Another problem many have with a 'progressive' tax system is the belief that once you hit magic thresholds like $50,000 for example, you end up paying MORE in taxes then if you had earned 1 dollar less at $49,999.
This is flat out FALSE.
The way it works is once you hit $50,000 the rest of the dollars you earned are taxed at the $50,000+ tax rate. The first $50,000 you made are taxed under a different tax bracket. The term Effective Tax Rate refers to the average tax you pay when you average out the taxes you paid in each of these brackets together. So for example if your first $25,000 was taxed at a 10% rate, and your second $25,000 was taxed at a 20% rate, you paid a 15% effective tax rate.
A revenue neutral flat tax (as in no adjustment to how many dollars the government collects in taxes overall) would RAISE taxes on like 80% of the tax payers, while heavily benefiting the wealthy. I'm not just pulling this out of my ass, experts have done the math on this repeatedly over the years whenever politicians (often presidential candidates) advocate for this idea.
I'm sure robbery and home break-ins will also become a lot more common in China thanks to this.
There was a story (that Techdirt reported on I believe) where facial recognition thought that 36 then current members of congress (out of 435) were matches with criminals already sitting behind bars. That's an 8% failure rate, which is scary high for a lock on your door.
Think of the private prisons! Georgia has to keep arresting lots of people to keep them filled at over 90% their occupancy level or else they'll owe them over ten million dollars in penalties!
We can't just admit that there's not enough crime to fill those prisons and stop signing such bad deals with the private prison owners! We've got to create more criminals instead!
So many obvious problems with all of these things:
Discussing any litigation making its way through the nation's courts.
So no discussing current events then huh.
Introducing "controversial issues" not related to the course being taught
Again a 'no current events' rule, but this one seems especially designed to target stuff like police officers misbehaving and murdering unarmed black people, because it offends the author that people want police officers held accountable for murder.
Endorsing any activity that "hampers or impedes lawful access of military recruiters to the campus"
So no bad mouthing the military in other words when discussing history, because that's literally the only way a teacher could hinder it in the class room.
Endorsing or engaging in any activity that "hampers or impedes the actions" of law enforcement
Again a no bad mouthing the police when they do something wrong and deserve to be called out on it.
"Singling out" one racial group as "being responsible" for the suffering of another race
That's nothing, I hear that 100% of Terrorists eat food they bought at grocery stores. - Signed "Somebody definitely not affiliated with the restaurant industry who definitely isn't trying to force you to eat out 3 times a day".
Well sure, of course that's a good idea! I mean we all know Ford and GM pay for all the roads and bridges in rural areas, so why not do the same thing with the Internet?
-Gets whispered into the ear-
Oh... so we don't do that you're saying?
Well still, we hold Ford and GM accountable when people use their automobiles to commit crimes like smuggling drugs or kidnapping sex victims! It works great there, so we should do the same to the Internet!
-Gets more frantic whispering into the ear-
Oh... so we don't do that either?
Hmm... it's almost as if Telecomms want to treat Internet companies differently then any other industry out of pure greed...
Well we've got to start somewhere. Might as well start with automobile manufacturers. I hear lots of criminals smuggle illegal goods with them. I also hear that terrorists use automobiles, they should be doing more to prevent terrorists from buying and using their products!
Or maybe we can let them pass this horrible bill, and wait for someone in the EU to inevitably report all of Donald Trump's tweets as 'terrorist content' to automatically take it down to show how bad the system is, and watch Trump go berserk on the EU and create an international incident.
Seriously, I 100% expect this to happen if the EU passes this as is.
They also need to public hate speech under their logic. Which essentially means platforms can't do anything about users who decide to harass other people with their platform with hate speech against the 'right' groups who a bunch of other people hate.
Some places in Europe, including France I believe, once escalated the punishment for copyright infringement up to **DEATH**, that's right a death sentence for infringement. Much of it was done to 'protect' people who the king granted rights to on certain fabric designs.
The threat of death failed to deter anyone. Literally everyone knew someone who had been murdered for copyright infringement before the laws were changed.
Which isn't too surprising considering how much infringement can easily be accidental, especially in those days long before the Internet. Even today there's no giant database of every single copyright on the planet that you can check to verify if you're infringing or not. Does that not seem like a problem to you with harsh penalties for violating such a copyright?
Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if some big tech companies would just say "screw it, we aren't putting our users & employees at risk" and just voluntarily pulled out of Australia.
Australia's economy is simply not that big, and not that many people live there. They don't have the clot or money that the entire EU had to effectively enforce GDPR on the planet.
Then, take it a step further. White House officials have told the press that they believe Meng "could be used as leverage with China in trade talks," and you realize this has fuck all to do with Iranian sanctions.
It's even worse then that. A statement like that from officials working for the head of the US government makes it look like the charges are likely baseless, and were just made up for pure political reasons, not actual law breaking.
As in the kind of thing a dictatorship does. The kind of thing we've accused China's government of doing in their 'corruption crackdowns', where enemies of China's presidents are prosecuted, but his allies get away with all sorts of corruption. Because it's not really about fighting corruption, it's about hurting enemies of the president of China.
Also, I'm not lawyer, but I think it sounds like complete BS that shouldn't be enforceable under sensible laws to say that a foreign business has to follow trade sanctions that were implemented by a second foreign government that they do business in.
If the US doesn't like it that they violate US trade sanctions because they aren't sanctioned by China then they can bar the foreign company from selling their products in the US until they abide by said sanctions.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Another problem many have with a 'progressive' tax system is the belief that once you hit magic thresholds like $50,000 for example, you end up paying MORE in taxes then if you had earned 1 dollar less at $49,999.
This is flat out FALSE.
The way it works is once you hit $50,000 the rest of the dollars you earned are taxed at the $50,000+ tax rate. The first $50,000 you made are taxed under a different tax bracket. The term Effective Tax Rate refers to the average tax you pay when you average out the taxes you paid in each of these brackets together. So for example if your first $25,000 was taxed at a 10% rate, and your second $25,000 was taxed at a 20% rate, you paid a 15% effective tax rate.
Re:
A revenue neutral flat tax (as in no adjustment to how many dollars the government collects in taxes overall) would RAISE taxes on like 80% of the tax payers, while heavily benefiting the wealthy. I'm not just pulling this out of my ass, experts have done the math on this repeatedly over the years whenever politicians (often presidential candidates) advocate for this idea.
So yeah, not going to happen, ever.
Re: If Musk...
There's simply no way around the laws of physics to fix that problem.
(untitled comment)
There was a story (that Techdirt reported on I believe) where facial recognition thought that 36 then current members of congress (out of 435) were matches with criminals already sitting behind bars. That's an 8% failure rate, which is scary high for a lock on your door.
Re: Anyone
No of course we can't let them off the hook!
Think of the private prisons! Georgia has to keep arresting lots of people to keep them filled at over 90% their occupancy level or else they'll owe them over ten million dollars in penalties!
We can't just admit that there's not enough crime to fill those prisons and stop signing such bad deals with the private prison owners! We've got to create more criminals instead!
Re:
(untitled comment)
So many obvious problems with all of these things:
So no discussing current events then huh.
Again a 'no current events' rule, but this one seems especially designed to target stuff like police officers misbehaving and murdering unarmed black people, because it offends the author that people want police officers held accountable for murder.
So no bad mouthing the military in other words when discussing history, because that's literally the only way a teacher could hinder it in the class room.
Again a no bad mouthing the police when they do something wrong and deserve to be called out on it.
Censoring of history.
Re: Re: Look, he was chairman
Re:
Re:
(untitled comment)
Well sure, of course that's a good idea! I mean we all know Ford and GM pay for all the roads and bridges in rural areas, so why not do the same thing with the Internet?
-Gets whispered into the ear-
Oh... so we don't do that you're saying?
Well still, we hold Ford and GM accountable when people use their automobiles to commit crimes like smuggling drugs or kidnapping sex victims! It works great there, so we should do the same to the Internet!
-Gets more frantic whispering into the ear-
Oh... so we don't do that either?
Hmm... it's almost as if Telecomms want to treat Internet companies differently then any other industry out of pure greed...
Re: Re:
Re:
Seriously, I 100% expect this to happen if the EU passes this as is.
Re: Re:
Re:
Some places in Europe, including France I believe, once escalated the punishment for copyright infringement up to **DEATH**, that's right a death sentence for infringement. Much of it was done to 'protect' people who the king granted rights to on certain fabric designs.
The threat of death failed to deter anyone. Literally everyone knew someone who had been murdered for copyright infringement before the laws were changed.
Which isn't too surprising considering how much infringement can easily be accidental, especially in those days long before the Internet. Even today there's no giant database of every single copyright on the planet that you can check to verify if you're infringing or not. Does that not seem like a problem to you with harsh penalties for violating such a copyright?
Re: EU Fools
There's a ton of people, many in EU, who's channels I watch that could literally lose their job and livelihood under this.
Re: Now we get to see if it wrecks the economy.
Australia's economy is simply not that big, and not that many people live there. They don't have the clot or money that the entire EU had to effectively enforce GDPR on the planet.
(untitled comment)
What are the chances it fails miserably at that one to? Chances are pretty good in the end I'd say.
Are the charges even legitimate, or just trumped up lies?
It's even worse then that. A statement like that from officials working for the head of the US government makes it look like the charges are likely baseless, and were just made up for pure political reasons, not actual law breaking.
As in the kind of thing a dictatorship does. The kind of thing we've accused China's government of doing in their 'corruption crackdowns', where enemies of China's presidents are prosecuted, but his allies get away with all sorts of corruption. Because it's not really about fighting corruption, it's about hurting enemies of the president of China.
Also, I'm not lawyer, but I think it sounds like complete BS that shouldn't be enforceable under sensible laws to say that a foreign business has to follow trade sanctions that were implemented by a second foreign government that they do business in.
If the US doesn't like it that they violate US trade sanctions because they aren't sanctioned by China then they can bar the foreign company from selling their products in the US until they abide by said sanctions.
Re:
Congrats AT&T, I now press 2 buttons instead of 1 to pause my shows, and I'm still not watching any of your ads.
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