We could stop having wars*, but the Republicans wouldn't like that idea either.
*and drastically reduce military spending
Considering our Democrat President has continued both wars, and that his budget request for the DOD was HIGHER than that passed by the GOP controlled House, I'd say both parties are fine with the defense spending we have...
The rich and corporations on the other hand, are known to hoard wealth, and send it out of the country respectively.
I have never gotten a loan from a bankrupt company, and when I've sought seed money for a new company I've never turned to poor people. Chances are the company you work for was funded by those same hoarders, who simply used their own money to bankroll the venture you now work for...
The only class waging war in this country on other classes is the rich.
Do you realize the top 25% pay 60% of ALL Federal revenues with just their income taxes and Social Security taxes? Yep - those evil rich pay the supermajority of all Federal revenues. Clearly not paying their fair share and waging war on everyone else...
How about we do a truly fair tax system? Our Government is spending $3.7 trillion this year; every single person in the US - man, woman, child - now has to pay $11,746 in annual taxes. Everyone pays the same amount... That's fair, no class warfare, no BS.
Or better yet - how about we set the corporate income tax rate to zero? No reason for GE and others to offshore so much. And we'd be VERY attractive to foreign companies as well... There'd be quite a few jobs created from that little maneuver.
You clearly didn't pay attention in junior high school, if you think that taxes on profits are a cost to a company. Profits are what you make after costs are netted out. Corporations are only taxed if they turn profits.
Not always... Here in the State of Washington we have a corporate Business & Occupation tax which is a tax on gross sales receipts - not profits. You can lose every dime of revenue - and then some - and still have a hefty tax bill...
Only true if you did not in any form, directly or indirectly, benefit from society. Say, by ever buying anything that used any sort of public infrastructure (and benefitting from the reduced price).
I make 100% of my income overseas. I live overseas. I still have to pay US income tax on my income (as well as income tax overseas). I don't use any US public infrastructure, however...
Taxation isn't about you paying your fair share, or infrastructure maintenance; the President last week talked about 153 bridges that are structurally deficient, yet he wants MORE money specially allocated to repair what should be done via gas taxes (which turn a profit for the US Government - they bring in more money via gas tax than is spent on road maintenance).
Taxation is about power. It's about taking money from one group, and using it to buy the votes of another group to maintain your own position. There's a reason why the US Tax Code is ~6 times longer than the Bible. In the US taxes are not about fairness or a functioning society - it's all about power for the Congressional members and the President.
No, using public services to make money, then hiding your earnings so that you don't have to pay for those public services is CHEATING.
Then why does the US tax every dollar you make overseas, even if you are overseas for the entire year? If I live in Thailand the entire year and earn my salary over there, I still have to pay US taxes on it - even though I didn't use any US public services. It's not about paying for what you use - it's about paying for what Government wants.
Let's put it this way: I am one car on the road, and I have to pay taxes for road upkeep. Mr. Millionaire has a fleet of 1000 semi trucks to deliver his product, but he doesn't have to pay for road upkeep? Does that seem fair to you?
Mr. Millionaire's company probably pays those taxes on those 1000 trucks. Unless you're suggesting he personally owns them? Do those trucks pay fuel taxes, excise taxes, and State registration taxes? How are they not paying for road upkeep - they pay fuel costs...
As it turns out learning by rote isn't very helpful beyond basic spelling and maths.
The problem, IMHO, is too many new educational approaches are eschewing this basic level of knowledge. They are not teaching basic spelling and math - they gloss over it, or let the student "discover" their own approach. We just had the lowest SAT reading scores ever - and attendance in remedial reading in universities and college is exploding. We're turning out an ever-increasing number of functionally illiterate (and math-deprived) students.
I think the problem is a high focus on advanced learning techniques applied much too early in age. IMHO, learning can be fun and interesting but still rely on rote memorization, and should do that until the 5th grade at the earliest. Expecting an 8 year old child to have the foundation in logic, reason, and the mental development to adequately build upon that foundation in trying to learn their own approach to division, or multiplication, or proper grammatical structure is way off base.
Learning by rote memorization ultimately makes those skills so highly developed they become transparent. Doing the "simple work" of any problem becomes nearly automatic - you are freed up to actually address the more important parts of the problem. You don't have to worry about getting 12.7 times 3.14159 correct, or how to factor a polynomial because you've done it a few thousand times and the answer just comes. You can worry about applying that knowledge.
As a university math prof once told me - it's the first 10,000 integrals that are hard - after that, they get easy. Practice does indeed make perfect, and it frees your intellect to work on the higher level, more logic/reason driven questions rather than working at the basest steps.
IMHO, we should use the first 5-6 years of school to build a VERY strong and firm foundation in linguistics, mathematics, and history. Then use the next 2-3 years to build the skills to apply those foundational constructs - building skills in logic and reason, working on extracting data from word problems and essays to address and refine. Then use the last 2-3 years of your K-12 schooling to build skills in learning HOW to learn. You'll turn out students who are well positioned to continue learning for their entire life - whether that is at a university, at a trade school, or in the workforce.
Consider how you would teach someone to program in C++ - someone who has never programmed in their life. Would you jump right in with pointers and references and operator overloading, or would you begin with basic operations, build on that to methods and members, and then continue from there?
I want the doctor to understand why things happen; expecting a 3rd grader to have the reasoning and mental maturity to make the decisions a doctor needs is immaterial. But both the doctor and the 3rd grader will benefit from knowing how to do long division and their multiplication tables. Teach the fundamentals until the mind is developed to build upon it an approach that worked for millennia and formed the minds that made our modern society.
Yes, all that rote memorization of facts and processes led to nothing - no semiconductor development, theoretical physics, nuclear power, aeronautics, travel to the moon, or even this thing called The Internet. Yeah, nothing good ever came from that approach of having young minds - too young to really perform complex reasoning - just memorize basic facts and simple processes like long division and multiplication. Who needs to build a foundation for sound logic and reason - let them try to learn how to reason on their own and discover the facts and foundation at a later date!
Anyone who's worked in audio speaker design and used ferrofluid (a common addition to tweeters and small, wide-band drivers, but sometimes used in larger drivers) knows that it will migrate (flow) with the magnetic field applied by the voice coil... In fact, careful attention must be paid to the ratio of voice coil field to static field and the shape of the magnetic gap to keep the ferrofluid from not blowing out of the gap.
It's actually the grizzlies getting pissed at all the rain and stomping too heavily that triggers the Earthquakes which kick off the volcanoes. So we Washingtonians try to keep the grizzlies happy by feeding them the occasional CA or OR hiker...
Huh? Not this year! Summer didn't arrive until August! June and July sucked bad - and I'm a native, having lived in Seattle for most of every one of my 43 years... We had a good August, and it stretched until September 10th - and then promptly petered out with the 62 and gray skies thing since then...
Oregon has a two-tiered corporate income tax, which tops out at 7.9% of profit over $250k. Web-based services usually have low expenses, so there's not much difference between revenue and profit, making Washington the clear winner.
Hmmm... Not quite. Having run a business in WA, you do pay an effectively hefty B&O tax (it's now at 1.5% for service industries, like resellers). And it's on GROSS receipts - not operating revenue. So every dollar of product or service you sell is hit with this rate - not just your gross profit or operating revenue. Buy a widget for $80 and sell it for $120? You pay 1.5% tax on the $120 - not the $40 of your gross margin. And there are NO deductions for profitability - you can lose money on the deal but you still have to pay the full B&O tax on the gross receipts.
All in all, a B&O tax is about the most unfair version of tax you can get as its strictly on gross receipts/dollars in, with no adjustments offered for expenses or even cost of goods sold. Just straight receipts times your rate and pay up.
Chances are, the PC you're using right now had its motherboard, hard disk, monitor, enclosure, and most other physical parts designed on a PC running Windows.
The facts show that the "rich people" pay a disproportionate amount of the income taxes. For example, the top 1% earn 20% of the AGI, but pay 38% of the income taxes, while the bottom 50% earn 12.8% of the AGI and pay 2.7% of the income taxes. We actually have a very progressive tax structure in the US, but it is much too complex.
I mentioned a standard exemption of base income; set it to $20,000. Everything above that is taxed at some flat rate (say 17%). So that person making $30,000 pays $1700 in tax - 17% on $10,000 ($30,000 - $20,000). The person earning $160,000 (in the top 5%) would pay $26,500 in tax - 17% on $150,000. A person earning less than $20,000 would pay nothing.
.
Start with an exemption that is 200% of the poverty line (poverty line for a single person is $10,890), and then index it for inflation. One deduction, nothing else. All other income is taxed at the fixed rate. Taxes become incredibly simple to define, to calculate and to deal with.
And this single tax rate covers income AND Social Security AND Medicare; all together, those 3 taxes bring in about $2 trillion to the Federal treasury annually; setting a 17% single tax rate would yield about the same total dollars when applied against gross (not adjusted gross) income. Revenue neutral, simple, flat and fair.
This is what happens when you have a tax code that is over 3.5 million words - and growing constantly. It's 72,000 pages and adding nearly every day. And it's because our leaders in Congress love to give special little breaks here and there to curry favor with a constituency or donor and thus ensure their position and power.
.
Toss it out, start over, and if it grows longer than the Hong Kong tax code (about 200 pages) - Congress is fired and a new group of people start the task. Flat rate, single deduction (a standard exemption of a base of income for any person), and that's it.
The LG Prada that is not a tablet - and thus not affected but the CD for the tablet, the one that was universally recognized as the progenitor to the iPhone. And it's curious that you highlight the "all important single button" - since that's what Samsung is MISSING on theirs. So how can it be the same?
It's not a design patent, but a design trademark. And as with all trademarks, you can register it but it does not take effect - nor have the ability to limit other's use - until it is used in commerce (you can't squat on trademarks - you have to use them). Since Samsung started using similar designs in 2006 - well before Apple used the design trademark - Samsung should be exempt from enforcement. I'm sure that's part of what Samsung will argue - and also why the Dutch court found the exact opposite of the German court.
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We could stop having wars*, but the Republicans wouldn't like that idea either.
*and drastically reduce military spending
Considering our Democrat President has continued both wars, and that his budget request for the DOD was HIGHER than that passed by the GOP controlled House, I'd say both parties are fine with the defense spending we have...
The rich and corporations on the other hand, are known to hoard wealth, and send it out of the country respectively.
I have never gotten a loan from a bankrupt company, and when I've sought seed money for a new company I've never turned to poor people. Chances are the company you work for was funded by those same hoarders, who simply used their own money to bankroll the venture you now work for...
This smells like more class warfare shit.
The only class waging war in this country on other classes is the rich.
Do you realize the top 25% pay 60% of ALL Federal revenues with just their income taxes and Social Security taxes? Yep - those evil rich pay the supermajority of all Federal revenues. Clearly not paying their fair share and waging war on everyone else...
How about we do a truly fair tax system? Our Government is spending $3.7 trillion this year; every single person in the US - man, woman, child - now has to pay $11,746 in annual taxes. Everyone pays the same amount... That's fair, no class warfare, no BS.
Or better yet - how about we set the corporate income tax rate to zero? No reason for GE and others to offshore so much. And we'd be VERY attractive to foreign companies as well... There'd be quite a few jobs created from that little maneuver.
You clearly didn't pay attention in junior high school, if you think that taxes on profits are a cost to a company. Profits are what you make after costs are netted out. Corporations are only taxed if they turn profits.
Not always... Here in the State of Washington we have a corporate Business & Occupation tax which is a tax on gross sales receipts - not profits. You can lose every dime of revenue - and then some - and still have a hefty tax bill...
I have yet to see a rich person who used a lot of public transportation, food stamps, section 8 housing, welfare, and SSI disability payments...
Only true if you did not in any form, directly or indirectly, benefit from society. Say, by ever buying anything that used any sort of public infrastructure (and benefitting from the reduced price).
I make 100% of my income overseas. I live overseas. I still have to pay US income tax on my income (as well as income tax overseas). I don't use any US public infrastructure, however...
Taxation isn't about you paying your fair share, or infrastructure maintenance; the President last week talked about 153 bridges that are structurally deficient, yet he wants MORE money specially allocated to repair what should be done via gas taxes (which turn a profit for the US Government - they bring in more money via gas tax than is spent on road maintenance).
Taxation is about power. It's about taking money from one group, and using it to buy the votes of another group to maintain your own position. There's a reason why the US Tax Code is ~6 times longer than the Bible. In the US taxes are not about fairness or a functioning society - it's all about power for the Congressional members and the President.
No, using public services to make money, then hiding your earnings so that you don't have to pay for those public services is CHEATING.
Then why does the US tax every dollar you make overseas, even if you are overseas for the entire year? If I live in Thailand the entire year and earn my salary over there, I still have to pay US taxes on it - even though I didn't use any US public services. It's not about paying for what you use - it's about paying for what Government wants.
Let's put it this way: I am one car on the road, and I have to pay taxes for road upkeep. Mr. Millionaire has a fleet of 1000 semi trucks to deliver his product, but he doesn't have to pay for road upkeep? Does that seem fair to you?
Mr. Millionaire's company probably pays those taxes on those 1000 trucks. Unless you're suggesting he personally owns them? Do those trucks pay fuel taxes, excise taxes, and State registration taxes? How are they not paying for road upkeep - they pay fuel costs...
Someone's going to come along and complain "ugh, resistive? If it's not capacitive it's crap!" any time now...
As it turns out learning by rote isn't very helpful beyond basic spelling and maths.
The problem, IMHO, is too many new educational approaches are eschewing this basic level of knowledge. They are not teaching basic spelling and math - they gloss over it, or let the student "discover" their own approach. We just had the lowest SAT reading scores ever - and attendance in remedial reading in universities and college is exploding. We're turning out an ever-increasing number of functionally illiterate (and math-deprived) students.
I think the problem is a high focus on advanced learning techniques applied much too early in age. IMHO, learning can be fun and interesting but still rely on rote memorization, and should do that until the 5th grade at the earliest. Expecting an 8 year old child to have the foundation in logic, reason, and the mental development to adequately build upon that foundation in trying to learn their own approach to division, or multiplication, or proper grammatical structure is way off base.
Learning by rote memorization ultimately makes those skills so highly developed they become transparent. Doing the "simple work" of any problem becomes nearly automatic - you are freed up to actually address the more important parts of the problem. You don't have to worry about getting 12.7 times 3.14159 correct, or how to factor a polynomial because you've done it a few thousand times and the answer just comes. You can worry about applying that knowledge.
As a university math prof once told me - it's the first 10,000 integrals that are hard - after that, they get easy. Practice does indeed make perfect, and it frees your intellect to work on the higher level, more logic/reason driven questions rather than working at the basest steps.
IMHO, we should use the first 5-6 years of school to build a VERY strong and firm foundation in linguistics, mathematics, and history. Then use the next 2-3 years to build the skills to apply those foundational constructs - building skills in logic and reason, working on extracting data from word problems and essays to address and refine. Then use the last 2-3 years of your K-12 schooling to build skills in learning HOW to learn. You'll turn out students who are well positioned to continue learning for their entire life - whether that is at a university, at a trade school, or in the workforce.
Consider how you would teach someone to program in C++ - someone who has never programmed in their life. Would you jump right in with pointers and references and operator overloading, or would you begin with basic operations, build on that to methods and members, and then continue from there?
I want the doctor to understand why things happen; expecting a 3rd grader to have the reasoning and mental maturity to make the decisions a doctor needs is immaterial. But both the doctor and the 3rd grader will benefit from knowing how to do long division and their multiplication tables. Teach the fundamentals until the mind is developed to build upon it an approach that worked for millennia and formed the minds that made our modern society.
Yes, all that rote memorization of facts and processes led to nothing - no semiconductor development, theoretical physics, nuclear power, aeronautics, travel to the moon, or even this thing called The Internet. Yeah, nothing good ever came from that approach of having young minds - too young to really perform complex reasoning - just memorize basic facts and simple processes like long division and multiplication. Who needs to build a foundation for sound logic and reason - let them try to learn how to reason on their own and discover the facts and foundation at a later date!
Anyone who's worked in audio speaker design and used ferrofluid (a common addition to tweeters and small, wide-band drivers, but sometimes used in larger drivers) knows that it will migrate (flow) with the magnetic field applied by the voice coil... In fact, careful attention must be paid to the ratio of voice coil field to static field and the shape of the magnetic gap to keep the ferrofluid from not blowing out of the gap.
It's actually the grizzlies getting pissed at all the rain and stomping too heavily that triggers the Earthquakes which kick off the volcanoes. So we Washingtonians try to keep the grizzlies happy by feeding them the occasional CA or OR hiker...
Ahh, a prime example of the warm and welcoming Portland attitude!
Huh? Not this year! Summer didn't arrive until August! June and July sucked bad - and I'm a native, having lived in Seattle for most of every one of my 43 years... We had a good August, and it stretched until September 10th - and then promptly petered out with the 62 and gray skies thing since then...
Oregon has a two-tiered corporate income tax, which tops out at 7.9% of profit over $250k. Web-based services usually have low expenses, so there's not much difference between revenue and profit, making Washington the clear winner.
Hmmm... Not quite. Having run a business in WA, you do pay an effectively hefty B&O tax (it's now at 1.5% for service industries, like resellers). And it's on GROSS receipts - not operating revenue. So every dollar of product or service you sell is hit with this rate - not just your gross profit or operating revenue. Buy a widget for $80 and sell it for $120? You pay 1.5% tax on the $120 - not the $40 of your gross margin. And there are NO deductions for profitability - you can lose money on the deal but you still have to pay the full B&O tax on the gross receipts.
All in all, a B&O tax is about the most unfair version of tax you can get as its strictly on gross receipts/dollars in, with no adjustments offered for expenses or even cost of goods sold. Just straight receipts times your rate and pay up.
How does that show that "everything Windows does natively is done wrong"?
Chances are, the PC you're using right now had its motherboard, hard disk, monitor, enclosure, and most other physical parts designed on a PC running Windows.
The facts show that the "rich people" pay a disproportionate amount of the income taxes. For example, the top 1% earn 20% of the AGI, but pay 38% of the income taxes, while the bottom 50% earn 12.8% of the AGI and pay 2.7% of the income taxes. We actually have a very progressive tax structure in the US, but it is much too complex.
Start with an exemption that is 200% of the poverty line (poverty line for a single person is $10,890), and then index it for inflation. One deduction, nothing else. All other income is taxed at the fixed rate. Taxes become incredibly simple to define, to calculate and to deal with.
And this single tax rate covers income AND Social Security AND Medicare; all together, those 3 taxes bring in about $2 trillion to the Federal treasury annually; setting a 17% single tax rate would yield about the same total dollars when applied against gross (not adjusted gross) income. Revenue neutral, simple, flat and fair.
Toss it out, start over, and if it grows longer than the Hong Kong tax code (about 200 pages) - Congress is fired and a new group of people start the task. Flat rate, single deduction (a standard exemption of a base of income for any person), and that's it.
The LG Prada that is not a tablet - and thus not affected but the CD for the tablet, the one that was universally recognized as the progenitor to the iPhone. And it's curious that you highlight the "all important single button" - since that's what Samsung is MISSING on theirs. So how can it be the same?
You mean before and after the LG Prada - which the iPhone wonderfully copied...
It's not a design patent, but a design trademark. And as with all trademarks, you can register it but it does not take effect - nor have the ability to limit other's use - until it is used in commerce (you can't squat on trademarks - you have to use them). Since Samsung started using similar designs in 2006 - well before Apple used the design trademark - Samsung should be exempt from enforcement. I'm sure that's part of what Samsung will argue - and also why the Dutch court found the exact opposite of the German court.