I think what Germany does makes a lot of sense. However, remember, that students are diverted into the "trade" path at a quite young age based on academic performance. I don't think that will fly in the US because parents will scream "discrimination" when their kid does poorly in school and is shunted to the trade school path -- even when it was the parent's failure to instill the value education, homework, and discipline into their spawn.
And, almost anyone who ends up with $150K-$200K of student debt and doesn't have a degree that is in demand did something VERY stupid and probably -- or actually, a lot of things very stupid. It doesn't take long to figure out that a BA degree in Gender Studies with a minor in Ancient Greek Mythology after taking seven years to finish those degrees is going to qualify you for a job where the most important skills is asking "Would you like fries with that?".
In exchange for a binding employment contract of substantial duration, employers would likely be more willing to train workers. But employees switch jobs freely so if you, as an employer, go to the expense of training someone in a non-proprietary skill the person is likely to take that skill (learned at your expense) and get a job at a competitor because they now have more skills.
If workers would accept (and the law didn't prevent them from from doing so) a contract that says something like: "I will work for you for three years and meet performance objectives, in exchange, you will train me -- if I leave before three years have elapsed or am fired for cause, I will repay you the cost of training", more employer training might occur.
The revolution will be telling people to go do something they like doing and not worry about whether some corp will pay you to sit in an office for eight to ten hours a day.
Everyone can already do that. However, it turns out, there are a couple things most people like to do/have: eat and have shelter. To do/have those things most people find that working is what allows them to do/have these things. Most people choose to work rather than forgo food and shelter. Most people balance their time - some spent in work (which the vast majority of unskilled people don't really like to do) and some spent on things they like to do (drinking, smoking pot, playing video games, eating, having sex, browsing Facebook...).
If people did ONLY what they liked, who would hang drywall or make drywall? Who would pick up garbage? Who would clean and repair sewage pumps at the treatment plant? Who would place and finish concrete? Who would clean toilets? Who would care for rude oldsters with dementia? Who would make or install wiring?
State laws vary on how premeditation is defined for murder. However, in some states,"premeditation" can occur in just seconds or possibly even in just one second. Typically, the time needs to be sufficient to form the conscious intent to kill and then act on it after enough time for a reasonable person to second guess the decision.
The term "Dormant Commerce Clause" refers to a rather specific doctrine that the courts have imposed on the states. The "Dormant Commerce Clause" doesn't exist in the text of the Constitution and it is a limit on the power of states rather than an additional power of Congress "found" in the penumbras of the Constitution by the courts.
This doctrine holds that since Congress has the power to regulate interstate commerce (a power given to them by the "Commerce Clause" in Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution: "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;"), it has that right exclusively and individual states are prohibited from doing so. For example, California can't impose a tariff on oranges imported from Florida - although they could put a tax on all oranges sold regardless of their origin.
(Hmm... In spite of the Dormant Commerce Clause, as of a week or so ago, California has made it illegal to import ammunition purchased in another state without going through a California dealer. Sounds like it's time to invoke the Dormant Commerce Clause!)
And there's nothing to be concerned about. Google hired some engineers from Intel to work on redesign of primate recognition - in fact, they hired the same old wise engineers who gave us the Meltdown vulnerability. What could possibly go wrong?
Why should the person sending Christmas packages themselves pay way more then a Amazon?
The overhead of accepting a single package from an individual is likely MUCH higher than accepting that package from Amazon.
Amazon correctly (well, usually) packages what they ship - they don't use materials that USPS doesn't like (like string to hold the box shut) or old broken down boxes with labels all over them -- Amazon never asks a USPS clerk at the front counter "can you give me some tape to close this box better?".
Amazon gets billed in giant increments covering thousands of packages and probably pays by some form of electronic payment. A USPS clerk never has to deal with a "declined" credit card from Amazon or print out a receipt for each package.
Amazon has no human to USPS human interaction on the "per package" basis for every package shipped. The administrative transaction cost for accepting a 53' trailer full of thousands of Amazon packages is probably just a bit more than the administrative transaction cost to accept a single package from an end consumer.
As well, when a package doesn't get delivered or is damaged, Amazon is more likely to be taking care of more of the overhead of dealing directly with the consumer. In the "individual person" shipping case, the USPS has to deal with individuals (the sender and/or the recipient) who don't understand how things work and needs to spend much more time explaining things to the shipper or recipient.
Back when I actually bought stuff at a local technology store instead of online, there was often a long (10+) line of sheeple waiting to get their receipts checked. I would routinely just walk right by the line carrying my bag full of things I had just bought and leave the store and was never challenged. I assumed others in the line would see what I did and exit the line and leave the store just as I did. However, I started glancing back after I had walked through the door to see if others took the hint but it was very rare for someone to do so. Often even when there is no line, I just say "No thanks" or "Have a nice day" as I walk by the person checking the receipts -- sometimes they follow or call after me, but I just ignore them and they never have followed me much past the front door.
If I were a retailer and wanted to check receipts, I'd be tempted to implement a system where your receipt is scanned at the "receipt checker" station and the paper copy is marked to indicate it was checked (probably with a some sort of code that was derived from the transaction id using a public/private key system so it couldn't be forged easily) against the products you were leaving with. My return policy would be "No returns without a VALIDATED receipt" (both validated on the paper copy and recorded in the database). If I didn't want to staff the "checker of receipts" position full time, self-serve validators would be enabled at the exit when there was no "checker of receipts" on duty. This policy would motivate people to allow the check to be done and anyone not choosing to be validated would be rather suspicious. I would even know the exact set of receipts that never got "validated" and could check video to detect any pattern of suspicious behavior as that customer moved through the store in an effort to refine security.
The only time the receipt check at the door has caught anything with me was at Costco. I had two of something and the checker had only scanned one of them (I think the product was about $10 each). The receipt checker noticed the count mismatch, went through the receipt to figure out which item was "extra" and filled out some sort of form and sent me on my way with the additional product gratis. I assume the checker (perhaps after a review the video of the transaction) gets dinged somehow if they miss items or double charge an item too often.
Damn, now I wonder which one of the of the cute red head twins in my high school class decades ago was "truly" a "living being" and which one was something else. Although, I'm not sure I would have cared if both of them were interested in doing more detailed research on that question with me as the lead investigator. I'm sure my research completion deadlines would have continuously been moved out as I learned more though. So many tests, so little time...
The toy manufacturers are obviously mispricing their toys if the 'Grinch Bots' are a problem. Sort of like a company that sets it's IPO price at $20/share and sees it climb to $50 the first day and stay above $40 for months -- the company just left too much money on the table and investors took advantage of it.
And, if you never paid it off, Discover ate it. If you never paid it off, they may have made a bad business decision WRT issuing you a card and paid the price. Or, maybe it was a good business decision because across all the dcolins117 in the country, they made money (in interest, late fees, and swipe fees). If they hadn't issued cards to any dcolins117 in the country, they might have had a lower ROI.
I got a credit card without a cosigner when I was 18 (a LONG time ago) while I was poor (in college) and had a tiny income and NO credit history. I have no idea WHY they gave it to me, but I used it some and paid it off every month (if I wouldn't be able to do so, I just kept it in my pocket and didn't party -- at least at my expense). They probably didn't make money off of me at the time (although I kept that card for probably 15 years and used it as my primary card -- still paying it off reliably every month so they may have made money in the end).
So, there are young consumers who are responsible and the credit card companies are betting on a certain mix to make money in the end.
Far more than 5000 people a year have to play games with their finances to avoid the estate tax so it impacts many more people than the 5000 you indicate it impacts.
Anyway, if something is wrong in principle, it doesn't matter that it only impacts a few people. Would you be in favor of a law that allowed 5000 people to be snatched off the streets and sold as slaves in the United States every year? After all, it would only negatively impact 5000 out of more than 326 million people, or less than 0.0015% of the population, and imagine the benefits of the cheap labor to those buying the slaves. How about if the government just instituted a program to kill the 5000 oldest Medicare recipients each year to save money - after all, that's less than 0.0015% of the population.
Inheritance income has already been taxed at least once. Taxing it again is double taxation.
Should your kid pay taxes on every pancake you feed them at breakfast? Of course not, because you already paid taxes on the income to acquire the pancakes.
It doesn't matter to society if you spend all your money before you die at 110 years old or if you die young at 60 and your kids inherit and spend that money. Why should more of it be diverted from the market economy to government spending (such as US military operations in foreign countries) just because you got cancer young?
It's well established that if an employer gives you something, cash or cars or houses or artwork or stock, in exchange for your labor it's generally taxable income.
Yes, there are some twisted loopholes (such as health insurance premiums being paid by the employer generally not being taxable to the employee and some arbitrary level of life insurance premiums not being taxable to the employee), but those are loopholes that should be eliminated just as this tuition waiver loophole should be eliminated.
While it would be nice to eliminate all loopholes at once, that's politically infeasible, so eliminating them one-by-one is probably the best we can do. Just as loopholes creep in one-by--one, they need to be eliminated one-by-one.
Perhaps eliminating this loophole will also help reduce the fantasy level of "tuition" that has arisen in American higher education (perhaps second only to the fantasy levels of "chargemaster" rates in the healthcare industry). If so, this will save billions of dollars a year and make educational institutions actually consider market economics in their pricing decisions.
Probably sell out and switch to Chrome -- but I've not spent much time in it so plans could change (the only time I use it now is when some web site, unfortunately more frequent recently, doesn't work in FF but does in Chrome - presumably because the site doesn't bother to test as well on FF any more).
But, nope, I'm not forking FF 55 and taking it over:) That's not the sort of system or code (or politics) I enjoy working on.
I've considered doing that, but since the problem cropped up simultaneously with the install of 56 and without any upgrades to add-ons (I don't allow automatic upgrades), I figure that probably isn't worth my time given that the lack of add-ons I want in 57 mean I'll be abandoning FF anyway -- small odds of buying a few more weeks or couple months (before some security problem goes unfixed in obsoleted 56) isn't worth the effort.
But, people who are already running 56 have no trivial LTS option - in a recent release (54?) Mozilla declared that backwards compatibility is not supported (I'd check the release notes again but find them extremely hard/counter-intuitive to find on the new FF website design - apparently it's focused on looking "cool" and trying to "sell" rather than focusing on trying to be functional and on providing information). Sure, you could reenter all your passwords, export/import your bookmarks (to some non FF format?), etc. -- but one might as well try other browsers at that point since it seems likely that Mozilla's poor planning, coupled with a lack of developer enthusiasm for developing/testing extensions for a browser with declining market and mind share, will mean that LTS will expire without a proper set of extensions available for a 57+ version.
freeze128 doesn't appear to be demanding anything of anyone. He is just observing that he dreads upgrading (just as I observed that I won't be upgrading and will be switching browsers).
I don't dread it, because I won't do it. After over a decade of loyal FF use, 56 is the end of the road for me as I've only found a comparable WebExtension plugin to ONE of the seven or so plugins I rely on. A major reason I have been loyal to FF, and tolerated its performance issues related to memory over the years, is because of the plugins.
I actually regret upgrading to 56 from 55 -- performance dropped into a abyss upon installation (I now keep an about:memory tab open all the time so every so often I can click on 'minimize memory' which resolves, or at least ameliorates, the performance problems for a couple of hours).
Which Supreme Court? Are you thinking of the Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins (1980) case? This was initially decided by the California Supreme Court based on the California Constitution. The Supreme Court of the United States upheld the California Supreme Court decision by ruling that State Constitutions are not in violation of the United States Constitution if they grant broader rights within the state than the United States Constitution does - they didn't find that the United States Constitution protects a "free speech" right under the First Amendment in the common areas of a shopping mall.
Perhaps you're thinking of another case, but I don't recall such a case right off the top of my head. Do you have a cite?
Slashdot Mirror
I think what Germany does makes a lot of sense. However, remember, that students are diverted into the "trade" path at a quite young age based on academic performance. I don't think that will fly in the US because parents will scream "discrimination" when their kid does poorly in school and is shunted to the trade school path -- even when it was the parent's failure to instill the value education, homework, and discipline into their spawn.
And, almost anyone who ends up with $150K-$200K of student debt and doesn't have a degree that is in demand did something VERY stupid and probably -- or actually, a lot of things very stupid. It doesn't take long to figure out that a BA degree in Gender Studies with a minor in Ancient Greek Mythology after taking seven years to finish those degrees is going to qualify you for a job where the most important skills is asking "Would you like fries with that?".
In exchange for a binding employment contract of substantial duration, employers would likely be more willing to train workers. But employees switch jobs freely so if you, as an employer, go to the expense of training someone in a non-proprietary skill the person is likely to take that skill (learned at your expense) and get a job at a competitor because they now have more skills.
If workers would accept (and the law didn't prevent them from from doing so) a contract that says something like: "I will work for you for three years and meet performance objectives, in exchange, you will train me -- if I leave before three years have elapsed or am fired for cause, I will repay you the cost of training", more employer training might occur.
Everyone can already do that. However, it turns out, there are a couple things most people like to do/have: eat and have shelter. To do/have those things most people find that working is what allows them to do/have these things. Most people choose to work rather than forgo food and shelter. Most people balance their time - some spent in work (which the vast majority of unskilled people don't really like to do) and some spent on things they like to do (drinking, smoking pot, playing video games, eating, having sex, browsing Facebook...).
If people did ONLY what they liked, who would hang drywall or make drywall? Who would pick up garbage? Who would clean and repair sewage pumps at the treatment plant? Who would place and finish concrete? Who would clean toilets? Who would care for rude oldsters with dementia? Who would make or install wiring?
Per capita measures are more meaningful as California has the highest population in the country.
Per capita, the GDP of California is 10th or 11th in the nation (depending on if you count DC as a "state").
State laws vary on how premeditation is defined for murder. However, in some states,"premeditation" can occur in just seconds or possibly even in just one second. Typically, the time needs to be sufficient to form the conscious intent to kill and then act on it after enough time for a reasonable person to second guess the decision.
True. Once rape is ignored, rapists will become more bold.
Except, it appears that if you have one 22LR round and live in Nevada, you can't put that in your UHaul when you move to California.
The term "Dormant Commerce Clause" refers to a rather specific doctrine that the courts have imposed on the states. The "Dormant Commerce Clause" doesn't exist in the text of the Constitution and it is a limit on the power of states rather than an additional power of Congress "found" in the penumbras of the Constitution by the courts.
This doctrine holds that since Congress has the power to regulate interstate commerce (a power given to them by the "Commerce Clause" in Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution: "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;"), it has that right exclusively and individual states are prohibited from doing so. For example, California can't impose a tariff on oranges imported from Florida - although they could put a tax on all oranges sold regardless of their origin.
(Hmm... In spite of the Dormant Commerce Clause, as of a week or so ago, California has made it illegal to import ammunition purchased in another state without going through a California dealer. Sounds like it's time to invoke the Dormant Commerce Clause!)
That's not an option for Dexter.
And there's nothing to be concerned about. Google hired some engineers from Intel to work on redesign of primate recognition - in fact, they hired the same old wise engineers who gave us the Meltdown vulnerability. What could possibly go wrong?
The overhead of accepting a single package from an individual is likely MUCH higher than accepting that package from Amazon.
Amazon correctly (well, usually) packages what they ship - they don't use materials that USPS doesn't like (like string to hold the box shut) or old broken down boxes with labels all over them -- Amazon never asks a USPS clerk at the front counter "can you give me some tape to close this box better?".
Amazon gets billed in giant increments covering thousands of packages and probably pays by some form of electronic payment. A USPS clerk never has to deal with a "declined" credit card from Amazon or print out a receipt for each package.
Amazon has no human to USPS human interaction on the "per package" basis for every package shipped. The administrative transaction cost for accepting a 53' trailer full of thousands of Amazon packages is probably just a bit more than the administrative transaction cost to accept a single package from an end consumer.
As well, when a package doesn't get delivered or is damaged, Amazon is more likely to be taking care of more of the overhead of dealing directly with the consumer. In the "individual person" shipping case, the USPS has to deal with individuals (the sender and/or the recipient) who don't understand how things work and needs to spend much more time explaining things to the shipper or recipient.
I'm amazed at how many people don't get this.
Back when I actually bought stuff at a local technology store instead of online, there was often a long (10+) line of sheeple waiting to get their receipts checked. I would routinely just walk right by the line carrying my bag full of things I had just bought and leave the store and was never challenged. I assumed others in the line would see what I did and exit the line and leave the store just as I did. However, I started glancing back after I had walked through the door to see if others took the hint but it was very rare for someone to do so. Often even when there is no line, I just say "No thanks" or "Have a nice day" as I walk by the person checking the receipts -- sometimes they follow or call after me, but I just ignore them and they never have followed me much past the front door.
If I were a retailer and wanted to check receipts, I'd be tempted to implement a system where your receipt is scanned at the "receipt checker" station and the paper copy is marked to indicate it was checked (probably with a some sort of code that was derived from the transaction id using a public/private key system so it couldn't be forged easily) against the products you were leaving with. My return policy would be "No returns without a VALIDATED receipt" (both validated on the paper copy and recorded in the database). If I didn't want to staff the "checker of receipts" position full time, self-serve validators would be enabled at the exit when there was no "checker of receipts" on duty. This policy would motivate people to allow the check to be done and anyone not choosing to be validated would be rather suspicious. I would even know the exact set of receipts that never got "validated" and could check video to detect any pattern of suspicious behavior as that customer moved through the store in an effort to refine security.
The only time the receipt check at the door has caught anything with me was at Costco. I had two of something and the checker had only scanned one of them (I think the product was about $10 each). The receipt checker noticed the count mismatch, went through the receipt to figure out which item was "extra" and filled out some sort of form and sent me on my way with the additional product gratis. I assume the checker (perhaps after a review the video of the transaction) gets dinged somehow if they miss items or double charge an item too often.
Damn, now I wonder which one of the of the cute red head twins in my high school class decades ago was "truly" a "living being" and which one was something else. Although, I'm not sure I would have cared if both of them were interested in doing more detailed research on that question with me as the lead investigator. I'm sure my research completion deadlines would have continuously been moved out as I learned more though. So many tests, so little time...
The toy manufacturers are obviously mispricing their toys if the 'Grinch Bots' are a problem. Sort of like a company that sets it's IPO price at $20/share and sees it climb to $50 the first day and stay above $40 for months -- the company just left too much money on the table and investors took advantage of it.
And, if you never paid it off, Discover ate it. If you never paid it off, they may have made a bad business decision WRT issuing you a card and paid the price. Or, maybe it was a good business decision because across all the dcolins117 in the country, they made money (in interest, late fees, and swipe fees). If they hadn't issued cards to any dcolins117 in the country, they might have had a lower ROI.
I got a credit card without a cosigner when I was 18 (a LONG time ago) while I was poor (in college) and had a tiny income and NO credit history. I have no idea WHY they gave it to me, but I used it some and paid it off every month (if I wouldn't be able to do so, I just kept it in my pocket and didn't party -- at least at my expense). They probably didn't make money off of me at the time (although I kept that card for probably 15 years and used it as my primary card -- still paying it off reliably every month so they may have made money in the end).
So, there are young consumers who are responsible and the credit card companies are betting on a certain mix to make money in the end.
Far more than 5000 people a year have to play games with their finances to avoid the estate tax so it impacts many more people than the 5000 you indicate it impacts.
Anyway, if something is wrong in principle, it doesn't matter that it only impacts a few people. Would you be in favor of a law that allowed 5000 people to be snatched off the streets and sold as slaves in the United States every year? After all, it would only negatively impact 5000 out of more than 326 million people, or less than 0.0015% of the population, and imagine the benefits of the cheap labor to those buying the slaves. How about if the government just instituted a program to kill the 5000 oldest Medicare recipients each year to save money - after all, that's less than 0.0015% of the population.
Inheritance income has already been taxed at least once. Taxing it again is double taxation.
Should your kid pay taxes on every pancake you feed them at breakfast? Of course not, because you already paid taxes on the income to acquire the pancakes.
It doesn't matter to society if you spend all your money before you die at 110 years old or if you die young at 60 and your kids inherit and spend that money. Why should more of it be diverted from the market economy to government spending (such as US military operations in foreign countries) just because you got cancer young?
It's well established that if an employer gives you something, cash or cars or houses or artwork or stock, in exchange for your labor it's generally taxable income.
Yes, there are some twisted loopholes (such as health insurance premiums being paid by the employer generally not being taxable to the employee and some arbitrary level of life insurance premiums not being taxable to the employee), but those are loopholes that should be eliminated just as this tuition waiver loophole should be eliminated.
While it would be nice to eliminate all loopholes at once, that's politically infeasible, so eliminating them one-by-one is probably the best we can do. Just as loopholes creep in one-by--one, they need to be eliminated one-by-one.
Perhaps eliminating this loophole will also help reduce the fantasy level of "tuition" that has arisen in American higher education (perhaps second only to the fantasy levels of "chargemaster" rates in the healthcare industry). If so, this will save billions of dollars a year and make educational institutions actually consider market economics in their pricing decisions.
Probably sell out and switch to Chrome -- but I've not spent much time in it so plans could change (the only time I use it now is when some web site, unfortunately more frequent recently, doesn't work in FF but does in Chrome - presumably because the site doesn't bother to test as well on FF any more).
But, nope, I'm not forking FF 55 and taking it over :) That's not the sort of system or code (or politics) I enjoy working on.
(I forgot to mention also, I don't screw around with about:config settings hardly ever -- and certainly not in the past couple of years).
I've considered doing that, but since the problem cropped up simultaneously with the install of 56 and without any upgrades to add-ons (I don't allow automatic upgrades), I figure that probably isn't worth my time given that the lack of add-ons I want in 57 mean I'll be abandoning FF anyway -- small odds of buying a few more weeks or couple months (before some security problem goes unfixed in obsoleted 56) isn't worth the effort.
But, people who are already running 56 have no trivial LTS option - in a recent release (54?) Mozilla declared that backwards compatibility is not supported (I'd check the release notes again but find them extremely hard/counter-intuitive to find on the new FF website design - apparently it's focused on looking "cool" and trying to "sell" rather than focusing on trying to be functional and on providing information). Sure, you could reenter all your passwords, export/import your bookmarks (to some non FF format?), etc. -- but one might as well try other browsers at that point since it seems likely that Mozilla's poor planning, coupled with a lack of developer enthusiasm for developing/testing extensions for a browser with declining market and mind share, will mean that LTS will expire without a proper set of extensions available for a 57+ version.
freeze128 doesn't appear to be demanding anything of anyone. He is just observing that he dreads upgrading (just as I observed that I won't be upgrading and will be switching browsers).
I don't dread it, because I won't do it. After over a decade of loyal FF use, 56 is the end of the road for me as I've only found a comparable WebExtension plugin to ONE of the seven or so plugins I rely on. A major reason I have been loyal to FF, and tolerated its performance issues related to memory over the years, is because of the plugins.
I actually regret upgrading to 56 from 55 -- performance dropped into a abyss upon installation (I now keep an about:memory tab open all the time so every so often I can click on 'minimize memory' which resolves, or at least ameliorates, the performance problems for a couple of hours).
Which Supreme Court? Are you thinking of the Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins (1980) case? This was initially decided by the California Supreme Court based on the California Constitution. The Supreme Court of the United States upheld the California Supreme Court decision by ruling that State Constitutions are not in violation of the United States Constitution if they grant broader rights within the state than the United States Constitution does - they didn't find that the United States Constitution protects a "free speech" right under the First Amendment in the common areas of a shopping mall.
Perhaps you're thinking of another case, but I don't recall such a case right off the top of my head. Do you have a cite?