Discussions

5 hours ago, Dr Herbie wrote

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Except that's not what i happening is it?  What's happening is that there are a lot of people who's rod have broken who need help getting new rods.  There are a lot of people who don't yet have a rod and need help to get one. There are even an unfortunate few who would be unable to fish even if they had a rod.  And there is a very small minority who don't want to bother fishing and think they can get away with parasitising everyone else.

There are a few people with more fish than they need to comfortably survive (and even a few with more fish than they can ever realistically eat in a lifetime) who just aren't letting anyone have any of theirs unless they are forced to, and even then they do their best to hide their fish so that they can't be forced to share them. In order to self-justify their lack of sharing they brand the all the people with no rods as worthless and undeserving of fish.

Herbie

Great take on the fishing analogy. While personally, I would donate lots of money if I had it to give, I don't think that the government can force others to donate against their will. Some people are just greedy and selfish, just as some people are lazy and purposely reliant on government support.

We've tried increasing spending and government intervention in industry. It doesn't work. The U.S. is over $15 trillion in debt. France, Greece, Ireland, Portugal are all in major trouble.

It's time to try another approach. Lower taxes for everyone, less government involvement in the market. And cut the damn military budget in half. Aside from an undeclared war on "terror", the U.S. has no reason to have troops stationed anywhere.

@cbae: My home cost about 4x my salary.

The wealthy typically buy multiple homes.

Someone making $20k per year shouldn't be eating out for lunch everyday. I pack my lunch and spend roughly $10 per week instead of the $25 at McDonald's.

Didn't Live Mesh do this before MS killed it in favor of Live Sync? I remember sharing an audio project with my friend on Mesh, and any updates he made were synced down to my PC.

Why did MS kill this project again?

19 hours ago, cbae wrote

I would probably put $100 more toward principal each month on my mortgage. Does that count as spending or saving or both? Regardless, the point is that if you divvy up the  money to millions of  low and middle class individuals rather than giving it all to ultra-wealthy individuals, you at least have some chance of having that money spent. Will 100% of the money be spent right away? Probably not. But to a multi-billionaire, there's zero chance he or she would spend any considerable portion of that money. Ever.

I count that as saving, since it's just paying down debt. Multi-billionaire's spend money all of the time. Big houses, lots of cars, travel, investments, etc. And I'm not advocating giving money to "ultra-wealthy". Obama wants to raise taxes on everyone making more than $250,000 a year. That would have a definite impact on small business.

And why would a business man feel compelled to expand his business unless the demand warranted it?

I'm assuming all businesses want to expand, but run into funding issues.

Whatever loopholes exist already exist, and they're being used regardless. Raising the tax rates doesn't automatically make more loopholes appear.

Yes, but there would be more incentive to find and exploit those loopholes.

The solution is to get rid of the loopholes and set the tax rate to the same amount for everyone. No one can claim unfairness, and "ultra-wealthy" can't shift their money around to avoid paying taxes.

@Dovella:Good question. I haven't heard anything about Homegroup and Windows 8.

4 minutes ago, cbae wrote

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No businesses hire because they just want to create jobs. They hire when demand for their products/services exceed their output capacity. Hence, the consumers are the true job creators.

And you're out of your mind if you think most business owners make over $250K per year. You're taxed on NET income, not gross receipts. Most businesses fail, and during that time in which they're operating, they're bleeding red. They have no tax liability anyway.

There was a time when Amazon.com was losing so much money per quarter some analysts believed they would never achieve profitability. Did you forget how many companies that IPOed in the late 1990s with absolutely zero earnings went BK within a year?

So if you got an extra $100 per paycheck, you'd spend it? I know I'd put it straight into savings, or better yet, into my retirement fund. If a business owner got an extra $5000, chances are he would expand his business and give one person an extra $50,000. That would contribute to the economy much more than giving everyone $100.

If you raise taxes on the rich, they'll just use accountants to find more loopholes to avoid the tax. Flat tax at a low rate, no loopholes, and the inequality between millionaires and the middle class will disappear.

I get the feeling this will be another never-ending debate on C9, a la climate change.

Consumers don't create jobs, they support existing jobs. Business owners create jobs, and most business owners make over $250,000 per year (amount chosen by Obama to mean "rich people").

Money != fishing rods. Education == fishing rods, Affordable (not free) healthcare == fishing rods, equal opportunity == fishing rods. Money == fish, and the costs will keep rising until we stop handing out fish and start distributing rods.

Handing out money to the poor is just going to continue the welfare cycle and cause the class divide to grow.

Taxes need to be adjusted so that everyone pays the same amount. Get rid of deductions and credits. You make $500,000? Pay your $50,000. You make $10,000? Pay your $1,000. You don't want to pay into a useless retirement pension fund (i.e. Social Security) because you're doing your own retirement savings (401(k), IRA, money under the mattress)? Fine, don't pay in, but don't expect anything out of it.

I have the help downloaded onto my PC, so I didn't notice it was gone. I just checked it and it took a long time to load (about 2-3 minutes), but it loaded.

@DeathByVisualStudio: I think it's cool that Adobe provided the code to MS. While a Flash-less IE10 was a good idea, it's a little ahead of its time. I think we'll see it for good in Windows 9. I hope this means they can "integrate" Silverlight as well. The whole experience of dropping to the desktop for certain sites is annoying.

@Maddus Mattus: The problem with treating healthcare in a pure free market way, is that consumers have no choice. If you're dying, you go to the closest hospital. You take whatever doctor they send your way. You pay whatever they ask.

Patient: "How much for heart surgery?"

Doctor: "$250,000."

Patient: "Oh, that's too much, I'm going to check the hospital in the next town."

I'm not going to die if I can't find a car that I can afford.

I think the best solution is tort reform for malpractice suits (lowers malpractice insurance costs, resulting in lower costs for patients), prohibiting health insurance as a job benefit (with the general public buying, the pool would be bigger, and costs would be better shared), and only having health insurance pay for emergencies (if people actually paid for their office visits instead of a $10 co-pay, they would be more aware of the actual cost and competition would increase).