Did I make it look like they weren't contributing anything? It was simple math and a simple statement. My point is that living on $16k is just a bit more difficult than living on $521k. And if someone pays more, someone else can pay less.

And perhaps you shouldn't regurgitate what you read from a group trying to defeat the measure. Their own data shows that the people that are paying the highest percentages in taxes are the ones that will benefit the most from this measure and make the tax system more progressive.

To put it another way, if you earn $20k, after taxes you have $16k left to live on. If you earn $537k, after taxes you have $521k to live on. (or about 33x as much as the guy earning $20k).

As far as Federal taxes go, the rates are a bit higher for higher income, but when you take into account deductions, the richer you are, the less you pay in general. Their are billion dollar corporations (and probably individuals) that pay nothing in income tax. In my own personal experience, as my income grows, my tax as a percentage of income has decreased because I can deduct more from my income.

The Republican philosophy is: Give all the money to the rich, and they will take care of everything. It hasn't worked, and never has. We are paying the price for that now.

In Washington state, there is no state income tax, so the state taxes come primarily from sales and property taxes, licensing, and business taxes. Everyone pays for these taxes. The less you make, the higher the percentage of your income goes to taxable items, so the tax burden as a percentage of income is much higher.

Do you know where else they get their money? From customers and lower startup costs. Both of which this law will help. So instead of waiting for Jeff Bezos to give them money, businesses can do it on their own.

This new law is an attempt to fix that. The richest in the state have already managed a vote for the poorest to support them. The richest in the state currently pay less than 3% in taxes, while the poorest are paying over 17%. This law will make it 12% for the rich, and around 14% for the poor.

Washington has the most regressive tax in the nation. The poorest are paying the majority of the taxes. The poorest pay 17% of their income to taxes, while the richest pay less than 3%. This law will even it out a bit, but the poorest will still be paying more as a percentage than the richest.

The people most likely to put the money back into the economy are the people that need it most. The poorest are most likely to spend whatever money they have at local businesses. The richest people don't need to spend the money, and are very likely to spend it outside the state anyway. Remember, this is a state tax. We want the money to be spent here, to stimulate the state economy. Buying stocks with the money in some foreign company (something the rich might do) does nothing for the state. Buying a beer at the local pub does.

This Republican idea of giving all the money to the rich and they will take care of everything is complete bullshit. It doesn't work.

In Washington state currently, people earning less than $20,000 pay 17.3% in taxes. People earning over $537,000 pay just 2.9%

Even with this law, the richest will be paying less as a percentage of income than the poorest in the state.

This study (pdf) gives the numbers.

PayPal doesn't agree. I sold something on EBay, and six months later PayPal charged me for the full amount. They told me the credit card that the buyer used through PayPal was stolen, so I had to pay for it. So I lost the item I sold, plus all the money I received for it, and there was nothing I could do about it. There was no way for me to validate the credit card myself because I was never given the credit card. That was PayPal's job, but I'm the one that lost, not them. PayPal even had the buyer's name, and the comments the buyer made that said they received the item and were completely satisfied. They screwed me over so I deleted my PayPal account and will never use them again.

PayPal should have been responsible because they accepted the credit card. All I accepted was the PayPal payment.

The travel company I work for just deleted Fucking, Austria from their database because they figured it was better not to offend someone than to allow them to travel there. The only way someone would have actually seen the name is if they searched for it, so it seems rather stupid, but I could imagine some complaining that they searched for Fucking and found what they searched for.

With a ship captain named Preparation H

Maybe ET thinks it's better to send messages through chemical patterns rather than electro-magnetic patterns.

Because probably the majority of people that are using IE are doing so because they are afraid to install something different, and they think that the Microsoft product must be the best. They also don't really understand what a plugin is, and if prompted to install it, they will just click OK and won't know what they did.

Bubbles are not unknown to anyone that is even casually paying attention. Everyone knew the dot-com bubble and the real estate bubble were going to pop at some point. The big question is when. Unfortunately, most armchair investors get to the party late and stay too long.

Get to the party early, and when you see the alcohol getting low, get out before everyone else realizes it, or you'll be left to help clean up.

There is also the theory of syphilis cycles, that have little to do with a change in sexual behaviors by the masses:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6935-syphilis-cycles-not-driven-by-risky-sex.html