I live in California, but stayed in hotels in several other states in the last couple of weeks... 14% occupancy tax does seem high, but this is San Francisco, they love taxes up there...

Dallas = Room + 2% DTPID Fee + 7.1% City Tax + 6.1% State Tax
NYC = Room + Sales Tax 8.875% + Occupancy Tax 5.875% + Room Tax $2.00 + Room Unit Tax $1.55
Boston = Room + State Tax 5.7% + City Tax 6% + CCF Tax 2.75%
Philadelphia = Room + Lodging Tax 8.5% + Sales Tax 8%


In Europe they are much more civilized about it -- they just toss in some huge VAT tax (like 20%) and may or may not mention that it is "included" (how thoughtful of them.) In some places there are still more taxes - in Dublin Ireland, my hotel bill had the room fee, with VAT included, but also added "other local taxes and fees" amounting to 9.25% of that...

In general, the observation that taxing visitors is popular is accurate, and accelerating, it seems.

Yes, and most cases such services are paid through property taxes. If the company owns the plant and its grounds, they pay substantial property taxes. If they lease the property, the property's owner does (and passes those costs along in the lease).

We're not talking about property taxes, we're talking about income taxes.

Unfalsifiable in fact does not mean false. It also does not mean true. Unfalsifiable does mean unprovable and nonfactual. You can't have a fact unless it's falsifiable. That's part of the definition of a fact: even if it's true there's the possibility to attempt to show it is false.

Science is concerned with hypotheses (testable statements) and repeatable observations (empirical facts). If you can't test it repeatedly and observe it repeatedly then it's not science.

There's a big difference between "not scientific" and "anti-scientific".

You can disingenuously try to put whatever words you like into my mouth to build whatever strawman you like. I'm just tired of hearing the religious anti-science crowd and the science-minded folks baiting and presenting meaningless arguments back and forth. If someone's worldview is completely inconsistent with someone else's, that's no reason for them to try to make idiotic cross-boundary arguments adding noise to public fora.

When those 3000 dudes come home, and go back through the major US airports, back to their families distributed across the country, and THEN spread the disease, it's going to be awesome.

Never wasting a good crisis, the President and administration will use this as an opportunity for massive federalization of health care and private sectore business.

As a RHEL server admin, the only thing I see systemd adding is complexity. Do a fresh install and compare it to RHEL5 or 6, and you have way more stuff running, new start/stop methods for init scripts, weird NTP replacements, and a bunch of stuff that you don't need. Then you go and install your app, or something like Postfix (because you're building a mail server). Why do you need parallel boot? udev hotpluggery? a "logind" process?

Unfortunately many people have never learned to deal with cognitive dissonance very well. There have been great scientists who believed one thing as religious truth and who supported the objective evidence within a scientific model at the same time.

Allegory, fable, parable, subjective experience, and unobservable conjecture about spirits and deities is not anti-science or counter to science. The problem is when people try to conflate their by definition subjective, unobservable, untestable beliefs with what by definition must be objective, observable, and testable.

Religion and theology are informed by a wholly different part of philosophy than is science. Science assumes an acceptance of objectivism, which is anathema to most religions (in fact any religion with a supernatural explanation for anything). It's no wonder they are incompatible.

If someone wants to have faith in something, I have no issue with that. If they want everything proven to them, I have no problem with that. If they want to separate one form the other, I even have no problem with that. If, however, they want to bash science because it's not in accords with their scary invisible, inaudible, uncommunicative, unobservable supreme being in another existence then they need to step back and consider that their religion is not at all even germane to the discussion of science.

What you are suggesting is only possible after a second, much larger federal grant is secured.

"Omg, we've identified this potentially huge problem that we're going to spread FUD about. We need the taxpayer to give us MOAR MONEEZ to study it further, or WES ALLSA GONNA DIESA!"

That isn't really true. You have to pay for xbox live even if you don't use any Microsoft servers. Even if you play on a third-party developer's server, a community server, or play peer-to-peer, you still have to pay Microsoft. It's effectively an Internet tax.

I'm Just Some Guy. And yes, I'd be furious if I gave my kids a CD and they whined as petulantly as half the posts I've been reading here and on Twitter. It's OK not to like any particular band, but I lack an understanding of the amount of entitlement required to rant about someone receiving a free gift that they have every ability to ignore./p?

Right. Just the other day the Motley Fool published effective tax rates. That takes into account not just federal taxes but aveerage state/provincial tales and other tax-related burdens that actually get paid in real life by actual companies doing actual business in all the countries they list. The effective rate for businesses in the US is 40%. The second highest, behind only the UAE.

The politics of tech are legitimate topics for discussion on slashdot. Green energy is all about technology, and in the case of Germany's forced green energy policy, the politics got ahead of the technology. That's clear from both articles. If you think not, then cite specific examples of your claims. Don't just have your hands about.

So, desktop apps. What's the difference now?

The correct analogy would be: do you like tofu? No? Well, here's a coupon for free tofu anyway. If you like it, pick it up at the store. If not, don't. Either way. Free tofu.

Why upgrade, Windows7 does everything I need.

Right. Usually, that's because:

1) We want people to risk their money making investments to start and grow businesses. That creates economic activity, which is taxed.

2) If the person risking their money on such an investment loses it (as most do - most new businesses fail), they do NOT get to write that loss off on their own income taxes. It's just gone, goodbye. 3) The lower rates only apply if you let the investment site for a good long time. Those who throw money in and yank it back up pay a much higher rate.

Employees ARE people who profit from a business. In fact employees account for the vast majority of the outbound cash that most businesses spend. And its taxed at normal payroll rates. And the taxes levied on the money those people are getting out of the company are a big part of what pays for the public infrastructure that they (as the people who are making money daily in the business) use. Why do you think that city, county, state, and federal programs to encourage business presence and growth aren't hesitant to wave, for some period of time, taxes charged directly to the business? It's because the net result of establishing that business in place and keeping it there is MUCH MORE TAX REVENUE - from all of the other activity and employment that results.