While they pay a higher absolute amount- the percentage of their income that they pay in total taxes is lower.
Sales taxes, gas taxes, cell phone taxes, property taxes, school taxes take huge percentages of lower and middle income families compared to high income families.
I agree they pay a higher percentage of income, however the difference is way less than you might think:
TAXES
As Congress has slashed taxes on the rich over the years, it has raised the taxes of the middle class to make up the difference. Here is how the family rates of the rich and the middle class have converged over the postwar years:
The Loss of Tax Progressivity Effective Family Federal Tax Rate (Income and FICA)1
Year Median Millionaire or Top 1% 1948 5.3% 76.9% 1955 9.1 85.5 1960 12.4 85.5 1965 11.6 66.9 1970 16.1 68.6 1975 20.0 -- 1977 -- 35.5 1980 23.7 31.7 1985 24.4 24.9 1989 24.4 26.7 http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/3Taxes.htm
The total tax load as a percentage is actually lower the richer you get. State Sales taxes Quintile 1985 1990 Lowest 20% 12.6% 13.8 Second 20% 10.0 10.9 Middle 20% 9.1 10.0 Fourth 20% 8.6 9.5 Next 15% 8.4 9.2 Next 4% 8.2 8.7 Top 1% 7.1 7.6
Oh come now- there are several other grammar errors that do not also undercut the point-- why not list them all and get it over with.
It doesn't change the point: Microsoft wins because microsoft is everywhere and programmers can sell their products more on microsoft. Once microsoft is not everywhere and other operating systems are also very popular, then they lose a major benefit.
Except if those OS's are not running on actual PC's and generating sales of secondary software then Microsoft finally loses it's network affect benefits of being ubiquous.
The japanese had the same issue-- hard working parents produced wealth. Children (correctly) decided there was no reason to keep busting their ass and started having lives. Same thing will happen in india. People only work hard enough to be comfortable and then most stop.
Actually the deduction is a huge savings for the rich (who might pay $14,000 a year in interest and $14,000 in taxes on a $750,000 house (well okay also californians) and get you roughly $4,500 dollars back in your pocket vs the roughly $600 you would get with the standard deduction ($3,900 diff). Even when your interest is zero- you still qualify to itemize.
For the middle class in a $120k house, the taxes and interest run about $3,000 each ($6,000) and *maybe* get you $750 in tax refund vs the $600 you would get with the standard deduction ($150 diff- do I really want to do all the extra calculations for $150?). Once your interest per year drops below $2,000 -- you don't even qualify to itemize any more.
--- Once again the rich make out like bandits on this while the middle class, in reality, gets nothing. However-- the AMT gets most of them these days. Those solid "middle class" families making a combined income of half a million are starting to be hit so there is a lot of noise about changing the law tho.
Roughly 50 here. And they took over everything at Kodak I am told.
However salaries going up 14% and the rupee appreciating against the dollar at 4% means salary parity in about five years. Infosys has to hire roughly 10,000 employees a year just to keep up with their turnover rate.
I have limited problems with them working cheaper.
I have significant problems with the fact that they don't have the same social costs that we do yet. I have serious problems with the fact that microsoft gives them free tools that i have to pay $1k for and they get their medicine for 10 cents while I have to pay $5 per pill (SAME PILL!!!) and it is illegal to reimport that 10 cent pill and sell it here for 20 cents. I wouldn't need to make so much money if I got the benefits of all this cheap labor on products here in the US.
A company wants a project done that would gross profit 5 million dollars. This means they can spend maybe 15 million dollars on it before considering all their other costs.
American labor is available- but it will cost $45 million dollars. Indian labor is available- and will 15 million dollars.
Now the unfair part.
1) Management which is GROSSLY overpaid ($4 million a year) could easily be replaced by outsourced labor as well ($300,000). 2) The company the resulting products cost $.10 to make. The company has laws passed requiring US labor to pay $15 for the product while they sell the same exact product overseas for $2.49 (or less) (or even give away the products for free to addict the potential market to the product-- pumping money out of America even more).
In a true capitalist situation- we could easily reimport the $2.49 product to the US and sell it for $3.00 and completely undercut the profit the company is making- and we could afford to be paid less (so american labor might cost $20 million instead of $45 million).
I'm glad to see the congress finally breaking this immoral drug company practice of selling the same exact pill for 10 cents all over the world and five dollars here and prohibiting that we reimporting the pills.
Capitalism will work-- IF we let it and stop infinite copyright and legalized monopolies that allow differential pricing. Otherwise, we are just going to pump all the wealth out of america and then the goose that laid the golden egg will be dead.
Business charge prices for profit and to discourage behavior.
Given very cheap prices, ebay could run into the tragedy of the commons where their bandwidth is overwhelmed in some unplanned, unintended way.
At the heart of it tho- all businesses take something that was a good deal, and then they turn the profit screws until it actually becomes unpleasant to deal with them because of ads, prices, etc. It's called "yield management" and it amounts to firing or reducing services to your LESS profitable customers and focusing your business on your best customers.
To give a personal example Contract programmers set their rates higher for new customers than old customers whenever they are fully booked. Then when a new customer offers to pay the higher rate, they drop/don't renew the customer paying the lowest rate (even if that was the one that stood by them). Over time they ratchet up their rates. And clearly- if people will pay them $75 an hour, then they are worth it, even tho "Bob's MiniBlinds" was paying them $33 an hour.
I think ebay will run into problems when some of it's patents run out and its prices become too high. There are already other auction sites on the web.
Average sentence for rape is 117 months for violent offenders (in 1992). Murder was 149 months. After good behavior, they got off in 65 and 71 months respectively.
OTH, "rapecrisis.com" says the average is currently 4 years (48 months) and here (http://www.hdtl.org/protect2.html) "The average rape sentence is just 10.5 years, and the average time served is less than half of that, approximately five years.".
I think the difference is between time served and time sentenced.
Part of the problem (here i go off topic) is that our prisons are full of people who would be good citizens if not for our insane drug laws. We incarcerate a very high percentage of our population. That means we end up letting some real bad people go.
Personally, I really enjoy being treated as an object. It's very simple. No negotiation-- god what a nightmare we have gotten ourselves into in our relationships these days. I also enjoy treating my so as an object occasionally. I don't have to worry about her fun. And she enjoys it a great deal too. You just go like beasts and forget all the touchy feely caring about if you are taking care of the other person's needs and going boom at the same second.
Personally- I think that porn does corrupt people's attitudes towards rape (as I agreed above I think). And any thing you show as positive is going to corrupt people towards that point of view (smoking,violence, being a republican, being a liberal). We are horrendously manipulated by modern media as a result (Drink POW Cola and you will get laid by lots of attractive people of the appropriate sex!!!) and there is evidence that even if you know it is wrong going in- that the stuff internalizes and comes out later.
--- Cross referencing to my other post tho-- Morality is a continuum. To a lot of people historically we are satanically going to hell immoral. We do things every day that people used to be burned, stoned, etc. for. How good or bad rape is has been changing a lot over the last 100 years. It got really bad for a while there. Lately, it's been overused and it's not as bad. I think its going to continue swinging and we will start seeing false accusing women put in jail before it's over.
And people exposed to western female supremacy ideals think that stoning adulterous women is wrong.
Where do you draw the line on moral standards?
The first prison sentences were on par with murder sentences for first time offenders. I'd say murder is worse than rape. Having the sentences the same would certainly encourage murdering someone to avoid being convicted of rape.
A LOT of men are getting out of rape charges lately after spending long terms in prison. We made rape such a horrible crime that women got carte blanche for a while to accuse men of it. Hopefully the lacrosse travesty will shift the burden of proof back to the level of other crimes.
I think the "no means no" saying that being asked to stop 10 seconds short of climax and not stopping being equated to be the same as a person who attacks a stranger is foolish too. Obviously rape is a very complex crime because of the issues consent- knowing the person vs a stranger, relative age of the victim/perp, etc.
I do agree with you that it looks like porn apparently corrupts the default attitude that rape is bad into something worse. I disagree that violence in entertainment isn't a problem tho-- we see increasing numbers of child attackers (even attacking their own parents.)
It's more like... if there is anything you want from me.
Response to your posts. Approval. Praise for your writing style. Agreement with your point of view.
And I randomly give those things to you, then you are going to work harder for them up to the inflection point.
You can see it in relationships. And being smart won't stop you from being emotionally trained if the other person is randomly filling your needs. You are aware of the process but still feel elated or sad all the same. Your body and emotions are trained while your mind rides on top. The only way to stop it, is to stop wanting whatever reward they give you or if they push it too far too fast. Over time the period between random rewards can be pretty amazing if you build up to it.
People who are going to have problems are going to have problems.
It sucks about your wife, but if it wasn't Wow, it is very likely she would have found something else.
Interestingly, if you have a reward someone wants in relationships, you can use the same quasi-random reward to make them more strongly desire a relationship with you. People are suprisingly trainable. And you can catch yourself being trained by others (usually unwittingly) by getting randomly rewards you desire from them.
So they have to push until the point of failure. Then they know they reached something "real".
So it is very wise to fail early in minor ways and on things you do not want to own.
Let someone else "succeed" at doing the crappy stuff so you are available to do the good stuff.
And excel at doing good stuff.
And never ever get mad or upset. A key quality of managers and being promoted to managers at many companies is never losing your cool. There is a reason they call it acting "professionally".
Slashdot Mirror
While they pay a higher absolute amount- the percentage of their income that they pay in total taxes is lower.
Sales taxes, gas taxes, cell phone taxes, property taxes, school taxes take huge percentages of lower and middle income families compared to high income families.
I agree they pay a higher percentage of income, however the difference is way less than you might think:
TAXES
As Congress has slashed taxes on the rich over the years, it has raised the taxes of the middle class to make up the difference. Here is how the family rates of the rich and the middle class have converged over the postwar years:
The Loss of Tax Progressivity
Effective Family Federal Tax Rate (Income and FICA)1
Year Median Millionaire or Top 1%
1948 5.3% 76.9%
1955 9.1 85.5
1960 12.4 85.5
1965 11.6 66.9
1970 16.1 68.6
1975 20.0 --
1977 -- 35.5
1980 23.7 31.7
1985 24.4 24.9
1989 24.4 26.7
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/3Taxes.htm
The total tax load as a percentage is actually lower the richer you get.
State Sales taxes
Quintile 1985 1990
Lowest 20% 12.6% 13.8
Second 20% 10.0 10.9
Middle 20% 9.1 10.0
Fourth 20% 8.6 9.5
Next 15% 8.4 9.2
Next 4% 8.2 8.7
Top 1% 7.1 7.6
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/3Taxes.htm
Oh come now- there are several other grammar errors that do not also undercut the point-- why not list them all and get it over with.
It doesn't change the point: Microsoft wins because microsoft is everywhere and programmers can sell their products more on microsoft. Once microsoft is not everywhere and other operating systems are also very popular, then they lose a major benefit.
Yup. It's the way I mispronounce ubiquitous so when I am rushed or tired, I misspell it that way.
Except if those OS's are not running on actual PC's and generating sales of secondary software then Microsoft finally loses it's network affect benefits of being ubiquous.
The japanese had the same issue-- hard working parents produced wealth. Children (correctly) decided there was no reason to keep busting their ass and started having lives. Same thing will happen in india. People only work hard enough to be comfortable and then most stop.
Actually the deduction is a huge savings for the rich (who might pay $14,000 a year in interest and $14,000 in taxes on a $750,000 house (well okay also californians) and get you roughly $4,500 dollars back in your pocket vs the roughly $600 you would get with the standard deduction ($3,900 diff). Even when your interest is zero- you still qualify to itemize.
For the middle class in a $120k house, the taxes and interest run about $3,000 each ($6,000) and *maybe* get you $750 in tax refund vs the $600 you would get with the standard deduction ($150 diff- do I really want to do all the extra calculations for $150?). Once your interest per year drops below $2,000 -- you don't even qualify to itemize any more.
---
Once again the rich make out like bandits on this while the middle class, in reality, gets nothing.
However-- the AMT gets most of them these days. Those solid "middle class" families making a combined income of half a million are starting to be hit so there is a lot of noise about changing the law tho.
Roughly 50 here. And they took over everything at Kodak I am told.
However salaries going up 14% and the rupee appreciating against the dollar at 4% means salary parity in about five years. Infosys has to hire roughly 10,000 employees a year just to keep up with their turnover rate.
I have limited problems with them working cheaper.
I have significant problems with the fact that they don't have the same social costs that we do yet.
I have serious problems with the fact that microsoft gives them free tools that i have to pay $1k for and they get their medicine for 10 cents while I have to pay $5 per pill (SAME PILL!!!) and it is illegal to reimport that 10 cent pill and sell it here for 20 cents. I wouldn't need to make so much money if I got the benefits of all this cheap labor on products here in the US.
six figure income is in the top 1/6 of all annual income.
t he_United_States
most degreed people (including doctorates) do not make six figures.
In 2005, the median annual household was $46,326
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_
So you work at a really nice place. Grats.
Wow.
So brilliant. So twisted.
Not really focused at the real target tho. Now how do you apply that evil mind to getting at the executive class that is really responsible?
Let's try to be fair about it.
A company wants a project done that would gross profit 5 million dollars. This means they can spend maybe 15 million dollars on it before considering all their other costs.
American labor is available- but it will cost $45 million dollars.
Indian labor is available- and will 15 million dollars.
Now the unfair part.
1) Management which is GROSSLY overpaid ($4 million a year) could easily be replaced by outsourced labor as well ($300,000).
2) The company the resulting products cost $.10 to make. The company has laws passed requiring US labor to pay $15 for the product while they sell the same exact product overseas for $2.49 (or less) (or even give away the products for free to addict the potential market to the product-- pumping money out of America even more).
In a true capitalist situation- we could easily reimport the $2.49 product to the US and sell it for $3.00 and completely undercut the profit the company is making- and we could afford to be paid less (so american labor might cost $20 million instead of $45 million).
I'm glad to see the congress finally breaking this immoral drug company practice of selling the same exact pill for 10 cents all over the world and five dollars here and prohibiting that we reimporting the pills.
Capitalism will work-- IF we let it and stop infinite copyright and legalized monopolies that allow differential pricing. Otherwise, we are just going to pump all the wealth out of america and then the goose that laid the golden egg will be dead.
Actually there is an interesting nugget in there.
Business charge prices for profit and to discourage behavior.
Given very cheap prices, ebay could run into the tragedy of the commons where their bandwidth is overwhelmed in some unplanned, unintended way.
At the heart of it tho- all businesses take something that was a good deal, and then they turn the profit screws until it actually becomes unpleasant to deal with them because of ads, prices, etc. It's called "yield management" and it amounts to firing or reducing services to your LESS profitable customers and focusing your business on your best customers.
To give a personal example Contract programmers set their rates higher for new customers than old customers whenever they are fully booked. Then when a new customer offers to pay the higher rate, they drop/don't renew the customer paying the lowest rate (even if that was the one that stood by them). Over time they ratchet up their rates. And clearly- if people will pay them $75 an hour, then they are worth it, even tho "Bob's MiniBlinds" was paying them $33 an hour.
I think ebay will run into problems when some of it's patents run out and its prices become too high. There are already other auction sites on the web.
because open office is free.
just having to charge one penny for it would require a substantial overhead.
And the 'reasonable' royalties could easily be 10 to 15 dollars.
Your right,
families were unable to hide entire families from the gestapos random search for several years...
oh wait.. they did.
I suspect a laptop would be easier. Something springloaded thatpulls it out of sight at a moments notice.
might as well make another huge swath of them criminals.
Honestly, it seems like they think of ways to make folks criminals and disenfranchise them.
Average sentence for rape is 117 months for violent offenders (in 1992). Murder was 149 months.
After good behavior, they got off in 65 and 71 months respectively.
OTH, "rapecrisis.com" says the average is currently 4 years (48 months) and here (http://www.hdtl.org/protect2.html) "The average rape sentence is just 10.5 years, and the average time served is less than half of that, approximately five years.".
I think the difference is between time served and time sentenced.
Part of the problem (here i go off topic) is that our prisons are full of people who would be good citizens if not for our insane drug laws.
We incarcerate a very high percentage of our population. That means we end up letting some real bad people go.
Personally, I really enjoy being treated as an object. It's very simple. No negotiation-- god what a nightmare we have gotten ourselves into in our relationships these days. I also enjoy treating my so as an object occasionally. I don't have to worry about her fun. And she enjoys it a great deal too. You just go like beasts and forget all the touchy feely caring about if you are taking care of the other person's needs and going boom at the same second.
,violence, being a republican, being a liberal). We are horrendously manipulated by modern media as a result (Drink POW Cola and you will get laid by lots of attractive people of the appropriate sex!!!) and there is evidence that even if you know it is wrong going in- that the stuff internalizes and comes out later.
Personally- I think that porn does corrupt people's attitudes towards rape (as I agreed above I think). And any thing you show as positive is going to corrupt people towards that point of view (smoking
---
Cross referencing to my other post tho-- Morality is a continuum. To a lot of people historically we are satanically going to hell immoral. We do things every day that people used to be burned, stoned, etc. for. How good or bad rape is has been changing a lot over the last 100 years. It got really bad for a while there. Lately, it's been overused and it's not as bad. I think its going to continue swinging and we will start seeing false accusing women put in jail before it's over.
And people exposed to western female supremacy ideals think that stoning adulterous women is wrong.
Where do you draw the line on moral standards?
The first prison sentences were on par with murder sentences for first time offenders. I'd say murder is worse than rape. Having the sentences the same would certainly encourage murdering someone to avoid being convicted of rape.
A LOT of men are getting out of rape charges lately after spending long terms in prison. We made rape such a horrible crime that women got carte blanche for a while to accuse men of it. Hopefully the lacrosse travesty will shift the burden of proof back to the level of other crimes.
I think the "no means no" saying that being asked to stop 10 seconds short of climax and not stopping being equated to be the same as a person who attacks a stranger is foolish too. Obviously rape is a very complex crime because of the issues consent- knowing the person vs a stranger, relative age of the victim/perp, etc.
I do agree with you that it looks like porn apparently corrupts the default attitude that rape is bad into something worse. I disagree that violence in entertainment isn't a problem tho-- we see increasing numbers of child attackers (even attacking their own parents.)
Duh!
Obviously, He dismisses it because he works in an office with 7' cielings.
I was forced to "whitelist" my hotmail account.
Now it works like it should with regard to spam.
I've not had to whitelist my yahoo account yet.
It just didn't work right in Firefox.
I know... "duh".
But the OLD hotmail does work correctly.
hehe.
It's more like... if there is anything you want from me.
Response to your posts. Approval. Praise for your writing style. Agreement with your point of view.
And I randomly give those things to you, then you are going to work harder for them up to the inflection point.
You can see it in relationships. And being smart won't stop you from being emotionally trained if the other person is randomly filling your needs. You are aware of the process but still feel elated or sad all the same. Your body and emotions are trained while your mind rides on top. The only way to stop it, is to stop wanting whatever reward they give you or if they push it too far too fast. Over time the period between random rewards can be pretty amazing if you build up to it.
Monopoly served this role in the 1930's.
People who are going to have problems are going to have problems.
It sucks about your wife, but if it wasn't Wow, it is very likely she would have found something else.
Interestingly, if you have a reward someone wants in relationships, you can use the same quasi-random reward to make them more strongly desire a relationship with you. People are suprisingly trainable. And you can catch yourself being trained by others (usually unwittingly) by getting randomly rewards you desire from them.
I can't see why any country in the world can't extradite people for local crimes.
Hopefully one of these cases will make it obvious the downside of extraditing like this.
That management doesn't know anything.
So they have to push until the point of failure. Then they know they reached something "real".
So it is very wise to fail early in minor ways and on things you do not want to own.
Let someone else "succeed" at doing the crappy stuff so you are available to do the good stuff.
And excel at doing good stuff.
And never ever get mad or upset. A key quality of managers and being promoted to managers at many companies is never losing your cool. There is a reason they call it acting "professionally".
Interesting discussion.
You've given me things to consider and made me consider some things a little more precisely.
I am reading and considering your last post but agree it is time to move on so letting your post stand as our closing positions..