In Washington State I believe welfare recipients get debit cards that are like Quest, EBT, or something. They are bound not to abuse them, and are only allowed to spend them on food.
Right now, most food isn't taxed in my state. I believe... Fast food is taxed. Beverages with certain sugar content are taxed. And buying less than 12 donuts will get tax on them.
The state portion of sales tax is currently 6.5 cents per dollar, which the highest local tax being 8.9 cents per dollar I hear.
Most tangible items are taxed, and some services I think.
About insurance paying for firemen, well, will that cover their whole annual salary or what? Cause right now I think it's a good idea to pay for them to be "ready" or "on alert" all year round to fight fires. And what about forest fires, public land? (I think it depends on method of taxation whether it's truly a good idea or not.)
What happens when the employees do hold shares of the company? The company gives the employees some of the shares. (Of course, giving employees shares in place of retirement options is obviously a horrible idea.)
More progressive, yet not complex, forms of taxation is what I would push for. Unfortunately, there isn't really a town meeting concept for at the state level, but thankfully I can easily e-mail legislators.
Here's a radical idea that would definately help everyone. Food is one thing everyone needs, yet not everyone can afford it. What we could do is provide each resident of the state with a special debit card, fill it with $50 per month (to be adjusted biennially to be proportional to the minimum wage). With the recipients being careful with their spending, this could very well prevent hunger. My idea expands on Washington State's Quest card thing for welfare recipients.
With 6.1 million residents in my state, I multiply by 12 months at $50 each to get $3,660,000,000 in needed annual revenue. It would be best to make a progressive tax system to get this revenue, otherwise if not, it would require about a 4 cent increase in sales tax. But consider a family of four would be receiving a household total of $200 per month. With sales tax by the way, at 4 cents, I guess that means someone would have to spend more than $15,000 on taxable items to have a net loss. But that's a single individual, so a family of four would have to spend more than $60k on taxable items per year to have a net loss. This is in comparison to the new tax I mentioned.
Any thoughts on that idea? By the way, lightposts would be a safety issue, but whether or not it would make a diffence is the key question.
And what if someone considers the item they are bartering to be worth like $0.01? Or are there laws against that type of stuff? Sorry, I'm not an expert on the tax code.
In my idea, there is a problem I realized. The savings account issue.
Someone can put money into a savings account, and it can grow due to interest, or lose money if fees exceed the interest gained, or perhaps you let it grow and you spend money and it's pretty "unstable" in that respect.
Consider this. You buy a nice car for $80k. Depending, it might mature in value over the years if it is a classic. You then sell it for $100k later on.
Let us say when someone liquidates assets, that it needs to be considered as income. So if you withdraw $200k from a bank, that's income. If you sell your house for $800k, that's income. However, if you buy an asset, that shouldn't necessarily be considered income until it is turned into cash.
stubear, would it be overtaxing the rich to do this?
My state has three main sources of taxation. Sales tax, property tax, and the B&O tax. To add to the revenue, here is an idea I have. I'm not sure what it would statistically work out to be.
A special type of income tax that only affects you if your individual income exceeds like 5 times the state per capita income. Let us assume the state per capita income is $44k. So 5 times that would be $220k. We'd only tax the excess. If you earn $800k per year in my example, that means $580k would be taxable. I would suggest a simple 10% no-deductions tax. So in my example, $58k would be the tax revenue you'd have to pay. 10% of the excess isn't much at all. And trust me, if you earn that much individual income, you're financially well off and it won't hurt you.
This idea would have to be done on the honesty policy. As for the problem of tax shelters, I don't know. I guess if you get caught, perhaps the punishment could be not only to pay it back with interest, but a hefty prison term.
This shouldn't touch savings accounts sources of income, unless it's withdrawn from the account. (That is, interest collected isn't taxed if it stays inside the account.) In other words, the paychecks you receive and any other money that is written to you, like withdrawing $10,000 from an account, that would count as income.
Not sure what the average home price is in my state. I think it probably ranges in the hundreds of thousands.
Here's my idea for property tax reform. 1) Eliminate all lower levels of property taxation. 2) Have a state property tax. 3) You either exempt the state's average home value or you do it by county. It would be best to do it by each county to be fair cause standards and costs of living can vary widely. 4) So perhaps $200k is your county's average home value. If you own a $800k parcel (business or residential) in your county, then $600k of your property will be considered taxable. 5) Obviously the percentage rate will have to be raised. 6) 30% of the revenue should be kept at the state level. 7) 35% of the revenue should be redistributed among counties based on population. 8) 35% of the revenue should be redistributed among counties based on total assessment value.
The above idea might work out. Of course, some people would be scared. But if you own a million dollar home, you sell it, buy a cheaper house, perhaps at the average, stick the extra revenue in the bank and use that interest to live off of or supplement your income.
Could we start a thread on tax reform ideas? I live in the U.S.A., so I don't know much about how other countries operate.
The problem with income tax is that it taxes necessities of life, such as food, groceries, and medical supplies. We could simply eliminate it and go to a sales tax on items that aren't considered necessities, that way the poor aren't faced with the tax burden, but the rich can certainly afford it.
I hate the idea of property tax, but there should be a way to make it progressive. One idea is this... Exempt a value from being taxable on the parcel of land. Perhaps the highest average home price or whatever. Let us say that is $200k. Then only tax the excess of it. Update this value every year or two. Change the rate. If someone owns a very expensive piece of land, they'd pay more into the system now, thus helping relieve those who own cheap homes. Same goes for businesses.
Income tax, a special one. Take five times the per capita income. If your income exceeds that value, then you'd pay like a 10% tax on the excess of that. So hypothetically, 5 times $40k would be $200k, and if someone were to earn $800k, then 10% of $800k-$200k would be $60k in tax revenue. Individual income only.
Just some ideas, I'd like to hear feedbacks, compliments and complaints.
It would only be for solicitations, not regular e-mail. And the idea is to provoke a sense of fear into spammers. Maybe a $500 fine is too small. Maybe a $5,000 would be big enough. Think about it. If a spammer doesn't include it, it would be an additional $5,000 fine next to any other laws they broke. $5,000 for the person spammed would be a big enough incentive to go after the spammer. After all, if the per capita income in the U.S. is like $40,000, that is like 6 weeks salary to the person who was spammed.
Let us say this law is created. Someone is keeping sending you solicitations, which is defined as I guess selling you something. You notice they broke this law by not having this disclaimer, or simply lying in the disclaimer. Well, for $5,000, would you try finding out who the spammer is and bring it to the criminal justice system?
Make it illegal for solicitations not to have how they obtained one's e-mail address. In other words, require how one obtained your e-mail address at the bottom of the e-mail message. Such as, "Your e-mail address _____ was obtained from ______." Something like a $500 fine for not having that in the solicitation, and a $500 fine for lying in the "disclaimer" too.
One, the evolutionary theory is a theory, not a fact. It is based in science if I understand it correctly.
When they teach things in school, specifically theories, they need to make sure students understand a theory is not a fact. Also, the theory they teach needs to be backed up by the scientific community.
With a ratio of like 680,486 persons to U.S. representatives, candidates are more likely to rely on lobbyists and such for campaign contributions than to do grassroots campaigning.
Consider a student buying an iPod for purposes of recording lectures. Consider that he or she only uses it for that purpose, and not for music period. Let us say it is a 60 gigabyte iPod. That would be about $258 more as the article says. Is that fair?
Seems wrong on so many levels
on
Dutch Pass iPod Tax
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The concept of taxing something to offset the effects of illegal activity. I mean, it hurts those who use it for legit purposes. But I guess this is what happens when the special interest groups and the lobbyists get their way. Perhaps we need a higher rate of legislators per number of persons, which would allow grassroot campaigning.
Our congressional districts are over 600,000 persons per representative. This means a candidate running is most likely going to rely on the campaign contributions from lobbyists. If a candidate fails to support the ideas of a lobbyist, he or she more likely than not won't be receiving any more aid in the future. Am I correct on this?
I simply pointed out that television and books both provide information. A television can provide educational material, and so can a book.
Whether those 70 million television sets equal 70 million Americans, I don't know. I am unsure of the ratio of t.v. sets to persons in that figure. More importantly, it did mention 15 million households below. Let's assume there's 2 to 4 persons per household. In a country with nearly 300 million Americans, 30 (2 persons per household) million to 70 million is a sizeable minority of people. Although it's not enough to make a difference if they were to have 10-23% of congressional representatives, it's still enough people that they shouldn't be ignored. I still stick by the use of the word disenfranchise. And I'm not going to argue this with you any longer. - "If enforced, that means that overnight, somewhere around 70 million television sets now connected to rabbit ears or roof-top antennas will suddenly and forever go blank, unless their owners purchase a special converter box." - "The real problem is the 15 million or so U.S. households whose only television service comes over the air. For these people, predominately lower-income and disproportionately black and Hispanic, the cut-off will be bad news indeed."
Reply to: #12334681 - That is totally backwards what you just said. The only difference between a television and a book is how the information is transferred. So instead of watching material on the history channel, should I go pick up a book, perhaps the "Cat in the Hat"? Gee, I wonder which will be more educational.
Reply to: #12334691 - The problem with the current system is that not everyone gets whom they vote for. Someone can get into the U.S. House of Representatives with less than 50% of the vote. Even if they did get 50+% of the vote, that still leaves the other 49% or so who are unrepresented. I think the only solution is for states with multiple representatives, elect them all at large either with the plurality method or STV, that way someone can say, "I voted for so and so and they got in." Example, states with nine congressional districts. Elect all nine at large with either the plurality method, meaning top nine, or STV, meaning a 10% quota if I'm not mistaken.
Reply to: #12334714 - Just because the government can legally do something, doesn't make that right. Wasn't it legal to own slaves at one point?
Reply to: #12334795 - Malls are privately owned if I'm not mistaken. It may be commercial, but the landlord or landlady has the right to do as he or she wishes. If he or she wishes to stupidly remove parking spaces, that is going to cause a huge loss of business. - You mentioned the biggest audience. How is losing 70 million viewers considered having the biggest audience?
There are areas that get weak signals due to terrain. There is really no solution for them. Notice in the article it mentioned, "On the other hand, when digital signals are weak, there is often no picture at all.".
There really has to be some sort of solution cause it's going to disenfranchise millions of Americans.
Actually, as someone mentioned, biometrics. Here's an idea, but do you think it would work?
USB thumb drive key, since most computers seem to have a USB port. It would store a list of passwords, and the passwords could be incredibly complex, like a kilobyte for a single password.
Next, we need to encourage keyboard makers to make a biometric fingerprint ID thing on them.
To unlock the USb thumb drive key thing, just use your fingerprint in combination with an 8 character password. Now, is a fingerprint complex enough that it's secure against brute force password cracking? Also, the 8 character password thing is just a slightly extra security feature to make it that much more tedious for crackers.
Also, what about the concept of forced delays when checking if a password is valid? Can those really work in most situations?
A USB thumb drive key thing that goes into USB ports, which I believe most computers pretty much have.
Additionally, start building keyboards with biometric fingerprint pads you could use.
The USB thumb drive key thing would have a list of all of one's passwords. But to unlock it, it would not only require your fingerprints (biometrics), but it would also require let's say an 8 to 16 character typed password when attempting to unlock it.
This way, it's as simple as plugging the USB thumb drive key thing into the USB port, pushing down one's finger on the keyboard, then type in an 8 to 16 character password, and there you go.
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In Washington State I believe welfare recipients get debit cards that are like Quest, EBT, or something. They are bound not to abuse them, and are only allowed to spend them on food.
Right now, most food isn't taxed in my state. I believe... Fast food is taxed. Beverages with certain sugar content are taxed. And buying less than 12 donuts will get tax on them.
The state portion of sales tax is currently 6.5 cents per dollar, which the highest local tax being 8.9 cents per dollar I hear.
Most tangible items are taxed, and some services I think.
The following reply is to the above two posts.
About insurance paying for firemen, well, will that cover their whole annual salary or what? Cause right now I think it's a good idea to pay for them to be "ready" or "on alert" all year round to fight fires. And what about forest fires, public land? (I think it depends on method of taxation whether it's truly a good idea or not.)
What happens when the employees do hold shares of the company? The company gives the employees some of the shares. (Of course, giving employees shares in place of retirement options is obviously a horrible idea.)
Probably as soon as they hear the news and figure out a way to convince us that 'it is for our own good'.
More progressive, yet not complex, forms of taxation is what I would push for. Unfortunately, there isn't really a town meeting concept for at the state level, but thankfully I can easily e-mail legislators.
Here's a radical idea that would definately help everyone. Food is one thing everyone needs, yet not everyone can afford it. What we could do is provide each resident of the state with a special debit card, fill it with $50 per month (to be adjusted biennially to be proportional to the minimum wage). With the recipients being careful with their spending, this could very well prevent hunger. My idea expands on Washington State's Quest card thing for welfare recipients.
With 6.1 million residents in my state, I multiply by 12 months at $50 each to get $3,660,000,000 in needed annual revenue. It would be best to make a progressive tax system to get this revenue, otherwise if not, it would require about a 4 cent increase in sales tax. But consider a family of four would be receiving a household total of $200 per month. With sales tax by the way, at 4 cents, I guess that means someone would have to spend more than $15,000 on taxable items to have a net loss. But that's a single individual, so a family of four would have to spend more than $60k on taxable items per year to have a net loss. This is in comparison to the new tax I mentioned.
Any thoughts on that idea? By the way, lightposts would be a safety issue, but whether or not it would make a diffence is the key question.
And what if someone considers the item they are bartering to be worth like $0.01? Or are there laws against that type of stuff? Sorry, I'm not an expert on the tax code.
In my idea, there is a problem I realized. The savings account issue.
Someone can put money into a savings account, and it can grow due to interest, or lose money if fees exceed the interest gained, or perhaps you let it grow and you spend money and it's pretty "unstable" in that respect.
Consider this. You buy a nice car for $80k. Depending, it might mature in value over the years if it is a classic. You then sell it for $100k later on.
Let us say when someone liquidates assets, that it needs to be considered as income. So if you withdraw $200k from a bank, that's income. If you sell your house for $800k, that's income. However, if you buy an asset, that shouldn't necessarily be considered income until it is turned into cash.
Will this above solve the problem?
stubear, would it be overtaxing the rich to do this?
My state has three main sources of taxation. Sales tax, property tax, and the B&O tax. To add to the revenue, here is an idea I have. I'm not sure what it would statistically work out to be.
A special type of income tax that only affects you if your individual income exceeds like 5 times the state per capita income. Let us assume the state per capita income is $44k. So 5 times that would be $220k. We'd only tax the excess. If you earn $800k per year in my example, that means $580k would be taxable. I would suggest a simple 10% no-deductions tax. So in my example, $58k would be the tax revenue you'd have to pay. 10% of the excess isn't much at all. And trust me, if you earn that much individual income, you're financially well off and it won't hurt you.
This idea would have to be done on the honesty policy. As for the problem of tax shelters, I don't know. I guess if you get caught, perhaps the punishment could be not only to pay it back with interest, but a hefty prison term.
This shouldn't touch savings accounts sources of income, unless it's withdrawn from the account. (That is, interest collected isn't taxed if it stays inside the account.) In other words, the paychecks you receive and any other money that is written to you, like withdrawing $10,000 from an account, that would count as income.
Not sure what the average home price is in my state. I think it probably ranges in the hundreds of thousands.
Here's my idea for property tax reform.
1) Eliminate all lower levels of property taxation.
2) Have a state property tax.
3) You either exempt the state's average home value or you do it by county. It would be best to do it by each county to be fair cause standards and costs of living can vary widely.
4) So perhaps $200k is your county's average home value. If you own a $800k parcel (business or residential) in your county, then $600k of your property will be considered taxable.
5) Obviously the percentage rate will have to be raised.
6) 30% of the revenue should be kept at the state level.
7) 35% of the revenue should be redistributed among counties based on population.
8) 35% of the revenue should be redistributed among counties based on total assessment value.
The above idea might work out. Of course, some people would be scared. But if you own a million dollar home, you sell it, buy a cheaper house, perhaps at the average, stick the extra revenue in the bank and use that interest to live off of or supplement your income.
Could we start a thread on tax reform ideas? I live in the U.S.A., so I don't know much about how other countries operate.
The problem with income tax is that it taxes necessities of life, such as food, groceries, and medical supplies. We could simply eliminate it and go to a sales tax on items that aren't considered necessities, that way the poor aren't faced with the tax burden, but the rich can certainly afford it.
I hate the idea of property tax, but there should be a way to make it progressive. One idea is this...
Exempt a value from being taxable on the parcel of land. Perhaps the highest average home price or whatever. Let us say that is $200k. Then only tax the excess of it. Update this value every year or two. Change the rate. If someone owns a very expensive piece of land, they'd pay more into the system now, thus helping relieve those who own cheap homes. Same goes for businesses.
Income tax, a special one. Take five times the per capita income. If your income exceeds that value, then you'd pay like a 10% tax on the excess of that. So hypothetically, 5 times $40k would be $200k, and if someone were to earn $800k, then 10% of $800k-$200k would be $60k in tax revenue. Individual income only.
Just some ideas, I'd like to hear feedbacks, compliments and complaints.
It would only be for solicitations, not regular e-mail. And the idea is to provoke a sense of fear into spammers. Maybe a $500 fine is too small. Maybe a $5,000 would be big enough. Think about it. If a spammer doesn't include it, it would be an additional $5,000 fine next to any other laws they broke. $5,000 for the person spammed would be a big enough incentive to go after the spammer. After all, if the per capita income in the U.S. is like $40,000, that is like 6 weeks salary to the person who was spammed.
Let us say this law is created. Someone is keeping sending you solicitations, which is defined as I guess selling you something. You notice they broke this law by not having this disclaimer, or simply lying in the disclaimer. Well, for $5,000, would you try finding out who the spammer is and bring it to the criminal justice system?
They would have to name the e-mail address trader in my idea.
Make it illegal for solicitations not to have how they obtained one's e-mail address. In other words, require how one obtained your e-mail address at the bottom of the e-mail message. Such as, "Your e-mail address _____ was obtained from ______." Something like a $500 fine for not having that in the solicitation, and a $500 fine for lying in the "disclaimer" too.
It's only a matter of time before we still "podcasting" audio/video. Am I correct on this?
Sorry, this was phrased real badly.
Yeah, but perhaps once we better understand quantum physics, we will no longer be building the cars of today.
Sorry, maybe I should have said theory versus law.
One, the evolutionary theory is a theory, not a fact. It is based in science if I understand it correctly.
When they teach things in school, specifically theories, they need to make sure students understand a theory is not a fact. Also, the theory they teach needs to be backed up by the scientific community.
With a ratio of like 680,486 persons to U.S. representatives, candidates are more likely to rely on lobbyists and such for campaign contributions than to do grassroots campaigning.
Consider a student buying an iPod for purposes of recording lectures. Consider that he or she only uses it for that purpose, and not for music period. Let us say it is a 60 gigabyte iPod. That would be about $258 more as the article says. Is that fair?
The concept of taxing something to offset the effects of illegal activity. I mean, it hurts those who use it for legit purposes. But I guess this is what happens when the special interest groups and the lobbyists get their way. Perhaps we need a higher rate of legislators per number of persons, which would allow grassroot campaigning.
What is your opinion on the problem of lobbyists?
Our congressional districts are over 600,000 persons per representative. This means a candidate running is most likely going to rely on the campaign contributions from lobbyists. If a candidate fails to support the ideas of a lobbyist, he or she more likely than not won't be receiving any more aid in the future. Am I correct on this?
I didn't come here to be insulted.
I simply pointed out that television and books both provide information. A television can provide educational material, and so can a book.
Whether those 70 million television sets equal 70 million Americans, I don't know. I am unsure of the ratio of t.v. sets to persons in that figure. More importantly, it did mention 15 million households below. Let's assume there's 2 to 4 persons per household. In a country with nearly 300 million Americans, 30 (2 persons per household) million to 70 million is a sizeable minority of people. Although it's not enough to make a difference if they were to have 10-23% of congressional representatives, it's still enough people that they shouldn't be ignored. I still stick by the use of the word disenfranchise. And I'm not going to argue this with you any longer.
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"If enforced, that means that overnight, somewhere around 70 million television sets now connected to rabbit ears or roof-top antennas will suddenly and forever go blank, unless their owners purchase a special converter box."
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"The real problem is the 15 million or so U.S. households whose only television service comes over the air. For these people, predominately lower-income and disproportionately black and Hispanic, the cut-off will be bad news indeed."
Reply to: #12334681
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That is totally backwards what you just said. The only difference between a television and a book is how the information is transferred. So instead of watching material on the history channel, should I go pick up a book, perhaps the "Cat in the Hat"? Gee, I wonder which will be more educational.
Reply to: #12334691
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The problem with the current system is that not everyone gets whom they vote for. Someone can get into the U.S. House of Representatives with less than 50% of the vote. Even if they did get 50+% of the vote, that still leaves the other 49% or so who are unrepresented. I think the only solution is for states with multiple representatives, elect them all at large either with the plurality method or STV, that way someone can say, "I voted for so and so and they got in." Example, states with nine congressional districts. Elect all nine at large with either the plurality method, meaning top nine, or STV, meaning a 10% quota if I'm not mistaken.
Reply to: #12334714
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Just because the government can legally do something, doesn't make that right. Wasn't it legal to own slaves at one point?
Reply to: #12334795
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Malls are privately owned if I'm not mistaken. It may be commercial, but the landlord or landlady has the right to do as he or she wishes. If he or she wishes to stupidly remove parking spaces, that is going to cause a huge loss of business.
-
You mentioned the biggest audience. How is losing 70 million viewers considered having the biggest audience?
There are areas that get weak signals due to terrain. There is really no solution for them. Notice in the article it mentioned, "On the other hand, when digital signals are weak, there is often no picture at all.".
There really has to be some sort of solution cause it's going to disenfranchise millions of Americans.
I'm serious. Do they really have a right to force us to switch even though it's going to create more problems?
It would still be better if it were on the keyboard than on the USB thumb drive cause the fingerprint thing could be used for other stuff.
Good idea, but make sure to have back-up thumb drives too.
Actually, as someone mentioned, biometrics. Here's an idea, but do you think it would work?
USB thumb drive key, since most computers seem to have a USB port. It would store a list of passwords, and the passwords could be incredibly complex, like a kilobyte for a single password.
Next, we need to encourage keyboard makers to make a biometric fingerprint ID thing on them.
To unlock the USb thumb drive key thing, just use your fingerprint in combination with an 8 character password. Now, is a fingerprint complex enough that it's secure against brute force password cracking? Also, the 8 character password thing is just a slightly extra security feature to make it that much more tedious for crackers.
Also, what about the concept of forced delays when checking if a password is valid? Can those really work in most situations?
A USB thumb drive key thing that goes into USB ports, which I believe most computers pretty much have.
Additionally, start building keyboards with biometric fingerprint pads you could use.
The USB thumb drive key thing would have a list of all of one's passwords. But to unlock it, it would not only require your fingerprints (biometrics), but it would also require let's say an 8 to 16 character typed password when attempting to unlock it.
This way, it's as simple as plugging the USB thumb drive key thing into the USB port, pushing down one's finger on the keyboard, then type in an 8 to 16 character password, and there you go.