npts2020

It's a Brioni suit and silk necktietie, isn't it?

I suppose "fair" is a bit in the eye of the beholder so what I mean by it is that the rules are exactly the same for everyone. We can quibble about any of the numbers I use (mostly from the IRS) but they can be adjusted as necessary to get a more accurate result, what its important is the general construct of the tax system being proposed. As in any undertaking, there must be initial assumptions made about the parameters being used. For this I am assuming 153 million US taxpayers who earn collectively $14.7 trillion plus corporate profits of $12 trillion every year. Also, assuming that the feds spend $7 trillion each year and a total deficit of $37 trillion. Other assumptions can be figured as necessary.. The first part of the proposal is that since "corporations are people" they should pay taxes at the same rate as people. As of 2023, about 85% of the federal revenues were income and payroll taxes, so it seems obvious to me that they currently do not. The second part is that there should be no deductions, period. If the federal government sees something deserving of money, they can fund it directly. The final part is that everyone will pay taxes at the same rate. Nobody would pay any federal tax on the first $20,000 they make in a year, making about $3 trillion exempt from taxation, and I can assume about 36 million people will end up owing nothing. The next $20,000 ($20,000-$40,000) would be taxed at 1%. If there are 35 million more people that will owe no further tax after this, we will have collected about $20 billion on the first $6 trillion in nationwide earnings. From $40,000-$60,000 taxes would be at 2 1/2%. From $60,000-$100,000 taxes would be 5%. From $100,000-$200,000, taxes would be at 10%. From $200,000-$500,000 taxes would be at 20%. From $500,000-$1,000,000 taxes would be at 33%. Anything over $1,000,000 would be taxed at 50%, this category affecting about 500,000 filers and contributing about a trillion dollars to the treasury. All told, income tax would come to around $4 trillion, not too far from what it is now. However, when you take into account corporate taxes, they would pay only a little less than half of the $12 trillion they made in profits if they paid at the same rate as everyone else. That means the treasury would take in around $10 trillion a year. This would pay the federal deficit off in around 10-15 years with no cuts in government spending (except no deductions would automatically cut the budget a fair amount) and we then could then give tax breaks to the wealthy with no ill effects.

I was being somewhat sarcastic. The comment was made only because I have heard of more than one administration official claim (imo erroneously) that it is acceptable.

In an administration so focused on eliminating waste, one would think (since Signal is obviously an acceptable means of secure communication) we could just use this free app and save the billions of $$$ spent on the Defense Message System and other methods of secure communication used by entities like DoD, CIA, Dept. of State, DHS and others. IMO the main reason for using Signal was to not have a record of what went on but I am pretty cynical about the motives of those in power.

My highest diploma is Tool & Die Technology from a high school vo-tech. However, I did work at most of the workstations at a shipboard nuclear power plant while in the USN many years ago. IMO there are only two actual reasons for widespread nuclear power and those are; to keep power production centralized in as few hands as possible and to facilitate production of nuclear materiel. If there weren't a plethora of other ways to generate power, some at far less than the cost of nuclear, I might be in favor of building more nuclear power plants. When you combine the above with the fact that we don't have any good way of neutralizing highly radioactive waste that will be around forever (as far as humans are concerned, anyway) and consistent failure of the industry to live up to any of its hype (especially in the area of cost), it just doesn't seem like a worthwhile avenue to pursue. You also have problems with profit vs safety (the reason Admiral Rickover thought commercial use of nuclear was a bad idea), proliferation of technology that is pretty closely related to that needed for building bombs (yes, the differences between reactors and bombs and how they work was a frequent topic of discussion amongst those working at the reactor when I was there and it is inconceivable to me that this isn't fairly commonplace), and it takes a long time to build a nuclear power plant.

Well, theology is certainly not any part of scientific philosophy.

Only if you consider theology to be philosophy.

How about something more like the frequency with which each is not successfully prosecuted for their crimes? These guys seem to think criminality is more widespread in the upper class, with many of their crimes simply overlooked or "not worth prosecuting". One of the things they point out is the following where more than 1 in 20 of the world's richest people are involved; The release of the ‘Panama Papers’ last year suggests that more than 14,000 banks, law firms, company incorporators and other ‘middlemen’ acted in league with law firm Mossack Fonseca to get away with tax fraud on a monumental scale and to avoid a range of other legal duties. Many of the world’s wealthiest people are alleged to be involved, including 12 current and former world leaders and 128 politicians and public officials from around the globe. Those implicated include: 29 billionaires featured in Forbes Magazine’s list of the world’s 500 richest people, 33 people and companies blacklisted by the US Government because they had done business with Mexican drug lords, terrorist organisations or ‘rogue nations’ including North Korea, Close associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who allegedly horded $2 billion through shadow companies, Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, who owned an offshore firm that held millions of dollars in Icelandic bank bonds during the country’s financial crisis, Offshore companies controlled by the Prime Minister of Pakistan, the King of Saudi Arabia, and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko who was revered for his anti-corruption stance, and The family of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, the father of British Prime Minister David Cameron and the children of the President of Azerbaijan.

I would like to see some statistics about this. As a percentage it wouldn't take very many wealthy crooks to skew it toward the upper class and I can think of a number of those folks just off the top of my head.

I guess Zelensky isn't really a dictator now or he would be a great friend and role model for our President.

I heard the President wants to issue a million of these. Just what America needs, a million more robber barons...

Pretty funny, the Canadian home crowd booed the US national anthem before the US/Canada hockey game. Guess they just don't understand that Big Brother is going give them what they want, even if they don't want it.

All true but I would argue two things. Firstly, I think China was already becoming less isolationist (largely necessitated by having to import foodstuffs to avoid famines which previously had been fairly commonplace) by that point and may well have gone the same path eventually, anyway, since the Communists saw that foreign trade was necessary. Secondly, if one concedes China is still a centralized economy (if not, when did it stop being one?) then it seems to me, one of the most remarkable economic transitions in history is due to central planning. BTW I would also point out that few nations have the same governance and policies they had several decades previously, especially dynamic ones.

AFAIK, no but we are talking about a process that might take millions of years for the right conditions to take place as well.

Have you looked at other robotic arms already being made? Here is a pretty good discussion of the various types and their uses > https://howtorobot.com/expert-insight/robotic-arms . Admittedly, it is a commercial site selling robotics but the explanation of the different kinds might be of use and you can see how they look after being built.

or cloning?

I would like to see a reference for any of this. I was always under the impression that Chairman Mao was beginning to end that isolation (mostly imposed by western colonial powers IMO) with his trade deal with President Nixon.

I see, so the Chinese no longer use central planning or a you saying there are no longer famines in the world for the Chinese to avoid?

That's kind of the point, even in the most ethical of regimes there will be grey areas where right and wrong are not easily delineated. Having spent a pretty good portion of my life on and around farms, I am not particularly shocked by the slaughter of an animal for food but that seems to be the biggest reason a lot of vegetarians I know don't eat meat and fits into the above narrative of emotions ruling the day. However, that was never a major influence on my decision to become and remain a vegetarian for the past several decades.

It also depends on what your metrics for "success" are. Using China as an example, there were fairly frequent famines there in which millions of people died, the last being in the very early 1960's. I bet most of the people doing food distribution worldwide would call that successful but that isn't a metric I typically see economists use much.

I fail to see what frequency has to do with emotion. Furthermore, you will have to explain to me what the emotional part of the sustainability and good health arguments in favor of veganism are. (I also noticed nobody cared to tackle the ethics of adopting feral cats vs killing them or allowing them to eat all of the birds in the neighborhood except to make a blanket statement that vegans shouldn't have cats)

IMO it is just an excuse to get rid of one of the main sources used by virtually every mainstream news source in the US to replace it with one easier to manipulate...

Actually degree is frequently (if not always) a focus in ethics. How many people do you know who say murder is wrong but still support capital punishment? How about ones who say lying is wrong but will still tell their kids about Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy or the Boogeyman? Are those people unethical?

Perhaps not but there is such a thing as degree. Drinking one beer a day will not completely eliminate all of the negative effects of alcohol but it surely reduces them greatly when compared to an individual who drinks a fifth of bourbon every day. How much meat does the average cat eat compared to the average American? Keep in mind a large, active cat only needs to eat 400-600 calories a day. https://pet-calculator.com/cat-calorie-calculator/

Most "impactful", anyway... (ducks for cover)