Posts made by Smacktard

Would have been a better story if it had actually happened to you :

"“Let me be clear.” I said, in my best cranky local drunk voice, “I will have you towed. You cannot block my garage. I need to be able to pull my car out of my driveway. There’s a chance…” and here I dropped my voice just a bit, and held my drink aloft, “…there’s a chance I may need to step out for some ice.”

• This is Rob Long with Martini Shot on KCRW.

http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/ma/ma080730paparazzi

What, did you think no one would google this? It took me about five seconds to find: media, van, driveway, towed, drink.

Gotcha! :evil:

This thread took an odd turn. I was mainly interested in if anyone had heard of a theory how a light-sensitive spot could evolve. The fossil record is very strong evidence that evolution occurs, but a good theory needs to answer all reasonable objections.

Andrew Jackson must have had access to a time machine as well. The first income tax wasn’t passed until 1861:

"When the Civil War erupted, the Congress passed the Revenue Act of 1861, which restored earlier excises taxes and imposed a tax on personal incomes. The income tax was levied at 3 percent on all incomes higher than $800 a year. This tax on personal income was a new direction for a Federal tax system based mainly on excise taxes and customs duties.

http://www.treasury.gov/education/fact-sheets/taxes/ustax.shtml

@Cmdr:

More realistically:  Quit your job paying 17.50 an hour so you can avoid paying taxes at all, or go to work and get slammed with a $3,000 tax bill (wiping out all the money you made instead of quitting plus a significant amount more.)

Unless your employer is named Vitto, the vast majority of under-the-table jobs involve picking a crop of some sort or working in the exciting world of hotel santitation. The original point stands: if progressive taxation were a form of punishment, people would never want to earn more money (no rational person would choose to be punished). Of course we know that upward mobility is alive and well in this country and that people work very hard for promotions and raises KNOWING it will put them into a higher tax bracket. $100,000 taxed at 28% > $50,000 taxed at 1%.

That’s a punishment.  Better to allow all men and women to pay the same percentage after certain allowable deductions: food, mileage or transportation costs too and from work, medicine/medical, housing + a certain dollar amount, indexed to inflation, per adult and child living in the household for incidental expenses.  You’d still only tax the rich, but they’d have to opt into the tax by spending the money.  The poor wouldnt be taxed at all since everything they spent on would be deductible anyway.

There is a group of people between rich and poor…

To do anything else is a method of punishing the huddled masses for becoming self sufficient.

Or you can look at it as a fee for membership in a society that allows anyone to become mega-rich? Punihsment, fee, justice, whatever you want to call it- progressive taxation has not stopped us from becoming the top economic and military superpower in the world. It’s only serious competitor is the flat-tax, and THAT is not even a blip on the radar screen of national issues.

Sorry, I know you dislike it when the truth is told, but that’s the truth.

Huh?

Taxes are all regressionary when they are locked to income.  The only progressive taxes are usage and sales taxes (provided the sales taxes are not locked onto goods and services needed to prolong life.)

Any tax is regressive- a sales tax would cause people to consume less. Not exactly a good thing in a consumer driven economy.

As for illegals, odds are you’d be surprised what they’d be paying taxes on.  Beer would be taxed.  Jewelry would be taxed.  Postage is a tax.

Yes, beer, postage and jewelry. At last, a way for illegals to pay for all the services they use  :roll:

But anyway, how can you be so heartless and cruel as to deny them food and medicine just because they are illegal!  You’re a very evil man.  You’d let them die on the streets just so you could increase taxes on them!

(Gawd, it’s so good to finally use that argument against someone with the mind set like a certain group of individuals!  Turn about is fair play!)

Was Russian your first language? You completely missed my point.

@Imperious:

The tax level is 22% or 23%

my god thats a huge amount to pay. Its a cure worse than the illness.

just tax anything sold at about 15% and luxury goods a bit more. Get rid of tax.

That way illegals have to pay and its ‘the more you buy the more you pay’ system. Rich people buy more stuff and they will pay more naturally.

It would encourage saving money too.

i am quite sure that 22% thing involves wealth redistribution on some level.

Even if an illegal worker spends $10,000 a year on taxable “stuff”, that’s still only $1500 in taxes they’re paying, and I doubt illegals are spending anywhere near that amount. Food, rent, and utilities (which would never be taxed under any conceivable flat tax system) probably eat up 80+% of their budget. Just one kid in school, or a trip to the emergency room and they’re back to a net drain. But then, so are most families with kids at the median income level. THEY don’t pay hardly any taxes either.

Jen, if you think progressive taxation is a punishment, I have 2 options for you:

1. Make $50,000 at a 10% tax rate
2. Make $500,000 at a 30% tax rate.

Oh, oh, punish me! I want to be punished! More punishment here!

Too slow, holds too few people. A drastic decrease in speed means an increase in food, water, entertainment items (people aren’t going to simply sit in a seat twiddling their thumbs for 30+hours), and bigger holding tanks for storing more waste. All of those mean increased weight and less space. They’ll never be as efficient as a jet carrying hundreds of people 300+MPH.

I’m having a hell of a time with this.

Even Darwin concded that its difficult to think a structure as complex as the human eye evolved by chance. Here’s how scientists explain it now:

"Here’s how some scientists think some eyes may have evolved: The simple light-sensitive spot on the skin of some ancestral creature gave it some tiny survival advantage, perhaps allowing it to evade a predator. Random changes then created a depression in the light-sensitive patch, a deepening pit that made “vision” a little sharper. At the same time, the pit’s opening gradually narrowed, so light entered through a small aperture, like a pinhole camera.

Every change had to confer a survival advantage, no matter how slight. Eventually, the light-sensitive spot evolved into a retina, the layer of cells and pigment at the back of the human eye. Over time a lens formed at the front of the eye. It could have arisen as a double-layered transparent tissue containing increasing amounts of liquid that gave it the convex curvature of the human eye."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/01/1/l_011_01.html

Ok, thats well and good but you know whats missing? Where did the lightsensitive patch of skin come from? A light sensitive cell is a pretty complex thing. Creating one by random mutation  seems a little farfetched, but I can’t find anything on how a light-senstivie patch might have evolved.

And if a light-sensitive spot DID spontaneously evolve, there are two other things that would have had to evolve simultansouly in order to confer a survival benefit:
1. A connection to a pathway of nerves leading to the brain (most cells aren’t connected to any type of nervous structure). I suppose you could argue that the light-sensitive spot evolved FROM a nerve cell, but that would require all sorts of simultaneous mutations to go from nerve cell to light-sensitive cell, AND the location of the nerve cell would have to be on the skin of the organism (or just under a transparent layer of skin). That’s not a place we usually find nerve cells.
2. A change in wahetver brain the organism had to recognize the new data that is being transmitted by the new light-sensitive cell. It doens’t do an organism any good to have new data coming in it can’t understand.

So I guess I’m still a little skeptical about evolution.

New numbers out on percentage of taxes the top 1% pay:

“The nearby chart shows that the top 1% of taxpayers, those who earn above $388,806, paid 40% of all income taxes in 2006, the highest share in at least 40 years.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121659695380368965.html?mod=opinion_main_review_and_outlooks

Families at the median income level hardly pay any taxes at all. A lot of families making $50,000 don’t pay a dime in federal or state income tax. If we’re really serious about gettng our financal house in order, shouldnt we all pitch in? An across the board 1% increase for all income levels  would be a good start.

Clinton was corrupted long before he became president. The guy was/is a habitual liar and womanizer. But murderer? That’s a bit of a stretch.

@Cmdr:

@Motdc:

@Jermofoot:

This is the type of stuff they are working on?  Sheesh…talk about busybodies.

This might be political, but I agree with that statement…it sums up my POV.

“Law makers” (local/state/federal) should spend a year or two instead going through the law books and finding ones to get rid of, not inventing even more crap to justify their existance.

Amen.

There was a law written almost 4000 years ago that was summarized into 10 laws and those were the only laws.  Much easier for everyone to know the law and live by the law!

Granted, many find issue with the first three of those laws, the laws themselves are not the point, the brevity and proliferation of knowledge of the laws is admirable at the very least.

Honestly, if it is not in the first three articles of the Constitution nor is it in the Bill of Rights or other Amendments of said Constitution, then it should not be a law.  In my humble opinion.

But we do digress into politics and should cease.  The post was originally to raise awareness of new procedures put down by the 110th Congress in regards to Flag etiquette.  (About the only thing the 110th Congress has done right so far, in my opinion.  After all, they are to blame for the messes this nation faces, Congress is ALWAYS to blame for the messes!)

Damn graven image carvers! Even when they said it was Al Queda, I knew it was them!

Hmm, Morningstar’s top 10-yr fund (ING Russia A) has grown 30%. About 3% per year.
http://screen.morningstar.com/FundSearch/FundRank.html?fundCategory=all&screen=tr10yr

Their top 5 yr fund (BlackRock Latin America A) has gotten 45% (About 9% per year).
http://screen.morningstar.com/FundSearch/FundRank.html

Their top 3 yr fund (ING Russia A) has gotten 46% (15% per year).
http://screen.morningstar.com/FundSearch/FundRank.html

Your claim that MorningStar is getting you 23% a year is either bullshit or wishful thinking. If you’re getting 23% a year, quit teaching, and apply to Goldman Sachs because you’re outperforming everbody except the top hedge-fund managers. To highlight the ridiculousness of what you’re saying, we have:

Barron’s #7 ranked Hedge-fund IN THE WORLD (Atticus Management, 2007 Return: 27.86%)
Barrons’ #11 ranked Hedge-Fund in the world (Blackhorse Emerging Enterprises Fund, 2007 Return: 26.16%)

Jen: 23%

Your theory that Lee deliberately wrecked his army was at least INTELLECTUALLY dishonest. This is just dishonest. Did you really think anyone would believe you?

@cyan:

What is a picture? like the kind a camera takes, not the ones you paint. Is it an actual moment in time, an array of light or something else?

if it’s a digital camera, a picture is information (1’s and 0’s) stored on a memory card. If it’s a film camera, the picture is information (patterns of emulsion) stored on film.

Another interesting question: can a camera ever take a picture of “the present”?

@Cmdr:

Actually, you’d have much less than $1000 if you put it under your mattress.

No, you would have $1000. 10 one hundreds, if you did it that way, or 50 twenties. That money doesn’t DISAPPEAR because of inflation, it’s buying power diminishes.

Assuming 4% inflation over 8 years (compounded only once per year) you’d actually have the buying power of $631.43 at the end of 8 years, if you had put that money under the mattress.

Right, and if you’d put it in the market (either tracking the S&P500, DJIA, NASDAQ or some combination of all three, as most people do), you’d have less than $631.  You wouldn’t even have your original thousand AND it would be worth less because of inflation.

However, if you had been smart and invested that money in the Asian or Russian stock markets you’d have significantly MORE!  In the Asian markets you would have about $3,758.86 and in the  Russian stock markets you’d have closer to $5,482.23.

Right, and if we’d all bought Google back in 2000, we’d be set for life. Unfortantely, we can’t go back in time and pick our investments, and the vast majority of investors have their money in broad market index funds (Vanguard, Fidelity, etc). And let’s not forget that when the S&P 500, DJIA, NASDAQ, etc. have negative growth for 8 years, that’s a MEASURE of the values of the companies that make up the market. When that measure falls or stagnates for a long time, as it has, that means major American companies (GM, Ford, Countrywide, etc.) are doing poorly. Probably a good reason why consumer confidence is at an all-time low.

Even in the American market (the DJIA, not the NYSE or S&P 500 or the other markets other posters fail to take notice of) you’d show a modest growth if you were in ANY mutual funds at all.  Maybe not the 9% you want to see, but you’d still have done better than you would have with a CD.

The DJIA has had NEGATIVE GROWTH. Not modest. NEGATIVE. The S&P 500 has had NEGATIVE growth since 2000. http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/charts/chartdl.aspx?Symbol=%24INX&CP=0&PT=10

The NASDAQ has lost HALF it’s value since 2000. http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/quickchart/quickchart.asp?symb=nasdaq&sid=3291&o_symb=nasdaq&freq=2&time=13

You’re absolutely right: a mutual fund made up of Haliburton, Russian oil, Exxon, and Google has done phenomally well. It’s right up there with the winning numbers of the last PowerBall lottery. Great growth  :roll:

The millions of people who’ve invested in Vanguard’s S&P500 Index fund, haven’t been so lucky: 2.8% growth over 10 years
https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/snapshot?FundId=0040&FundIntExt=INT

Mainly because if you had invested in 2000, you would have lost all your money in 2000 and 2001 and then built back up.  Since most people engage in dollar cost averaging, this would mean the vast majority of your money would have actually grown at a rate of 4.5-7.0% per annum with inflation hovering around 4%.

If you had invested in any of the major domestic indexes, in 2000, you would have LESS MONEY TODAY. Not less BUYING POWER. LESS MONEY. Let’s say that again: LESS MONEY. That is what a NEGATIVE RETURN means. It doesn’t matter if it grew 10% one day in 2005 and fell 15% the next. Over 8 years, through all the ups and downs, you now have LESS MONEY.

You know, you’re really not worth the trouble. The thought of you teaching is a little unnerving, but who am I to try to straighten you out. If you want to go through life clueless, go right ahead.

@dezrtfish:

LOL, years ago I had a neighbor that would leave his flag out in the rain and at night etc.  When ever I saw it in the rain I would go steal it.

Well… it made sence at the time, it was also usualy after a few beers…

I can totally see you stealing a flag. Take that for whatever it’s worth. :lol:

You don’t index the Stock Market to inflation because it’s not a commodity, like gas or oil. It’s a MARKET (or more accurately, a measure of the value of stocks). So instead, you look for grwoth patterns. Historically, the DOW has grown about 9% per year. In the last 8 years, it’s had NEGATIVE growth.

What that means is if you put $1000 in the market in 2000, and took it out now, you’d have about $990. Not only is the money you now have worth less because of inflation, you actually LOST MONEY over the 8 yr period. Not good. If you’d kept that $1000 under the mattress, you’d have… $1000. That’s not supposed to happen with a market that historically grows 9% per annum.

It’s true that you can pick an arbitrary date, but let’s go back even 10 years: In July of 1998, the DOW was at 8800. It just closed at 11288. That’s roughly 24% growth over 10 years. That’s still pretty bad. If the DOW grows 9% per year, it should double every 8 years or so. We SHOULD be well over 17,000 by now. Instead, you would have been better off putting your money in a 10 yr bond or even a long-term CD. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the current market.

If you go back 15 years, the DOW performs better. In July of 1993, it was trading at 3539. From 1993, it’s had great growth, but here’s the problem:

Let’s suppose you’ve been working for 20 years. In the first 12 years of your job, you did very well. You got promotions and raises. Your salary grew from $30,000 to $75,000. But in the last 8 years, things haven’t been so good. You haven’t seen a raise in 8 yrs. You actually had to take a small pay cut. Now, there are two ways to look at this:
1. Man, my job rocks! I never thought I’d be making this much money after 20 years!
2. What the fuck? I’m working just as hard as I ever have and in the last EIGHT YEARS, I had to take a pay cut!

People get used to doing well because this is America, right? We’re supposed to keep growing, and making more money, and doing better. Eight years is a LONG time to not see your wages and investments grow AT ALL. THAT was Switch’s point, I believe.

Possession is 9/10 of the law. America will be a very minor player in space. The money that COULD have gone there will go to Iraq/Afghanistan, paying interest on the debt, keeping baby boomers alive another 6 months, and whatever new trendy war we get involved in. Probably Iran. All empires eventually rot and decay from within.

@Cmdr:

@Smacktard:

@Cmdr:

I’m truly sorry you picked a bad fund manager, my fund managers have been getting close to 17% per annum since 2002 (2001 was a bad year, we had the World Trade Center and other things happening, very high unrest, I only got 7% that year, bad bad year for me.)

:roll:

And I’m 6’4’', 220, Atlas physique. Done some modelling. You might have seen me. If its on the internet it must be true! Thanks for the laugh, Jen. Your investments tanked like everyone else’s. Why do I picture you sitting across from a Countrywide agent, saying, “Adjustable rate? Interest only? Where do I sign?!?!?”

Thanks for the nice flaming and flame baiting.

Not everyone’s stocks went down, Smacktard.  Anyone invested heavily over seas and in wise domestic products actually saw very nice returns on their investments.

Here are some examples for you.  I don’t own them all, but I have held most of them since 2001 due to the terrorism activities in this nation and my intimate knowledge on how poorly you Americans can sift through the propaganda fed to you by the news. (Hey, if the news is battering you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week telling you the economy is awful, eventually you’ll cave in and start believing them, even if everyone is driving around in golden Rolls Royces and sipping Champaign with their Caviar.)

American Funds EuroPacific Growth Fund (AEPGX) up 22.8% in the last five years.  Up 19% THIS YEAR
T. Rowe Price Intl Discovery (PRIDX) up 31.2% in the last 5 years. Up 16.6% THIS YEAR
T. Rowe Price Emerging Markets (PRMSX) up 38.3% in the last 5 years. Up 42.9% THIS YEAR
American Funds New World (NEWFX) up 23.1% in the last 5 years. Up 32.9% THIS YEAR
T. Rowe Price New Era (PRNEX) up 29.9% in the last 5 years. Up 40.7% THIS YEAR

Source: THE MONEY 70, Money Magazine, June 2008

As I said, I’m sorry some people are having a hard time investing wisely.

Um, to get any credit, you have to make the prediction BEFORE it comes true. Going by your inability to actually read a simple DJIA chart, I’m gonna have to call BS and go with the Countrywide scenario.

@dezrtfish:

Ok, how about Fox, CNN, and the Senate…

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,166038,00.html

How about Fox?

"In its Medium-Term Oil Market Report on Tuesday, the IEA said demand would rise most in developing countries, with Asia, the Middle East and Latin America accounting for nearly 90% of demand growth over the next five years.

The energy agency’s executive director, Nobuo Tanaka, said market fundamentals, and not speculative investments, were behind high oil prices."

http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/industries/energy/oil-jumps-middle-east-concerns/

CNN?

“Oil rises on tight supply forecast
Investors hedge against dollar as energy agency sees supply problems and demand growth over the next five years.”

http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/01/markets/oil/index.htm?postversion=2008070113

Here’s a good article for you: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/07/lets_shoot_the_speculators.html

The title is tonge-in-cheek, and the guy is hardly a leftist. One of his articles is “Start Drilling”. And what do you actually believe? That there’s a cabal of investors jacking up the price? You do realize that speculators are a REACTIVE group, right? Whatever the news is, they REACT to it. If some marvelous invention came out that doubled MPG and cost $50, where do you think oil futures would go? Right now, these investors are reacting to bad news. News that Fox and CNN are carrying this morning: The dollar’s sinking, supplies are tight, demand is growing. Its the same litany I said yesterday.

I am not suggesting some backroom conspiracy, I’m saying that investment companies have found a way to make money and they’re taking from me.

Ok, so what new trick did these companies come up with in the past couple years? Because oil was $30 a barrel just four years ago. In fact, for about 20 years, we were awash in cheap oil. Were these investment company henchmen twirling their mustaches and just biding their time all those years?

I am also saying that global warming proponents think is a good thing because it’s helping their agenda.

Environmentalists have hated oil since forever. Did they also suddenly find a way to drive up the price? The real truth can be summed up by about 4 simple reasons:

1. The dollar’s historic decline: Since the 70’s oil HAS to be traded in dollars. When the dollar drops, it takes more dollars to buy the same barrel of oil
2. China, India, Southeast Asia’s enormous growth: China and India have sustainable 8%+ growth for over a decade now. Like any industrialized nation, they run on oil. China and India’s economy doubles every 7-8 years. Ours (running at around 3-4% grwoth) doubles every 20-25 years.
3. Mideast worries: Iran is a huge supplier of oil. Any saber-rattling is going to worry people who trade in futures, and there’s been a lot of it lately.
4. OPEC’s production: Bush recently begged Saudi Arabia to increase production. They ignored him. OPEC is just about at capacity. There’s a finite supply of light sweet crude. We don’t have the will to drill our own, and new discoveries in the MidEast aren’t keeping pace with demand. A basic law of economics: rising demand and limited supply= price goes up.

I agree there are people that will pay more for better gas mileage, but there are even more people that can’t go out and buy a new car so they get better mileage.  Those people are really getting the shaft in the name of progress.

It’s painful in the short-term. It will be better for all of us in the long-term. It’s not like people are starving. You cut back on movies, lattes, eating out, put off that new flat screen, etc. Most people in the world would kill for what we have to cut back on. We’re a fat lazy country of consumerists with a negative savings rate, spending our grandkids’ money. Maybe we need a kick in the ass.

You missed a step, the oil companies also buy from investors who are buying from OPEC and other countries.  That creates an artificial demand and normally allows for a more smooth process so that demand isn’t constantly rising and falling.  However now that oil prices seem to be going up only it’s a runaway train the more that is bought the higher the price goes.  From what I can gather, I don’t have a hard current source the world uses about a 100 million barrels of oil a day, I read in one of those sources above that there are over a billion barrels being held by speculators, and the longer they hold them the more their worth and when they sell them the more they can buy again…

Look, it’s not a self-fulfilling prophecy, like you’re describing. There are concrete reasons why investors see oil as a good buy (the 4 I listed). They didn’t all just wake up one day and think, “Oil’s too cheap! Let’s drive up the price”. And I’d be surprised if speculators were holding a billion barrels. You would need a pretty big tank to hold that. Commodities traders don’t usually buy the commodities: they bet on future contracts. The contracts are bought and sold and finally end up with the person that actually wants to take delivery of the oil. If you hold onto the contract too long, YOU buy the oil. Good luck storing it. What you’re talking about is the equivalent of hundreds of oil-tankers steaming in circles to create artificial scarcity. World doesn’t work like that. The oil is pumped, refined, and shipped to whoever buys it as quickly as possible.

I read last week about an electrolysis generator that can split H2 and O and feed them directly into a cars intake increasing mileage and hp by 15% to 40%.  It runs off of the car battery and distilled water.  If some one can make and install that in their garage the car companies should be doing something more to increase mpg.

There’s also a small company selling a $10,000 battery kit that will 1: turn any car into a hybrid or 2: turn a hybrid into a fully electric car. Like any new techology, it’s ridiculously expensive, but there is now a market for it. The VCR was expensive when it first came out and calculators used to cost hundreds. GM is betting on batteries and Toyota is betting on fuel cells. Maybe they’ll both be right. The point is, the tradiontional gas engine is going to be a thing of the past. In 10 years, you’ll only see it on used cars. This is a good thing. If it takes a rise in fuel prices, so be it.

@Cmdr:

I’m truly sorry you picked a bad fund manager, my fund managers have been getting close to 17% per annum since 2002 (2001 was a bad year, we had the World Trade Center and other things happening, very high unrest, I only got 7% that year, bad bad year for me.)

:roll:

And I’m 6’4’', 220, Atlas physique. Done some modelling. You might have seen me. If its on the internet it must be true! Thanks for the laugh, Jen. Your investments tanked like everyone else’s. Why do I picture you sitting across from a Countrywide agent, saying, “Adjustable rate? Interest only? Where do I sign?!?!?”

@Cmdr:

Doubt the north pole will be devoid of ice, but if it is, there’s no land there to claim!  It’s all ocean is it not?

Besides, if Russia claims the north pole, does that mean America gets the Moon and Mars? (We placed flags on both long before the Russians had a chance too.)  If so, then America is rolling in fresh water reserves just found on Mars and we have an awesome space platform to launch expeditions into the outer solar system (the moon.)!

Right, because NASA is a study in innovation! I mean the shuttles we use now don’t even look like the old glider with big rockets strapped to its… oh wait. When we ever do get around to building a moonbase, it will be to supply Chinese ships making their run to Mars.