(Likely) insufficient tax revenue to meet expenses. A system designed to accelerate wealth gaps and minimise class mobility.
Likely, based on what? With a flat-tax and no deductions (save the one I mentioned) I believe the government would end up with more revenue than it does now. It would also become (due to the single deduction that helps low-income people more) a progressive-tax as the more you make the higher your effective tax rate goes (until it flat-lines at the flat tax rate). Not to mention that it would allow most of the IRS (and its expenses) to go away.
What's the remaining problem after that? Once you've subtracted out the minimum living wage from being taxed, how can taxes on any income above that be "crippling"?
Well that's you. I have been building my own for just as long and I see things quite differently. My method has always been (and remains) to buy the best motherboard you can find and then buy the CPU that has the best price point you can afford today. This way, in a couple of months when the $1000 dream chip you were drooling over comes down to a reasonable price you can grab it and do a simple swap. I usually got 2 CPU's out of every motherboard this way and my machines were functional for almost twice as long as other people's.
Lets buy five 2000 hour 100 watt old fashioned filament bulbs for $5
Lets buy the equivalent number of lumens in a 10000 hour LED I donno 8 watts or something for $50.
Um, no, you can't do the math like that. You started with 5, 100-watt incandescent bulbs which can be used to light 5 different areas with 100-watts of light. You then compared it to a single LED bulb capable of producing the equivalent amount of light as a single incandescent but can on used to light a single area. To be fair you must account for the remaining 4 lights which is another $200 making the comparison $105 vs $298 (including $8 per additional LED for energy). This is why lower income folks get screwed, $50/light is hugely expensive compared to $0.50/light. This doesn't even factor in the fact that bulbs break before their usable life is over for other reasons.
Be careful with that - in countries which are NOT aware of this intentional misuse of the English language (i.e. pretty much anywhere outside the US), people WILL misunderstand the speaker and actually think "oh, he says he COULD care less, that means he DOES care at least a little bit". Which means that it is bad to use "could care less" when posting something on a website which is read by people from all over the world.
The expression is ambiguous no matter which way you say it, if you were to analyze it in a rational fashion. Either the person could care less - meaning they care a certain amount but could care less than that and it would not matter - or - the person couldn't care less - meaning they care a certain amount but could not care less either because it is not possible to care less or that it is possible but the person will not do it. It's a bad phrase to start with and people arguing about doesn't make it any better. We should just agree that what is meant by it is that the subject does not matter to the speaker and call it a day.
This is where prior art is all about, and while it would be great if someone could legitimately claim to have predated Apple's use of the technique, for the nonce it's likely that Apple is correct in claiming that they invented the feature (regardless of the ethical merits of the patent).
The point is "obvious to one skilled in the art" so that the "invention" is novel. Being able to code a scroll-page so that it bounces after you hit the bottom is pretty obvious to any programmer which "should" deny this "invention" any patent protection whatsoever. Ideas are not patentable, inventions are and this is not an invention. Being the first to think of the concept or idea does not make the concept or idea novel. It only does so if the implementation itself would be non-obvious to anyone skilled in the art which it is not.
For example, after the 1981 capital gains tax was cut from 28 to 20 percent, real (all figures in this section are 2004 dollars) federal capital gains tax revenues leapt from $29.4 billion in 1981 to $36.6 billion by 1983—a 24 percent increase. After the capital gains tax was cut in 1997, the receipts from capital gains taxes rose from $66.9 billion in 1996 to $114.7 billion by 1999, an increase of more than 71 percent.
FBI could just have paid Blue Toad to take the blame
That's assuming that Blue Toad isn't just a front-company for the FBI to start with. No payment necessary and is possibly how the FBI got the list in the first place. i.e. The normal way, through an undercover operation, disguised as an iPhone developer company.
As another poster put it: there's no point trying to 'incentivise' investment.
And historically it would appear you are both wrong. In the last two reductions of the Capital Gains Tax, it resulted in more revenue for the government ergo it not only 'incentivized' but actually caused more investment that was otherwise not happening in the higher-taxed world.
Why? I can charge you different prices for cash/credit. So I already know you're willing to pay different prices for the same goods.
Not according to your merchant agreement. You can offer discounts for cash but can't charge more for credit. They are not willing to pay more for the goods, they are willing to pay more for the convenience of credit. Different story.
Now if you come in all Mr. T wearing 99 gold chains and a T-shirt that says "I ALWAYS NEED MORE BLANG" and I have a gold chain shop, there's a good chance that my prices are going up to what I think you'll pay.
If I come into your gold shop and there are no prices posted, I'm walking out - period. Now, I'm not arguing about haggling - anyone can try and negotiate for a lower price than what's posted and as a merchant it's your right to choose to engage in it or not but in that scenario everyone starts with the same base price (max price).
Not defending anyone that uses this pricing scheme, but what makes people think they have a right to something at any price?
They don't - you just made that up. They think they have a right not to be discriminated against and I happen to agree. If a purple-man (not to start a race war) walked into your store you can't charge him double what you charged the blue-man that just left your store. You can adjust the price for everybody if the demand/supply equation changes but not for a single person or class of people.
Still there? I mean, are you really going to take your 70+% and go home?
Yes. I'd really find another game to play that offered a better return. Let's be honest - most investments don't double your money. The touted good return figure is 12%. At 15% rate, I get 10.2% return on my money and the government gets the remaining 1.8% . At 30-39 (lets say 35%), I get 7.8% and the government gets 4.2% all with the risk of losing my (already taxed) principle investment. So, yes, I'd move my money to where I could get a better return - say investment in foreign companies overseas where the tax rate is less.
But you seem to think we should tax people on based on risk.
That's not what I said. I said risk should be taken into consideration along with the fact that increased investment helps everybody and is necessary for the economy. The more return an individual gets, the more he is likely to re-invest them. Having more of the money siphoned to the government does not grow the economy, it shrinks it. Government cannot grow the economy, only business can. Government can be of assistance (as well as be a hindrance) but it is not in the driver's seat and not in complete control.
My understanding is that it's this $800K that gets the 15% rate, and the original $200K is not taxed again.
This is correct. However, the investment involved risk, and is good/necessary for the economy to function. This is why investments get a lower tax-rate, to encourage investment, which encourages business which encourages hiring which drives the economy. It's harder to convince someone to take on investment risk if the government limits the up-side. Look at it this way, you invest 200K and you could either lose it all, break even or make a return on the investment - currently if you get a return on the investment, you only get 85% of it and the government takes 15% - but you took all of the risk (there is no risk in working a regular job (W-2 income), you are guaranteed to make your wage). If the government took 30-39% of the return, and still assumed none of the risk, where is the incentive to invest? It's really penny-wise and pound-foolish to consider taxing investment returns like regular income.
Yeah, I'm clueless in the sense that I have no clue what point you are trying to make. This happens to reflect more on you than it does on me. My arguments are at least logical and make sense. Yours seem to be alluding to knowing things in absolute terms which is ridiculous considering the context of the original conversation. Based on your logic, we know nothing because it cannot be proven that we are not just a brain in jar with our sensory inputs being manipulated and fed to us, matrix-style. Sure, that is a useful philosophical concept/argument but it is completely useless in all other facets of life and understanding.
Argued that way, I can accept that as a reasonable conclusion. However, I realize that Anonymous could include that very same TLA, although it is unlikely, or someone who is even more of a pathological liar. While the odds may be in your favor (it's arguable) it is not a slam-dunk.
Yes, tied to my single UID (zzsmirkzz). That is a record of a single person's actions/speech which can be used to predict that single person's future actions/speech.
However, when dealing with Anonymous their actions/speech can not be tied to any single person, organization or group. Due to the fact that anyone can use the identity (or lack thereof) at any time and for any reason, past actions/speech tied to the identity (Anonymous) cannot be reliably (or logically) used to predict future actions/speech of the identity. So the statement "Anon has a better record of telling the truth" has no real meaning because Anonymous can encompass everyone, no one, and all of the points in-between (depending on the context). The person who used the identity yesterday and happened to be truthful tells you nothing about truthfulness of the person who is using the identity today.
The cell phone location, by itself, instills no doubt whatsoever in my mind because it proves nothing by itself.
As a single juror okay this might not instill any doubt for you but you can't speak for the other 11.
And your statement of "no matter how unlikely" is untrue. That's why the standard is "beyond a reasonable doubt"
I said at the beginning of my statement that "if there is just one, reasonably believable, alternate version..." so I already covered that the doubt is "Reasonable". A version of events can be unlikely and still be reasonably supported by the evidence the two are not mutually exclusive.
The defense does not have to prove anything. They only need to instill reasonable doubt. The cell phone location by itself does instill doubt - I'll concede that the amount of doubt depends on the other evidence. But if there is just one, reasonably believable, alternate version of events that does not incriminate the defendant, and is not disproved by the evidence, no matter how unlikely, the jury must return a verdict of not guilty.
Congress is within its right to pass laws criminalizing such speech.
No, they are not. They are within their right to pass laws criminalizing such attempts at causing harm.. The freedom of the person to speak their mind is absolute but if they do so with intent to cause harm, they can be found liable for the harm they caused, not the words they spoke.
It is not illegal to scream "Fire!" in a crowded movie theater. It is illegal to start a panic by falsely screaming "Fire!" in a crowded theater.
No, it is not. The current testing/matching methods put the chance of a duplicate at (I believe) 1 in 1000 - that's a whole lot of duplicates if you have a country or state-wide database. DNA is amazing tool in identifying a single person out of a small amount of suspects with the means and motive to commit the crime, say 1 out of 10 or 20. The probability of finding a duplicate in that small sample-pool is very small. This is why any attempt at building a comprehensive DNA database should be fought vigorously.
Slashdot Mirror
(Likely) insufficient tax revenue to meet expenses. A system designed to accelerate wealth gaps and minimise class mobility.
Likely, based on what? With a flat-tax and no deductions (save the one I mentioned) I believe the government would end up with more revenue than it does now. It would also become (due to the single deduction that helps low-income people more) a progressive-tax as the more you make the higher your effective tax rate goes (until it flat-lines at the flat tax rate). Not to mention that it would allow most of the IRS (and its expenses) to go away.
What's the remaining problem after that? Once you've subtracted out the minimum living wage from being taxed, how can taxes on any income above that be "crippling"?
Then include a single deduction (the minimum living wage deduction) that applies to everyone. the first 10-20K is untaxable. Solved.
Well that's you. I have been building my own for just as long and I see things quite differently. My method has always been (and remains) to buy the best motherboard you can find and then buy the CPU that has the best price point you can afford today. This way, in a couple of months when the $1000 dream chip you were drooling over comes down to a reasonable price you can grab it and do a simple swap. I usually got 2 CPU's out of every motherboard this way and my machines were functional for almost twice as long as other people's.
Lets buy five 2000 hour 100 watt old fashioned filament bulbs for $5
Lets buy the equivalent number of lumens in a 10000 hour LED I donno 8 watts or something for $50.
Um, no, you can't do the math like that. You started with 5, 100-watt incandescent bulbs which can be used to light 5 different areas with 100-watts of light. You then compared it to a single LED bulb capable of producing the equivalent amount of light as a single incandescent but can on used to light a single area. To be fair you must account for the remaining 4 lights which is another $200 making the comparison $105 vs $298 (including $8 per additional LED for energy). This is why lower income folks get screwed, $50/light is hugely expensive compared to $0.50/light. This doesn't even factor in the fact that bulbs break before their usable life is over for other reasons.
Be careful with that - in countries which are NOT aware of this intentional misuse of the English language (i.e. pretty much anywhere outside the US), people WILL misunderstand the speaker and actually think "oh, he says he COULD care less, that means he DOES care at least a little bit". Which means that it is bad to use "could care less" when posting something on a website which is read by people from all over the world.
The expression is ambiguous no matter which way you say it, if you were to analyze it in a rational fashion. Either the person could care less - meaning they care a certain amount but could care less than that and it would not matter - or - the person couldn't care less - meaning they care a certain amount but could not care less either because it is not possible to care less or that it is possible but the person will not do it. It's a bad phrase to start with and people arguing about doesn't make it any better. We should just agree that what is meant by it is that the subject does not matter to the speaker and call it a day.
This is where prior art is all about, and while it would be great if someone could legitimately claim to have predated Apple's use of the technique, for the nonce it's likely that Apple is correct in claiming that they invented the feature (regardless of the ethical merits of the patent) .
The point is "obvious to one skilled in the art" so that the "invention" is novel. Being able to code a scroll-page so that it bounces after you hit the bottom is pretty obvious to any programmer which "should" deny this "invention" any patent protection whatsoever. Ideas are not patentable, inventions are and this is not an invention. Being the first to think of the concept or idea does not make the concept or idea novel. It only does so if the implementation itself would be non-obvious to anyone skilled in the art which it is not.
Well you can give this a quick read.
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/CapitalGainsTaxes.html
Relevant passage here:
For example, after the 1981 capital gains tax was cut from 28 to 20 percent, real (all figures in this section are 2004 dollars) federal capital gains tax revenues leapt from $29.4 billion in 1981 to $36.6 billion by 1983—a 24 percent increase. After the capital gains tax was cut in 1997, the receipts from capital gains taxes rose from $66.9 billion in 1996 to $114.7 billion by 1999, an increase of more than 71 percent.
FBI could just have paid Blue Toad to take the blame
That's assuming that Blue Toad isn't just a front-company for the FBI to start with. No payment necessary and is possibly how the FBI got the list in the first place. i.e. The normal way, through an undercover operation, disguised as an iPhone developer company.
As another poster put it: there's no point trying to 'incentivise' investment.
And historically it would appear you are both wrong. In the last two reductions of the Capital Gains Tax, it resulted in more revenue for the government ergo it not only 'incentivized' but actually caused more investment that was otherwise not happening in the higher-taxed world.
As another poster put it: there's no point trying to 'incentivise' investment. If I don't invest it I'll put it into a bank
Maybe you would, I wouldn't. I would find another avenue with a better ROI. Last resort is to convert into gold so inflation isn't robbing you blind.
Choosing a nice slice of cherry pie over a shit sandwich is also being "discriminating".
Yes, but neither the cherry pie nor the shit sandwich have a right to treated fairly and equally. The same could not be said of people.
Why? I can charge you different prices for cash/credit. So I already know you're willing to pay different prices for the same goods.
Not according to your merchant agreement. You can offer discounts for cash but can't charge more for credit. They are not willing to pay more for the goods, they are willing to pay more for the convenience of credit. Different story.
Now if you come in all Mr. T wearing 99 gold chains and a T-shirt that says "I ALWAYS NEED MORE BLANG" and I have a gold chain shop, there's a good chance that my prices are going up to what I think you'll pay.
If I come into your gold shop and there are no prices posted, I'm walking out - period. Now, I'm not arguing about haggling - anyone can try and negotiate for a lower price than what's posted and as a merchant it's your right to choose to engage in it or not but in that scenario everyone starts with the same base price (max price).
Hell, if I had a store and could identify people willing to pay more for my goods, I'd charge them more too.
And I wouldn't be surprised if you got sued for doing so. Discrimination is bad, mmkay.
Not defending anyone that uses this pricing scheme, but what makes people think they have a right to something at any price?
They don't - you just made that up. They think they have a right not to be discriminated against and I happen to agree. If a purple-man (not to start a race war) walked into your store you can't charge him double what you charged the blue-man that just left your store. You can adjust the price for everybody if the demand/supply equation changes but not for a single person or class of people.
Still there? I mean, are you really going to take your 70+% and go home?
Yes. I'd really find another game to play that offered a better return. Let's be honest - most investments don't double your money. The touted good return figure is 12%. At 15% rate, I get 10.2% return on my money and the government gets the remaining 1.8% . At 30-39 (lets say 35%), I get 7.8% and the government gets 4.2% all with the risk of losing my (already taxed) principle investment. So, yes, I'd move my money to where I could get a better return - say investment in foreign companies overseas where the tax rate is less.
But you seem to think we should tax people on based on risk.
That's not what I said. I said risk should be taken into consideration along with the fact that increased investment helps everybody and is necessary for the economy. The more return an individual gets, the more he is likely to re-invest them. Having more of the money siphoned to the government does not grow the economy, it shrinks it. Government cannot grow the economy, only business can. Government can be of assistance (as well as be a hindrance) but it is not in the driver's seat and not in complete control.
My understanding is that it's this $800K that gets the 15% rate, and the original $200K is not taxed again.
This is correct. However, the investment involved risk, and is good/necessary for the economy to function. This is why investments get a lower tax-rate, to encourage investment, which encourages business which encourages hiring which drives the economy. It's harder to convince someone to take on investment risk if the government limits the up-side. Look at it this way, you invest 200K and you could either lose it all, break even or make a return on the investment - currently if you get a return on the investment, you only get 85% of it and the government takes 15% - but you took all of the risk (there is no risk in working a regular job (W-2 income), you are guaranteed to make your wage). If the government took 30-39% of the return, and still assumed none of the risk, where is the incentive to invest? It's really penny-wise and pound-foolish to consider taxing investment returns like regular income.
Yeah, I'm clueless in the sense that I have no clue what point you are trying to make. This happens to reflect more on you than it does on me. My arguments are at least logical and make sense. Yours seem to be alluding to knowing things in absolute terms which is ridiculous considering the context of the original conversation. Based on your logic, we know nothing because it cannot be proven that we are not just a brain in jar with our sensory inputs being manipulated and fed to us, matrix-style. Sure, that is a useful philosophical concept/argument but it is completely useless in all other facets of life and understanding.
Argued that way, I can accept that as a reasonable conclusion. However, I realize that Anonymous could include that very same TLA, although it is unlikely, or someone who is even more of a pathological liar. While the odds may be in your favor (it's arguable) it is not a slam-dunk.
However, when dealing with Anonymous their actions/speech can not be tied to any single person, organization or group. Due to the fact that anyone can use the identity (or lack thereof) at any time and for any reason, past actions/speech tied to the identity (Anonymous) cannot be reliably (or logically) used to predict future actions/speech of the identity. So the statement "Anon has a better record of telling the truth" has no real meaning because Anonymous can encompass everyone, no one, and all of the points in-between (depending on the context). The person who used the identity yesterday and happened to be truthful tells you nothing about truthfulness of the person who is using the identity today.
Only problem is that Anon has a better record of telling the truth.
A nameless, faceless, identity that anyone can assume at any time, by definition, does not have a record .
The cell phone location, by itself, instills no doubt whatsoever in my mind because it proves nothing by itself.
As a single juror okay this might not instill any doubt for you but you can't speak for the other 11.
And your statement of "no matter how unlikely" is untrue. That's why the standard is "beyond a reasonable doubt"
I said at the beginning of my statement that "if there is just one, reasonably believable, alternate version..." so I already covered that the doubt is "Reasonable". A version of events can be unlikely and still be reasonably supported by the evidence the two are not mutually exclusive.
The defense does not have to prove anything. They only need to instill reasonable doubt. The cell phone location by itself does instill doubt - I'll concede that the amount of doubt depends on the other evidence. But if there is just one, reasonably believable, alternate version of events that does not incriminate the defendant, and is not disproved by the evidence, no matter how unlikely, the jury must return a verdict of not guilty.
Congress is within its right to pass laws criminalizing such speech.
No, they are not. They are within their right to pass laws criminalizing such attempts at causing harm.. The freedom of the person to speak their mind is absolute but if they do so with intent to cause harm, they can be found liable for the harm they caused, not the words they spoke.
It is not illegal to scream "Fire!" in a crowded movie theater. It is illegal to start a panic by falsely screaming "Fire!" in a crowded theater.
DNA is an amazing tool in the crime database.
No, it is not. The current testing/matching methods put the chance of a duplicate at (I believe) 1 in 1000 - that's a whole lot of duplicates if you have a country or state-wide database. DNA is amazing tool in identifying a single person out of a small amount of suspects with the means and motive to commit the crime, say 1 out of 10 or 20. The probability of finding a duplicate in that small sample-pool is very small. This is why any attempt at building a comprehensive DNA database should be fought vigorously.