But in reality a corporation isn't a person. People are people. Sure, businesses deserve rights, but for them to encourage laws that are very much in the interest of corporations and not real people, that goes too far.
When you have businesses having a lot of control in the legislative branch, you know it's not good. The corporations get done what's in their best interest. You say they have a right to protect themselves? No, they are not people. People are people.
One reason why I said, "We need some kind of national sales tax uniformity in the U.S.A.".
I personally think something needs to be done at the national level determining how sales tax is done. I'd prefer by the locale of the business/seller rather than buyer.
Right now, Oregonians don't pay Washingtonian sales tax when they cross the border. There's a proposal to make them pay sales tax on purchases less than $50.
We need some kind of national sales tax uniformity in the U.S.A.
Hypothetically speaking, what if something like this happened? And this is only a hypothetical, not based on real facts.
Iowa passes a law so sales tax is based on the seller's location rather than buyer's location. That is, if Amazon.com were to be located in Iowa, and someone from Oregon bought from that business, Iowan sales tax would be used.
However, what if Oregon were to have a law saying that if the buyer is in Oregonian at the time of purchase, Oregonian sales tax is paid.
The result would be double taxation.
Although I believe in states' rights, we need some form of sales tax uniformity. And the simplest way would be to base sales tax on the business location. And it's more fair since the sales tax would benefit the locale of where the business is physically located.
There's another very odd issue we may end up having to deal with. What happens when there are two sellers of the same item, or two buyers of the same item? How is sales tax determined then? Two persons pooling their money together to buy a bulk set of something, and will be sharing it. They order online, and decide to get it delivered to one of their post office boxes.
There'd have to be a way to offset it. Here's a very simple idea, which could even be done at the state level.
1) Set sales tax as needed. 2) Times sales tax by 10/7ths, which is only a number I chose to use for calculations. 3) The excess money you're collecting, that 42%, will be used for universal rebates.
Universal rebates, giving each legal resident citizen a check for a given amount. Everyone gets the same amount regardless of income. Maybe an age limit of two to prevent people from having babies to get more money. As for minors, the checks would be written to the parents.
1) A business sets up in a small town. 2) The business does very well. 3) None of the customers come from the locale, resulting in no sales tax to the city.
Ignore income tax, property tax, and business tax. We're focusing on sales tax.
Here is what happens. The business may be using some services provided by the city that is specifically paid for by city sales tax. But since none of the customers are citizens of the city, none of the sales tax done by the business goes to the city. Inbalance.
In my honest opinion, it would be better to do things in reverse. I.e., sales tax would be done by the location of the business.
Also, here's something to think about. Example 1... Customer A lives in City A. Customer A orders online a product from City B. Customer A pays the sales tax of City A. Example 2... Customer B lives in City B. Customer B drives to City A, and buys a product. Customer B pays the sales tax of City A. Result... Whether you drive or order online, a customer will be getting the product. But it's backwards in my opinion because depending on how you got the product, depends where the taxes will end up going.
One, we're living in the digital age where stuff is being shipped more and more often.
Two, what if a business gets no local customers? That is, a company is set up in a small town, and is doing well at selling stuff. But all the stuff is shipped to everyone else, no the locale the business is located in isn't getting a dime. Ignore business taxes, property taxes, and income taxes, cause some places may not have them.
And what happens if the person simply travels the three counties, buys it, puts it in his or her pick-up truck, and heads home? Maybe he or she will end up paying less tax than that method?
Washingtonians don't have state income tax, so that's one less thing to worry about. We do have 6.5 cents for the state portion of the sales tax, and in my opinion, very high property tax.
There's business tax and income tax. I believe businesses pay tax to the physical location they are in. I believe employees pay income tax to the place they live at. Maybe it balances out?
In my opinion, state income tax would be best done in this way. Have the employers take out the state income tax from your paycheck, so you need not worry about ever paying it again if that's your only income. (Gambling winning and other stuff, is a whole other matter.) Then the business divides up your state income tax they took out to the city, business, and state. - For example, 10% to the local city, 40% to the county, and 40% to the state.
In my "opinion", sales tax should work by the seller charging for sales tax based on the physical location of that business. So if someon from like Oregon buys cigarettes from like Florida, the Oregonian would be paying Floridian sales tax.
My logic is that if someone travels from one state to another, in person, you end up paying the sales tax at the location of the business. That is, a Californian travels to Texas for vacation, wouldn't he or she be paying Texan sales tax at the place he or she is staying?
If we have it the other way around, where the buyer pays the sales tax where he or she is located, and not the business, it complicates things a whole lot more.
Here's a thought. What if someone travels in-state to a Native American Reservation and pays no tax?
But still, Google would still hold more power than Wikipedia. Cause the information held on the server would be more valuable than a lawsuit resulting.
If Google hosts the space needed for Wikipedia, they will end up holding all the cards. Cause if the information is stored on a Google server, and not anywhere else, what prevents Google from pulling out or even threatening to pull out?
Maybe there isn't a technological solution. It's up to each member not to feed the arguments. By not feeding the arguments, I mean a single member shouldn't try replying repeatedly to a thread that's going out of control. One reply is enough, and if someone doesn't listen, that's it.
No one should be made a criminal in this case. No one is getting hurt. The game makers aren't losing any money. The gamers aren't doing any harm as I can see.
You don't need a credit card to buy stuff ofg the Internet. There are other non-age related ways. Such as gift cards, Internet based gift certificates, etc.
For example, I believe it was 1999 when PlanetAll gave me an Amazon.com online gift certificate for like $10. No catch either.
How exactly do they check to see the age of someone buying off the Internet? And before someone says something like, "How do you expect a kid to buy it off the Net without a credit card?", there are gift cards that are easy to get.
The Internet is a medium of anonymity. There's no easy way to prevent the sale of mature video games to minors without a huge invasion of privacy, another obstacle.
goes to non-recycling purposes? Hypothetical example would be perhaps 10 cents out of that $10 to fund education, or maybe even road construction. What happens to the excess funds?
First, Internet accounts need to have unlimited character lengths for passwords. For example, I believe Hotmail only allows 16 characters.
Second, once we have unlimited character lengths for passwords, we then could store biometrically generated passwords easily.
Biometrics in required situations, create problems. One, there is a privacy concern regarding biometrics, especially with the government. But more importantly, it creates the problem of what happens when someone gets both hands cut off in some freak accident.
Concerning microchips, I don't like the idea of being tagged like cattle. And it's not really removable once it's in.
Slashdot Mirror
I strongly dislike Real Player too. Especially after accidently installing that Google toolbar I think. So I finally uninstalled it.
5 0&from=rss concerning MXF would be nice. How that would work with current players, I don't know, but maybe someone could explain it to me.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/06/15352
Yes. The best thing we can do is stop electing those whom we always elect. Even if that means voting third party.
But in reality a corporation isn't a person. People are people. Sure, businesses deserve rights, but for them to encourage laws that are very much in the interest of corporations and not real people, that goes too far.
When you have businesses having a lot of control in the legislative branch, you know it's not good. The corporations get done what's in their best interest. You say they have a right to protect themselves? No, they are not people. People are people.
One reason why I said, "We need some kind of national sales tax uniformity in the U.S.A.".
I personally think something needs to be done at the national level determining how sales tax is done. I'd prefer by the locale of the business/seller rather than buyer.
Read http://www.koin.com/news.asp?RECORD_KEY%5Bnews%5D= ID&ID%5Bnews%5D=1324 to know what I'm talking about below.
Right now, Oregonians don't pay Washingtonian sales tax when they cross the border. There's a proposal to make them pay sales tax on purchases less than $50.
We need some kind of national sales tax uniformity in the U.S.A.
Hypothetically speaking, what if something like this happened? And this is only a hypothetical, not based on real facts.
Iowa passes a law so sales tax is based on the seller's location rather than buyer's location. That is, if Amazon.com were to be located in Iowa, and someone from Oregon bought from that business, Iowan sales tax would be used.
However, what if Oregon were to have a law saying that if the buyer is in Oregonian at the time of purchase, Oregonian sales tax is paid.
The result would be double taxation.
Although I believe in states' rights, we need some form of sales tax uniformity. And the simplest way would be to base sales tax on the business location. And it's more fair since the sales tax would benefit the locale of where the business is physically located.
There's another very odd issue we may end up having to deal with. What happens when there are two sellers of the same item, or two buyers of the same item? How is sales tax determined then? Two persons pooling their money together to buy a bulk set of something, and will be sharing it. They order online, and decide to get it delivered to one of their post office boxes.
Wouldn't that make Oregon a great vacation spot? Cause vacationers wouldn't need to worry about sales tax.
But doesn't Oregon have a state income tax, and does that create stress?
There'd have to be a way to offset it. Here's a very simple idea, which could even be done at the state level.
1) Set sales tax as needed.
2) Times sales tax by 10/7ths, which is only a number I chose to use for calculations.
3) The excess money you're collecting, that 42%, will be used for universal rebates.
Universal rebates, giving each legal resident citizen a check for a given amount. Everyone gets the same amount regardless of income. Maybe an age limit of two to prevent people from having babies to get more money. As for minors, the checks would be written to the parents.
On number two, here is what I meant.
1) A business sets up in a small town.
2) The business does very well.
3) None of the customers come from the locale, resulting in no sales tax to the city.
Ignore income tax, property tax, and business tax. We're focusing on sales tax.
Here is what happens. The business may be using some services provided by the city that is specifically paid for by city sales tax. But since none of the customers are citizens of the city, none of the sales tax done by the business goes to the city. Inbalance.
In my honest opinion, it would be better to do things in reverse. I.e., sales tax would be done by the location of the business.
Also, here's something to think about.
Example 1...
Customer A lives in City A.
Customer A orders online a product from City B.
Customer A pays the sales tax of City A.
Example 2...
Customer B lives in City B.
Customer B drives to City A, and buys a product.
Customer B pays the sales tax of City A.
Result...
Whether you drive or order online, a customer will be getting the product. But it's backwards in my opinion because depending on how you got the product, depends where the taxes will end up going.
That seems awfully complicated.
One, we're living in the digital age where stuff is being shipped more and more often.
Two, what if a business gets no local customers? That is, a company is set up in a small town, and is doing well at selling stuff. But all the stuff is shipped to everyone else, no the locale the business is located in isn't getting a dime. Ignore business taxes, property taxes, and income taxes, cause some places may not have them.
And what happens if the person simply travels the three counties, buys it, puts it in his or her pick-up truck, and heads home? Maybe he or she will end up paying less tax than that method?
Washingtonians don't have state income tax, so that's one less thing to worry about. We do have 6.5 cents for the state portion of the sales tax, and in my opinion, very high property tax.
There's business tax and income tax. I believe businesses pay tax to the physical location they are in. I believe employees pay income tax to the place they live at. Maybe it balances out?
In my opinion, state income tax would be best done in this way. Have the employers take out the state income tax from your paycheck, so you need not worry about ever paying it again if that's your only income. (Gambling winning and other stuff, is a whole other matter.) Then the business divides up your state income tax they took out to the city, business, and state.
-
For example, 10% to the local city, 40% to the county, and 40% to the state.
In my "opinion", sales tax should work by the seller charging for sales tax based on the physical location of that business. So if someon from like Oregon buys cigarettes from like Florida, the Oregonian would be paying Floridian sales tax.
My logic is that if someone travels from one state to another, in person, you end up paying the sales tax at the location of the business. That is, a Californian travels to Texas for vacation, wouldn't he or she be paying Texan sales tax at the place he or she is staying?
If we have it the other way around, where the buyer pays the sales tax where he or she is located, and not the business, it complicates things a whole lot more.
Here's a thought. What if someone travels in-state to a Native American Reservation and pays no tax?
But still, Google would still hold more power than Wikipedia. Cause the information held on the server would be more valuable than a lawsuit resulting.
If Google hosts the space needed for Wikipedia, they will end up holding all the cards. Cause if the information is stored on a Google server, and not anywhere else, what prevents Google from pulling out or even threatening to pull out?
Maybe there isn't a technological solution. It's up to each member not to feed the arguments. By not feeding the arguments, I mean a single member shouldn't try replying repeatedly to a thread that's going out of control. One reply is enough, and if someone doesn't listen, that's it.
No one should be made a criminal in this case. No one is getting hurt. The game makers aren't losing any money. The gamers aren't doing any harm as I can see.
The stuff you don't like them doing, don't let them get away with it.
The U.S. Government is suppose to be Of, For, and By the People. The People should be holding all the cards, not them.
If everyone resisted instead of being complacent, enough said.
You don't need a credit card to buy stuff ofg the Internet. There are other non-age related ways. Such as gift cards, Internet based gift certificates, etc.
For example, I believe it was 1999 when PlanetAll gave me an Amazon.com online gift certificate for like $10. No catch either.
How exactly do they check to see the age of someone buying off the Internet? And before someone says something like, "How do you expect a kid to buy it off the Net without a credit card?", there are gift cards that are easy to get.
The Internet is a medium of anonymity. There's no easy way to prevent the sale of mature video games to minors without a huge invasion of privacy, another obstacle.
And who is defining what is mature content?
goes to non-recycling purposes? Hypothetical example would be perhaps 10 cents out of that $10 to fund education, or maybe even road construction. What happens to the excess funds?
Privatizing social security, that's risking it. That's simple a gamble. It could very well make things a whole lot worse.
With nearly a half trillion being spent on so-called "defense" each year, I think it could be spent on better things.
Biometrics should always be optional.
First, Internet accounts need to have unlimited character lengths for passwords. For example, I believe Hotmail only allows 16 characters.
Second, once we have unlimited character lengths for passwords, we then could store biometrically generated passwords easily.
Biometrics in required situations, create problems. One, there is a privacy concern regarding biometrics, especially with the government. But more importantly, it creates the problem of what happens when someone gets both hands cut off in some freak accident.
Concerning microchips, I don't like the idea of being tagged like cattle. And it's not really removable once it's in.