I believe that people should be free to take advantage of uninformed consumers.
So, you are all for fraud/cons then as that is the epitome of taking advantage of uninformed people.
(Likely) insufficient tax revenue to meet expenses. A system designed to accelerate wealth gaps and minimise class mobility.
Likely, based on what? With a flat-tax and no deductions (save the one I mentioned) I believe the government would end up with more revenue than it does now. It would also become (due to the single deduction that helps low-income people more) a progressive-tax as the more you make the higher your effective tax rate goes (until it flat-lines at the flat tax rate). Not to mention that it would allow most of the IRS (and its expenses) to go away.
Lets buy five 2000 hour 100 watt old fashioned filament bulbs for $5
Lets buy the equivalent number of lumens in a 10000 hour LED I donno 8 watts or something for $50.
Um, no, you can't do the math like that. You started with 5, 100-watt incandescent bulbs which can be used to light 5 different areas with 100-watts of light. You then compared it to a single LED bulb capable of producing the equivalent amount of light as a single incandescent but can on used to light a single area. To be fair you must account for the remaining 4 lights which is another $200 making the comparison $105 vs $298 (including $8 per additional LED for energy). This is why lower income folks get screwed, $50/light is hugely expensive compared to $0.50/light. This doesn't even factor in the fact that bulbs break before their usable life is over for other reasons.
Be careful with that - in countries which are NOT aware of this intentional misuse of the English language (i.e. pretty much anywhere outside the US), people WILL misunderstand the speaker and actually think "oh, he says he COULD care less, that means he DOES care at least a little bit". Which means that it is bad to use "could care less" when posting something on a website which is read by people from all over the world.
The expression is ambiguous no matter which way you say it, if you were to analyze it in a rational fashion. Either the person could care less - meaning they care a certain amount but could care less than that and it would not matter - or - the person couldn't care less - meaning they care a certain amount but could not care less either because it is not possible to care less or that it is possible but the person will not do it. It's a bad phrase to start with and people arguing about doesn't make it any better. We should just agree that what is meant by it is that the subject does not matter to the speaker and call it a day.
This is where prior art is all about, and while it would be great if someone could legitimately claim to have predated Apple's use of the technique, for the nonce it's likely that Apple is correct in claiming that they invented the feature (regardless of the ethical merits of the patent)
The point is "obvious to one skilled in the art" so that the "invention" is novel. Being able to code a scroll-page so that it bounces after you hit the bottom is pretty obvious to any programmer which "should" deny this "invention" any patent protection whatsoever. Ideas are not patentable, inventions are and this is not an invention. Being the first to think of the concept or idea does not make the concept or idea novel. It only does so if the implementation itself would be non-obvious to anyone skilled in the art which it is not.
Well you can give this a quick read.
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/CapitalGainsTaxes.html
Relevant passage here:
For example, after the 1981 capital gains tax was cut from 28 to 20 percent, real (all figures in this section are 2004 dollars) federal capital gains tax revenues leapt from $29.4 billion in 1981 to $36.6 billion by 1983—a 24 percent increase. After the capital gains tax was cut in 1997, the receipts from capital gains taxes rose from $66.9 billion in 1996 to $114.7 billion by 1999, an increase of more than 71 percent.
FBI could just have paid Blue Toad to take the blame
That's assuming that Blue Toad isn't just a front-company for the FBI to start with. No payment necessary and is possibly how the FBI got the list in the first place. i.e. The normal way, through an undercover operation, disguised as an iPhone developer company.
As another poster put it: there's no point trying to 'incentivise' investment.
And historically it would appear you are both wrong. In the last two reductions of the Capital Gains Tax, it resulted in more revenue for the government ergo it not only 'incentivized' but actually caused more investment that was otherwise not happening in the higher-taxed world.
As another poster put it: there's no point trying to 'incentivise' investment. If I don't invest it I'll put it into a bank
Maybe you would, I wouldn't. I would find another avenue with a better ROI. Last resort is to convert into gold so inflation isn't robbing you blind.
Choosing a nice slice of cherry pie over a shit sandwich is also being "discriminating".
Yes, but neither the cherry pie nor the shit sandwich have a right to treated fairly and equally. The same could not be said of people.
It's a naive, domestic operating system without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.
