Not quite but if amazon has people (like me) selling used books, and they live in Canada, then by New York's flawed argument that gives amazon a "presence" in Canada and liable to Canadian sales tax.
It isn't Republicans versus Democrats. It's city versus countryside, and it's been going on since 1989. Most people in the country (and suburbs) want minimal taxation and government to "butt out" of their affairs. Meanwhile city folk what free handouts like subways, hospitals, new baseball stadiums - they want to be treated like children being cared for by daddy government.
Country - independent City - dependent
That's what almost all politics in America boils down to.
>WTF, would someone please explain to an ignorant foreigner why a state has a national guard?
For the same reason why France, Germany, and Italy have national guards. I don't know if you've ever studied the American Civil War, but you'll probably note that the army is divided into State-based units, such as the Maryland 2nd regiment, or the Massachusetts 3rd, or the Georgian 5th.
The modern U.S. army has eliminated most of that to create a seamless whole, but the States still maintain their own private armies (national guard) and militias (their citizens).
Amazon.com has a place for people like me to sell online. New York claims that because some of those persons are from NY, that makes amazon have a presence in NY, even though those people are completely independent from amazon. Same applies to Ebay. Therefore NY wants amazon/ebay to add a 7% tax to all NY sales.
My argument is that I'm not amazon's employee - I'm independent and represent no one but myself. Furthermore I'm not a New York citizen, therefore NY has no authority over me. Furthermore: "it's taxation without representation" - I'm being taxed by a foreign body who does not represent me & for whom I never voted.
I am not going to collect and submit sales tax forms to NY on April 15, 2009. If they want to sue me, or issue a warrant for my arrest, go right ahead. I'll throw the papers in the trash and make sure never to visit NY State.
Well it's no different than someone in the EU, who lives in France, calling Germans foreign. The United States is the same deal where I am considered a non-citizen of New York, and therefore not subject to foreign NY law.
No. I will still sell to New York, but I won't pay taxes. The Legislature has no authority to tax a foreign citizen outside their jurisdiction. The NY legislators can go to hell.
>>>Maybe you should stop installing every single thing that comes up on your screen.
I rarely install anything, ever. This was simply the result of scripts automagically changing the homepage in IE to www.porn.com (or what4ever) and taking advantage of exploits to save themselves to the c: drive (spybots). When I switched to Firefox, all those problems stopped.
It's just that my boss hasn't asked me to solve any "free body diagram" problems lately, or write FORTRAN code (or any code for that matter). Almost everything I needed to know I learned in the sophomore-level electronics class.
We had a tragic accident today. We were drilling for heat - well the good news is we found it. Lots of it. The bad news is that we destroyed a $50,000 drill bit and pipe.
Please don't fire me.
No pun intended.
Your faithful employee, and gracious servant, who hopes you will come to my home for Christmas dinner. Or any other dinner you desire... John Doe
>>>Its progressive. The rich are taxed at a higher percentage of their income than the poor
Well. Isn't that the goal of the IRS and the new president, to install a progressive tax? It sounds like my yyyyy (annual earnings) - xxxxx (paid to government) == $30,000 (you keep) achieves Obama's dreams.
I wonder why these politicians (New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland - they are all in trouble) never had the idea to "lay off 75% of the government staff who are doing nothing but surfing the net" and "cut spending"?
It's as if the don't know how to do what every American family does every day - pinch pennies & cut spending.
Here's a thought: Why not just tax everyone according to this formula? yyyyy (annual earnings) - xxxxx (paid to government) == $30,000 (you keep). People earning less than $30000 would actually get a handout to make it an even $30k.
There. Isn't that fair? A completely and totally flat tax.
>>>State funds are our property. If those funds are spent on health care, and your neighbor does things which burden the health care system more than others, than he is doing harm to your property by effectively taking it from you.
Yes that's true. And you have a right to deny your fat neighbor the "charity" of free healthcare.
You do NOT have the right to take away his freedom of religion.... er, to eat as many burgers as he wants. Your neighbor is not your slave to control and dictate what he can or can not eat.
Hmmm. Except that the rich tend to buy more stuff. If a poor person buys $5000 in clothes (25% out of 20,000) and a rich person buys a million in cars, boats, and other crap (50% of 2 million annually), the rich actually pays a higher percentage of income for his items. Correspondingly he pays a higher percent of sales tax too - 2.5% for the poor and 5% for the rich.
So you can't say it's "regressive" - it's not that simple.
The quick fix is to simply give all poor people cards such that they are tax-exempt at the store. We already do that in many States, so it's not a big deal.
Well I used to think like you, no problems with IE, but what changed my mind was when my homepage kept randomly changing to various sites. Then I started getting weird images on my desktop. That's when I realized that IE is basically a giant hole for hackers.
(i.e. I take home about 650 out of $1000 earned.) Add in all the other taxes from sales, property, electricity,....., gasoline and I am *well* over the 40% estimate.
That's not regressive. That's flat. A regressive tax would be one where the poor pay 10%, the middle incomes pay 5%, and the upper incomes pay 1%. And of course a progressive tax moves in the opposite direction, with ever-increasing percentages.
I wonder why the idea of "cut spending" and "lay off 75% of the government staff who are doing nothing but surfing the net" never occurs to these Governors and Legislators?
There is another alternative, one that seems to be unfolding even now:
- Lay off a lot of Americans. - Unemployment rises. - American workers will be in such a desolate state that they are willing to take any job they can get, even if it only pays $6 an hour for welding cars (or sewing Levis, or whatever), and therefore Asians/Americans are on the same wage scale. - Factories flock back to America where they can get cheap labor.
Slashdot Mirror
Not quite but if amazon has people (like me) selling used books, and they live in Canada, then by New York's flawed argument that gives amazon a "presence" in Canada and liable to Canadian sales tax.
This is the REAL conflict in America.
It isn't Republicans versus Democrats. It's city versus countryside, and it's been going on since 1989. Most people in the country (and suburbs) want minimal taxation and government to "butt out" of their affairs. Meanwhile city folk what free handouts like subways, hospitals, new baseball stadiums - they want to be treated like children being cared for by daddy government.
Country - independent
City - dependent
That's what almost all politics in America boils down to.
>>>>>PA national guard
>WTF, would someone please explain to an ignorant foreigner why a state has a national guard?
For the same reason why France, Germany, and Italy have national guards. I don't know if you've ever studied the American Civil War, but you'll probably note that the army is divided into State-based units, such as the Maryland 2nd regiment, or the Massachusetts 3rd, or the Georgian 5th.
The modern U.S. army has eliminated most of that to create a seamless whole, but the States still maintain their own private armies (national guard) and militias (their citizens).
Okay here's the deal:
Amazon.com has a place for people like me to sell online. New York claims that because some of those persons are from NY, that makes amazon have a presence in NY, even though those people are completely independent from amazon. Same applies to Ebay. Therefore NY wants amazon/ebay to add a 7% tax to all NY sales.
My argument is that I'm not amazon's employee - I'm independent and represent no one but myself. Furthermore I'm not a New York citizen, therefore NY has no authority over me. Furthermore: "it's taxation without representation" - I'm being taxed by a foreign body who does not represent me & for whom I never voted.
I am not going to collect and submit sales tax forms to NY on April 15, 2009. If they want to sue me, or issue a warrant for my arrest, go right ahead. I'll throw the papers in the trash and make sure never to visit NY State.
Well it's no different than someone in the EU, who lives in France, calling Germans foreign. The United States is the same deal where I am considered a non-citizen of New York, and therefore not subject to foreign NY law.
And hurt my own income?
No. I will still sell to New York, but I won't pay taxes. The Legislature has no authority to tax a foreign citizen outside their jurisdiction. The NY legislators can go to hell.
>>>Maybe you should stop installing every single thing that comes up on your screen.
I rarely install anything, ever. This was simply the result of scripts automagically changing the homepage in IE to www.porn.com (or what4ever) and taking advantage of exploits to save themselves to the c: drive (spybots). When I switched to Firefox, all those problems stopped.
NOPE. Assembly *is* a language. Atheism is more akin to programming in a string of bits - 101010000111110101010101
It's kinda like the old punchcard programming of the 1970s (which many unfortunate engineers had to do).
I don't "waste" my education.
It's just that my boss hasn't asked me to solve any "free body diagram" problems lately, or write FORTRAN code (or any code for that matter). Almost everything I needed to know I learned in the sophomore-level electronics class.
Dear Boss:
We had a tragic accident today. We were drilling for heat - well the good news is we found it. Lots of it. The bad news is that we destroyed a $50,000 drill bit and pipe.
Please don't fire me.
No pun intended.
Your faithful employee, and gracious servant, who hopes you will come to my home for Christmas dinner. Or any other dinner you desire...
John Doe
Clearly the fastest speed that local citizens can get, averaged over the whole state.
It's well known that Sweden has the fastest connections in all of Europe.
Anonymous Cowards have a score of (0) and the Slashdot comment viewer is set at (1), so their comments are rarely heard by anyone.
>>>Its progressive. The rich are taxed at a higher percentage of their income than the poor
Well. Isn't that the goal of the IRS and the new president, to install a progressive tax? It sounds like my yyyyy (annual earnings) - xxxxx (paid to government) == $30,000 (you keep) achieves Obama's dreams.
>>>he is harming my property by reducing its value
Bull.
You might as well try to convince me that angels built your home.
Raises taxes pisses off even more people.
I wonder why these politicians (New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland - they are all in trouble) never had the idea to "lay off 75% of the government staff who are doing nothing but surfing the net" and "cut spending"?
It's as if the don't know how to do what every American family does every day - pinch pennies & cut spending.
Why is is that leftists often end-up looking like the right? (Or the church.) No sex. No drugs. No rock-and-roll. Oh and no sugar either.
Here's a thought: Why not just tax everyone according to this formula? yyyyy (annual earnings) - xxxxx (paid to government) == $30,000 (you keep). People earning less than $30000 would actually get a handout to make it an even $30k.
There. Isn't that fair? A completely and totally flat tax.
>>>State funds are our property. If those funds are spent on health care, and your neighbor does things which burden the health care system more than others, than he is doing harm to your property by effectively taking it from you.
Yes that's true. And you have a right to deny your fat neighbor the "charity" of free healthcare.
You do NOT have the right to take away his freedom of religion.... er, to eat as many burgers as he wants. Your neighbor is not your slave to control and dictate what he can or can not eat.
Oh I see what you're saying.
Hmmm. Except that the rich tend to buy more stuff. If a poor person buys $5000 in clothes (25% out of 20,000) and a rich person buys a million in cars, boats, and other crap (50% of 2 million annually), the rich actually pays a higher percentage of income for his items. Correspondingly he pays a higher percent of sales tax too - 2.5% for the poor and 5% for the rich.
So you can't say it's "regressive" - it's not that simple.
The quick fix is to simply give all poor people cards such that they are tax-exempt at the store. We already do that in many States, so it's not a big deal.
Okay.
Well I used to think like you, no problems with IE, but what changed my mind was when my homepage kept randomly changing to various sites. Then I started getting weird images on my desktop. That's when I realized that IE is basically a giant hole for hackers.
Every week my employer sucks 35% off my paycheck.
(i.e. I take home about 650 out of $1000 earned.) Add in all the other taxes from sales, property, electricity, ....., gasoline and I am *well* over the 40% estimate.
That's not regressive. That's flat. A regressive tax would be one where the poor pay 10%, the middle incomes pay 5%, and the upper incomes pay 1%. And of course a progressive tax moves in the opposite direction, with ever-increasing percentages.
I wonder why the idea of "cut spending" and "lay off 75% of the government staff who are doing nothing but surfing the net" never occurs to these Governors and Legislators?
There is another alternative, one that seems to be unfolding even now:
- Lay off a lot of Americans.
- Unemployment rises.
- American workers will be in such a desolate state that they are willing to take any job they can get, even if it only pays $6 an hour for welding cars (or sewing Levis, or whatever), and therefore Asians/Americans are on the same wage scale.
- Factories flock back to America where they can get cheap labor.