of time (and they've been proven right over and over.)
Do you foresee a situation where the right to free expression or the right to assemble perhaps should be considered just a little too dangerous, and we should consider taking that away?
If so, you can start the process of putting a new amendment in place, one that kills of the First. While you're at it, you can try the same with the protections proclaimed by the Second (or the Fourth, if you think that's also a "living" amendment that's worth scrapping), but you're not going to get the supermajority and ratification needed to make any of that happen.
Since you're apparently an expert in the colloquial interpretation of 18th century American English, could you please explain what this part of the 2nd amendment means?
You're looking at the language and purpose of the amendment incorrectly. To translate its essence into more modern parlance, if would go something like: "Because it's always going to be necessary to have a trained and equipped military organization ready to defend the country, the government - in the interests of not allowing the government to have a monopoly on the tools of defense - shall not prevent citizens who are not in the military from having arms."
The people who wrote that amendment still had a very bad taste in their mouths from living under a monarchy that DID reserve the power to capriciously allow only the military to keep and bear arms. Knowing that a military/militia is necessary, they used the second amendment to be VERY clear that they considered the fundamental right to keep and bear arms to be NOT exclusive to the military. Just like the considered the freedom to speak to be not under the control of the government.
Bullshit. Unless you can point to real evidence this is true, you're just guessing.
What? How do you think that coupons actually work, anyway?
1) You present a coupon, and you pay less cash at the point of sale than you otherwise would have. This is not a mystery. It's the whole point. If it's the retailer's own coupon, then they are basically putting the item on sale in exchange for having a trackable form of marketing. If it's a manufacturer's coupon, then the retailer is participating in a mechanism wherein the manufacturer and retailer have worked out a back-channel compensation scheme for the retailer having collected less cash during the transaction. This is also not a mystery.
2) When you present the retailer with a bogus retailer coupon, you're getting a discount that's disconnected from one of the key reasons they issued the coupon in the first place: to understand which marketing methods are the most constructive. When you present the retailer with a bogus manufacturer's coupon, one of two things happens: the retailer eats the loss, or the manufacturer does. Again, why are you acting like this is some strange unknown? Or, are you just hoping that someone there's a third magical possibility that makes it just fine to rip off businesses with fake coupons? Yeah, I thought so.
Is short, this "informative" post is nothing but a guess.
What you mean is that you have no idea how retail operations and promotional marketing work, but you vaguely want it to be true that ripping off stuff through the use of bogus discount coupons is a "victimless crime" blah blah blah, so you're going to pretend that basic information is unknowable, as moral cover. Hint: you're not as clever as you think you are.
I think there should be a no carrier in there somewhere.
Which wouldn't matter a bit if the machine is flying waypoints using its own internal flight controller. That's how mine work: you inform the machine of the flight plan using a ground station, and then it does off and does its thing, whether or not you can talk to it along the way. Loss of, say, Verizon's signal wouldn't make a bit of difference.
Both. The retailer takes on the overhead costs of handling the coupon. They are then collecting less money at the register, but never seeing the expected promotional kick-in from the defrauded manufacturer ... unless the manufacturer wants to continue to provide the retailer with promotional money for fake promos that never actually happened. All sorts of back-and-forth with the accounting, tax implications, distorted reporting - just bad for everyone all the way around.
You only have to make a spectacle of arresting a few and applying the existing $10,000 fine + jail time, and word gets out. Sort of like most people understand that even though you can climb the White House fence, it's a Really Bad Idea.
Meanwhile, in ten years, every tourist in DC will have a selfie drone
Which would be fine, except the DC FRZ (flight restriction zone) is a 30-mile circle around the Capital within which it is illegal to fly ANY remote control device of any kind. Includes "drones" as well as those toy RC helicopters at the mall kiosks, and the sort of RC planes that people have been flying around for many decades. Some tourist flying a quad in DC is in for a very rude awakening, as has already happened.
Yea, but a cell phone signal flying over the south lawn is a pretty clear indicator that you have an issue
Wouldn't matter. Do you understand how small the White House grounds are, and how fast even a modest quad can fly when it means business? I've got one that can do over 40mph. That would cover the distance from the sidewalk in front of the White House to the middle of the typical speech-giving area of the Rose Garden in well under 8 seconds. A drone flying waypoints - with no need for a human controller nearby or watching - could be moving that fast well before it gets to the White House fence, and be coming in 200' overhead, be above a high-profile press event in seconds, cut power and drop like a stone spewing a mist of cesium or a nice cloud of serin or laden with a nice little brick of C4, and it would be on the ground in the middle of that speech/ceremony so fast you'd have no ability to do something about it. Except maybe light it up with some sort of automated buckshot gatling gun, right in the middle of a busy urban area.
This is going to result in a lot more events being held indoors.
Yeah. Except, it's the EU countries that went the austerity route that are now in the best shape, financially. And their people see that, and vote to reinforce the politicians that made that wise choice. Government largess can't make the economy grow when the government is too corrupt, and the people too indifferent (or too used to getting away with) to pay the taxes that will let the government throw around huge sums of money. "Stimulus" spending with borrowed money is right up there with sacrificing chickens or doing a magical dance when it comes to fixing what's actually wrong with places like Greece. The problem is cultural, and has been that way for decades. The Nanny State mentality is bad enough, but trying to keep it going when at the same time the entire nation plays games with tax collection so they can all lie to themselves about it is a recipe for ... contemporary Greece.
Does the average worker have a retirement investment account?
I suppose that depends on how you define "average." In the US, over 52 million people participate in 401k plans. That's in addition to those who have other retirement vehicles (like IRAs, etc). Almost all of those funds are tied up at least in part in mutual funds. Probably most people who aren't working aren't contributing to such a plan, though many who are out of work still have money sitting in them. Alas, we have over 90 million people who aren't participating in the labor force - the highest number since the 1970's. In more recent times, when more people had jobs, there was a much more common interest in how one's mutual funds were performing, because more people were actively slicing off a piece of each paycheck to invest therein. That tended to make more people aware of, and interested in how it all works.
It amazes me how nutty people get over "terrorists" when the roads are like a civilized version of Mad Max. People constantly die every day. Tens of thousands of lives unnecessarily lost every year just to automobile accidents. I feel like I'm the only rational person when I experience a certain apprehension every time I get behind a wheel, knowing that while racing through space in a multi ton coffin, even a small mistake could send me careening to my death.
The difference is that while you are indeed taking a small risk every time you get on the road, you have the luke-warm comfort of knowing that just like, you the vast majority of other people on the road don't want to die themselves, or see you die. Doesn't mean they're all as careful as they should be, and some are indeed belligerent and dangerous on the road, though they are the minuscule exceptions. Most accidents are the result of inattentiveness in one form or another, or poor judgment.
... they're trying to kill you. It feels different because it is different. We all internalize certain risks, but bristle - very reasonably - when we learn of someone who, out of malice, wants to kill you and everyone else nearby. A dead kid is awful. But there's something substantially different between a kid on a sidewalk getting killed by an out of control car, and a kid like the one in Boston, who had his guts blown out by someone who stood there, looked right at him, and decided to set his IED down on the sidewalk right next to him.
People, on the other hand, who do things like blow up train loads of passengers in London or Madrid, or who try to blow up an aircraft on final approach over Detroit, or who park a car bomb in Time Square
In other words, you're looking for the people doing the baseline, basic research to be better at demonstrating the importance of their work in the grant marketplace.
which perhaps others would do if grants were fairly distributed
Translation: everybody who wants grant money should get it. There should be an infinite supply of other people's money so that everyone engaged in their own pet field of research should be able to do whatever they want, indefinitely, without worrying about demonstrating to anyone else that what they're working on is more interesting, more useful, or even sane, compared to the next guy's project. That would be truly fair. The guy looking to synthesize unicorn DNA from horses and narwhals should definitely get some funds diverted his way from that jerk across the hall in the other lab who's working on that stupid HIV vaccine. Because otherwise it's NOT FAIR.
VERY high on the list of global tax cheats yet no government seems to have the guts to go after them
What you mean is that you don't like the laws in place, not that the they're breaking a law that's in place. Try to get it straight.
And it is LONG past time for America to tax delivered items.
You mean, increase the taxes on delivered items, right? Because most states already have sales and use taxes, some of them quite high. We'll ignore for the moment those states that have decided they'd rather cover their overhead through things like property taxes or other income taxes, forgoing sales taxes.
If you order a new computer display from an out-of-state vendor, your state's taxes are still owed. Think that just because a business located in some other tax jurisdiction isn't working on behalf of your state to collect and remit your state's taxes on your purchase that somehow you're off the hook? Just wait until you're audited by your state, and you'll find yourself paying those taxes and substantial penalties.
It's not "long past time" for a change, because the situation you want is already in place. If you have a complaint, it should be about your fellow local state citizens who are cheating on their sales and use tax obligations. That's between them and their state government, not between your state government and a business that's located and chartered (and paying taxes) in another state entirely.
This is simply because an increase in profits will certainly not result in an increase in wealth for individuals that make up the "labour" part of society
Which is exactly why your average worker with a retirement plan investing in mutual funds and other investments might want to wake up and realize that they, too, own parts of large profit-making companies - and they, too, will have the return on those investments impacted by the taxes the invested-in companies bear.
If a business could deal with a 10% increase in tax by raising prices to make higher profits than why are those prices not already being charged and those higher profits already being made?
Because they have competition, which puts pressure on them to keep prices low enough to attract, rather than repel customers. How is this not obvious to you? Everyone should run a retail business for a year or two so they can learn some basic facts, thus making them a far more constructive person for the rest of their lives.
A change in the tax law impacts every business that operates under that law. The way a business structures its pricing has to take into account cost pressures that impact the entire market of retailers (their competition) so they can make judgments about what will leave them in a competitive position on prices. Business owners wrestle with that topic every single day, and are acutely aware of what factors put pressure on them (and only them) and on their entire market segment. Overhead they take onto themselves, for their own convenience (say, operating in a slightly more expensive part of town) is something they may decide not to reflect in their pricing, knowing that the better location will increase volume. Overhead costs (like a bump in taxes) that impacts everyone in their market will result in higher prices across the board. This isn't just a theoretical, you can watch it happen every day.
SAVINGS, on the other hand, are seldom passed on to the consumer.
What are you talking about? We've never been in a more competitive environment. You have at your fingertips more information about price and availability and the quality of various retailers' services than ever before in human history. Retailers who don't react to that bright light of consumer comparison shopping lose sales to those that do. It's exactly because Amazon (and Costco, and everyone else) use their well-oiled operations and buying power to keep prices down that brings in long-term, repeat customers. Modern retail shoppers are notoriously well-informed and fickle - retailers who aren't competitive are serving a quickly vanishing audience.
so they are going to stop cheating the UK out of taxes owed
Cheating? Are you saying they were actually operating outside of the tax law?
You know they weren't. The law has now changed, and they're changing their operations and accounting to reflect that change. Their competition has to do the same thing.
bribes changed hands before the immoral laws were passed
Please provide specific examples of this illegal activity. Don't you think that prosecutors would like to have your evidence?
... a bribe? No? I see.
Or are you referring to documented campaign donations, just like millions of people and organizations make to support those with whom they align themselves? If you like a candidate or cause that says they're going to do [X] to Teh Eeeeevil Businesses, do you consider providing that candidate with your support as they try to get elected to office
And, as expected, this wasn't a mental health issue. This was a pre-planned extortion exercise involving more than one person in holding the victims captive, torturing their son, and arranging for a pile of cash to be delivered. Accomplices, helping out this trained welder who new the family in question would be good targets because he used to work for the victim's company.
What are you talking about? The police say this was a planned event carried about by more than one person. He didn't "snap," he set up a captivity/torture scenario in order to try to extort $40K in cash from a former employer, and had help from accomplices. You're going to have to find another way to feel sorry for the crew that did this.
Who gave this clown a "5"?
People tired of other people apologizing on behalf of the Obama administration, and those already tired of Hillary weasel-wording on the subject.
so you are saying that republicans were lying in their report about Benghazi?
No, I'm saying that the Obama administration, with the direct involvement of Hillary Clinton, was lying - deliberately, repeatedly, for weeks - about what happened. In order to influence the imminent election.