Who says they are not learning all sorts of things? Cooking is all they are telling us about. And by they, it could be DARPA or the robots themselves. Maybe they are waiting for just the right time.

We get in our mech suits and seek and destroy. That is of course after several years calling it work place violance rather than robot terrorism.

Let's talk income tax, because the vast majority of people are employees, not small business owners (when you compare the amount of actual business owners to the amount of pandering that goes towards them, it's hilarious.)

We can, but then we are not talking about the rich or 1% now. Well, unless they become employees of their own investments in which case they still pass the buck down to the consumers.

When you make a certain amount, as I do, small changes to my tax rates don't really bother me. I make a shitload of money, so another couple of % of my earnings isn't really anything I'm prepared to uproot my life for, pick up and move for.

I doubt you make as much money as you want us to think you do. Your reading comprehension is too lacking for that to be believable. We are talking about "how a taxes that only targets the top 1%, 0.1% and 0.01% would be "regressive"."

Go ahead and hit the parent button a couple of times if you missed that. Of course this makes you seem like you are arguing apples while holding oranges. I guess the big problem for you is that we aren't even talking about fruit. Stupid sauce indeed, but if I was you, I would stop throwing crap around before you know what is going on. It may be that you are the only one catching it.

Taxes are paid by those against whom they are levied.

Those entities may try and recover that cost elsewhere. They may or may not be successful in doing so.

No, when you are above the level of a salaried employee, all taxes are paid by the product and services sold or returns on investments which most likely will be products and services sold by someone else.

So you don't think anyone will step in and provide equivalent products and services at a lower cost than established players because they're prepared to accept a smaller profit margin ?

Ie: markets don't work ?

Why would they? The barriers to entry are so high that anyone overcoming them would simply price their products and services at the same rates and pocket the extra cash. We do not have a free market in most places due to regulations and laws in place.

There are plenty of rich people who don't own and run businesses, or have substantial income and wealth outside of their business interests.

The majority of rich people don't even run their businesses if they have them. They set them up as corporations and become an employee of those corporations or pay someone else to run them. This however does not preclude them from influencing those businesses or demanding rates of returns. You hear it all the time, a company lets 1/3 of their staff go and forces the remaining 2/3rds to pick up the difference all to satisfy investor profits demands.

Firstly, the world is not America.

I'm not sure what you think you mean by this. I was talking about America only. Congress does not have any power to prevent any company, person, or otherwise legal entity from making money in the US. You cannot legislate away anyone's ability to do so.

Secondly, even in the US, between local, state and federal Governments, they can legislate nearly anything they want to. If, of course, they want to.

No they cannot. Laws are rules unconstitutional, overly broad, and outside the reach of government near daily in the US. If they could just do anything they wanted to do, this would not be happening. So until something severely changes, there are limits to the powers of government and these limits are why we consider ourselves a free nation.

But there's been little interest in trying to build a better society since the neoliberal right took over the western world in the '70s and started pursuing the greatest wealth transfer from the

I'm not sure where you are going here but I think I might somewhat agree outside of the aspect of taxing and making arbitrary laws to satisfy some ideology.

All it will do is cause US companies to become foreign companies incorporated in other jurisdictions. And then there will be less taxes collected. There are reasons why these things have not been addressed already and contrary to what some may think, they have little to do with politicians being paid off.

This is little more than posturing for the 2016 elections. No one expects anything to be done about it, just a lot of hype to define sides and make up short comings noticed in the last election.

All taxes get paid by the people purchasing products and services. If you tax only the rich, the poor will pay the differences. and no, you cannot address that with any legislation because congress does not have the power to do so.

lol.. I think you might need to look up fascism and ponder a bit on what you think is connected here. I'll give you a hint, nothing.

As I said, no compelling case has been made that you either stand against or with evil here.

Sure it will cost money as it has cost money all through out history before we understood that you were to blame for it. But the money it costs is over a longer term, most likely generational, and as it is laid out now, most likely impacts the rich who have property along the ocean fronts, who have the commercial farms that might need irrigation or to change crops or whatever may happen.

Personally, I do not care if a casino has to relocate because of encroaching water levels. I do not care if New York becomes the New Holland or The Netherlands and builds dikes to maintain their at, below, or near sea level existence or if they become the new Venice and utilize the water table. And in case you are not familiar, those are places that have already dealt with and pretty much overcame a lot of the issues that we are supposed to be seeing- but they did it long ago when the technology levels were at a fraction of what we have today.

But I know, the sky is falling and the earth might be different that what it is today and that scares a lot of you.

People who invest do not pay taxes. The top 1% or whatever you want to play with will just increase their margins by raising prices or only investing in areas that would make a larger amount of income.

You see, if you made $100 a year and paid $10 in taxes and those taxes all the sudden go up to $20 a year, you essentially lose $10 of earning power. But because you are at the top of the chain, the 1% or better, you control prices, you get to pick and choose where you invest and so on. So you increase interest rates for loans you give, you streamline efficiency and cut jobs that are borderline wasteful, you increase prices to the consumer and all the sudden, you are making $110-115 a year. You now have returned your income to previous levels and perhaps increased it a bit but it all trickles down to the little person. Businesses do not pay taxes- they charge more to cover them. The rich do not lose money without a fight, they find ways to make more which generally means you pay more somewhere along the line or your job gets shipped to a cheaper area or goes away altogether.

Now you are changing the goal posts a bit. The original argument was about frivolous items.

However, the rich people would just hid their money and move out of the jurisdiction so the end result would be no different.

George Pataki I believe it was, tells a story about his father becoming a postal worker and having to become a registered democrat to do so. This was a premise his mother's father
(George's grandfather) laid out- a steady job not becoming a democrat- before his father was allowed to date and eventually marry his mother.

He has said he ran for governor of New York because he wanted to change the corruption in government and when he was an assemblyman and state senator, he realized the republicans were just as entrenched and corrupt as the democrats in those branches and nothing could be done from there.

I guess at one time or another, it was all corrupt. Likely still is on some places.

I do not know about taxis but yes garbage collectors in some areas require political connections to get the jobs. I live in thd country so i pay a private contracter but the nearest city runs its own collection service paying garbage truck drivers almost $30 an hour and the helpers aroung $20 an hour. Because of this high pay, they do not loose many employees and when the do, you almost have to know someone in the city politics in order to even get your application through for consideration.

Is it really a different game when you call a footbal a zebra but everything else looks like a game of football?

What they are essentially doing is playing the same game but substituting their own rules for the league ruls by calling the same thing something different. Now this is meaningless until you attemp to play league games under those perverted riles.

It doesn't really matter as it is outside any point made. 20 people, one person, or no one at all, it does not make someone a criminal but it doesn't mean the clerk or store owner can hate ski masks.

When we become a non free country, you would be able to take whatever you want from the rich, you will be able to demand they do not buy what you deem frivolous luxury items or that anyone produces them. When we become a non free country, you can invent things for scientists to solve.

But wait, no you cannot because the chances of you being the supreme dictator of this non free country would be about zero. What we will end up with is the same as every single other communist country- an elite few muddled with various levels of corruption and brutal enforcement of their demands to do what they decide is best for you. We may even end up killing thousands if not millions of people in order to make it happen just like in almost every other start of communist ruled countries. You may think, oh noes, couldn't be because this time we will get it right those with more will have less and it will all be unicorns shitting rainbows all over the place, and then they take your Iphone because a nokia flip phone is good enough and everything else is a luxury. Then they take your computer because it wastes electricity and they deemed you do not need it. But hey, that's an ideal world right? Someone making arbitrary decisions about who can purchase what, about who works on what and who can produce what, all based around the whims of someone who doesn't like people with more money than them.