I'm hearing that google and the others may have pushed this particular button a little too hard and too often. New laws are coming. Or even better, the IRS may come in and just issue a ruling and some huge fines as they've done repeatedly for over 60 years whenever some kind of shelter became too abusive.
Do you consider google's sub 2% tax rate fair considering the wealth they have made out of the country?
Seriously... they should stop fixing the roads, withdraw police support and let the citizen's know that there will be one policeman patrolling on odd wednesdays. Then perhaps google will see the benefit of paying taxes.
It started sometime 4-8 years before Reagan. I'm not sure why.
And it's held by about 15% of the population but repeated endlessly by talk radio and news programs owned by the wealthy (even including "liberal" MSNBC which is owned by...a wealthy person).
The other 35% of conservatives are mostly poor and are voting on social issues. I think (hope) they are *starting* to wake up- I've seens signs of it.
The top 50% contain many many people who believe we should share the countries wealth with the lower 50%.
If your taxes are 6.5% and they give you a 2% holiday because of hard times and then they allow your taxes to return to 6.5%, it is not a tax increase.
I've seen this meme on several posting sites tho. The republicans must be pushing it as a talking point.
Personally tho- for the good of the country, we should have allowed ALL bush tax cuts to expire and ALL spending cuts to occur.
If you want to talk about new taxes- the 3.8% on investments for people making $400k and up is a new tax... well.. sort of. The old tax rate was much higher when reagan cut taxes and kicked off this round of heavy deficit spending.
We need to get the growth of the deficit under 1.3% (GDP growth). If not, things will be bad.
That means spending cuts AND tax increases. And the tax increases should be on everyone making over $24000 a year (perhaps $30000 a year in california and new york).
The company planned the layoffs on the assumption that the very large SAP project would be completed when they laid us off and brought in Infosys to provide support....
wait for it......
the project was 5% complete and now the entire place is melting down. They may recover after 9-12 months... or the project (over a billion so far) will fail. If they succeed, it's probably going to be at least 4x the original budget... two to three YEARS of profits. I wouldn't be surprised to see the company broken up and sold off before 2020.
I've seen a half dozen of these situations in 30 years and so I can speculate some answers for you.
1) Child support is 23% of the man's income for one child and scales up from there. There is NO requirement or enforcement that the money be spent on the child. If the couple owned a house and the man makes "good money", they are often required to pay part of the house payment while not being allowed to live there. For bonus points, in pro alimony states the man also pays child support.
2) The mom gets nearly complete control over how the child is raised. The dad gets to enforce his rules 6 days a month.. the mom gets the rest. This has declined since 2000 as joint custody occurs more. For bonus points, the 6 days plays out as free weekend baby sitting for the mom.
3) If she's "hot" then it's pretty easy to attract a lothario-- especially if said lothario doesn't have to pay her rent. He doesn't have to support or deal with the kids. But if lothario turns into a step dad... he usually has no say in how the kids are raised. unless she repeats (which I have no personal experience with in 30 years but have heard about third hand). Oh wait.. there was one- high school friend, he was totally in love with one of these. She had 4 kids by 4 guys by the time she was done. And we are pretty sure that his daughter wasn't really his daughter.
I wouldn't call it feminism but good old fashioned "rut".
Females who desire sex are leaving or cheating on or getting permission to have someone else on the side.
Work friend of mine's wife of 17 years just went bat shit crazy from conservative to going clubbing til 2am every night- drunk all the time- got std's. He was very conservative and oppressive. She was very conservative until she snapped.
The problem since 1980, is that those with the most money have voted that they pay a lower share of taxes than their share of wealth.
They've been starving 98% of the country out- taking the wealth and income for themselves.
Finally-- Finally (I've been waiting at least 8 years)-- the bottom 98% woke up and said, "wow! The top 1% is taking everything- why the hell do I keep voting to slit my own throat".
If the top 1% earns 40% of the countries income, they are going to need to pay 40% of the taxes.
And since you need at least the first 15,000 to 20,000 just to live, the top 1% are going to pay over 40% of the taxes because after sales tax, gas tax, cell phone tax, etc. tax the bottom 30% is already living in poverty and can't afford federal income tax.
On fast development projects, a large body of the contractors get to do work, collect the bonus, and then move on leaving a pile of crap for the employees to maintain and actually work to make functional.
I understand what it USED to be like to have secure employment. That day is done.
Your manager can replaced any day and turn your work environment to crap. Your company can be bought and you can be laid off with almost no warning.
My company just laid off hundreds of employees after 20 or more years on the job.
After working them over 60 hours a week for 2 years.
And replaced them with infosys employees.
If you have infosys in your workplace, you should seriously leave. Infosys has done this often enough now that it's more of a 'playbook'. 4 years after they walk in the door the first time, you will be on the street.
In our recent layoffs, the people who left were very aggressive about working 50 or fewer hours per week. This was because the company had been working us over 72 hours a week (twice for a month straight) to make deadlines. The reward was the layoff.
If a company starts working you 60+ hours-- start looking. It may be tough now but with higher boomer retirements and tightening indian and chinese labor markets- by 2016, you should be able to find jobs with reasonable working hours if you make it a priority.
I'm not sure that locking you in a building with others your own age and then forcing you to complete useless, mundane busy work is a good way to accomplish that.
WOW-- You have perfectly described the company I just left!
I once documented that after SOX, it now took 47 days to make a 1 LINE change to the code (it was actually 46 days + 1 day for the coding and testing so you could probably make a well defined change that involved 100 lines in the same period.)
Of that, easily 30 days were spent on completely useless, mundane busy work. And while locked in an office building 8 hours a day with others essentially your own age.
There is a list of organizations which help young women and female minorities longer than my arm. There are a few which help male minorities. I'm unaware of any dedicated to helping young majority males.
I get it... things were unbalanced. But they still have their foot on the accelerator.
In the recent layoffs at my company- every male manager was laid off or demoted leaving 3 female managers lead by a female director.
Of the team leads, one male team lead was retained and some were assigned to the new consulting firm (expected job duration of 12 months or less). Seven female team leads were retained.
If a male director had retained three male managers and seven male team leads and one female team lead-- you would have been looking at immediate lawsuits.
Many of the females were competent hard workers. That's not the issue. When compared to equally competent males, the female bosses preferentially laid off the males. Essentially, they have formed their own "good old gal" networks and the government isn't enforcing equality on them yet.
The only place where more males were retained was at the "doer" level. The ratio there went from about 60%/40% male/female pre layoffs to about 70%/30% male/female. I can only imagine this is because over the last two years women have been "mommying out" left and right* while the men continued to put in 65+ hour weeks.
It may be closer to 40%/60% now however as many males who had been retained after the layoffs found jobs with other companies ( aggressively seeking a new position since it was clear the old one was no longer safe ).
I was a bit luckier... I'd saved over half what I made since 2000 and retired instead.
I'm pretty sure I see another failed SAP story developing... well over a billion so far so it'll be a biggun.
Your numbers sounded high so I looked at my last few electrical bills... My last three electric bills averaged about 525kwh.
One panel is producing about 30kwh per month. So 10 panels would be 300kwh.. that's over half of my 525kwh bills. This case is true for 8 months a year.
Going back to the summer-- I peaked 1122kwh. This is in texas where I the ac runs from june to september. For the other three summer months I was just above 1000 kwh.
Doing a little counting on my fingers and tows, I have about 600 extra kwh to distribute over the summer. That's about half for three months and about 40% for the peak month.
Perhaps you are thinking of grid independent- in which case I completely agree with you. You need a huge system, and/or batteries to run that way.
But for a grid tied system- you simply lower your bill to zero for long periods of time during the day when you are not simultaneously doing all of the above. In many states, your meter runs backwards.
My computer and TV both draw about 120 watts. The houselights about 35 watts. The fridge, ac, etc are all temporary loads that run 25% of the time at best. Tho my roomba is basically covered. My heating and cooking is gas.
Putting businesses 8' (and LESS) above sea level in a 100 year storm zone, means you are going to get clobbered on average every 100 years (and have good odds of getting hit in a 3 generation period).
Insurance companies have got to assume any low lying areas next to the ocean will be flooded.
sunray panels use micro inverters and simply plug into one of your sockets.
They don't make financial sense right now ($1300 after the tariffs came in. $1000 with $300 rebate previously).
My one panel appears to lower my electricity costs by about $2.50. The "kilawatt meter" is showing production of about 1 kilowatt per per month. Basically 68 watts 9am to noon. 140 watts noon to 4pm. And 68 watts 4pm to 6pm (8pm in the summer). The curve is a little smoother than that- but not much.
If the panels were $350, they would be a no brainer- buy 10 of them, basically erase your electrical bill during daylight hours. Get a 10 year payoff.
The panels are heavy tho and this technology would help.
For now tho- power savings items (like LED bulbs) have payoffs in under a year. So they are a better option.
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I'm hearing that google and the others may have pushed this particular button a little too hard and too often. New laws are coming. Or even better, the IRS may come in and just issue a ruling and some huge fines as they've done repeatedly for over 60 years whenever some kind of shelter became too abusive.
Do you consider google's sub 2% tax rate fair considering the wealth they have made out of the country?
Seriously... they should stop fixing the roads, withdraw police support and let the citizen's know that there will be one policeman patrolling on odd wednesdays. Then perhaps google will see the benefit of paying taxes.
Actually, corporate provided health care is the best form of wage slavery every devised.
Literally ... work or die. heck, work or your children die.
It started sometime 4-8 years before Reagan. I'm not sure why.
And it's held by about 15% of the population but repeated endlessly by talk radio and news programs owned by the wealthy (even including "liberal" MSNBC which is owned by ...a wealthy person).
The other 35% of conservatives are mostly poor and are voting on social issues. I think (hope) they are *starting* to wake up- I've seens signs of it.
The top 50% contain many many people who believe we should share the countries wealth with the lower 50%.
If your taxes are 6.5% and they give you a 2% holiday because of hard times and then they allow your taxes to return to 6.5%, it is not a tax increase.
I've seen this meme on several posting sites tho. The republicans must be pushing it as a talking point.
Personally tho- for the good of the country, we should have allowed ALL bush tax cuts to expire and ALL spending cuts to occur.
If you want to talk about new taxes- the 3.8% on investments for people making $400k and up is a new tax... well.. sort of. The old tax rate was much higher when reagan cut taxes and kicked off this round of heavy deficit spending.
We need to get the growth of the deficit under 1.3% (GDP growth). If not, things will be bad.
That means spending cuts AND tax increases. And the tax increases should be on everyone making over $24000 a year (perhaps $30000 a year in california and new york).
The glorious thing in our case...
The company planned the layoffs on the assumption that the very large SAP project would be completed when they laid us off and brought in Infosys to provide support. ...
wait for it... ...
the project was 5% complete and now the entire place is melting down. They may recover after 9-12 months... or the project (over a billion so far) will fail. If they succeed, it's probably going to be at least 4x the original budget... two to three YEARS of profits. I wouldn't be surprised to see the company broken up and sold off before 2020.
I've seen a half dozen of these situations in 30 years and so I can speculate some answers for you.
1) Child support is 23% of the man's income for one child and scales up from there. There is NO requirement or enforcement that the money be spent on the child. If the couple owned a house and the man makes "good money", they are often required to pay part of the house payment while not being allowed to live there. For bonus points, in pro alimony states the man also pays child support.
2) The mom gets nearly complete control over how the child is raised. The dad gets to enforce his rules 6 days a month.. the mom gets the rest. This has declined since 2000 as joint custody occurs more. For bonus points, the 6 days plays out as free weekend baby sitting for the mom.
3) If she's "hot" then it's pretty easy to attract a lothario-- especially if said lothario doesn't have to pay her rent. He doesn't have to support or deal with the kids. But if lothario turns into a step dad... he usually has no say in how the kids are raised. unless she repeats (which I have no personal experience with in 30 years but have heard about third hand). Oh wait.. there was one- high school friend, he was totally in love with one of these. She had 4 kids by 4 guys by the time she was done. And we are pretty sure that his daughter wasn't really his daughter.
I wouldn't call it feminism but good old fashioned "rut".
Females who desire sex are leaving or cheating on or getting permission to have someone else on the side.
Work friend of mine's wife of 17 years just went bat shit crazy from conservative to going clubbing til 2am every night- drunk all the time- got std's. He was very conservative and oppressive. She was very conservative until she snapped.
The problem since 1980, is that those with the most money have voted that they pay a lower share of taxes than their share of wealth.
They've been starving 98% of the country out- taking the wealth and income for themselves.
Finally-- Finally (I've been waiting at least 8 years)-- the bottom 98% woke up and said, "wow! The top 1% is taking everything- why the hell do I keep voting to slit my own throat".
If the top 1% earns 40% of the countries income, they are going to need to pay 40% of the taxes.
And since you need at least the first 15,000 to 20,000 just to live, the top 1% are going to pay over 40% of the taxes because after sales tax, gas tax, cell phone tax, etc. tax the bottom 30% is already living in poverty and can't afford federal income tax.
On fast development projects, a large body of the contractors get to do work, collect the bonus, and then move on leaving a pile of crap for the employees to maintain and actually work to make functional.
I understand what it USED to be like to have secure employment.
That day is done.
Your manager can replaced any day and turn your work environment to crap.
Your company can be bought and you can be laid off with almost no warning.
My company just laid off hundreds of employees after 20 or more years on the job.
After working them over 60 hours a week for 2 years.
And replaced them with infosys employees.
If you have infosys in your workplace, you should seriously leave. Infosys has done this often enough now that it's more of a 'playbook'. 4 years after they walk in the door the first time, you will be on the street.
In our recent layoffs, the people who left were very aggressive about working 50 or fewer hours per week. This was because the company had been working us over 72 hours a week (twice for a month straight) to make deadlines. The reward was the layoff.
If a company starts working you 60+ hours-- start looking. It may be tough now but with higher boomer retirements and tightening indian and chinese labor markets- by 2016, you should be able to find jobs with reasonable working hours if you make it a priority.
Just think about the tax cut deal.
Higher taxes on the top 1.x% (I'ts less than 2% but more than 1%) earning $400,000 and up.
I'm not sure that locking you in a building with others your own age and then forcing you to complete useless, mundane busy work is a good way to accomplish that.
WOW-- You have perfectly described the company I just left!
I once documented that after SOX, it now took 47 days to make a 1 LINE change to the code (it was actually 46 days + 1 day for the coding and testing so you could probably make a well defined change that involved 100 lines in the same period.)
Of that, easily 30 days were spent on completely useless, mundane busy work. And while locked in an office building 8 hours a day with others essentially your own age.
There is a list of organizations which help young women and female minorities longer than my arm. There are a few which help male minorities. I'm unaware of any dedicated to helping young majority males.
I get it... things were unbalanced. But they still have their foot on the accelerator.
In the recent layoffs at my company- every male manager was laid off or demoted leaving 3 female managers lead by a female director.
Of the team leads, one male team lead was retained and some were assigned to the new consulting firm (expected job duration of 12 months or less). Seven female team leads were retained.
If a male director had retained three male managers and seven male team leads and one female team lead-- you would have been looking at immediate lawsuits.
Many of the females were competent hard workers. That's not the issue. When compared to equally competent males, the female bosses preferentially laid off the males. Essentially, they have formed their own "good old gal" networks and the government isn't enforcing equality on them yet.
The only place where more males were retained was at the "doer" level. The ratio there went from about 60%/40% male/female pre layoffs to about 70%/30% male/female. I can only imagine this is because over the last two years women have been "mommying out" left and right* while the men continued to put in 65+ hour weeks.
It may be closer to 40%/60% now however as many males who had been retained after the layoffs found jobs with other companies ( aggressively seeking a new position since it was clear the old one was no longer safe ).
I was a bit luckier... I'd saved over half what I made since 2000 and retired instead.
I'm pretty sure I see another failed SAP story developing... well over a billion so far so it'll be a biggun.
Only those most suited to the current environment survive. Strength has nothing to do with it.
Also, in the wild, it's more like "Only those most suited living long enough to breed in the current environment have ancesters."
I'd say mod you up... but I'd hate for them to see the idea... so your... and my... comment must be modded down.
Serving Bandwidth costs money.
These newspapers may only want local populace who pay for the content.
It's kind of pointless to do this with international and national news as everyone will simply move on to another free source.
XKCD is fun too but QC is something wonderfully special.
Your numbers sounded high so I looked at my last few electrical bills...
My last three electric bills averaged about 525kwh.
One panel is producing about 30kwh per month. So 10 panels would be 300kwh .. that's over half of my 525kwh bills. This case is true for 8 months a year.
Going back to the summer-- I peaked 1122kwh. This is in texas where I the ac runs from june to september. For the other three summer months I was just above 1000 kwh.
Doing a little counting on my fingers and tows, I have about 600 extra kwh to distribute over the summer. That's about half for three months and about 40% for the peak month.
Perhaps you are thinking of grid independent- in which case I completely agree with you. You need a huge system, and/or batteries to run that way.
But for a grid tied system- you simply lower your bill to zero for long periods of time during the day when you are not simultaneously doing all of the above. In many states, your meter runs backwards.
My computer and TV both draw about 120 watts. The houselights about 35 watts. The fridge, ac, etc are all temporary loads that run 25% of the time at best. Tho my roomba is basically covered. My heating and cooking is gas.
But not continuously during daylight hours (unless you are in arizona).
Surge load vs average load.
The recent musketeers with milla jovavich used 3d well.
Putting businesses 8' (and LESS) above sea level in a 100 year storm zone, means you are going to get clobbered on average every 100 years (and have good odds of getting hit in a 3 generation period).
Insurance companies have got to assume any low lying areas next to the ocean will be flooded.
sunray panels use micro inverters and simply plug into one of your sockets.
They don't make financial sense right now ($1300 after the tariffs came in. $1000 with $300 rebate previously).
My one panel appears to lower my electricity costs by about $2.50. The "kilawatt meter" is showing production of about 1 kilowatt per per month. Basically 68 watts 9am to noon. 140 watts noon to 4pm. And 68 watts 4pm to 6pm (8pm in the summer). The curve is a little smoother than that- but not much.
If the panels were $350, they would be a no brainer- buy 10 of them, basically erase your electrical bill during daylight hours. Get a 10 year payoff.
The panels are heavy tho and this technology would help.
For now tho- power savings items (like LED bulbs) have payoffs in under a year. So they are a better option.
Species die all the time.
It's not necessity- its lack of any open spot to expand into.
Those ecological niches are full.