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Comment Re:WTF that wasn't supposed to happen!? (Score 1) 1239

So by this logic, society achieves its best if a 100% tax is imposed on everyone. The government takes everything it can and then spends on the people, in a socially responsive way such that everyone is better off. You do know the word for that kind of economy, right?

In your example you fail to consider what could've happened to those taxed dollars that came from those "six digit earners". Wealthier individuals tend to save (read: invest) their additional income. By taxing more (and redistributing the income) you lower investment and raise consumption. Depending on how far you go with this redistribution, the economy may end up in ruins.
Don't get me wrong. Public schools are probably a very good thing for the government to provide. So is the defense and public safety and many many more.
But the main reason we pay our taxes is so the government can provide us with public goods that the free market fails to deliver effectively, not because additional taxes puts more money in our pockets.

(Of course that 100% can not maximize the tax income, as the Laffer curve suggests. It's not the 100% rate I am arguing against but the notion that we are all better off if the government's income is maximized)

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Submission + - Winklevoss Twins To Continue Fighting Facebook

An anonymous reader writes: Facebook's longest legal saga, which has lasted seven years so far, looked like it was finally closed, but that was just a false alarm. In a filing earlier this week with the federal court in San Francisco, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s former Harvard classmates Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss, who accuse him of stealing their idea for the social network, decided not to seek US Supreme Court review of the $65 million settlement made in 2008. Everyone thought this meant they had finally given up. It turns out that the twins have decided to keep fighting after all, just with a different lawsuit.

Comment Re:makes sense (Score 2) 609

The Israeli arabs are citizens of Israel in the name only. Recently, there was a fairly well published case of an arab being sentenced for rape for having consensual sex with a jewish woman. She went to the police when she found out that he was arab not jewish and he was sentenced to 18 months in jail for "rape by deception." The occupation/colonization project of the West Bank has been going on for over 40 years so to not call it an apartheid system is insincere.

So you claim that Israeli arabs are not true and equal citizens of Israel precisely because you happened to hear about a verdict you disagree with, and which you never bothered to read.

The "rape by deception" charge was actually a plea bargain. And that "consensual sex" is what the defendant told the press, right after the trial where he plead guilty. And of course the appeal that followed was all about the severity of the sentence, not the factually established evidence (the one for example, where the victim was left in a pool of blood, naked).
But hey, why let the details get in your way. It must have been a racist Judge. Not a single one but the whole political system must have been based on racism.

And now for the inconvenient truth.
There is not a single civil and political right that is not equally shared by all Israeli citizens.
Yet there are inequalities in civil duties. For example, Israeli arabs (and not just arabs) are exempt from the compulsory military service, while still allowed to volunteer.

I am not trying to sell the idea that Israeli democracy is pure and perfect. It certainly isn't.
And much more must be done to integrate better different parts of the Israeli society.
But to clam that 20% of the citizens are "citizens in the name only" is idiocy at best and shameless propaganda at worst.

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