Agreed, which is why I'd only exempt medical care; maybe food/water.
All hail the return of the third world. (explative deleted) the poor by making everything cost 25% more! they're "inferior" anyway, right?
heltered life? Raised by two accountants, maybe.
I'd call that sheltered. Two parents in the upper professional echelons means never facing hard times. You are in no position to be demanding everything cost 25% more.
Are you one of those that also complain about how those who need credit the most can't get it?
damn right! You only get extended a loan if you already have the money sitting in an account somewhere, and now since the credit crunch not even that. Heck, i can't even consolidate the citi private student loans despite the fact i can never, ever walk away from them in a bankruptcy!
Except people have to buy and sell new goods for revenue to flow and salaries to be paid.
And the feds need money to run their operations, your point?
The POINT is a tax system which deliberately penalizes consumption will kill revenue streams to manufacturers, resulting in depressed wages or lost jobs while at the same time raising the cost of products by 25%. My, how very "fair" this tax is to the lower 50% of the income distribution.
Remember, under my scheme you'll also be keeping about 25% more of your pay.
and you'll be paying 25% more for everything when, currently, its already damn hard to get by, but the people who should be contributing proportionately more will be paying less. So where is the benefit again?
He does?
yes, he does, or are you a real accountant?
st you read up more; European countries, Australia charge VAT on incoming goods all the time.
good luck stopping the smuggling! Oh look i just found a big hole that can be used for tax evasion under this "fair tax" which will screw everyone below the median income!
Everyone knows from recent news that microsoft has removed the innards of windows 7 and replaced them with "gerald", a lovable computer literate field mouse.
Gerald is cheap, congenial, and zippy, but unfortunately has very poor judgment.
The "fair tax" will be much more painful to the unemployed and middle class, and will have the poor screaming for anesthesia.
Not if essential items like clothes, food, and medicine are tax free. The poor spend a lot of money on them, if they were tax free then they'd pay less in tax. As they would if they grew some of their own food.
Falcon
Clothes tax free? Ok mr gates, let's go get that custom fit armani.
Then there's the fact that food, water, and shelter are not the only portions of a first-world lifestyle. It would be quite a bit easier for these same poor people to just move to a developing nation if that's all they need.
This, however, is the western hemisphere. Other modern conveniences are important to make up a modern lifestyle. As you can see from my example on clothing, the more in include in this exemption list the greater loopholes become for those who wish to evade it.
1. Please don't try to analyze my proposal for a sales tax on one sentence. The actual system, just the barebones, would be a small paper, and address the concerns you just listed
you mean exempting "necessities?".
sorry but modern western society is not defined by food shelter and water, and as soon as you start to expand it from there it becomes open to exploitation.
2. Shouldn't we punish being in debt? Besides, interest wouldn't be charged sales tax.
I dont know what sheltered life you live, but in the real world people maintain a specific lifestyle by assuming debt in harder times and paying it off in better times. Punishing the assumption of debt by increasing the principle 20+% will kick people financially when theyre down and will discourage economic growth overall by punishing spenders.
3. New goods would be taxed, not used; that way we don't have to try to hit up yard sales for revenue.
Except people have to buy and sell new goods for revenue to flow and salaries to be paid.
4. Look up the fairtax.org website and look at the rebate proposal
See my answer to number 1, add to that the fact that governmental policies never track properly with inflation or account for debt to income ratios, which are much more important than nominal income.
5. The wealthy are some of the biggest tax-avoiders around. Trump pays less in income taxes than his secretary.
And trump spends far less in comparison to his income than his secretary spends on her son's allowance. The "fair tax" would allow him to pay even less.
6. You'd audit commercial companies for failing to collect the tax; not individuals for failing to pay it.
no, you'd lose domestic companies because everyone would buy from online vendors across the border. Introduce tariffs and face economic sanctions from the WTO.
The root of the problem has to do with irresponsible people who couldn't afford a 2-3% increase in their monthly payment without going into default.
Yes, never mind the fact wages have been more or less frozen for the past 10 years while inflation has proceeded normally and energy has gone through the roof.
It's those idiotic great unwashed who are at fault for the decreased purchasing power of the dollar. They should have just accepted their slide into the poverty lifestyle despite doing the same work and carrying hefty student debts. How DARE they try to maintain a lifestyle they worked so hard to achieve.
"As a result the Swedish economy bounced back and most, if not all, of the money used to rescue the banks have been returned to the taxpayers"
This is a huge leap of logic that, like any macroeconomic theory, isn't testable. The world economies were entirely different during those two time periods and the Swedish economy is anything but an island.
what was fundamentally different about the world economy then? Were resources infinite? are they infinite now? The tools have changed but the processes now are the same as the processes then.
The issue is not whether we should or should not, the issue is we HAVE to.
These companies have been allowed to grow so large their failure would cause mass social unrest and considerable hardship for the citizens of the nation.
What we should be demanding, more than anything else, is the splitting of these companies into financially independent subsidiaries. Ownership and management can remain in the same hands, but each subsidiary must be capable of operating independently, and be small enough to fail without dragging a state, nation, or world economy with it.
Of course, nobody is bringing up these questions because the news organizations reporting on this are of an equally bloated size.
...but I just know that with one billion dollars you can give 20'000 people 50'000 dollars, each. I'm just asking myself whether rerouting such money directly into the pockets of those laid off wouldn't make more sense. Give them the opportunity to not worry too much for a year, get some additional education and try elsewhere.
Wouldn't it be better if the government didn't to take half of people's money in the first place?
I happily accept your idea of preserving or restoring the quality of life being destroyed in this recession by making sure I receive 100% of the zero dollars a month I receive from my lost job (or in my case, my nonexistent job as a new college grad).
Your average homeowner gets about a third of his income lopped off in withholding, then another chunk in sales taxes and property taxes take the rest. How great would it be if everyone's earnings were suddenly doubled?
you mean the earnings of those who are not feeling the recession anyway? That's nice, what about the rest?
Even when they have the best of intentions you can't rely on government to do the right thing
Ah, but we can rely on corporations to restore the jobs they cut in the US without government intervention? It's been said elsewhere in this thread "business is not a charity". I recently read a report (ironically often cited by people claiming libertarian approaches of ignoring or allowing offshoring are good) which shows that only 1/3 of jobs created in times of growth are now created in the US. Does the phrase "Jobless Recovery" ring a bell?
look at both of the trillion dollar bailout packages: pure pork and waste.
This is your opinion, and a very ironic statement given your next few thoughts.
The process of government is inevitably biased [see?] by the actions of special interests, self interest of the politicians and plain old human stupidity.
There's a massive recession, and while the wealthy may control campaign funds they still only have one vote. Guess who holds more sway now, and guess which usual suspects are now firmly within the public ire.
This does not guarantee a lack of corruption in the slightest, but the alternative is to just have more of "the market sorting it out".
We doesn't the government just not take the money from joe six-pack in the first place? It's not like he would save the extra 10-15%.
Because you have no paychecks to cut taxes on when you've been laid off or have graduated into a recession and can't find a living wage.
Tax cuts are just like health savings accounts: they're designed to quell the concerns of those who don't actually need the help while screwing everyone who actually does.
tax cuts do nothing to restore quality of life to those truly disenfranchised by this economic disaster.
That really is the opposite of what we'd want. If the financial sector was working, then saving would equal investment, which boosts aggregate demand. The idea being that someone pays his debt down, the bank gives it to a business, and the business buys things, and everything works out well.
But since the financial sector isn't working, so if someone saves, the bank just sits on the money and it disappears. Because of that, a large increase in savings would cause a rather large decrease in aggregate demand, which would causes businesses to close, which causes further decreases in aggregate demand... that process ends at the great depression.
To prevent that, we want the government to spend their money boosting aggregate demand to compensate. Government spending is one way to do it, but there are limits to how many roads you can build within a couple months. So some money will be given to individuals.
But the key point, is that the money given to individuals needs to be *spent*, not saved!
This argument doesn't make sense.
If you distributed the cash directly to individuals, they would pay down their debts. This would remove the debts from the books of financial institutions, reducing the perception of risk and boosting their reserves. The direct injections into the top are not working because people at the bottom are still in debt and nobody knows how many will default in the deteriorating situation.
Additionally, injecting cash at the bottom and relieving peoples' debts will help open consumer wallets and free people to re-train or even--if they were smart or lucky before and have little debt--start new enterprises.
Giving money to huge corporations does nothing to quell uncertainty about consumer demand or credit risk, but does a great job of funding corporate bonuses.
I had that thought too. If we're going to give money to individuals at all, it should be to their debts (homes, student loans, etc.). And it should go to those who have a track record of working hard, but just ran into tough times beyond their abilities. It still helps them, without the temptation to waste money on non-essentials. If we're going to spend our grand-children and great grand-children's tax dollars, we owe it to them to at least do something intelligent with the money.
you mean like engaging in massive military spending, creating whole new departments of the government double the size of existing departments to do the exact same job, only much worse, waging endless wars in the middle east, and, give huge tax cuts to the wealthy?
How about we close the DHS, cut military spending by 10%, and use that money to introduce a universal healthcare solution (that does NOT have to mean putting private insurance out of business either)
I have an easier and much more hollow victory scenario for them.
Glider's creators are now criminally liable. Before the case is over they move offshore, say, to where slysoft is (argentina?).
the bot continues to be circulated, the US tech sector moves into a new phase of deep-freeze right when we need it to be growing the most, china and argentina inherit the earth.
Most of us bought WoW to play a game under a fair playing field.
If you want people to stop botting, tell blizzard to cut the costs of their mounts and that stupid ring by 80%.
The cost of mounts drives the cost of everything else. Remove that ridiculous cost, which, under point of fact, only allows people who play 24/7/365 to get what they need to progress, and people wouldn't get a bot to let them keep up with other people while they slept and worked.
or are you saying flying a blue flyer around the storm peaks is actually playing a game rather than extended time looking at a static model.
Blizzard isn't really forcing anyone to play in a specific way. They are asking for the right to kick people out who are worsening the experience for everyone else.
A substantial portion of game content in WoW is server-side. The scripts for raid encounters, NPC locations and dialogue, and other elements are arguably creative works, and they are stored on the server. The game client downloads these elements and renders them using local models and textures.
Warden prevents access to such game content by preventing users from authenticating with the WoW servers if detected cheat programs are loaded. Glider circumvents this measure by fooling Warden into allowing access to such content.
I'm sorry but you are convoluting warden with the server authentication process, of which it plays no part.
It is the server authentication process which protects the content, not warden, which only detects after-the-fact operations.
Warden does not "control" access, it "detects" access.
True, but there are prepaid POS phones that are $10USD, such as Virgin Mobile (Sprint), coupled with a 1000 minute card for $50USD, compared to the $45ish monthly for my 400 minute + 200 text Verizon plan...
OTOH, you get what you pay for with a lot of those prepaids...
and virgin mobile is exactly what I use. the phone was not attached to a contract.
Sounds like someone got touched in a naughty place by violent movies when they were younger.
LOL no, I'm just calling out Elfen Lied out for what it is: A bad show with no redeeming features. All it has is the gore, and for some reason that gives it lots of fans.
There's no accounting for taste, as they say.
There are studies out there which show the most incompetent people believe themselves to be utmost experts.
So, how does it feel to be an "expert" film critic?
The brain lives on for up to 5 minutes after cardiac arrest, slowly dying off. This does not mean someone whose heart is blown away by a shotgun is still alive.
the premise, while dark, was not brought to the levels of, say, elfen lied, which did a much better job of portraying a dark, dissociated view of human corruption.
I don't belive it... someone trying to put Elfen Lied on an intellectual level with what would have been a Stanley Kubrick film.
Wow, just... wow. The only thing Elfen Lied is good for is the visceral rush guro fans get when they see characters torn to bits. That's it. Seriously.
Sounds like someone got touched in a naughty place by violent movies when they were younger.
Slashdot Mirror
To see what happens when you impose a luxury tax, please look up the history of the US yacht industry.
luxury providers have smaller clientele and end up having to eat the tax instead of passing it on.
Agreed, which is why I'd only exempt medical care; maybe food/water.
All hail the return of the third world. (explative deleted) the poor by making everything cost 25% more! they're "inferior" anyway, right?
heltered life? Raised by two accountants, maybe.
I'd call that sheltered. Two parents in the upper professional echelons means never facing hard times. You are in no position to be demanding everything cost 25% more.
Are you one of those that also complain about how those who need credit the most can't get it?
damn right! You only get extended a loan if you already have the money sitting in an account somewhere, and now since the credit crunch not even that. Heck, i can't even consolidate the citi private student loans despite the fact i can never, ever walk away from them in a bankruptcy!
And the feds need money to run their operations, your point?
The POINT is a tax system which deliberately penalizes consumption will kill revenue streams to manufacturers, resulting in depressed wages or lost jobs while at the same time raising the cost of products by 25%.
My, how very "fair" this tax is to the lower 50% of the income distribution.
Remember, under my scheme you'll also be keeping about 25% more of your pay.
and you'll be paying 25% more for everything when, currently, its already damn hard to get by, but the people who should be contributing proportionately more will be paying less. So where is the benefit again?
He does?
yes, he does, or are you a real accountant?
st you read up more; European countries, Australia charge VAT on incoming goods all the time.
good luck stopping the smuggling! Oh look i just found a big hole that can be used for tax evasion under this "fair tax" which will screw everyone below the median income!
Everyone knows from recent news that microsoft has removed the innards of windows 7 and replaced them with "gerald", a lovable computer literate field mouse.
Gerald is cheap, congenial, and zippy, but unfortunately has very poor judgment.
The "fair tax" will be much more painful to the unemployed and middle class, and will have the poor screaming for anesthesia.
Not if essential items like clothes, food, and medicine are tax free. The poor spend a lot of money on them, if they were tax free then they'd pay less in tax. As they would if they grew some of their own food.
Falcon
Clothes tax free?
Ok mr gates, let's go get that custom fit armani.
Then there's the fact that food, water, and shelter are not the only portions of a first-world lifestyle. It would be quite a bit easier for these same poor people to just move to a developing nation if that's all they need.
This, however, is the western hemisphere. Other modern conveniences are important to make up a modern lifestyle. As you can see from my example on clothing, the more in include in this exemption list the greater loopholes become for those who wish to evade it.
1. Please don't try to analyze my proposal for a sales tax on one sentence. The actual system, just the barebones, would be a small paper, and address the concerns you just listed
you mean exempting "necessities?".
sorry but modern western society is not defined by food shelter and water, and as soon as you start to expand it from there it becomes open to exploitation.
2. Shouldn't we punish being in debt? Besides, interest wouldn't be charged sales tax.
I dont know what sheltered life you live, but in the real world people maintain a specific lifestyle by assuming debt in harder times and paying it off in better times. Punishing the assumption of debt by increasing the principle 20+% will kick people financially when theyre down and will discourage economic growth overall by punishing spenders.
3. New goods would be taxed, not used; that way we don't have to try to hit up yard sales for revenue.
Except people have to buy and sell new goods for revenue to flow and salaries to be paid.
4. Look up the fairtax.org website and look at the rebate proposal
See my answer to number 1, add to that the fact that governmental policies never track properly with inflation or account for debt to income ratios, which are much more important than nominal income.
5. The wealthy are some of the biggest tax-avoiders around. Trump pays less in income taxes than his secretary.
And trump spends far less in comparison to his income than his secretary spends on her son's allowance. The "fair tax" would allow him to pay even less.
6. You'd audit commercial companies for failing to collect the tax; not individuals for failing to pay it.
no, you'd lose domestic companies because everyone would buy from online vendors across the border. Introduce tariffs and face economic sanctions from the WTO.
Fixed that for you.
Fixed that for you
Or go whole hog and get rid of income taxes in favor of sales taxes.
The problem with this "fair tax" is that it's not really fair.
As a percentage of income, the wealthy spend much less than average americans.
Additionally, the lower your income, the more debt you're likely to incur as economic times get tougher, and the fair tax taxes debt, not income.
The "fair tax" will be much more painful to the unemployed and middle class, and will have the poor screaming for anesthesia.
The root of the problem has to do with irresponsible people who couldn't afford a 2-3% increase in their monthly payment without going into default.
Yes, never mind the fact wages have been more or less frozen for the past 10 years while inflation has proceeded normally and energy has gone through the roof.
It's those idiotic great unwashed who are at fault for the decreased purchasing power of the dollar. They should have just accepted their slide into the poverty lifestyle despite doing the same work and carrying hefty student debts. How DARE they try to maintain a lifestyle they worked so hard to achieve.
"As a result the Swedish economy bounced back and most, if not all, of the money used to rescue the banks have been returned to the taxpayers"
This is a huge leap of logic that, like any macroeconomic theory, isn't testable. The world economies were entirely different during those two time periods and the Swedish economy is anything but an island.
what was fundamentally different about the world economy then?
Were resources infinite? are they infinite now? The tools have changed but the processes now are the same as the processes then.
The issue is not whether we should or should not, the issue is we HAVE to.
These companies have been allowed to grow so large their failure would cause mass social unrest and considerable hardship for the citizens of the nation.
What we should be demanding, more than anything else, is the splitting of these companies into financially independent subsidiaries.
Ownership and management can remain in the same hands, but each subsidiary must be capable of operating independently, and be small enough to fail without dragging a state, nation, or world economy with it.
Of course, nobody is bringing up these questions because the news organizations reporting on this are of an equally bloated size.
...but I just know that with one billion dollars you can give 20'000 people 50'000 dollars, each. I'm just asking myself whether rerouting such money directly into the pockets of those laid off wouldn't make more sense. Give them the opportunity to not worry too much for a year, get some additional education and try elsewhere.
Wouldn't it be better if the government didn't to take half of people's money in the first place?
I happily accept your idea of preserving or restoring the quality of life being destroyed in this recession by making sure I receive 100% of the zero dollars a month I receive from my lost job (or in my case, my nonexistent job as a new college grad).
Your average homeowner gets about a third of his income lopped off in withholding, then another chunk in sales taxes and property taxes take the rest. How great would it be if everyone's earnings were suddenly doubled?
you mean the earnings of those who are not feeling the recession anyway? That's nice, what about the rest?
Even when they have the best of intentions you can't rely on government to do the right thing
Ah, but we can rely on corporations to restore the jobs they cut in the US without government intervention? It's been said elsewhere in this thread "business is not a charity". I recently read a report (ironically often cited by people claiming libertarian approaches of ignoring or allowing offshoring are good) which shows that only 1/3 of jobs created in times of growth are now created in the US. Does the phrase "Jobless Recovery" ring a bell?
look at both of the trillion dollar bailout packages: pure pork and waste.
This is your opinion, and a very ironic statement given your next few thoughts.
The process of government is inevitably biased [see?] by the actions of special interests, self interest of the politicians and plain old human stupidity.
There's a massive recession, and while the wealthy may control campaign funds they still only have one vote. Guess who holds more sway now, and guess which usual suspects are now firmly within the public ire.
This does not guarantee a lack of corruption in the slightest, but the alternative is to just have more of "the market sorting it out".
We doesn't the government just not take the money from joe six-pack in the first place? It's not like he would save the extra 10-15%.
Because you have no paychecks to cut taxes on when you've been laid off or have graduated into a recession and can't find a living wage.
Tax cuts are just like health savings accounts: they're designed to quell the concerns of those who don't actually need the help while screwing everyone who actually does.
tax cuts do nothing to restore quality of life to those truly disenfranchised by this economic disaster.
That really is the opposite of what we'd want. If the financial sector was working, then saving would equal investment, which boosts aggregate demand. The idea being that someone pays his debt down, the bank gives it to a business, and the business buys things, and everything works out well.
But since the financial sector isn't working, so if someone saves, the bank just sits on the money and it disappears. Because of that, a large increase in savings would cause a rather large decrease in aggregate demand, which would causes businesses to close, which causes further decreases in aggregate demand... that process ends at the great depression.
To prevent that, we want the government to spend their money boosting aggregate demand to compensate. Government spending is one way to do it, but there are limits to how many roads you can build within a couple months. So some money will be given to individuals.
But the key point, is that the money given to individuals needs to be *spent*, not saved!
This argument doesn't make sense.
If you distributed the cash directly to individuals, they would pay down their debts. This would remove the debts from the books of financial institutions, reducing the perception of risk and boosting their reserves. The direct injections into the top are not working because people at the bottom are still in debt and nobody knows how many will default in the deteriorating situation.
Additionally, injecting cash at the bottom and relieving peoples' debts will help open consumer wallets and free people to re-train or even--if they were smart or lucky before and have little debt--start new enterprises.
Giving money to huge corporations does nothing to quell uncertainty about consumer demand or credit risk, but does a great job of funding corporate bonuses.
I had that thought too. If we're going to give money to individuals at all, it should be to their debts (homes, student loans, etc.). And it should go to those who have a track record of working hard, but just ran into tough times beyond their abilities. It still helps them, without the temptation to waste money on non-essentials. If we're going to spend our grand-children and great grand-children's tax dollars, we owe it to them to at least do something intelligent with the money.
you mean like engaging in massive military spending, creating whole new departments of the government double the size of existing departments to do the exact same job, only much worse, waging endless wars in the middle east, and, give huge tax cuts to the wealthy?
How about we close the DHS, cut military spending by 10%, and use that money to introduce a universal healthcare solution (that does NOT have to mean putting private insurance out of business either)
bookmarked.
I have an easier and much more hollow victory scenario for them.
Glider's creators are now criminally liable. Before the case is over they move offshore, say, to where slysoft is (argentina?).
the bot continues to be circulated, the US tech sector moves into a new phase of deep-freeze right when we need it to be growing the most, china and argentina inherit the earth.
Most of us bought WoW to play a game under a fair playing field.
If you want people to stop botting, tell blizzard to cut the costs of their mounts and that stupid ring by 80%.
The cost of mounts drives the cost of everything else. Remove that ridiculous cost, which, under point of fact, only allows people who play 24/7/365 to get what they need to progress, and people wouldn't get a bot to let them keep up with other people while they slept and worked.
or are you saying flying a blue flyer around the storm peaks is actually playing a game rather than extended time looking at a static model.
Blizzard isn't really forcing anyone to play in a specific way. They are asking for the right to kick people out who are worsening the experience for everyone else.
no, they're not.
In addition, the point was made elsewhere that now completely unrelated parties are being held to EULAs of products they've never seen.
When does this go to the US Supreme Court where it can be obliterated by people who understand the concept of earthshaking implications.
A substantial portion of game content in WoW is server-side. The scripts for raid encounters, NPC locations and dialogue, and other elements are arguably creative works, and they are stored on the server. The game client downloads these elements and renders them using local models and textures.
Warden prevents access to such game content by preventing users from authenticating with the WoW servers if detected cheat programs are loaded. Glider circumvents this measure by fooling Warden into allowing access to such content.
I'm sorry but you are convoluting warden with the server authentication process, of which it plays no part.
It is the server authentication process which protects the content, not warden, which only detects after-the-fact operations.
Warden does not "control" access, it "detects" access.
True, but there are prepaid POS phones that are $10USD, such as Virgin Mobile (Sprint), coupled with a 1000 minute card for $50USD, compared to the $45ish monthly for my 400 minute + 200 text Verizon plan...
OTOH, you get what you pay for with a lot of those prepaids...
and virgin mobile is exactly what I use. the phone was not attached to a contract.
5 years ago a cell phone like the one i have cost 150 bucks
I lost my brick recently and bought this one for a whopping 10 bucks.
I pay almost as much for fast food.
That, of course, is US retail, which means it should cost 3 in developing nations and still make companies a profit.
Article past freshness!
LOL no, I'm just calling out Elfen Lied out for what it is: A bad show with no redeeming features. All it has is the gore, and for some reason that gives it lots of fans.
There's no accounting for taste, as they say.
There are studies out there which show the most incompetent people believe themselves to be utmost experts.
So, how does it feel to be an "expert" film critic?
The brain lives on for up to 5 minutes after cardiac arrest, slowly dying off. This does not mean someone whose heart is blown away by a shotgun is still alive.
I don't belive it... someone trying to put Elfen Lied on an intellectual level with what would have been a Stanley Kubrick film.
Wow, just... wow. The only thing Elfen Lied is good for is the visceral rush guro fans get when they see characters torn to bits. That's it. Seriously.
Sounds like someone got touched in a naughty place by violent movies when they were younger.