It's actually the other way around. Copyright law and copyright enforcement have to be justified. The inherent right of "fair use" falls under the 1st amendment that protects free speech (and subsequent expression in any form, including giving a disc you burned to your buddy). Any restriction on said ability must be justified through a court case and is granted Constitutional validity by Article I, section 8:
"To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries"
Wavelet approximation does a pretty good job of being independent of framerate. Codecs just need to be decoded into raw information, and then analyzed. Hell, a simple FFT of the video, normalized to a certain framerate, would also do a bang-up job of filtering out 99% of the videos that don't match. The staggering amount of processing power required for this though, is surprising. Either Google has some monstrous server farm somewhere, or they're counting on content "owners" not using this utility too much that their processing queue becomes backed up.
Remember that it's not just the initial analysis/data extraction to some form of meta-data representation (eigenvectors or wavelet data) that has to be performed. Every subsequent video submission by every teenager out there has to be run through the same video analysis process and then compared to the entire library.
You can register and sue to have have the unlicensed distribution ceased. You can't sue for damages you think already incurred. Copyright and patents last for a finite amount of time and you are only afforded protection from the date it starts (when you register) to the date it expires. Any infringement before and after are not liable for cost of damages.
Also, I believe there is a time limit. In the case of patents, I think this is two years. If you do not patent an invention within two years of its conception, you no longer qualify for the patent. The law has been extended lately to automatically provide a small set of protection to anything published (including stuff on the internet, which isn't considered public domain).
Forgive me in my ignorance but if a heart expands in order to pump more blood because there isn't enough blood flow, wouldn't this device essentially cause insufficient blood flow, which, depending on where it happens, will cause a stroke?
Those games, unfortunately, don't really make the AI harder. They just make the AI cheat by having the units they build cost less in resources, the research take less time, units gather more resources, etc. All that ends up happening is that you don't outsmart the AI, you learn to manage your resources better to catch up to the AI in how fast you can amass an army or research tech.
Hence why Koreans are so good at Starcraft./Kidding, that was racist.//Or should I say lacist.
They didn't use the game's AI to make new ones. They created them from scratch and probably either used the game's API interface or macros to control a "player" to play against the built-in AI.
To be fair, the "unstable" ones usually inherited their power because of their bloodline. And considering the amount of incest that occurred to keep the power "in the family", it isn't very difficult to imagine why they were a bit loony.
Whenever a new bloodline gained power (Julius and Augustus Caesar, Galba), they were always competent or even brilliant people. Hardly neurotic. Then things go downhill from there.
I've noticed this in both Civ4 and "smart" AI's in games like WC3. Their decision to retreat or fortify rather than perform a suicide attack was predictable and one could take advantage of it immensely. Often times, the suicide attack would've been much more effective either because one would decimate the base or be able to take out a key item (in the case of Civ4, elite units or generals) of the opponent.
Believe it or not, the old AI's in Age of Empires, with no sense of retreat, were harder to fight as they'd send their forces at you non-stop. The game was almost completely about whether you can build an army faster than the AI because the AI would not hesitate to send his entire army after you as soon as he developed it.
Having worked for Lockheed as well, I can tell you that they're an extreme case. There's a stark and clear difference between the defense contractors and real companies that actually have to compete in the commercial market. Companies like Apple, Intel, AMD, etc. The engineering field may be worse nowadays because of the massive growth of the defense sector over the past 7 or so years.
The good news is that the international market for engineers has really increased drastically. This isn't just good for those willing to move but it also means that more competition to hire talented engineers (including Chinese and Indian engineers) will increase and companies will have to provide better incentives to keep them.
It's really a matter of supply and demand and I don't think unions are ever the answer.
Don't confuse the corporate-welfare-fed, cartel-like defense contractors (or telecoms) with real engineering companies.
Your situation and mine differ - for one thing I am a lot older than you are. My marginal income tax rate (the rate on the last dollar I earn) including US Federal and California State income taxes, but excluding SS and Medicare, is just under 50%. It does not take that much of an income - probably a couple hundred thousand a year - to get to this marginal rate. You might not make that now, but imagine a future in which you do.
It's even worse for higher-income individuals as I'm aware. So long as your income comes from a salary and you haven't broken into the amount of wealth barrier that allows you to live off of yields from investments.
The conclusion is that your 401K is a much better deal than you think it is, and if you really hate it, buy equities instead as long as the tax rate remains low and stop lobbying for changing the capital gains and dividend tax rates!
That really depends on what your (or rather my) expectation is. Arguably, my current tax rate is lower than the average tax rate I will be paying throughout my working career and the aggregate sum of taxes paid given the current income tax system vs that of a much flatter tax system where capital gains were taxed the same as income (thus decreasing the tax burden on income earners) is much greater. Keep in mind that even though my contributions to my 401k are not taxed at the tax rate at the time of contribution, the amount taxed on the remaining 92% of my salary adds up over 30 years as well and they could've gained the same yield as my 401k.
And as to your suggestion of equities, whether I do that or not does not change the disadvantage I'm at in the current tax system. Why should I not want capital gains tax to be eliminated?
Now, if you would like to say that all tax shelters should be abolished - including those lucrative 401K's and IRA's, and tax all income equally, that might be fair, but be careful of what you wish. You will be responsible for your own income in retirement, and you would be giving up a powerful tool to attain a degree of retirement comfort that might be hard to replace. You might also be surprised to see your own taxes remain about the same, or if your income is high enough, even go up.
I believe my original crude calculation included for the possibility that I will be taxed the full amount for my 401k contributions (meaning the only benefit is from the company matching). I still gain a much higher amount of base investment to put towards retirement assuming the tax burden is relieved and my base tax rate is reduced.
Of course we probably don't want a high tax rate for low-income people as we don't want riots and a revolution, but as far as people beyond the middle-class barrier (let's say 100k+ earners), I see no reason why, no matter how you earn money, you shouldn't pay the same amount of taxes on money you gain.
As far as the broader picture, of how much tax burden, if any, will be relieve from income earners, I'd need numbers for the amount of capital gains that are earned on average in the U.S. Considering that an individual who gains most of their earnings from capital gains probably does not have a job, they'd qualify in the low-income bracket and are taxed ~5% of their profits through capital gains, I'd say that just a selected few hundred or a few thousand would provide billions/year in taxes that are currently not paid. I'd say that reduces the middle class's tax burden quite a bit.
You are only taxing income, after all, not the wealth itself.
If capital gains were taxed at the same rate as equivalent income tax, you'd indeed be indirectly taxing wealth. Unless someone keeps their money under a mattress (and really, how many millionaires do) and consequently losing wealth every year due to inflation, they will be taxed whatever they gain through investments of the wealth they have.
I remain of the opinion that inheritance taxes that permit nearly unlimited transfer of wealth between generations, are more to
That would include my 100 year-old mother-in-law and her 'insanely huge' earnings? Or me? My earnings are at best 'distubed,' but what savings I have would earn more in mutual funds than in passbook savings even were the tax rates the same. Most stock is held by individuals or funds of individuals - and are more broadly distributed in practice than just a privileged few. If you have a 401-K or equivalent where you work (1) it probably invests in some form of mutual fund - or has a choice for that, and (2) it would be insane (to use your word) not to contribute at least a token to it. Ditto your IRA. Once you maximize those two, the next investments you probably will consider (other than buying a home and paying for more education) will probably be stocks in some form or another. At that point you may come to appreciate the intricacies of the US Tax Code.
I do have those and what pittance I get in terms of my IRA/401k is incomparable to the extra tax burden put upon me (upper-middle class high income worker) because those upper ~2% that owns ~60% of the wealth in this country get to pay less taxes on their multi-million dollar stock portfolios than I do on my salary.
The fatal mistake here is assuming that my current tax level is set in stone and that what little benefits I can get from "savings" programs the government generously gives me is all I can have. If capital gains tax were removed, yes, I might lose out by not having as much saved through my 401k and my IRA, but guess what? I wouldn't *need* those as my tax burden would decrease.
Let's say, at my current income tax rate (not even accounting for SS, Medicare, etc.) of 25% (I get deductions but let's call that the base), 8% of my income goes towards a 401k program and 6% goes towards an IRA. Of that 14%, 4% is match by my company in my 401k. So 18% of my salary goes untaxed until I make a withdraw (at which point, it's capital gains, assuming I keep it in there for that long). Let's assume a capital gains tax of 15%. I end up getting 15.3% of my salary (multiplied by percentage yield over however many years) from putting in 18% originally. Without capital gains, I'd end up with 13.5%.
Let's assume that, if the rich were forced to go without capital gains tax as well. Let's say this reduces my tax burden by 5% to 20%. That extra 5% of my income could've gone towards the same investments my IRA/401k went to. Assuming I max my 401k and IRA still the same, I end up with (18 + 5) * 0.80 = 18.4% of my original salary (multiplied by percentage yield). In reality, I suspect my tax burden would be reduced significantly more than 5% and the more it's reduced, the more useless "perks" like an IRA becomes (although not a 401k since there's matching there). That's not even accounting for the decrease of tax burden that eliminating tax on corporations will cause. Yes this cost is distributed to both employees and customers but employees are still among that burden.
Actually, according to many economists, accumulation of wealth is a bad thing for any economy. From a standpoint of utility, it makes sense. Economics is not a zero-sum game and the flow of wealth is what entices people to work. The fact that money, as a symbolic means to property, has been stripped of such value actually serves a purpose. It's so people won't horde it for its own sake. Even the richest man will not keep all his money under a mattress and this is a *good* thing. Those rich people will instead invest in stocks which will subsequently fund companies to hire workers to earn salaries.
Now, admittedly, our government tax system has favored those rich instead of those working and has thus, created an imbalance where the rich are disproportionately rich (even more than what you'd get with just strictly capitalist/worker relationships under an ideal market). Charging corporations taxes is a fraud as it does not help the worker, the corporations will simply pass those taxes on to their employees by lowering salaries. Capital gains tax is the biggest scam in existence whereby the people who *own* the corporations get to pay 10-15% tax on their insanely huge earnings through stock.
All of that unfairness aside, the fact that money is being inflated (though the slower the better) and that it is being sought by means of trade (stock market) which subsequently leads to labor (salaries) is what actually makes the world go around. Whether most of that work is actually needed....well, that's a philosophical issue.
I think that's a drastic oversimplification. The perceived intelligence of a woman is not linearly inversely proportional to the size of her breasts. There's a Gaussian curve coefficient relationship with the height/build of the woman being a linear offset.
In other words, there's a "perfect size" and as any woman's breast size approaches said midpoint in the Gaussian curve, her perceived intelligence level approaches zero.
To counter that anecdote, how many guys with poor hygiene do you think get made fun of by girls in their age group? This, somehow, is considered perfectly harmless, and even if it wasn't harmless, the smelly guy would just be told to "not take it seriously".
I'm not saying there isn't disproportionately more pressure for women to be more physically attractive than there is for men but your example points out a double standard as well. Men who are made fun of for their choice of fashion/hygiene aren't victimized like your friend is in your eye.
Or could it simply be that those geeky men who dress funny and smell decided long ago they didn't care what others thought and stuck with what they were passionate about: engineering. Perhaps that's how they manage to publish more papers, have an easier time getting jobs and having higher salaries in the field of engineering?
In a manner of speaking, you are correct, but the Constitution does not address the rights of foreign nationals under the military control of the US armed forces.
It doesn't have to. If one takes the view that it follows the flag, it, by default, addresses any actions taken in the name of, and sanctioned by, the United States government.
That's nice, but my ability to change the law begins at the ballot box and ends with email, phone calls, and letters to my elected representatives.
May I refer you to yet another founding principle:
"That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government"
The Constitution is a social contract between the governed and the government and the citizens are affected by it.
I believe the original argument was about Habeas Corpus, which may be spelled out in the Constitution but, I assert, is certainly not limited to only those whom it "covers". This is assuming those under U.S. military occupation and detention aren't considered persons (note, not citizens, persons, the Constitution does make a distinction between the two).
James Madison opposed the Bill of Rights precisely because he feared that future interpreters would think that the unnamed rights would rest with the government
Hence Amendment 10:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."
Yes, but what does the Constitution limit the government from? The citizens. Read up on John Stuart Mill if you haven't already. The citizenry is implied in the constitution because that's who the government governs!
Actually, no. The occupation of Iraq by the U.S. means that they are governed by the powers of the U.S. government. I'm of the firm belief that the Constitution follows the flag. As to the social contract, I will remind you to note that no philosopher, including John Stuart Mill, ever considered the legal definition of "citizen" as a qualification to be a member of a governed society. Using that argument, whenever a government has power over a group of people, that government owes certain inherent responsibilities over said people. A captive person of the U.S. Military certainly qualifies.
That's all warm and fuzzy, but the application of the law is precise and the DofI isn't part of the law.
Hence why the law must be changed. Are you honestly arguing that U.S. law should be unguided by moral resolutions and the founding principles of this country?
Erm, no. The Constitution has limit of legal power to the *United States Government*. This ridiculous idea that the Constitution is there to dictate to citizens is somewhat frightening. The *vast* majority of it is to outline and *limit* what the *government* can do. And yes, if the U.S. government is operating oversees, it is *still* bound by what the Constitution allows it to do.
Aside from the legal issue, may I remind everyone of the *intent* of the law vs the letter:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"
What the fuck has happened that have made people forget this?
This isn't entirely true. The person who does the purchasing or the selling isn't necessarily doing it to gain things that can be rationally justified to be worth what is being traded. For instance, how do you judge social standing to be gained from buying the latest and greatest cell phone? I would say that perfect rationality is not a requirement for a perfect free market.
As to the change in value after purchase, I would make the same argument. The value that an object has in one person's eye will change over time but at the time of purchasing, it was worth x amount and that was the amount that person paid. Just because it doesn't continue to be worth x amount doesn't mean that it wasn't a perfect trade in the free market sense. The value of money itself changes over time, yet we can reasonably use it as a measure of value attributed to an object at any given time (it's market price, if you will).
The final argument is that the lack of complete and perfect information invalidates the concept of perfect trade. Here, I would agree to a degree. It could be argued that so long as information does not present itself after the trade that changes the value to the purchaser or the seller, the trade is still perfect because the *worth* of the gained object to both parties is still the same. I would pose the example of, say, an heirloom left to a child. He/she may have been told that it was unique and belonged in the family for generations. If the reality is that it was bought by his/her parents from a discount dollar store, the value of said object, and the value imparted by the parent onto the child, would only change if said child were to find out about the true history of the heirloom.
I would say that all of your arguments to the lack of objectivity in a trade transaction are mitigated by the fact that value (what is being traded on both sides) is subjective in and of itself and therefore, objective information (whether it be reasoning, facts or subsequent changes in mood) is not a necessity for a perfect trade to exist.
Considering I'm writing this from work. I don't think computer speed's the limitation to my productivity.
And while HD lag is annoying, the concern for most computational limits, IMO, has been with processing heavy workloads (simulation time, gaming, processing filters, etc.) The actual time it takes to load a picture from HD is quite trivial compared to waiting 5 min for a black-and-white filter.
It's not the same because it's not as accurate. And those torrents that track statistics don't necessarily have the information for *all* or even the majority of people who used that tracker. And once someone has finished and deleted the torrent, they're off the list.
It wouldn't be impossible to track but as long as it's not clear-cut that x number of people are downloading *and* watching the ads off of a program, advertisers won't go for it.
Slashdot Mirror
It's actually the other way around. Copyright law and copyright enforcement have to be justified. The inherent right of "fair use" falls under the 1st amendment that protects free speech (and subsequent expression in any form, including giving a disc you burned to your buddy). Any restriction on said ability must be justified through a court case and is granted Constitutional validity by Article I, section 8:
"To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries"
Wavelet approximation does a pretty good job of being independent of framerate. Codecs just need to be decoded into raw information, and then analyzed. Hell, a simple FFT of the video, normalized to a certain framerate, would also do a bang-up job of filtering out 99% of the videos that don't match. The staggering amount of processing power required for this though, is surprising. Either Google has some monstrous server farm somewhere, or they're counting on content "owners" not using this utility too much that their processing queue becomes backed up.
Remember that it's not just the initial analysis/data extraction to some form of meta-data representation (eigenvectors or wavelet data) that has to be performed. Every subsequent video submission by every teenager out there has to be run through the same video analysis process and then compared to the entire library.
You can register and sue to have have the unlicensed distribution ceased. You can't sue for damages you think already incurred. Copyright and patents last for a finite amount of time and you are only afforded protection from the date it starts (when you register) to the date it expires. Any infringement before and after are not liable for cost of damages.
Also, I believe there is a time limit. In the case of patents, I think this is two years. If you do not patent an invention within two years of its conception, you no longer qualify for the patent. The law has been extended lately to automatically provide a small set of protection to anything published (including stuff on the internet, which isn't considered public domain).
Forgive me in my ignorance but if a heart expands in order to pump more blood because there isn't enough blood flow, wouldn't this device essentially cause insufficient blood flow, which, depending on where it happens, will cause a stroke?
Those games, unfortunately, don't really make the AI harder. They just make the AI cheat by having the units they build cost less in resources, the research take less time, units gather more resources, etc. All that ends up happening is that you don't outsmart the AI, you learn to manage your resources better to catch up to the AI in how fast you can amass an army or research tech.
/Kidding, that was racist. //Or should I say lacist.
Hence why Koreans are so good at Starcraft.
They didn't use the game's AI to make new ones. They created them from scratch and probably either used the game's API interface or macros to control a "player" to play against the built-in AI.
To be fair, the "unstable" ones usually inherited their power because of their bloodline. And considering the amount of incest that occurred to keep the power "in the family", it isn't very difficult to imagine why they were a bit loony.
Whenever a new bloodline gained power (Julius and Augustus Caesar, Galba), they were always competent or even brilliant people. Hardly neurotic. Then things go downhill from there.
I've noticed this in both Civ4 and "smart" AI's in games like WC3. Their decision to retreat or fortify rather than perform a suicide attack was predictable and one could take advantage of it immensely. Often times, the suicide attack would've been much more effective either because one would decimate the base or be able to take out a key item (in the case of Civ4, elite units or generals) of the opponent.
Believe it or not, the old AI's in Age of Empires, with no sense of retreat, were harder to fight as they'd send their forces at you non-stop. The game was almost completely about whether you can build an army faster than the AI because the AI would not hesitate to send his entire army after you as soon as he developed it.
Zerg-rushing has been in use long before you picked up the mouse and keyboards son.
How does one mod a post with "Nerd"?
I have no idea what you're talking about and I did watch Voyager for a while there. Though it could be that I just blocked most of it out of my mind.
Having worked for Lockheed as well, I can tell you that they're an extreme case. There's a stark and clear difference between the defense contractors and real companies that actually have to compete in the commercial market. Companies like Apple, Intel, AMD, etc. The engineering field may be worse nowadays because of the massive growth of the defense sector over the past 7 or so years.
The good news is that the international market for engineers has really increased drastically. This isn't just good for those willing to move but it also means that more competition to hire talented engineers (including Chinese and Indian engineers) will increase and companies will have to provide better incentives to keep them.
It's really a matter of supply and demand and I don't think unions are ever the answer.
Don't confuse the corporate-welfare-fed, cartel-like defense contractors (or telecoms) with real engineering companies.
They might meet some resistance...
Your situation and mine differ - for one thing I am a lot older than you are. My marginal income tax rate (the rate on the last dollar I earn) including US Federal and California State income taxes, but excluding SS and Medicare, is just under 50%. It does not take that much of an income - probably a couple hundred thousand a year - to get to this marginal rate. You might not make that now, but imagine a future in which you do.
It's even worse for higher-income individuals as I'm aware. So long as your income comes from a salary and you haven't broken into the amount of wealth barrier that allows you to live off of yields from investments.
The conclusion is that your 401K is a much better deal than you think it is, and if you really hate it, buy equities instead as long as the tax rate remains low and stop lobbying for changing the capital gains and dividend tax rates!
That really depends on what your (or rather my) expectation is. Arguably, my current tax rate is lower than the average tax rate I will be paying throughout my working career and the aggregate sum of taxes paid given the current income tax system vs that of a much flatter tax system where capital gains were taxed the same as income (thus decreasing the tax burden on income earners) is much greater. Keep in mind that even though my contributions to my 401k are not taxed at the tax rate at the time of contribution, the amount taxed on the remaining 92% of my salary adds up over 30 years as well and they could've gained the same yield as my 401k.
And as to your suggestion of equities, whether I do that or not does not change the disadvantage I'm at in the current tax system. Why should I not want capital gains tax to be eliminated?
Now, if you would like to say that all tax shelters should be abolished - including those lucrative 401K's and IRA's, and tax all income equally, that might be fair, but be careful of what you wish. You will be responsible for your own income in retirement, and you would be giving up a powerful tool to attain a degree of retirement comfort that might be hard to replace. You might also be surprised to see your own taxes remain about the same, or if your income is high enough, even go up.
I believe my original crude calculation included for the possibility that I will be taxed the full amount for my 401k contributions (meaning the only benefit is from the company matching). I still gain a much higher amount of base investment to put towards retirement assuming the tax burden is relieved and my base tax rate is reduced.
Of course we probably don't want a high tax rate for low-income people as we don't want riots and a revolution, but as far as people beyond the middle-class barrier (let's say 100k+ earners), I see no reason why, no matter how you earn money, you shouldn't pay the same amount of taxes on money you gain.
As far as the broader picture, of how much tax burden, if any, will be relieve from income earners, I'd need numbers for the amount of capital gains that are earned on average in the U.S. Considering that an individual who gains most of their earnings from capital gains probably does not have a job, they'd qualify in the low-income bracket and are taxed ~5% of their profits through capital gains, I'd say that just a selected few hundred or a few thousand would provide billions/year in taxes that are currently not paid. I'd say that reduces the middle class's tax burden quite a bit.
You are only taxing income, after all, not the wealth itself.
If capital gains were taxed at the same rate as equivalent income tax, you'd indeed be indirectly taxing wealth. Unless someone keeps their money under a mattress (and really, how many millionaires do) and consequently losing wealth every year due to inflation, they will be taxed whatever they gain through investments of the wealth they have.
I remain of the opinion that inheritance taxes that permit nearly unlimited transfer of wealth between generations, are more to
That would include my 100 year-old mother-in-law and her 'insanely huge' earnings? Or me? My earnings are at best 'distubed,' but what savings I have would earn more in mutual funds than in passbook savings even were the tax rates the same. Most stock is held by individuals or funds of individuals - and are more broadly distributed in practice than just a privileged few. If you have a 401-K or equivalent where you work (1) it probably invests in some form of mutual fund - or has a choice for that, and (2) it would be insane (to use your word) not to contribute at least a token to it. Ditto your IRA. Once you maximize those two, the next investments you probably will consider (other than buying a home and paying for more education) will probably be stocks in some form or another. At that point you may come to appreciate the intricacies of the US Tax Code.
I do have those and what pittance I get in terms of my IRA/401k is incomparable to the extra tax burden put upon me (upper-middle class high income worker) because those upper ~2% that owns ~60% of the wealth in this country get to pay less taxes on their multi-million dollar stock portfolios than I do on my salary.
The fatal mistake here is assuming that my current tax level is set in stone and that what little benefits I can get from "savings" programs the government generously gives me is all I can have. If capital gains tax were removed, yes, I might lose out by not having as much saved through my 401k and my IRA, but guess what? I wouldn't *need* those as my tax burden would decrease.
Let's say, at my current income tax rate (not even accounting for SS, Medicare, etc.) of 25% (I get deductions but let's call that the base), 8% of my income goes towards a 401k program and 6% goes towards an IRA. Of that 14%, 4% is match by my company in my 401k. So 18% of my salary goes untaxed until I make a withdraw (at which point, it's capital gains, assuming I keep it in there for that long). Let's assume a capital gains tax of 15%. I end up getting 15.3% of my salary (multiplied by percentage yield over however many years) from putting in 18% originally. Without capital gains, I'd end up with 13.5%.
Let's assume that, if the rich were forced to go without capital gains tax as well. Let's say this reduces my tax burden by 5% to 20%. That extra 5% of my income could've gone towards the same investments my IRA/401k went to. Assuming I max my 401k and IRA still the same, I end up with (18 + 5) * 0.80 = 18.4% of my original salary (multiplied by percentage yield). In reality, I suspect my tax burden would be reduced significantly more than 5% and the more it's reduced, the more useless "perks" like an IRA becomes (although not a 401k since there's matching there). That's not even accounting for the decrease of tax burden that eliminating tax on corporations will cause. Yes this cost is distributed to both employees and customers but employees are still among that burden.
If you make a show about Geek people, you'll have an hour of some guy sitting in a dark room staring at a computer screen reading /.
Actually, according to many economists, accumulation of wealth is a bad thing for any economy. From a standpoint of utility, it makes sense. Economics is not a zero-sum game and the flow of wealth is what entices people to work. The fact that money, as a symbolic means to property, has been stripped of such value actually serves a purpose. It's so people won't horde it for its own sake. Even the richest man will not keep all his money under a mattress and this is a *good* thing. Those rich people will instead invest in stocks which will subsequently fund companies to hire workers to earn salaries.
Now, admittedly, our government tax system has favored those rich instead of those working and has thus, created an imbalance where the rich are disproportionately rich (even more than what you'd get with just strictly capitalist/worker relationships under an ideal market). Charging corporations taxes is a fraud as it does not help the worker, the corporations will simply pass those taxes on to their employees by lowering salaries. Capital gains tax is the biggest scam in existence whereby the people who *own* the corporations get to pay 10-15% tax on their insanely huge earnings through stock.
All of that unfairness aside, the fact that money is being inflated (though the slower the better) and that it is being sought by means of trade (stock market) which subsequently leads to labor (salaries) is what actually makes the world go around. Whether most of that work is actually needed....well, that's a philosophical issue.
I think that's a drastic oversimplification. The perceived intelligence of a woman is not linearly inversely proportional to the size of her breasts. There's a Gaussian curve coefficient relationship with the height/build of the woman being a linear offset.
In other words, there's a "perfect size" and as any woman's breast size approaches said midpoint in the Gaussian curve, her perceived intelligence level approaches zero.
To counter that anecdote, how many guys with poor hygiene do you think get made fun of by girls in their age group? This, somehow, is considered perfectly harmless, and even if it wasn't harmless, the smelly guy would just be told to "not take it seriously".
I'm not saying there isn't disproportionately more pressure for women to be more physically attractive than there is for men but your example points out a double standard as well. Men who are made fun of for their choice of fashion/hygiene aren't victimized like your friend is in your eye.
Or could it simply be that those geeky men who dress funny and smell decided long ago they didn't care what others thought and stuck with what they were passionate about: engineering. Perhaps that's how they manage to publish more papers, have an easier time getting jobs and having higher salaries in the field of engineering?
In a manner of speaking, you are correct, but the Constitution does not address the rights of foreign nationals under the military control of the US armed forces.
It doesn't have to. If one takes the view that it follows the flag, it, by default, addresses any actions taken in the name of, and sanctioned by, the United States government.
That's nice, but my ability to change the law begins at the ballot box and ends with email, phone calls, and letters to my elected representatives.
May I refer you to yet another founding principle:
"That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government"
The Constitution is a social contract between the governed and the government and the citizens are affected by it.
I believe the original argument was about Habeas Corpus, which may be spelled out in the Constitution but, I assert, is certainly not limited to only those whom it "covers". This is assuming those under U.S. military occupation and detention aren't considered persons (note, not citizens, persons, the Constitution does make a distinction between the two).
James Madison opposed the Bill of Rights precisely because he feared that future interpreters would think that the unnamed rights would rest with the government
Hence Amendment 10:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."
Yes, but what does the Constitution limit the government from? The citizens. Read up on John Stuart Mill if you haven't already. The citizenry is implied in the constitution because that's who the government governs!
Actually, no. The occupation of Iraq by the U.S. means that they are governed by the powers of the U.S. government. I'm of the firm belief that the Constitution follows the flag. As to the social contract, I will remind you to note that no philosopher, including John Stuart Mill, ever considered the legal definition of "citizen" as a qualification to be a member of a governed society. Using that argument, whenever a government has power over a group of people, that government owes certain inherent responsibilities over said people. A captive person of the U.S. Military certainly qualifies.
That's all warm and fuzzy, but the application of the law is precise and the DofI isn't part of the law.
Hence why the law must be changed. Are you honestly arguing that U.S. law should be unguided by moral resolutions and the founding principles of this country?
Erm, no. The Constitution has limit of legal power to the *United States Government*. This ridiculous idea that the Constitution is there to dictate to citizens is somewhat frightening. The *vast* majority of it is to outline and *limit* what the *government* can do. And yes, if the U.S. government is operating oversees, it is *still* bound by what the Constitution allows it to do.
Aside from the legal issue, may I remind everyone of the *intent* of the law vs the letter:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"
What the fuck has happened that have made people forget this?
This isn't entirely true. The person who does the purchasing or the selling isn't necessarily doing it to gain things that can be rationally justified to be worth what is being traded. For instance, how do you judge social standing to be gained from buying the latest and greatest cell phone? I would say that perfect rationality is not a requirement for a perfect free market.
As to the change in value after purchase, I would make the same argument. The value that an object has in one person's eye will change over time but at the time of purchasing, it was worth x amount and that was the amount that person paid. Just because it doesn't continue to be worth x amount doesn't mean that it wasn't a perfect trade in the free market sense. The value of money itself changes over time, yet we can reasonably use it as a measure of value attributed to an object at any given time (it's market price, if you will).
The final argument is that the lack of complete and perfect information invalidates the concept of perfect trade. Here, I would agree to a degree. It could be argued that so long as information does not present itself after the trade that changes the value to the purchaser or the seller, the trade is still perfect because the *worth* of the gained object to both parties is still the same. I would pose the example of, say, an heirloom left to a child. He/she may have been told that it was unique and belonged in the family for generations. If the reality is that it was bought by his/her parents from a discount dollar store, the value of said object, and the value imparted by the parent onto the child, would only change if said child were to find out about the true history of the heirloom.
I would say that all of your arguments to the lack of objectivity in a trade transaction are mitigated by the fact that value (what is being traded on both sides) is subjective in and of itself and therefore, objective information (whether it be reasoning, facts or subsequent changes in mood) is not a necessity for a perfect trade to exist.
Considering I'm writing this from work. I don't think computer speed's the limitation to my productivity.
And while HD lag is annoying, the concern for most computational limits, IMO, has been with processing heavy workloads (simulation time, gaming, processing filters, etc.) The actual time it takes to load a picture from HD is quite trivial compared to waiting 5 min for a black-and-white filter.
It's not the same because it's not as accurate. And those torrents that track statistics don't necessarily have the information for *all* or even the majority of people who used that tracker. And once someone has finished and deleted the torrent, they're off the list.
It wouldn't be impossible to track but as long as it's not clear-cut that x number of people are downloading *and* watching the ads off of a program, advertisers won't go for it.