There is no such thing as an idiot proof flat tax.

Businesses by their nature have very complicated taxes. We'll let them write off a $45,000 truck to deliver product but not a $45,000 mercedes (unless you are in the limo business in which case, you might be able to after all).

Wealthy people, by their nature, have very complicated taxes. Is this a business trip or a holiday? Is this a business lunch or a personal lunch?

We can reduce the loopholes (temporarily) but corporate bought representatives will put them right back in. The flat tax by it's nature is either regressive OR has a massive deduction for everyone which means many of the poorest won't be paying taxes (just like now).

Each share of the national spending last year was $10,000 for every baby, child, senior, and working person. It's about $20,000 if you restrict it to adults who have earnings. That means- unless people can earn well over $20,000 there is not point in working under a totally flat tax. Which means it must be progressive (you have to take money from those who have money to pay).

AND it ignores state and local taxes which are currently higher on the poor than the middle class and higher on the middle class than on the wealthy in every single state. In some states, it's 12.9% for the poorest but under 1% for the wealthiest.

It's pretty simple. Do you want to vote for corporate sock puppet #1 or #2?

But the republican sock puppets are very much against my self interest. The party has drifted a long way from when I voted for three republican presidents in a row.

While the right calls Obama a socialist, he's really a capitalist corporate servant.

To be fair, the system has been so rigged at this point, that unless you are an independently wealthy socialist, you are going to have to sell out to capitalistic corporate interests to be elected.

And that's why we vote. To come to a democratic, collective decision.

And each of us tolerates the decisions we were in the minority on.

I don't like subsidizing sports stadiums but they got 51% of the vote.

I voted republican for Reagan and Bush Sr. and then the republicans went bat shit crazy (measurably so on 528.com) with reagan republicans having a '32" conservative ranking while Ted Cruz has a over 60 ( I think it's "68"). Democrats have stayed about the same in the 20's.

So now, I vote democratic. I don't like all they stand for but no way I'm voting for the extreme right wing conservative party the republicans have become. But... if 51% of the country elects a republican candidate then I'll tolerate it for 4 years because that's the collective decision of our democratic republic.

Aye, and if you count the two trillion dollars we spent to protect oil fields, the subsidies are much higher than people realize for oil.

Imagine ... if we didn't do that. And oil went to $300 a barrel. We would have automatically gone to less expensive cars, solar would have surged into demand along with other alternative energies. We might have even worked on smaller, safer self contained- no human intervention nuclear power.

But since we engage in massive subsidies for sports stadiums, oil companies, banking companies-- I think the benefit (much lower cost solar panels) of subsidizing the early expensive iterations of solar panels will be a good bang for the buck. And reduce our need to spend two trillion dollars again in the future.

Things are so much better since we cut taxes for the wealthy.

The infrastructure is crumbling and college tuition which was free or nearly free now costs more than a luxury car at state universities.

We should have more of this dog eat dog stuff until we can share the glorious french experience of 1789 to 1799.

math error... $4200 for the three cars or $600 per person vs $1400 for the single driver.

They wandered off for a while but...They are putting out a huge number of science fiction and fantasy series.

I hope folks watch
Ascension
Defiance
Killjoys
12 Monkeys
Bitten
Dark Matter
Continuum (returns fall)
Haven (returns fall)
Helix (returns fall)
Z-nation (September)
Childhood's End (December)
Lost Girl (2016)

Not SciFi but related...
Face Off

Plus various one off movies... and of course Sharknado.

Hmm. on second thought... ;-)

http://www.syfy.com/shows

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Can't see anything good coming from this merger.
Cable and internet rates are insane right now.

700 watt Microwave ovens cost $300 twenty years ago.

You can get one for $70 now. you can get a 1200 watt Microwave oven.

Somethings do seem to be going up (like cable TV for now- it's insane).

But where you have competition between different companies, they do sell on price.

Customers have price options all the time.

But you could see how a group of 7 people might share three cars for a total cost of $77,000 dollars or $11,000 each.
Meanwhile, you would be paying $25,000 for the car.

Now you were not specifying a manual car but to extend it further- in 20 years manual cars might be double the annual insurance cost (especially for the very young and the very old). So $1400 for insurance for three cars but $1400 for insurance for your one car. Or $200 each for the 7 vs $1400 for you.

Finally, paying for parking is becoming much more common. A self driving car would incur much lower parking fees. It could go be used by another timeshare owner or it could park it self in a the cheap lots further away and probably formatted for autocars.

There are people who pay a premium for all kinds of things. And that's cool. But a lot of people act differently when the cost differential becomes high enough.

And yet, you can see rampant examples in this thread that excuse a "youth" culture and it's becoming an issue for google because they've been so blatant about it.

The thing that kills me is that T-Mobile service is TERRIBLE at the University of Houston. Especially in the student center. Zero bars in large areas of the building.

It's great in many other parts of town. Service absolutely sucks at the DFW Convention Center (zero bars).

I can sort of understand DFW. Basically 2,000 business travellers for a big convention- who probably are not mostly T-Mobile users anyway.

  But why on earth would you allow 45,000 young people who are deciding what phone to use, pretty much for life, have such a terrible experience on campus?

I should have put /sarcasm shouldn't I?

"we just have a youth culture" was being compared with "we just have a white male religious culture".

One is clearly illegal .. as is the other one too.

You are off by 1 year. They don't apply if you are 39.

http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types...

Age discrimination involves treating someone (an applicant or employee) less favorably because of his or her age.

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) only forbids age discrimination against people who are age 40 or older. It does not protect workers under the age of 40, although some states do have laws that protect younger workers from age discrimination.

What the hell do you think young people who only hire less qualified young people over more qualified older people are doing?

We had a 63 year old java programmer at our company who crushed the younger programmers in terms of delivery, elegance of solutions, maintainability, creativity, and even hours worked (regularly put in 60 hours a week). He would be turned away from Google over a less qualified candidate.

Wouldn't it be nice if companies hired the most qualified candidate for the job?

Age discrimination in IT has been rampant since the 1990s.