Perhaps I should have finished my coffee before commenting.

The general consensus seems to be that you don't need to speak German to live and work in at least some areas of Germany. Go to a cafe in Berlin and try ordering a latte in German - you'll get a confused look. Or Munich, get in a taxi and say "Auf Flugenhafen Bitte", your American accent will give you away and the driver will reply "Sure, I'll take you to the airport" in perfect English.

The French are very, erm, proud of their language. Speak to them in another language and they'll look down their nose at you. Germans don't seem to mind much, I think any idea of spreading German culture or complaining about immigrants brings up bad memories. Good for them too, you can build a much stronger economy if your population doesn't care about things that simply don't matter.

I actually use PayPal, a lot. I have their debit card, I have their credit card. I'm sure I use the debit card at least a dozen times a month. The first robocall I get, I'm closing out my PayPal account completely. Seriously, PayPal, give your customers an opt-out or be prepared to lose a lot of them. None of my banks robocall me (or, really, call me at all) for any reason, you don't have any excuse.

As I said in another comment, payroll tax on $30K works out to less than $200 per month. Let's say the government phases out payroll tax over 10 years, where's that money going to go? Corporate profits.

As for the other taxes you mentioned:
- Phone bill surcharges
      I have a T-Mobile data plan for my iPad Mini. The sticker price is $30/mo. The bottom line on the bill is... $30. I can make and receive calls with google voice.
- Vehicle registration
    I don't have a car, I do pay $83/mo for unlimited transit in the county, but this is not subject to income tax, and is a lot less than I would pay to park a car. It's also less than the cost of running the system, the rest is made up by other taxes. There are maps of what my city would look like if everyone drove cars, Market street would have had an 8 block long multistory car park. Huge highways would cut apart neighborhoods creating high crime and high poverty areas.
- Property taxes
  My rent is not influenced by property tax. First, property tax is 1.1% of the property value and cannot rise by more than 2% per year. Second, I assure you that rent in San Francisco is determined by the market, not in any way by taxes. If the property taxes were doubled I doubt the rate at which rent is increasing would be affected (it's too high as is).

Now, you might be right if we switch this to say Monroe County, NY. Out there, property taxes are very high, but I still doubt that you would hit $1000 per month total. You would get close though, assuming 4% tax (generous overestimate) rate and a home value of $110,000 you get a raw tax rate of $360/mo. Monroe County is in the top ten for property tax rates, but even there this is an overestimate because of STAR, which reduces the overall property tax.

Bottom line, telling people on $30K they're paying $1000/month in taxes is a lie. In any case, I'd rather people who are struggling have internet access, so that they have:
- Modern communications, making it easier for them to look for jobs and respond to interview requests
- Better access to financial information, so that they're less likely to fall in to pay-day loan scams or high interest credit cards or for-profit "colleges"
- Access to cheaper services, like ordering goods from Amazon instead of buying them at an overpriced convenience store, or online banking, etc.

I did count state and local income tax, and sales tax. Payroll tax (which is paid by the employer) comes out to less than $200, so you haven't broken $800 even if that is included. It shouldn't be included, because lowering payroll tax wouldn't necessarily increase gross pay. Note that there is no local income tax in California.

If you live in CA, alcohol tax appears to be very low, based on the the cheapest prices in stores (1.75L of cheap vodka is less than $15). The tax is by volume, not a percentage of price.

Fuel tax is an even worse example. Retailers charge what the market will bear, not their costs plus a fixed profit margin. Fuel tax is just as "built in" to prices as all other taxes, including corporate income tax paid by retailers. Once you start counting taxes paid by other people, you end up with everyone either paying their entire income in tax or paying no tax at all. For instance, one could easily argue all taxes are really paid by the employer, since they're all "built in" to the salary charged by the employee.

Your math is ridiculous.

Running the math for a single person, living in California on 30K (chosen for relatively high tax rates):
Gross per Month: $2500
Net Pay after tax: $2043

That's less than $500 tax, even if all net pay were then spent on items carrying sales tax, that's less than $200 more. Realistically tax paid per month on 30K would be well under $600.

It's definitely the north pole. If you start at the north pole and walk one mile south you'll be standing on some ice one mile from the pole, if you then walk west you'll actually be walking around a circle (look at lines of latitude, that is East-West lines on a globe near the poles). If you then walk 1 mile north you'll be right back at the north pole.

Took me longer to write the explanation than to figure it out, honestly a fifth grader could figure that out.

We can have attendants at the service stations to pump the gas. If something breaks, the AI can pull over to the side of the road and call for help.

But let's be serious. It doesn't matter whether there's any need for a "driver" in the truck, the Teamsters would demand that a dues paying member be present in each truck.

If the driver is only needed during emergencies, they won't be awake enough to do much when the emergency hits. The same is true for cars as well, after sitting in the car for hours doing nothing you'll zone out. Even a short trip you take every day will get ignored.

Besides, in an emergency the two choices are to brake or to try to turn. In a big rig trying to make a fast turn is probably just going to make the situation worse. A computer can hit the brakes just as well as an unprepared human.

There are many kinds of dystopia. Another example from pop culture would be Zombieland.

Orwell believed that the advancement of technology, combined with government control, would lead to a particularly frightening dystopia. One where the government would use technology (mostly mass surveillance and control of information repositories) to control thought and knowledge. That's why I prefer the technology industry maintain a healthy antagonism with the government. The fact that the (UK) government castrated the inventor of the modern computer and drove him to suicide helps, plus the government's continual attempts to screw over and/or control the technology industry (patents, DMCA, NSA, etc.).

What really worries me is "tech" companies that want to help the government, like Palantir. I'm sure there are others.

They can take action on it the next day, once everyone has had a chance to receive and digest the information, rather than acting in a split-second on instinct and fear (and still being beaten to the punch by a computer).

There's a similar paper here in San Francisco, Street Sheet.

I really hope Google doesn't decide to help them, I've seen their "vendors" chasing and screaming at people right in the middle of the Castro here.

I've also seen others blocking exits from BART escalators (meaning they're either begging or selling newspapers inside the paid area of the station, the first is illegal and the second requires a license. Street Sheet is an organization that just needs to stop existing, they just give homeless people an excuse to scream at people and threaten them.

Disclaimer: I have T-Mobile service, and I'll tell anyone I meet that I'm happy with the service. I don't work for them.

The problem with T-Mobile's policy is that it creates a barrier to market entry. If a new streaming service starts they have to come to T-Mo, hat in hand and ask for zero rating. If T-Mo says no, well, would you use a streaming service that eats your data allotment if you have other choices?

I use Spotify, but when looking at other services I specifically check if they're in T-Mobile's list. If they're not, I tend not to investigate further.

In this case, internet.org includes 8 providers, so I assume rather than being a relatively small part of the mobile market, this group is probably dominant. That means if your service isn't in their list, you'll probably get a lot less traffic. It also likely makes it easier to price real data service as a "premium" product. With internet.org gone there would be a lot more pressure on the mobile carriers to provide affordable data service.

Even if it's completely illegal for the NSA to get the other pieces, they'll try. They'll hack in, or they'll snoop into the lives of everyone with access to find something they can use for blackmail...

Which is why, if this insane policy is enacted, there needs to be another requirement: if the NSA tries to get the other pieces, the director of the NSA gets executed on live TV for treason. So does every official or agent involved in the operation. Same goes for every other government agency.

Really, though. Hearing the NSA complain that they can't access my private data sounds exactly like complaining they can't bug my apartment. If they want to stop the "turrists" they'll have to learn to do it without creating a worldwide police state.

Would you rather have:

A) An electric car with a petrol-powered generator on board to extend the range.

or

B) An electric car with a hydrogen fuel cell to extend the range.

If you're concerned that there are loopholes in the green laws, get the laws changed, rather than banning technologies because they create a loophole. That's like banning the internet because you might download copyrighted materials.

Also, I have yet to see a hydrogen powered car that isn't an electric car.

You want to talk about physics problems? Tell me how you move 40 killowatt-hours of electricity in less than 10 minutes safely and efficiently. We can't replace poison-belching petrol vehicles until we have something that can make long trips, go periods of time without a charging station, etc. My apartment complex, built in 2013, in San Francisco no less, doesn't have a single EV charging station in its underground parking lot. How do you expect the millions of us who live in apartments to charge these batteries you speak of?

A car that solves 95% of the problem doesn't get rid of petrol cars. Why? Because families still know they'll need to drive their kid to summer camp. Or they'll want to drive for vacation. My family used to drive 500 miles each way every Christmas. We once drove from NY to Florida and back.

If electric cars really can solve 95% of the problem, the efficiency of the backup is irrelevant. If 95% of the time you/re running at 80% efficiency (battery charged by grid) and 5% of the time you're running at 20% efficiency (hydrogen), your overall efficiency is 77%. That's a hell of a lot better than a gas-powered car.