There's only a few cryptology related things on the munitions export control list: militarized encryption equipment, TEMPEST equipment, custom cryptographic software, and cryptographic consulting services. Non-military cryptography does supposedly need to be registered with the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security, although given that the 6th and 9th circuit courts have both rules that software is free speech it would probably be very difficult for the government to make a case that it can require someone to register their speech with the government. Yes, there are theoretically countries, groups, and individuals that you can't export to, but for all practical purposes you don't really have much to worry about.
PGP has been distributed for years and AES has implementations in C, C++, C-Sharp, Java, and Python that are freely available and are, barring some huge discovery, unbreakable until after the sun goes nova. Basically, unless the NSA has some cryptographic secret or a computer that violates the laws of physics, your code is a drop in the bucket to them.
So your suggestion was to raise prices on everyone? Because seriously, have you ever seen someone who drive the speed limit every second that they drive? Hell, if you drive the speed limit and the flow of traffic is 10-15 mph faster than you, you're being unsafe. Also, cars can't take down buildings in the same way as a jumbo jet without being so packed full of C4 that the black box would get vaporized. (Why did I just get a tingling feeling that I was added to some government watch list?)
even an underground base in the grand canyon simply because over 100 miles of it hasn't ever been recorded and it would be the most ideal place to have a hiding spot.
What on earth would make anyone think that a giant tourist attraction would be an ideal place to house a top secret military base? If I were going to find a place to hide a military base, it'd be somewhere where no one goes, like a library in New Jersey or anywhere in Idaho.
The point isn't the value, its the lack of consensus on what value it ("rich") is. It's a moving target and one day depending on whose definition gets used, it can and will effect you directly.
Index it to inflation and revisit it ever decade or two. Sure, government measured inflation probably isn't 100% accurate to what people feel as inflation, but it tends to float along pretty close to average salary increases. The AMT didn't do this, and yeah, it's a fucking bitch. Blame Nixon.
I do, but you clearly cannot see the forest for the trees.
I can see that if I'm given a choice between getting a hundred dollars and having to give $33 of that to the government versus not getting money at all, I'm going to choose the one that gets me some money.
There are 5 states without sales tax. However, the majority of states do, but its still not all tax-free. For example NH has a %9 prepared food tax. Any which way an individual turns it is likely they are going to contribute to the government in some form or another.
And state sales taxes have zilch to do with federal income taxes.
Of course it does. In MA, people who have made out of state purchases are required to declare on their state taxes.
Use Tax Due on Out-of-State Purchases Worksheet
The burden of paying the tax is not on the company, but on the individual making the purchase.
Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the concept of Use Tax?
There's nothing complicated about them. We just do not agree on who should take the burden. If you are an internet retailer without a physical presence in some states, should you be adhering to the whims of the state rules of all 50 (plus the small number of US territories), and violating the Commerce Clause.
Ok, that clarifies what you meant. In the case of online retailers, sure, you've got court decisions on your side [1][2] and I'll concede the point.
On one extreme some people wanted limited government. On the other extreme people want a welfare state. Since you want to talk about what has happened in the last 40 years, I'll throw out the key pieces, but include a little bit before as well.
1966 - Dept. of Transportation
Operates, among others, the FAA, Federal Highway Program, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
1967 - Dept. of Energy
Far as I can tell, the real date is 1977. Anyway, this handles our nuclear weapons, nuclear reactors for the navy, radioactive waste disposal, grants for alternative energy, smart grid and R&D. Most of it's budget is spent on military purposes.
1979 - Dept. of Education
Goes to student loans, adult education, special education programs, and putting kids of poor families into pre-school. There's some fat to be cut, and some policies that I don't like about it (No Child Left Behind is an insipid piece of legislation), but it's not breaking the bank.
1987 - Veteran Affairs
The VA was elevated to cabinet level in 1989, but it's existed since 1930, and was a consolidation of previous agencies that existed before that.
And regardless of anyone's feelings about the current wars or the activities of the US military, we should damn well take care of our veterans.
1990 - EPA
1970, you mean? The problem with the EPA is that's it's essentially been gutted by Republicans into an agency run by political cronies instead of scientists. Right now we've got oil companies fucking up safety checks and dumping oil into the ocean, oil and natural gas companies pumping hundreds of millions of gallons of carcinogens
What makes someone rich? Pick a number. During the last US election cycle the number of what constitutes rich varied in values (the ones that came to mind were 40k, 250k, 1mil and 5mil).
Are you talking income or money in the bank? In terms of income, 40k doesn't get all that far even in middle America. 250k is certainly plenty of money for people to live without sacrificing anything (unless they've got 10 kids or something). 1 million is enough to live very well, even in New York City. 5 million is a ridiculous amount.
Anyone who is near or at the limit of being thrown into a higher tax bracket because of an idea like yours is going to do the most natural response: Keep themselves just shy of that limit.
You don't really understand how tax brackets work, do you? If you move from making $171,850 (the top number for the 28% tax bracket for singles) to $171,851 (the beginning of the 33% tax bracket), you aren't suddenly paying 5% more taxes on everything you made from dollar 1 to dollar 171850.You're only paying the 33% tax on that last dollar. If you refuse that last dollar of nominal income, you're saying "I don't want to get 67 cents if the government gets 33 cents too! Pay me less!".
The reason "tax the rich" doesn't work is because it creates incentives for people becoming underachievers.
Well, it'll create that incentive for people who can't do the math on what marginal tax rates actually mean. For anyone who actually understands the basics of the system, at most it creates a decreasing utility on each extra dollar in pre-tax salary, even though in absolute terms, you're still richer regardless.
What matters to most people is that there are jobs available and they don't suck. Should we give tax breaks to people who create jobs (especially 6 figure salaries), tax revenue and wealth? I think so.
1) Business owners don't hire workers out of their own salary, it's an expense paid by the business.
2) Businesses get to deduct costs associated with employees already, including the employee's salary, benefits, etc.
3) Businesses don't hire just because they've got money sitting in the bank, they do it because they need to to expand or meet some operational need.
4) Quite a few 6 figure salaries are given to white collar workers at existing companies who have no ownership stake. Giving income tax breaks here would have even less connection to job creation than to a theoretical small business owner.
5) Right now we're at some of the lowest tax rates since World War 2, yet we also have pretty terrible unemployment and underemployment. The Bush tax cuts promised a golden age of prosperity. Did I blink and miss it?
1) They pay annual business taxes.
I'm not a tax accountant, but this is an issue that depends quite a bit on what type of company you're talking about. For S-Corps, the income is flow through, and they can deduct all sorts of business expenses against their revenue (office space, employee salaries, equipment costs, etc). For C-Corps, mixing personal finances with company finances by having an individual directly pay for the company income taxes will probably get you a nice visit from the IRS and some legal troubles. Either way, thanks to financial games and tax loopholes, a lot of companies get away with paying very, very low taxes (unfortunately it's usually the biggest ones that pay the lowest rates).
2) They pay their employees who have taxes taken out of their salaries.
Deductible against revenues, so already a tax break.
3) The employees pay taxes on the products they buy.
There's no federal sales tax on general goods (there's a gas tax, some excise taxes, and a few other specific taxes) and some states and localities don't have sales taxes.
It's the same reason why we don't replace the income brackets [20k-30k$/year], [30k-50k$/year], etc by an exponential formula. It would be more correct mathematically, more just when you go from 29999$ to 30001$ but people are too dumb to understand it.
Have you even seen the news (or what passes as news these days)? As it is there are way too many people who don't understand tax brackets. You've got people saying that if you raise the top marginal tax rates by 10% that people making $250,001 dollars are going to suddenly be paying 10% more, which couldn't be further from the truth. Hell, people keep saying "Our corporate tax rate is 35%, that's way too high!", despite the number of deductions available to a corporation to the point where you get huge corporate powerhouses paying single digit tax rates while making money hand over fix.
You see, when the Keynesian gods tell you that economy is about consumption, they are full of it, completely wrong. Consumption is a trivial consequence of production. If nothing is produced, nothing will be consumed. Production IS economy.
China accounts for 19.8% of world manufacturing. The US is at 19.4%. We still produce a shit ton of stuff.
Irony is of-course that it borrows money from China and buys the Chinese made products, and the population of USA is convinced by their useless 'economists', who are really charlatans, that the US consumer is the actual engine behind this entire economic activity.
I certainly have no love for the consumer lifestyle of endless debt that seems to pervade American culture, but production without consumption is a waste of time. If you produce 10 times more frying pans than people could possibly ever or buy, you're not contributing extra to the economy.
No. What China needs to do is to let their currency appreciate, so that it becomes cheaper for Chinese to both: buy raw materials (as they are hit hard with price inflation, which in the case of producers follows immediately after the self inflicted money inflation) and it becomes cheaper for the Chinese to buy foreign products and their own manufactured products as well, and China has plenty of potential for consumption, they do have over a billion people after all.
I agree that China needs to let their currency appreciate, but the Chinese culture doesn't have the appetite for consumption that exists in the West (and the US especially). Not to mention, a lot of those billion people can't afford a lot of the things China produces.
If China lets the currency appreciate, it will become nearly impossible for the US consumers to buy Chinese products. That's good for USA in the long run, because USA has to be hit with very high interest rates on their money, Americans need to start saving and creating capital that can be applied for building things again, so that it starts producing again. But in the short term it's going to be disastrous for USA, not for China.
I agree that America needs a good slap in the face about saving money, especially considering that most people are theoretically supposed to be self-funding their retirement (even though most 401(k)s probably couldn't last a year or two, even if we didn't have a huge recession). However, this recession is hitting China just as hard as it's hitting the US. Chinese unemployment is rising, and college grads there can't find jobs either. With China's economy dependent on exporting goods (for the time being), they will suffer until people start buying again.
Do you think USA can pay that debt back? EVER?:)
In terms of the trade gap? Depends on if China lets the Yuan appreciate to it's real value. They're saying they might let it float more, but if they keep it undervalued it'll continue to cause a trade gap. Of course, it also doesn't help that the biggest Chinese companies are state owned and heavily subsidized.
USA doesn't produce anything of any value except for the raw materials, that Chinese would want to buy. USA can NEVER pay the debts back.
Eh, maybe, but once China actually lets it's currency float, it's good are no longer cheap, and who wants to buy their low quality goods if they're not cheap?
Do not be mistaken - US debts will never be repaid in anything that's valuable. US can print the dollar and 'repay' in worthless paper, but that's just as much of a default as a real bankruptcy would be.
We've got a large, relatively educated workforce and a decent chunk of world production. If people would stop putting everything on credit cards and taking loans for shit they don't need, we'd be a'ok. The economics are driven by cultural stupidity of spending beyond our means. Fix that and we can ride it out.
In case anyone was wondering, the 5.6 billion mile stack is about 6.6 million Library of Congress Distance Units right now (exact amount is subject to uncertainty in the measurement and drift of the Bookshelf Inflationary Constant, consult your local Librarian of Congress for more details).
No. If there's no selection for or against a particular trait, then it'll follow the Hardy-Weinburg principle and pretty much stay at a stable rate within the populace.
And basically, with "3d TV" announced, it basically means that even people who upgraded everything for Blu Ray are already behind the leading edge, before the technology even caught on!
All because one movie made a bunch of money off looking like passable 3d. (Or so I'm told, I can't see 3d, so it was Dances With Smurfahontas for me.)
1) Lean on Europe to extend copyright.
2) "Harmonize" copyright terms in America.
3) Profit!
Not even a fucking ???.
Seriously, retroactive copyright extension is the biggest bullshit imaginable. I could sorta understand and deal with laws making the copyright on new works longer, but the way it is now, we'll forever leave locked up all culture since basically Steamboat Willie was published. Even today, works created the day I was born will not enter public domain till after I die. I'll never see any music by The Beatles be public domain, despite their music coming out when my parents were children. Star Wars will be milked for profit until long after I am dead and buried and turned to worm food. Seriously, how long is enough for the copyright lobby? Till the creator's grandchildren are dead? Through the 10th generation? The hundredth? Or are they going to introduce a Constitutional amendment allowing for perpetual copyright and just fucking get it over with.
It's not "one branch", it's the trunk. Those "branches" didn't exist for the first millennium and a half of its existence; its existence and authority pre-date the Bible, the component parts of which it authored, preserved, evaluated, and the canon of which it certified. Trying to claim that the Church is a political institution that tries to influence a culture, and not the guiding force throughout time in exploring, refining, and teaching the religion itself is laughable.
I've very clearly demonstrated a multitude of branches occurring long before the Protestant Reformation. They were not, in any real sense, a unified body. For fucks sake, the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Pope both excommunicated each other in 1054. Even the heretical groups that didn't survive sometimes lasted for hundreds of years and are clearly branches, even if they didn't last.
Sure, it's authority predates the Bible. This shouldn't be a revelation to anyone who's familiar with the history of how they edited it together by voting, leaving an awful lot of stuff on the cutting room floor.
Again though, there have been numerous times where the church (whichever church you want to name, I'm assuming you're talking about the "one church" that's based in Rome, and not any of the "one church"es that are elsewhere) has exercised power for non-religious ends, either for personal gain (see Rodrigo Borgia for probably the worst example) or political gain (The Papal States were one of the dominant forces in Italy during the renaissance).
I don't know any other way to say it, but you're wrong. You're completely wrong. You're diminishing the very real differences and disagreements that happened in history that are still around today.
The Church of the East broke ties in 431. It was never wiped out, and it's various modern branches have somewhere around 2 million followers.
The Oriental Orthodox churches split off in 451. It too was never wiped out, and it's various modern branches have somewhere around 82 million members.
The Eastern Orthodox church split off in 1054. Again, not wiped out. It's modern branches have 230 million members.
All of those groups trace their roots back just as far as the Catholic church and for the most part view each other and the Catholic church as wrong at best or heretical at worst.
Even if you take the early writings at face value, there were disagreements between Paul, who rejected much of the Jewish tradition, James, who vigorously supported it, and Peter who was a moderate between the two. Considering these three are supposed to be the ones who kicked it all off and they couldn't fully agree, it blows your shit out of the water.
Someone needs to read up a bit more on their history. There were branches off right from the start. Marcionism, Gnosticism, Montanism, and Monarchianism all came about before 200 AD.
A lot of the basics the theology even in the big churches didn't get hammered out until the various Ecumenical Councils taking place from 325-787. Things like whether Jesus was divine, whether Mary was the mother of god or just the mother of Christ, who then just got "adopted", or what the hell the holy spirit was supposed to be. Along the way, you had several more groups leave. After that, you missed the East-West Schism in 1054 between the Catholic and Orthodox churches, which is kind of a big thing to miss.
Further along you missed groups that many today would be scratching their heads at at calling themselves Christian, but it was a wild and crazy time back then. Groups like the Cathars, who believed in two gods, one good, one evil, and that the material world was tainted with evil. They thought the Old Testiment god was really the god of evil and that Jesus never incorporated and was of a manifested spirit. They held no significance of the crucifixion or cross. They were nonviolent pacifists, some even rejecting the eating of meat. Their goal was to renounce anything connected with the material world or power to transcend out of it, and they saw the Catholic church's well decorated cathedrals as a sign of evil winning over good. Basically, they were Western Buddhists. They ended up getting wiped out as heretical and are left to the history books.
Even within the Catholic church, there have been near schisms from purely political maneuvering. For example, from 1378 to 1417 there was a temporary schism when the cardinals elected one pope (who continued his line in Rome), then regretted their decision and elected a different pope (who continued his line in Avignon), then in 1409 after a meeting fell through, they ended up electing a third pope (who continued his line in Pisa). This all ended when they finally realized it was embarassing and forced all three popes to resign and elected a new one. Up until the 19th century it was contentious as to which line was legitimate in this period. When Rodrigo Borgia (yes, that Rodrigo Borgia) took the name of Alexander VI, it had assumed that Alexander V of the Pisa line was valid, though nowadays the church says the one in Rome was valid the whole time.
So basically, what I'm trying to say is, do some research. Please. It's actually kind of interesting to see how fractured it all became and even just some of the petty stuff that some branches just couldn't get over or couldn't get over other branches doing. Either $deity really, really cares about the minutia of what people think about some of these things, or there's some serious cultural/political shit going on. You decide.
Have you taken a look at the nerds in your workplace? Would you really *want* to see any of them nude?
2) hard work for sustenance
Nerds working hard? Since when?
3) painful childbirth
I don't have a uterus. Looks like I'm free and clear! And for the woman, science has given us some nice drugs to help out. Looks like science gave the finger to God!
Seriously, if you took 5 minutes to wikipedia it, you'd learn several things.
1) Satanism doesn't worship Satan so much as worship the self.
2) Satan is an allegory for someone rebelling against a tyrant who was trying to keep knowledge from us.
3) Most of what's done is done for the lulz.
4) They're not nihilists, they're basically Objectivists with a flair for the dramatic.
I don't subscribe to the views myself, but it only takes a couple seconds to disabuse myself of ignorance.
You DO realize that it was conservative, deeply religious people that BUILT this country - the industry, the infrastructure, the economy? It was their hard work, their dollars, their effort that has produced anything of value. The effete intellectuals pretty much just sat around and whined about how bad everything is/was.
The founding fathers as a group had too much of a difference in religious make up than exists today. Some were deeply religious, but Jefferson cut and pasted together a Bible without miracles or a deity and Franklin's tenure in Europe ended up getting him every STD known to man at the time from all the orgies he had. Regardless, most of them were intellectuals (lawyers/generals/publishers), though yes, they did do a lot of whining. They even wrote some of it down somewhere in an angsty manifesto to some guy across the ocean. I hear there was a fight or something.
No, I think when the US is a downtrodden 3rd-rate country, people are going to wonder why the Left built a massive, overwhelming government that stole from the productive and handed it all to the non-productive. Self-evidently an economically suicidal plan.
Wall Street traders are not productive. I repeat: WALL STREET TRADERS ARE NOT THE LEAST BIT FUCKING PRODUCTIVE. An investor, someone who's willing to hold onto a company, and nurture it for decades, they're productive. People making trades for a quick buck are not only not productive, they harm productivity. The constant push for money right now this very quarter and damn everything down the line is what has driven our economy into the shitter. Who cares if we move to cheap goods that break after a week, consumers are idiots and we want money now! Why worry about sending jobs overseas when we get our dividends now? Who cares that in a decade there won't be anyone with enough money to actually buy anything, I can move to somewhere else!
Workers were productive for decades, even heavily unionized workers. It didn't fucking matter. People who were several levels up shipped their jobs off.
Perhaps if scientific research is worthwhile, someone will INVEST in it, rather than needing to steal tax dollars to fund the study of the mating strategies of violets?
Fat chance. Hard science research doesn't pay off this quarter/year/decade, if ever. It's a huge gamble, and although we're better as a society for it, no company wants to take on the risk anymore. The last company to really invest in basic research was Bell Labs back in the day, and we got amazing inventions out of it, but it's hardly an example of the triumph of the free market.
Also, as I'm sure you're aware, the very medium you're posting to (the internet) arose out of government funded research. It's extremely unlikely that it would've arisen from private research, and even less likely that it would be anywhere near as free as it is today.
Perhaps tax dollars taken from the public should be put to positive use beyond funding giant government agencies that perform little to no useful function? (Dept of Energy, Dept of Education)
Department of Energy funding mostly goes to atomic weapons (upkeep, cleanup, etc). The research into alternative energy is very tiny. The Department of Education services innumerable loans and grants, which is somewhat important when the only decent jobs in the country require going to college for 4 years with colleges getting more and more expensive all the fucking time.
Perhaps not everyone needs to go to college? And if you want to go, rather than making Joe and Joanne Public help pay for your lazy ass you could SAVE UP YOUR OWN MONEY and pay your own way. If you don't have enough, perhaps you could work hard and save enough for your kids to go? It's amusingly naive that you think it's strange that people are reluctant to give their dollars to you, so you can go to school.
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There's only a few cryptology related things on the munitions export control list: militarized encryption equipment, TEMPEST equipment, custom cryptographic software, and cryptographic consulting services. Non-military cryptography does supposedly need to be registered with the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security, although given that the 6th and 9th circuit courts have both rules that software is free speech it would probably be very difficult for the government to make a case that it can require someone to register their speech with the government. Yes, there are theoretically countries, groups, and individuals that you can't export to, but for all practical purposes you don't really have much to worry about.
PGP has been distributed for years and AES has implementations in C, C++, C-Sharp, Java, and Python that are freely available and are, barring some huge discovery, unbreakable until after the sun goes nova. Basically, unless the NSA has some cryptographic secret or a computer that violates the laws of physics, your code is a drop in the bucket to them.
But do it quietly, otherwise she'll wake up.
So your suggestion was to raise prices on everyone? Because seriously, have you ever seen someone who drive the speed limit every second that they drive? Hell, if you drive the speed limit and the flow of traffic is 10-15 mph faster than you, you're being unsafe. Also, cars can't take down buildings in the same way as a jumbo jet without being so packed full of C4 that the black box would get vaporized. (Why did I just get a tingling feeling that I was added to some government watch list?)
even an underground base in the grand canyon simply because over 100 miles of it hasn't ever been recorded and it would be the most ideal place to have a hiding spot.
What on earth would make anyone think that a giant tourist attraction would be an ideal place to house a top secret military base? If I were going to find a place to hide a military base, it'd be somewhere where no one goes, like a library in New Jersey or anywhere in Idaho.
The point isn't the value, its the lack of consensus on what value it ("rich") is. It's a moving target and one day depending on whose definition gets used, it can and will effect you directly.
Index it to inflation and revisit it ever decade or two. Sure, government measured inflation probably isn't 100% accurate to what people feel as inflation, but it tends to float along pretty close to average salary increases. The AMT didn't do this, and yeah, it's a fucking bitch. Blame Nixon.
I do, but you clearly cannot see the forest for the trees.
I can see that if I'm given a choice between getting a hundred dollars and having to give $33 of that to the government versus not getting money at all, I'm going to choose the one that gets me some money.
There are 5 states without sales tax. However, the majority of states do, but its still not all tax-free. For example NH has a %9 prepared food tax. Any which way an individual turns it is likely they are going to contribute to the government in some form or another.
And state sales taxes have zilch to do with federal income taxes.
Of course it does. In MA, people who have made out of state purchases are required to declare on their state taxes. Use Tax Due on Out-of-State Purchases Worksheet The burden of paying the tax is not on the company, but on the individual making the purchase. Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the concept of Use Tax? There's nothing complicated about them. We just do not agree on who should take the burden. If you are an internet retailer without a physical presence in some states, should you be adhering to the whims of the state rules of all 50 (plus the small number of US territories), and violating the Commerce Clause.
Ok, that clarifies what you meant. In the case of online retailers, sure, you've got court decisions on your side [1] [2] and I'll concede the point.
On one extreme some people wanted limited government. On the other extreme people want a welfare state. Since you want to talk about what has happened in the last 40 years, I'll throw out the key pieces, but include a little bit before as well. 1966 - Dept. of Transportation
Operates, among others, the FAA, Federal Highway Program, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
1967 - Dept. of Energy
Far as I can tell, the real date is 1977. Anyway, this handles our nuclear weapons, nuclear reactors for the navy, radioactive waste disposal, grants for alternative energy, smart grid and R&D. Most of it's budget is spent on military purposes.
1979 - Dept. of Education
Goes to student loans, adult education, special education programs, and putting kids of poor families into pre-school. There's some fat to be cut, and some policies that I don't like about it (No Child Left Behind is an insipid piece of legislation), but it's not breaking the bank.
1987 - Veteran Affairs
The VA was elevated to cabinet level in 1989, but it's existed since 1930, and was a consolidation of previous agencies that existed before that.
And regardless of anyone's feelings about the current wars or the activities of the US military, we should damn well take care of our veterans.
1990 - EPA
1970, you mean? The problem with the EPA is that's it's essentially been gutted by Republicans into an agency run by political cronies instead of scientists. Right now we've got oil companies fucking up safety checks and dumping oil into the ocean, oil and natural gas companies pumping hundreds of millions of gallons of carcinogens
What makes someone rich? Pick a number. During the last US election cycle the number of what constitutes rich varied in values (the ones that came to mind were 40k, 250k, 1mil and 5mil).
Are you talking income or money in the bank? In terms of income, 40k doesn't get all that far even in middle America. 250k is certainly plenty of money for people to live without sacrificing anything (unless they've got 10 kids or something). 1 million is enough to live very well, even in New York City. 5 million is a ridiculous amount.
Anyone who is near or at the limit of being thrown into a higher tax bracket because of an idea like yours is going to do the most natural response: Keep themselves just shy of that limit.
You don't really understand how tax brackets work, do you? If you move from making $171,850 (the top number for the 28% tax bracket for singles) to $171,851 (the beginning of the 33% tax bracket), you aren't suddenly paying 5% more taxes on everything you made from dollar 1 to dollar 171850.You're only paying the 33% tax on that last dollar. If you refuse that last dollar of nominal income, you're saying "I don't want to get 67 cents if the government gets 33 cents too! Pay me less!".
The reason "tax the rich" doesn't work is because it creates incentives for people becoming underachievers.
Well, it'll create that incentive for people who can't do the math on what marginal tax rates actually mean. For anyone who actually understands the basics of the system, at most it creates a decreasing utility on each extra dollar in pre-tax salary, even though in absolute terms, you're still richer regardless.
What matters to most people is that there are jobs available and they don't suck. Should we give tax breaks to people who create jobs (especially 6 figure salaries), tax revenue and wealth? I think so.
1) Business owners don't hire workers out of their own salary, it's an expense paid by the business.
2) Businesses get to deduct costs associated with employees already, including the employee's salary, benefits, etc.
3) Businesses don't hire just because they've got money sitting in the bank, they do it because they need to to expand or meet some operational need.
4) Quite a few 6 figure salaries are given to white collar workers at existing companies who have no ownership stake. Giving income tax breaks here would have even less connection to job creation than to a theoretical small business owner.
5) Right now we're at some of the lowest tax rates since World War 2, yet we also have pretty terrible unemployment and underemployment. The Bush tax cuts promised a golden age of prosperity. Did I blink and miss it?
1) They pay annual business taxes.
I'm not a tax accountant, but this is an issue that depends quite a bit on what type of company you're talking about. For S-Corps, the income is flow through, and they can deduct all sorts of business expenses against their revenue (office space, employee salaries, equipment costs, etc). For C-Corps, mixing personal finances with company finances by having an individual directly pay for the company income taxes will probably get you a nice visit from the IRS and some legal troubles. Either way, thanks to financial games and tax loopholes, a lot of companies get away with paying very, very low taxes (unfortunately it's usually the biggest ones that pay the lowest rates).
2) They pay their employees who have taxes taken out of their salaries.
Deductible against revenues, so already a tax break.
3) The employees pay taxes on the products they buy.
There's no federal sales tax on general goods (there's a gas tax, some excise taxes, and a few other specific taxes) and some states and localities don't have sales taxes.
If your state wants taxes, and you ar
It's the same reason why we don't replace the income brackets [20k-30k$/year], [30k-50k$/year], etc by an exponential formula. It would be more correct mathematically, more just when you go from 29999$ to 30001$ but people are too dumb to understand it.
Have you even seen the news (or what passes as news these days)? As it is there are way too many people who don't understand tax brackets. You've got people saying that if you raise the top marginal tax rates by 10% that people making $250,001 dollars are going to suddenly be paying 10% more, which couldn't be further from the truth. Hell, people keep saying "Our corporate tax rate is 35%, that's way too high!", despite the number of deductions available to a corporation to the point where you get huge corporate powerhouses paying single digit tax rates while making money hand over fix.
RTFA. It was an order by a British judge. They don't have to care about the Constitution.
I thought Al Gore won because all you have to do is play a recording of his voice on a battlefield to get all combatants to fall asleep.
You see, when the Keynesian gods tell you that economy is about consumption, they are full of it, completely wrong. Consumption is a trivial consequence of production. If nothing is produced, nothing will be consumed. Production IS economy.
China accounts for 19.8% of world manufacturing. The US is at 19.4%. We still produce a shit ton of stuff.
Irony is of-course that it borrows money from China and buys the Chinese made products, and the population of USA is convinced by their useless 'economists', who are really charlatans, that the US consumer is the actual engine behind this entire economic activity.
I certainly have no love for the consumer lifestyle of endless debt that seems to pervade American culture, but production without consumption is a waste of time. If you produce 10 times more frying pans than people could possibly ever or buy, you're not contributing extra to the economy.
No. What China needs to do is to let their currency appreciate, so that it becomes cheaper for Chinese to both: buy raw materials (as they are hit hard with price inflation, which in the case of producers follows immediately after the self inflicted money inflation) and it becomes cheaper for the Chinese to buy foreign products and their own manufactured products as well, and China has plenty of potential for consumption, they do have over a billion people after all.
I agree that China needs to let their currency appreciate, but the Chinese culture doesn't have the appetite for consumption that exists in the West (and the US especially). Not to mention, a lot of those billion people can't afford a lot of the things China produces.
If China lets the currency appreciate, it will become nearly impossible for the US consumers to buy Chinese products. That's good for USA in the long run, because USA has to be hit with very high interest rates on their money, Americans need to start saving and creating capital that can be applied for building things again, so that it starts producing again. But in the short term it's going to be disastrous for USA, not for China.
I agree that America needs a good slap in the face about saving money, especially considering that most people are theoretically supposed to be self-funding their retirement (even though most 401(k)s probably couldn't last a year or two, even if we didn't have a huge recession). However, this recession is hitting China just as hard as it's hitting the US. Chinese unemployment is rising, and college grads there can't find jobs either. With China's economy dependent on exporting goods (for the time being), they will suffer until people start buying again.
Do you think USA can pay that debt back? EVER? :)
In terms of the trade gap? Depends on if China lets the Yuan appreciate to it's real value. They're saying they might let it float more, but if they keep it undervalued it'll continue to cause a trade gap. Of course, it also doesn't help that the biggest Chinese companies are state owned and heavily subsidized.
USA doesn't produce anything of any value except for the raw materials, that Chinese would want to buy. USA can NEVER pay the debts back.
Eh, maybe, but once China actually lets it's currency float, it's good are no longer cheap, and who wants to buy their low quality goods if they're not cheap?
Do not be mistaken - US debts will never be repaid in anything that's valuable. US can print the dollar and 'repay' in worthless paper, but that's just as much of a default as a real bankruptcy would be.
We've got a large, relatively educated workforce and a decent chunk of world production. If people would stop putting everything on credit cards and taking loans for shit they don't need, we'd be a'ok. The economics are driven by cultural stupidity of spending beyond our means. Fix that and we can ride it out.
In case anyone was wondering, the 5.6 billion mile stack is about 6.6 million Library of Congress Distance Units right now (exact amount is subject to uncertainty in the measurement and drift of the Bookshelf Inflationary Constant, consult your local Librarian of Congress for more details).
No. If there's no selection for or against a particular trait, then it'll follow the Hardy-Weinburg principle and pretty much stay at a stable rate within the populace.
Not to be confused with "adult industry" customers, who get an entirely different substance shot into their gaping mouth.
10 Science is slow, reduce funding for science!
20 We've got no money, our progress is slow!
30 goto 10
Seriously, out of 15 cabinet members, exactly one (Stephen Chu, Department of Energy) has a degree in science.
The only other high up one I saw was Lisa Jackson of the EPA who has a chemical engineering degree.
Almost all the rest had economics, history, political science, and/or had JDs.
And basically, with "3d TV" announced, it basically means that even people who upgraded everything for Blu Ray are already behind the leading edge, before the technology even caught on!
All because one movie made a bunch of money off looking like passable 3d. (Or so I'm told, I can't see 3d, so it was Dances With Smurfahontas for me.)
I expect it to remain private. I know it's not. The part I don't like is the people creating the gulf between the two.
1 GB gets you 7,669,584 text messages. At 25 cents per text message, that comes out to $1,533,916..
Perhaps you're looking for the word "conjecture" - a proposition that is unproven but is believed to be true and has not been disproven.
(Though string theory probably doesn't even really live up to conjecture, but at least the term is somewhat more accurate.)
1) Lean on Europe to extend copyright.
2) "Harmonize" copyright terms in America.
3) Profit!
Not even a fucking ???.
Seriously, retroactive copyright extension is the biggest bullshit imaginable. I could sorta understand and deal with laws making the copyright on new works longer, but the way it is now, we'll forever leave locked up all culture since basically Steamboat Willie was published. Even today, works created the day I was born will not enter public domain till after I die. I'll never see any music by The Beatles be public domain, despite their music coming out when my parents were children. Star Wars will be milked for profit until long after I am dead and buried and turned to worm food. Seriously, how long is enough for the copyright lobby? Till the creator's grandchildren are dead? Through the 10th generation? The hundredth? Or are they going to introduce a Constitutional amendment allowing for perpetual copyright and just fucking get it over with.
It's not "one branch", it's the trunk. Those "branches" didn't exist for the first millennium and a half of its existence; its existence and authority pre-date the Bible, the component parts of which it authored, preserved, evaluated, and the canon of which it certified. Trying to claim that the Church is a political institution that tries to influence a culture, and not the guiding force throughout time in exploring, refining, and teaching the religion itself is laughable.
I've very clearly demonstrated a multitude of branches occurring long before the Protestant Reformation. They were not, in any real sense, a unified body. For fucks sake, the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Pope both excommunicated each other in 1054. Even the heretical groups that didn't survive sometimes lasted for hundreds of years and are clearly branches, even if they didn't last.
Sure, it's authority predates the Bible. This shouldn't be a revelation to anyone who's familiar with the history of how they edited it together by voting, leaving an awful lot of stuff on the cutting room floor.
Again though, there have been numerous times where the church (whichever church you want to name, I'm assuming you're talking about the "one church" that's based in Rome, and not any of the "one church"es that are elsewhere) has exercised power for non-religious ends, either for personal gain (see Rodrigo Borgia for probably the worst example) or political gain (The Papal States were one of the dominant forces in Italy during the renaissance).
I don't know any other way to say it, but you're wrong. You're completely wrong. You're diminishing the very real differences and disagreements that happened in history that are still around today.
The Church of the East broke ties in 431. It was never wiped out, and it's various modern branches have somewhere around 2 million followers.
The Oriental Orthodox churches split off in 451. It too was never wiped out, and it's various modern branches have somewhere around 82 million members.
The Eastern Orthodox church split off in 1054. Again, not wiped out. It's modern branches have 230 million members.
All of those groups trace their roots back just as far as the Catholic church and for the most part view each other and the Catholic church as wrong at best or heretical at worst.
Even if you take the early writings at face value, there were disagreements between Paul, who rejected much of the Jewish tradition, James, who vigorously supported it, and Peter who was a moderate between the two. Considering these three are supposed to be the ones who kicked it all off and they couldn't fully agree, it blows your shit out of the water.
Someone needs to read up a bit more on their history. There were branches off right from the start. Marcionism, Gnosticism, Montanism, and Monarchianism all came about before 200 AD.
A lot of the basics the theology even in the big churches didn't get hammered out until the various Ecumenical Councils taking place from 325-787. Things like whether Jesus was divine, whether Mary was the mother of god or just the mother of Christ, who then just got "adopted", or what the hell the holy spirit was supposed to be. Along the way, you had several more groups leave. After that, you missed the East-West Schism in 1054 between the Catholic and Orthodox churches, which is kind of a big thing to miss.
Further along you missed groups that many today would be scratching their heads at at calling themselves Christian, but it was a wild and crazy time back then. Groups like the Cathars, who believed in two gods, one good, one evil, and that the material world was tainted with evil. They thought the Old Testiment god was really the god of evil and that Jesus never incorporated and was of a manifested spirit. They held no significance of the crucifixion or cross. They were nonviolent pacifists, some even rejecting the eating of meat. Their goal was to renounce anything connected with the material world or power to transcend out of it, and they saw the Catholic church's well decorated cathedrals as a sign of evil winning over good. Basically, they were Western Buddhists. They ended up getting wiped out as heretical and are left to the history books.
Even within the Catholic church, there have been near schisms from purely political maneuvering. For example, from 1378 to 1417 there was a temporary schism when the cardinals elected one pope (who continued his line in Rome), then regretted their decision and elected a different pope (who continued his line in Avignon), then in 1409 after a meeting fell through, they ended up electing a third pope (who continued his line in Pisa). This all ended when they finally realized it was embarassing and forced all three popes to resign and elected a new one. Up until the 19th century it was contentious as to which line was legitimate in this period. When Rodrigo Borgia (yes, that Rodrigo Borgia) took the name of Alexander VI, it had assumed that Alexander V of the Pisa line was valid, though nowadays the church says the one in Rome was valid the whole time.
So basically, what I'm trying to say is, do some research. Please. It's actually kind of interesting to see how fractured it all became and even just some of the petty stuff that some branches just couldn't get over or couldn't get over other branches doing. Either $deity really, really cares about the minutia of what people think about some of these things, or there's some serious cultural/political shit going on. You decide.
1) shame from nudity
Have you taken a look at the nerds in your workplace? Would you really *want* to see any of them nude?
2) hard work for sustenance
Nerds working hard? Since when?
3) painful childbirth
I don't have a uterus. Looks like I'm free and clear! And for the woman, science has given us some nice drugs to help out. Looks like science gave the finger to God!
Seriously, if you took 5 minutes to wikipedia it, you'd learn several things.
1) Satanism doesn't worship Satan so much as worship the self.
2) Satan is an allegory for someone rebelling against a tyrant who was trying to keep knowledge from us.
3) Most of what's done is done for the lulz.
4) They're not nihilists, they're basically Objectivists with a flair for the dramatic.
I don't subscribe to the views myself, but it only takes a couple seconds to disabuse myself of ignorance.
You DO realize that it was conservative, deeply religious people that BUILT this country - the industry, the infrastructure, the economy? It was their hard work, their dollars, their effort that has produced anything of value. The effete intellectuals pretty much just sat around and whined about how bad everything is/was.
The founding fathers as a group had too much of a difference in religious make up than exists today. Some were deeply religious, but Jefferson cut and pasted together a Bible without miracles or a deity and Franklin's tenure in Europe ended up getting him every STD known to man at the time from all the orgies he had. Regardless, most of them were intellectuals (lawyers/generals/publishers), though yes, they did do a lot of whining. They even wrote some of it down somewhere in an angsty manifesto to some guy across the ocean. I hear there was a fight or something.
No, I think when the US is a downtrodden 3rd-rate country, people are going to wonder why the Left built a massive, overwhelming government that stole from the productive and handed it all to the non-productive. Self-evidently an economically suicidal plan.
Wall Street traders are not productive. I repeat: WALL STREET TRADERS ARE NOT THE LEAST BIT FUCKING PRODUCTIVE. An investor, someone who's willing to hold onto a company, and nurture it for decades, they're productive. People making trades for a quick buck are not only not productive, they harm productivity. The constant push for money right now this very quarter and damn everything down the line is what has driven our economy into the shitter. Who cares if we move to cheap goods that break after a week, consumers are idiots and we want money now! Why worry about sending jobs overseas when we get our dividends now? Who cares that in a decade there won't be anyone with enough money to actually buy anything, I can move to somewhere else!
Workers were productive for decades, even heavily unionized workers. It didn't fucking matter. People who were several levels up shipped their jobs off.
Perhaps if scientific research is worthwhile, someone will INVEST in it, rather than needing to steal tax dollars to fund the study of the mating strategies of violets?
Fat chance. Hard science research doesn't pay off this quarter/year/decade, if ever. It's a huge gamble, and although we're better as a society for it, no company wants to take on the risk anymore. The last company to really invest in basic research was Bell Labs back in the day, and we got amazing inventions out of it, but it's hardly an example of the triumph of the free market.
Also, as I'm sure you're aware, the very medium you're posting to (the internet) arose out of government funded research. It's extremely unlikely that it would've arisen from private research, and even less likely that it would be anywhere near as free as it is today.
Perhaps tax dollars taken from the public should be put to positive use beyond funding giant government agencies that perform little to no useful function? (Dept of Energy, Dept of Education)
Department of Energy funding mostly goes to atomic weapons (upkeep, cleanup, etc). The research into alternative energy is very tiny. The Department of Education services innumerable loans and grants, which is somewhat important when the only decent jobs in the country require going to college for 4 years with colleges getting more and more expensive all the fucking time.
Perhaps not everyone needs to go to college? And if you want to go, rather than making Joe and Joanne Public help pay for your lazy ass you could SAVE UP YOUR OWN MONEY and pay your own way. If you don't have enough, perhaps you could work hard and save enough for your kids to go? It's amusingly naive that you think it's strange that people are reluctant to give their dollars to you, so you can go to school.
Have you taken a look at th