I don't feel that my taxes are 'theft at gunpoint.'
I completely agree with you that government is a necessary evil and that the infrastructure it provides is incredibly useful... however, try not paying your taxes sometime. I promise, men with guns will come force you to do their bidding.
I snipped off a bit off irrelevancy at the beginning of that just so we could clearly see something terribly terribly wrong with what you are saying.
Wealth ALWAYS comes from someone making something that someone else wants. The wealth comes from PEOPLE. Now, if you want to concentrate wealth more than what you can carry with you, you will need some form of government; otherwise, someone will just take whatever it is you have that they want. So you are kind of correct. Large amounts of wealth are not possible without some form of government but government is never a producer of wealth, it is a consumer.
Wealth comes from people. Government allows that wealth to be concentrated (good or bad).
What makes you think this tax will help:
1 in 5 healthcare dollars go to diabetes
1 in 4 teens have diabetes or prediabetes
1 in 3 people will eventually contract diabetes
Will the tax raise the cost high enough to make people buy something different? Doubtful. A few pennies are not sufficient for that.
Will the tax raise enough money to pay for the treatment of those things? Lol, the money will not be set aside for that, it will be spent on what the city needs at the time.
So how exactly will this tax, or similar taxes, help any problems like this?
You are modded +5 but I simply can not figure out why. What makes you think the money that the tax that is brought about by arguments such as yours will actually go towards paying for those exact problems? Sure, they SAY that money will be used for that purpose but what happens is that the money is put in the General Fund and is spent LONG before any such person needs any such care. Then, your children will be bitching that THEY have to pay for your poor decisions and another tax will be brought out.
You. Are. A. Tool. Fuck off with arbitrarily increasing taxes. Push the problem back on the people who are causing it (me) and then stop taking their money so they can actually pay for their own health care.
Yes, I am perfectly fine with being denied medical care if I can not pay for it. I already have to pay out of my own pocket in addition to paying for the fucking insurance (thanks for everything under the sun being deniable).
I could tell you about a nice $15k story with insurance and denial concerning my son... but I will not. Screw all of you who want to take more money from me.
What is this Universal Health Care you are talking about? When I lived in California, I had to pay huge amounts on health insurance. The time I went to see a doctor there, I paid a few thousand out of my own pocket for some trivial stuff (because the insurance company said it was not covered and besides, I had a large deductible).
So what exactly about the health care in California is universal and why should that count as an argument for taxing people?
Your doctor sees something, and its a 1% chance of being bad. So he orders a test.
Yeah... okay. I have paid over my life well over $60k (pretty sure less than $100k) in health insurance. For that $60k I have received a few (about 5 over 25 years) checkups at random locations by random doctors. I do not and can not have a regular doctor.
I am unsure WHO is getting all this fucking awesome medical care that you are talking about but it is NOT me. I had much better service overseas paying out of pocket. Fuck insurance, fuck American healthcare, and fuck YOU for stealing on my money. Thanks.:)
Just to be sure we're clear -- are you saying you want to live somewhere the emergency rooms turn people away?
Emergency rooms are NOT treatment facilities. They are for preventing immediate death only. If someone is brought to the emergency room and is dying from emphysema brought about by smoking, there is jack and shit the doctors can do. Your argument is fallacious.
If you choose to be fat, if you choose to smoke, if you choose to live an unhealthy lifestyle, you should be the one to pay for your healthcare expenses. The tax allows the government to charge the people who are running up the healthcare expenses and this is an excellent idea for a state which provides universal coverage.
I have smoked since I was 13. I am about to turn 45 now. I have been paying HUGE amounts of tax on those cigarettes... ok, so what?
You will still be bitching that I am a burden on your medical system even though I have pre-paid. Even worse, I will NOT be receiving free medical care for any tobacco related illnesses. I will have to pay for it AGAIN out of my OWN pocket (which I can afford). So yes, indeed. Stop taking my money through taxes and pass a law which says public facilities do not have to treat me for free (which they won't!) if it is a smoking related issue.
Yeah, this whole tax bad habits that cost us idea is a massive scam. The tax money is gone and is probably spent on hookers and blow just like the RIAA execs do. Meh. Thieves. Since you are buying into it, you are a thief too. Thanks.
Oh, I want my money back so I can use it to pay for my own healthcare.
It has always troubled me to hear people talk about how important it is to secure womens' rights
I will repeat this again: There is no such thing as womens' rights.
Let that sink in for a minute...
How did you react? Think about that.
Now, think about this: There are rights that all Americans have. There are no special right for women, blacks, or any other group. If women are not being treated like people, then that needs to be addressed but it does NOT give them any special rights.
Let me make that clear: All Americans have the same rights. If any Americans are having these rights being denied, then that needs to be addressed. Giving and "special" rights to any one sub-group takes away from the rights of everyone else.
Concerning female multi-tasking, I agree; however, I know a woman who blew me away by multi-tasking. I walked in to my mom's room one time and she was chatting on the phone and had a nintendo controller in her hand. She was having an in-depth conversation requiring some thought and was playing Tetris. I forget which level she was on but the blocks were dropping at the fastest speed on the game. I stood there with my jaw on the floor and my mother started talking me too... while not missing a block. Batshit crazy amazing.
That 1% you are talking about are Americans. I am an American. I have a place to live, a computer, and a car. Should I give them up? I am taking up too many resources right? I am guessing people in Germany, and Australia do not live inside, nor do they travel to and from work? People in Japan have fairies transport them and provide electricity for the evil earth killing computers?
I sincerely would like to know how I am any different than any of them. I would also like to know how my energy usage is 90% more than theirs. I am tired of being insulted by this crap without anything to show that *I* and most of my fellow Americans use energy differently... well, other than crappy gas mileage but I can not do anything about that. I can only buy from what is on the market. I also doubt that personal transportation is the majority of energy usage within America as a whole.
I assume you are speaking of the Fry's off of I15 near Mission Valley? Yeah. That place was awesome (don't live there anymore). You should have seen Clairemont Mesa Blvd before 2005! Dozens, possibly hundreds of small stores all selling parts of different sizes, qualities, and prices. It was to die for (to turn a phrase).
I agree about clustered stores. It always baffles me when I go to visit relatives and friends and they do not have a Frys-like store within 500 miles. Sometimes, a Best Buy or Staples will be within 100 miles, but just wow! That is a LOT of revenue to throw away and it is likely one of the biggest drivers of internet purchasing. I would really like to know where the majority of the stuff bought on the internet gets shipped to. My guess for American addresses is that the majority of revenue comes from areas that are not properly served by decent electronics stores such as Kansas, New Mexico, Iowa, etc.
2) Don't insult your customers with insane markups on things like cables, or with bullshit warranties, credit card offers, etc.
This. The first time (2001?) I ever walked in to a Best Buy (never heard of them before), it was to buy a Firewire cable to replace one I had damaged that belonged to a friend. After walking out of the store with $45 less, I felt raped. What I mean by that is that my internal reaction to the experience was so negative that I sincerely felt my anus stretched and I became mildly depressed over the feeling of dirtiness for allowing someone to take such thorough advantage of me. I needed that cable immediately regardless of cost and I am sure Best Buy made a HUGE profit on that sale but that does not seem like a sustainable way to make money.
Weird. I can still mod your post even after directly replying to it, but I can not mod my own. I wonder if something changed purposefully or if it is a bug... anyways, I will conform to the spirit of the rules and not mod in this discussion at all. Cheers.:)
Weird. Slashdot is broken. I have the chance to mod your comment up (or down, but it deserves up) right now despite commenting in the article...
I generally agree with your statement:
The moment you start justifying mass murder on the simple premise of "those people are the enemy", you're inviting fascism and genocide.
We need to be careful in both directions. Putting a military strategic decision made during combat to a civilian judgement after the war is won/lost is a very hard decision to make. Monday morning quarterbacking can be enlightening but it can be full of shit too. That is why I said unless the intent was provably murder rather than a bad decision, we should not pass judgement on it. But feel free to prove it was murderous. If you do, I will judge right alongside of you.:)
Hm. Has Ubuntu ever fixed the problem with keyboard and mouse stopping working when an Nvidia video card is present on the system? Nope. That bug is over 5 years old now. It is not my fault that the problem only occurs on 1 system out of a thousand even if my system is one of them. Ubuntu just needs to die because it is NOT fit for survival. Unity? Unresolved bugs half a decade old? Gnome3? Meh.
I am unsure why people talk about Gnome still. It is lying on the floor with blood running out of its neck and the knife has fallen out of the wound. It would be nice to find the murderer and hold them to account, but that can not happen since the death, for all intents and purposes (for all in tents and porpoises?), appears to be a suicide. I still think it was Microsoft who did it just like they did it to Gentoo. Brutal.
Actually, you might not have all of your rights still, you just do not know it yet. Harm may also be awaiting you. Try applying for a job that requires a security clearance. Try crossing the border and then come back. Try applying for a job at any business that has an owner that is "ra ra ra, nothing America does is wrong". Before doing all of those things, make sure someone can correlate your real name with your screen name. Yeah... saying it semi-anonymously in an online forum is a LOT different than saying it when people can mark you directly for what you say.
Still, you are further along here than you might be in China so it is not a total loss.;)
The most powerful people in the country had no plans beyond "overthrow Saddam" and little or no conception of history or politics in Iraq. They seemed to have no idea at all that there would be a civil war, or any strategies on how to fight it. That's tragic negligence.
No. It is CRIMINAL negligence. I support being VERY lenient towards those in power because it is so easy to fog reality and create perceptions that did not exist at the time of the act... however, there was clear incompetence and visceral human emotion which prompted and executed the overthrow of Saddam's government. It was so clearly bad that it should be examined by an unbiased (rofl, good luck) judge in a sober court of law. Never gonna happen... but meh. Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld should all have to explain/defend their actions to America (not Iraq!).
The military commanders should NOT have to explain anything. They did not do anything clearly illegal, and in fact, actually did their job extremely well under the circumstances.
The war in Iraq killed over a hundred thousand civilians
I am not arguing over the culpability of the United States of America in the deaths of those people, but I would like to point out that the vast majority of civilian deaths were Sunnis and Shias killing each other. An incredibly small percentage of that 100,000+ were directly killed by American military forces.
Since America was the invading force and in theory at least, were supposed to be providing security for the country once Saddam's government had fallen, you can seemingly legitimately blame ALL deaths on America, but as I said in my initial statement, the point is about immediate cause of death, not the conditions which spawned those causes.
In a battle for life and death, absolutely ANYTHING is fair game. In a normal fist fight between you and I, kicking you in the balls or gouging your eyes out is generally considered "against the rules". If you are trying to kill me, those are legitimate tactics. Nazi Germany was intentionally eradicating (killing/murdering) the entirety of the Jewish people. Worse yet, the Jews were only the first target for annihilation. All non-Aryan people would eventually be annihilated by the Nazis if they won. I am sorry but THAT is a life and death situation.
The firebombing of Dresden appears to have been a waste of military strength but until it is proven that it was done just to kill random people for the sake of killing them, I will not pass any moral judgements on it and neither should you.
As you might not be able to deduce from the previous paragraph, I mostly agree with you: Killing "the enemy" for no apparent reason is not a good thing. I suspect there was a reason (terrorism!). If the terrorism of German Citizens through the firebombing of Dresden (during an all out war!) helped the German population to acclimatise to a new political reality after the war was over, then so be it. Germany did NOT start a third world-wide war afterwards. Does the killing of hundreds of thousands justify saving tens/hundreds of millions through aversion of war? Dunno. I am satisfied with the results.
(CAPTCHA is proving. How is it that the CAPTCHAs are so frequently bizarrely related to the comment?)
The Crab Nebula is the result of a supernova that went off in 1054 (Earth time) and was visible to the human eye for a period of approximately 2 years after it went off.
It is extremely far-fetched, but, this could have been an earlier event from the same star that created the Crab nebula. Just saying.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't feel that my taxes are 'theft at gunpoint.'
I completely agree with you that government is a necessary evil and that the infrastructure it provides is incredibly useful... however, try not paying your taxes sometime. I promise, men with guns will come force you to do their bidding.
do you think about who's gonna spy on you when you talk on the phone, when you watch tv, when you drive your on-star car??
yes. next question please.
all wealth comes from government.
I snipped off a bit off irrelevancy at the beginning of that just so we could clearly see something terribly terribly wrong with what you are saying.
Wealth ALWAYS comes from someone making something that someone else wants. The wealth comes from PEOPLE. Now, if you want to concentrate wealth more than what you can carry with you, you will need some form of government; otherwise, someone will just take whatever it is you have that they want. So you are kind of correct. Large amounts of wealth are not possible without some form of government but government is never a producer of wealth, it is a consumer.
Wealth comes from people. Government allows that wealth to be concentrated (good or bad).
Pardon me but you are a moron.
What makes you think this tax will help:
1 in 5 healthcare dollars go to diabetes
1 in 4 teens have diabetes or prediabetes
1 in 3 people will eventually contract diabetes
Will the tax raise the cost high enough to make people buy something different? Doubtful. A few pennies are not sufficient for that.
Will the tax raise enough money to pay for the treatment of those things? Lol, the money will not be set aside for that, it will be spent on what the city needs at the time.
So how exactly will this tax, or similar taxes, help any problems like this?
Dying is expensive, no matter what it's from.
Not if it is a bullet through the mouth... obviously self-inflicted. Then it is just the cleanup and burial that is expensive. ;)
You are modded +5 but I simply can not figure out why. What makes you think the money that the tax that is brought about by arguments such as yours will actually go towards paying for those exact problems? Sure, they SAY that money will be used for that purpose but what happens is that the money is put in the General Fund and is spent LONG before any such person needs any such care. Then, your children will be bitching that THEY have to pay for your poor decisions and another tax will be brought out.
You. Are. A. Tool. Fuck off with arbitrarily increasing taxes. Push the problem back on the people who are causing it (me) and then stop taking their money so they can actually pay for their own health care.
Yes, I am perfectly fine with being denied medical care if I can not pay for it. I already have to pay out of my own pocket in addition to paying for the fucking insurance (thanks for everything under the sun being deniable).
I could tell you about a nice $15k story with insurance and denial concerning my son... but I will not. Screw all of you who want to take more money from me.
California has universal healthcare.
What is this Universal Health Care you are talking about? When I lived in California, I had to pay huge amounts on health insurance. The time I went to see a doctor there, I paid a few thousand out of my own pocket for some trivial stuff (because the insurance company said it was not covered and besides, I had a large deductible).
So what exactly about the health care in California is universal and why should that count as an argument for taxing people?
Your doctor sees something, and its a 1% chance of being bad. So he orders a test.
Yeah... okay. I have paid over my life well over $60k (pretty sure less than $100k) in health insurance. For that $60k I have received a few (about 5 over 25 years) checkups at random locations by random doctors. I do not and can not have a regular doctor.
I am unsure WHO is getting all this fucking awesome medical care that you are talking about but it is NOT me. I had much better service overseas paying out of pocket. Fuck insurance, fuck American healthcare, and fuck YOU for stealing on my money. Thanks. :)
Just to be sure we're clear -- are you saying you want to live somewhere the emergency rooms turn people away?
Emergency rooms are NOT treatment facilities. They are for preventing immediate death only. If someone is brought to the emergency room and is dying from emphysema brought about by smoking, there is jack and shit the doctors can do. Your argument is fallacious.
If you choose to be fat, if you choose to smoke, if you choose to live an unhealthy lifestyle, you should be the one to pay for your healthcare expenses. The tax allows the government to charge the people who are running up the healthcare expenses and this is an excellent idea for a state which provides universal coverage.
I have smoked since I was 13. I am about to turn 45 now. I have been paying HUGE amounts of tax on those cigarettes... ok, so what?
You will still be bitching that I am a burden on your medical system even though I have pre-paid. Even worse, I will NOT be receiving free medical care for any tobacco related illnesses. I will have to pay for it AGAIN out of my OWN pocket (which I can afford). So yes, indeed. Stop taking my money through taxes and pass a law which says public facilities do not have to treat me for free (which they won't!) if it is a smoking related issue.
Yeah, this whole tax bad habits that cost us idea is a massive scam. The tax money is gone and is probably spent on hookers and blow just like the RIAA execs do. Meh. Thieves. Since you are buying into it, you are a thief too. Thanks.
Oh, I want my money back so I can use it to pay for my own healthcare.
It has always troubled me to hear people talk about how important it is to secure womens' rights
I will repeat this again: There is no such thing as womens' rights.
Let that sink in for a minute...
How did you react? Think about that.
Now, think about this: There are rights that all Americans have. There are no special right for women, blacks, or any other group. If women are not being treated like people, then that needs to be addressed but it does NOT give them any special rights.
Let me make that clear: All Americans have the same rights. If any Americans are having these rights being denied, then that needs to be addressed. Giving and "special" rights to any one sub-group takes away from the rights of everyone else.
Clear?
Concerning female multi-tasking, I agree; however, I know a woman who blew me away by multi-tasking. I walked in to my mom's room one time and she was chatting on the phone and had a nintendo controller in her hand. She was having an in-depth conversation requiring some thought and was playing Tetris. I forget which level she was on but the blocks were dropping at the fastest speed on the game. I stood there with my jaw on the floor and my mother started talking me too... while not missing a block. Batshit crazy amazing.
She obviously beat the game.
That 1% you are talking about are Americans. I am an American. I have a place to live, a computer, and a car. Should I give them up? I am taking up too many resources right? I am guessing people in Germany, and Australia do not live inside, nor do they travel to and from work? People in Japan have fairies transport them and provide electricity for the evil earth killing computers?
I sincerely would like to know how I am any different than any of them. I would also like to know how my energy usage is 90% more than theirs. I am tired of being insulted by this crap without anything to show that *I* and most of my fellow Americans use energy differently... well, other than crappy gas mileage but I can not do anything about that. I can only buy from what is on the market. I also doubt that personal transportation is the majority of energy usage within America as a whole.
Thanks,
An individual American
I assume you are speaking of the Fry's off of I15 near Mission Valley? Yeah. That place was awesome (don't live there anymore). You should have seen Clairemont Mesa Blvd before 2005! Dozens, possibly hundreds of small stores all selling parts of different sizes, qualities, and prices. It was to die for (to turn a phrase).
I agree about clustered stores. It always baffles me when I go to visit relatives and friends and they do not have a Frys-like store within 500 miles. Sometimes, a Best Buy or Staples will be within 100 miles, but just wow! That is a LOT of revenue to throw away and it is likely one of the biggest drivers of internet purchasing. I would really like to know where the majority of the stuff bought on the internet gets shipped to. My guess for American addresses is that the majority of revenue comes from areas that are not properly served by decent electronics stores such as Kansas, New Mexico, Iowa, etc.
2) Don't insult your customers with insane markups on things like cables, or with bullshit warranties, credit card offers, etc.
This. The first time (2001?) I ever walked in to a Best Buy (never heard of them before), it was to buy a Firewire cable to replace one I had damaged that belonged to a friend. After walking out of the store with $45 less, I felt raped. What I mean by that is that my internal reaction to the experience was so negative that I sincerely felt my anus stretched and I became mildly depressed over the feeling of dirtiness for allowing someone to take such thorough advantage of me. I needed that cable immediately regardless of cost and I am sure Best Buy made a HUGE profit on that sale but that does not seem like a sustainable way to make money.
I never went back.
Weird. I can still mod your post even after directly replying to it, but I can not mod my own. I wonder if something changed purposefully or if it is a bug... anyways, I will conform to the spirit of the rules and not mod in this discussion at all. Cheers. :)
Weird. Slashdot is broken. I have the chance to mod your comment up (or down, but it deserves up) right now despite commenting in the article...
I generally agree with your statement:
The moment you start justifying mass murder on the simple premise of "those people are the enemy", you're inviting fascism and genocide.
We need to be careful in both directions. Putting a military strategic decision made during combat to a civilian judgement after the war is won/lost is a very hard decision to make. Monday morning quarterbacking can be enlightening but it can be full of shit too. That is why I said unless the intent was provably murder rather than a bad decision, we should not pass judgement on it. But feel free to prove it was murderous. If you do, I will judge right alongside of you. :)
Hm. Has Ubuntu ever fixed the problem with keyboard and mouse stopping working when an Nvidia video card is present on the system? Nope. That bug is over 5 years old now. It is not my fault that the problem only occurs on 1 system out of a thousand even if my system is one of them. Ubuntu just needs to die because it is NOT fit for survival. Unity? Unresolved bugs half a decade old? Gnome3? Meh.
I am unsure why people talk about Gnome still. It is lying on the floor with blood running out of its neck and the knife has fallen out of the wound. It would be nice to find the murderer and hold them to account, but that can not happen since the death, for all intents and purposes (for all in tents and porpoises?), appears to be a suicide. I still think it was Microsoft who did it just like they did it to Gentoo. Brutal.
Actually, you might not have all of your rights still, you just do not know it yet. Harm may also be awaiting you. Try applying for a job that requires a security clearance. Try crossing the border and then come back. Try applying for a job at any business that has an owner that is "ra ra ra, nothing America does is wrong". Before doing all of those things, make sure someone can correlate your real name with your screen name. Yeah... saying it semi-anonymously in an online forum is a LOT different than saying it when people can mark you directly for what you say.
Still, you are further along here than you might be in China so it is not a total loss. ;)
The most powerful people in the country had no plans beyond "overthrow Saddam" and little or no conception of history or politics in Iraq. They seemed to have no idea at all that there would be a civil war, or any strategies on how to fight it. That's tragic negligence.
No. It is CRIMINAL negligence. I support being VERY lenient towards those in power because it is so easy to fog reality and create perceptions that did not exist at the time of the act... however, there was clear incompetence and visceral human emotion which prompted and executed the overthrow of Saddam's government. It was so clearly bad that it should be examined by an unbiased (rofl, good luck) judge in a sober court of law. Never gonna happen... but meh. Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld should all have to explain/defend their actions to America (not Iraq!).
The military commanders should NOT have to explain anything. They did not do anything clearly illegal, and in fact, actually did their job extremely well under the circumstances.
The war in Iraq killed over a hundred thousand civilians
I am not arguing over the culpability of the United States of America in the deaths of those people, but I would like to point out that the vast majority of civilian deaths were Sunnis and Shias killing each other. An incredibly small percentage of that 100,000+ were directly killed by American military forces.
Since America was the invading force and in theory at least, were supposed to be providing security for the country once Saddam's government had fallen, you can seemingly legitimately blame ALL deaths on America, but as I said in my initial statement, the point is about immediate cause of death, not the conditions which spawned those causes.
In a battle for life and death, absolutely ANYTHING is fair game. In a normal fist fight between you and I, kicking you in the balls or gouging your eyes out is generally considered "against the rules". If you are trying to kill me, those are legitimate tactics. Nazi Germany was intentionally eradicating (killing/murdering) the entirety of the Jewish people. Worse yet, the Jews were only the first target for annihilation. All non-Aryan people would eventually be annihilated by the Nazis if they won. I am sorry but THAT is a life and death situation.
The firebombing of Dresden appears to have been a waste of military strength but until it is proven that it was done just to kill random people for the sake of killing them, I will not pass any moral judgements on it and neither should you.
As you might not be able to deduce from the previous paragraph, I mostly agree with you: Killing "the enemy" for no apparent reason is not a good thing. I suspect there was a reason (terrorism!). If the terrorism of German Citizens through the firebombing of Dresden (during an all out war!) helped the German population to acclimatise to a new political reality after the war was over, then so be it. Germany did NOT start a third world-wide war afterwards. Does the killing of hundreds of thousands justify saving tens/hundreds of millions through aversion of war? Dunno. I am satisfied with the results.
(CAPTCHA is proving. How is it that the CAPTCHAs are so frequently bizarrely related to the comment?)
Isn't that what code signing is supposed to do?
The Crab Nebula is the result of a supernova that went off in 1054 (Earth time) and was visible to the human eye for a period of approximately 2 years after it went off.
It is extremely far-fetched, but, this could have been an earlier event from the same star that created the Crab nebula. Just saying.