Also, the intention is clearly to to benefit the Authors and Inventors. NOT publishers. NOT performers. NOT record companies. NOT patent trolls. NOT descendants of the original Author/Inventor.
Actually the intent is not to "benefit the Authors and Inventors" but to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts".
yearly renewal with exponential growth for as long as it is worth it to renew. If a company finds a single song worth billions in tax payment then it's a win for both the company as they've found some great way to profit off it and society as they git a huge drop in the tax bucket.
This type of thing is what I have always supported. Make the first N years free and automatic, and allow people to pay multiple years at a time to keep the book-keeping easier, if the first paid year was $1 and it doubled for each subsequent year, after 20 years the bill is a bit over a million while the first 10 years were only about a thousand bucks. If the "free" period was 7 or 10 years, people would have time enough to decide if it was valuable enough to protect for longer, and the vast majority of stuff would quickly fall into the public domain without hurting people who actually have produced something of extended monetary value. Mickey Mouse type products would generate considerable tax revenue, and a whole lot of stuff would quickly fall into the public domain.
It's not like classical music doesn't have its own skeletons in its closets: Lick my ass, by Mozart nonetheless.
The more you know....
Iran: Never invaded anyone
Because the only place they might consider invading would nuke them into slag.
never used weapons of mass destruction...
Because we've prevented them from getting WMDs or anything else that would allow them to pose a serious threat.
Seriously, most Australians and Brits probably have no idea how pointless it is to bring up stuff like this:
The U.S. has some problems that Australia doesn't have. It's got a lot more racial crimes, it's got a lot more gun-related crimes, but I don't think that is going to drive a whole bunch of ultra-rich Americans out of their country,
What most foreigners consistently get wrong when looking at our crime stats is failing to note that the overwhelming majority of our gun deaths either have a criminal or a suicidal person on the receiving end of the bullet. Since it's illegal in all 50 states and DC to shoot someone over a non-violent offense or even a violent misdemeanor, that almost invariably means that when a criminal is shot it's either by someone who by definition doesn't respect the law (fellow criminal) or someone about to be on the receiving end of a violent felony.
I can't blame them for this misunderstanding. Our gun control lobby is notorious for manipulating stats by doing stuff like putting gangbangers near the age of majority, who are both eligible to be prosecuted as adults and involved in serious crime when killed, as "children" under the death stats. That's about as bad as most countries refusing to count the death of premature babies on their mortality rates and mocking us for our higher mortality rate because we record those as infant deaths.
Your example of being "notorious for manipulating stats" by clasifying people "near" the age of majority as children seems pretty disingenuous. Are these people younger than the age of majority or older? If they are in fact younger than that age and only "eligible to be prosecuted as adults", why would it be "manipulating stats" to clasify them as children? If they are older than the age of majority, and thus presumably not even eligible to be prosucuted as children, why wouldn't you state that?
It is interesting that statistics can be difficult to compare when dealing with things like crime or death stats. It is also interesting how easy it is to dismiss uncomfortable conclusions. I wouldn't say we are being "mocked" by other countries and I doubt very much that anyone is "refusing" to count things - they just do their statistics different (despite our feelings of importance, most countries are too busy worrying about their own troubles to spend much energy over ours). In any case, any careful look at the state of afairs does reveal that we certainly have room for improvement. Our full term mortality rate is higher than it should be.
http://www.livescience.com/479...
"...the U.S. infant mortality rate for babies born at 37 weeks or later (considered "full term") was actually the highest among the 12 countries, and about twice the rates in Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland."
I suspect that you probably misunderstand the feelings of foreigners when thinking about the USA. While you might not care that "the overwhelming majority of our gun deaths either have a criminal or a suicidal person on the receiving end of the bullet", it is at least possible that those foreigners are appalled that we seem to think that it is acceptable that criminals and suicidal people are being killed. It can be seen to speak to the value that our society places on human lives. The USA is exeptional in many ways. Unfortunately not all of those ways are things we shold be proud of.
Because the US is the only country in the world that taxes it's citizens regardless of where they reside
Not completely correct. There is also Eritrea, in the Horn of Africa if you couldn't recall where it was.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Any policy that is only also shared by a single other country has got to be a well thought out one, no?
That's great! As soon as alllllll the richie richers leave, the entiiiiiire USA can be like Detroit! It's gonna be fucking awesome!!
Not a problem. The US and Eritrea are pretty much the only countries in the world that taxes non-resident citizens. Usually I would question any policy only followed by a single other country, but in this situation I can see why a country might like to have such a policy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Giving up your US Citizenship might help your unborn children's tax situation, but might not help yours:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"U.S. citizens who renounce their citizenship are subject under certain circumstances to an expatriation tax, which is meant to extract from the expatriate taxes that would have been paid had they remained a citizen: all property of a covered expatriate is deemed sold for its fair market value on the day before the expatriation date, which usually results in a capital gain, which is taxable income."
The entire point of everyone having a gun is so the GOVERNMENT is not safe - from the people.
Oh give it a fucking rest you American Gun Nut Anonymous Coward. The government has drones, warthogs and TANKS. You really think the Colt 45 you keep under your pillow and caress every night before falling asleep is going to make a difference?
Now go away and watch your VHS copy of Red Dawn again and leave the rest of us in peace.
Have you seen the Iraqi military in action lately?
Saudi Arabia has 200,000 active-duty military personnel, in a country led by old men who consider the middle ages to be a little too progressive for their liking.
Google Maps puts inappropriate weight towards making a route more complicated with short freeway hops
I wouldn't exclusively blame Google for this though.
I travel regularly to the USA on business, and I've used rental GPSes (Garmin / TomTom) as well as Apple and Google services on my phones. They all seem to do this equally - I'm always puzzled why I'm merging on and off in a 1/4 mile....
It is easy to look like victim and bully peoples [sic]
You just quote the parent in your reply and presto problem solved.
I for one look forward to staring face to face at strangers
What in the picture of the config suggests you'll be staring face-to-face?
Try 18 hours Melbourne (aus) to London. Overnight.
Well, when you consider it used to take 3-4 weeks (by ship) this feels like an improvement to me.
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." -- Albert Einstein
