Ask him if he'd be willing to take some consultant work on the side, or maybe throw him a good goodby party. Simple things mean a lot.

Which I think is the heart of the complaint here.

I think the real problem is not the number of people getting a generalized liberal arts degree vs the number of people getting a STEM degree.

Both of those degrees are expensive and worth it.

Nor is it the number of people getting what I will call the specialized non-stem degree.

Prime examples of this would be "Hotel Management", "Sociology", "Graphic Designer", "illustrator", "Teaching."

Note, this is not an insult to those fields. The world needs people with those skills. But if you want to be a teacher, get a BA in English or Mathematics, or Biology, not in teaching. My sister has a Masters in sociology - a well worth it. But as a College level degree, it is worthless. You can't get a job as a Sociology Major, nor does it help you get into a Masters Program more than a degree in Psychology. No on goes looking for a painter with an Illustrator degree, they look for a painter that paints WELL.

Some of these 4 year degrees would do much better as a 2 year program. Others should simply get a liberal arts 4 years BA and then get work or go into a post-grad study. Some should never go to college at all, better to get some real life experience.

The problem is that certain job fields have NO business getting a 4 year degree in that subject. There is reason to learn how to lift off an airplane if you don't also learn how to land it. Four year programs for certain things make no sense.

The problem is people have been caught up in the idea that a College education is the be all and end all. So we took a bunch of regular jobs that don't need or want a BA and created BA's for them. Some of them need Post-Grad work, others could get by on a couple of Community College courses, rather than spending the huge amount of money for a BA.

Are you really stupid enough to think everything you just described doesn't happen now?

Normal people have mortgages. If they can't afford the house, they have to sell it. That's the way the world works.

As for on top of, I did not say that. I want a federal property tax to replace existing federal taxes.

As for how much tax 5% property tax (on everything excluding IRAs and 1 home of upto 200K value) per year would allow us to totally remove all federal income tax

If you make it 2% that only applied if you owned more than 1 million dollars, we could lower the top tax rate to 30% and keep it there.

The fact that you thought 10% or more indicates your knowledge of the math and economics involved is seriously flawed. Frankly, you don't know enough to have this argument.

Most things are fairly easy to determine their worth. But for anything you have issues with determining, you can write whatever you want in there - but the government has the right to offer you 15% more and you are required to sell it for that 'profit'.

If you refuse, you can give a new number - and pay back taxes for the past 5 years.

Wow, what an idiot. We already have property taxes on homes - but I don't see people moving out of the high tax ares. In fact they move to them because they offer good services. Similarly, we already tax the homes of old people, so what kind of idiot thinks that would suddenly put old people out of their home?

Yes, my method would shift the tax burden to the wealthy a SMALL amount, but not by much. Current estimates have the US wealth divided as such:

0-50 percentile are poor. They own nothing and pay no income tax. nothing changes for the poor

51-90 are middle class, own 1/3 of the property and pay about 1/3 of the taxes. Again, nothing changes.

91-99 are upper class, own a bit less than 1/3 of the property but pay a bit more than 1/3 of the taxes. They do better with this system.

1 % are truly wealthy, own more than 1/3 of the property but pay a bit less than 1/3 of the taxes (mainly becuase of tax manipulations). They lose their unfair advantage.

My system does not eat the rich, but is simple.

If you pay an annual ownership fee of 5% (excluding IRA and the first home), then you would not have to pay any income tax. The math works out fine. Under those circumstances people still pay for things they need. Cars, clothing, jewelery, etc. But we would stop buying junk we don't need - like a sports car we can't afford. There would be a slight increase in the market for consumables - specifically experiences, and classes.

Your argument makes ZERO sense. If you think that taxing what people own means the state owns it, then taxing what people earn means the state earns it.

Tax does not equal ownership. It is a fee for protection from invasion, pollution, crime, etc.

The more wealth you have, the more you should pay to protect what you own. Taxing income on the other hand makes no sense, why should you pay more because you earn more? Because you might some day eventually own more?

No it doesn't. The only way to get rich is to save. The incentive to save still far exceeds the incentive to spend.

Effectively what this does is make it a bit harder to get rich and STAY rich.

In other words it reduces the gap between the wealthy and the poor,

If you merely keep an IRA as tax free, effectively the middle class starts to save, while the wealthy, particularly the extremely wealthy, start paying their fair share.

The key thing is this is a simple tax structure that soaks the wealthy, the exact opposite of the flat tax that soaks the poor.

What idiot thinks the company doesn't pay the ownership tax? And who said anything about business expenses being deductable? That works when you are trying to calculate your income, it doesn't apply when you are talking about ownership taxes

I the US it's called a property tax. You pay a small % each year. Rather than a lot when you buy

I agree. The rules the CIA etc. use for deciding who is a terrorist and who is not, while self-serving, are definitely a lot better than what the media uses.

Among other things, it means the bombing of the navy ship USS Cole is not a terrorist attack.

Right now it is nearly impossible for a Republican to win the general election.

During the Bush years, the GOP has sidetracked itself with it's own gerrymandering. By pursuing said strategy, they created a bunch of safe districts, allowing only the most extreme, conservative people to get elected. This works extremely well on the local level, but the Constitution of the US prevents them from gerrymandering all the democrats into a a few states.

This forces the majority of the party to kowtow to the extreme right on issues like gay rights and gun control, so it becomes impossible for a truly moderate republican, such as Huntsman to win the nomination.

As such, the Democrats get to decide who runs the country, while the Republicans get to decide the Congress. The Senate and the Governorships are the only real elections up for grabs.

No. You should tax people on what they own, not what they earn or what they consume.

If you tax people on what they earn, people declare certain things as 'not an earning'.

If you tax people on what they consume, than you are screwing over the people that have no money - the elderly, students, sickly people, etc.

If you tax people on what they OWN, then you don't screw over anyone. While similar to a consumption tax, it affects the wealthy more than the poor - it stops them from buying things outside of the tax system, and if you can't pay the taxes on it you shouldn't buy it.

Sometimes the US government is reasonable when it comes to defining terrorism.

The intelligence agencies in particular, are pretty good about insisting that attacking soldiers/"combatants" is not terrorism. The NSA probably insisted that the FBI say it wasn't terrorism.

Note, the reason the Intelligence agencies are good about not falsely claiming terrorism is that they themselves routinely kill people for political reasons and they don't want other people to call them terrorists. After all, you don't want to say that killing a spy is terrorism if you yourself kill spies. So they loudly claim that only killing a civilian makes you a terrorist.

Which won't survive a Presidential Veto. The president has expressed concerns that mirror ours and the FCC.