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Many sources are reporting that Trump finally signed the pandemic relief bill:
- Trump signs stimulus and government spending bill into law, averting shutdown
- Trump Signs Pandemic Relief Bill After Unemployment Aid Lapses
- Trump signs stimulus bill ahead of government shutdown, releasing checks and aid
- Trump signs COVID relief bill amid pressure, but adds conditions
Not gonna summarize all the bits in it - it's some 5k pages of legalese gobbledygook, but I understand it continues augmented unemployment benefits, eviction suspension, funding to prevent government shutdown, and another direct cash payment.
I'm sure it also has a bunch of "porky pork", but the people are suffering, time is of essence, and it should have been done months ago.
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Trump Signs $900 Billion Pandemic Relief Bill
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The last time I saw him he was walking down Lover's Lane holding his own hand.
-- Fred Allen
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @07:28PM (69 children)
This bill sucks because the only way to pass a bill through the Republican-controlled Senate is to bargain over tax breaks for wealthy and special interests and screwing over working class Americans. There are tax breaks for special interests like Hollywood but Republicans want to cut unemployment and direct payments, claiming they're too expensive. The bill was also delayed because Pat Toomey whined that the ability of the Federal Reserve to provide emergency lending. The deficit doesn't matter when tax breaks can be provided for the wealthy, but it's tremendously important when aid for working class Americans is involved. We could do useful things like cancelling all federal student loan debt and regulating the wasteful expenditures of higher education. That will never pass because Republicans will whine that it's too expensive, but yet we apparently can afford tax breaks for the wealthy and large corporations.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @07:55PM
You being played my friend, they are both controlled opposition to one another to distract you while the debt, corporate favors, and spying grows.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @08:47PM (61 children)
You make good points, but still aren't quite getting it. Working-class American's work where? Corporations, right? If you tax the corporations more, they lay people off. And the economy slows down.
Absolutely NO argument from me- there is far too much money influencing Congress and govt. in general, but I don't see how to fix that. It's entrenched beyond repair.
(Score: 5, Informative) by barbara hudson on Monday December 28 2020, @09:10PM (60 children)
Trickledown never worked in all of human history.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @09:28PM
You might enjoy looking into how the federal reserve works, and where money comes from in general.
Because it is all trickle down.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @10:23PM (8 children)
You got upvoted because people want to believe.
What you wrote sounds nice. I wish it were true. Sadly, it isn't, and most people aren't educated enough to see why. (it's college-level economics) Politicians are happy to repeat nice-sounding nonsense.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Monday December 28 2020, @11:56PM (7 children)
Low taxes on the rich discourage investment in products and services, diverting money away to finalization and rent-seeking behaviour.
Learn from history.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 29 2020, @12:26AM (4 children)
Clownwig tranny hudson's HISTORY of FAIL exposed https://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=14501614&cid=59043858 [slashdot.org] shot down publicly in front of 1,000's after "it" essentially states "how great a coder I am" on THIS site, parent to this here that proves otherwise https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=41274&page=1&cid=1091104#commentwrap [soylentnews.org] with documented FACT of twisted tranny barb fuckups (bar = all talk, no action, no proof of mere talk) and further errors after that too here https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=41274&page=1&cid=1091785#commentwrap [soylentnews.org] AND the great admin barbara hudson, no proof as usual, more bullshit lies SHOT DOWN IN FLAMES yet again on her "it" admin skillz https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=41315&page=1&cid=1092189#commentwrap [soylentnews.org] for being a bullshit liar sucking WELFARE IN CANADA, below retirement age, faking being BLIND but using YOUR TAXPAYER DOLLARS to spout it's SWINERY online, leftist (that ain't "right") bullshit. "Social spending" on REJECT defective product mentalcases like barbara (alias TOM) hudson = waste of TIME trying to fix a BROKEN from BIRTH freak like "it" or anyone LIKE it. Barbara Hudson will just buy another "clownwig" hahaha (it does wear one, tom hudson = BALD weasel whimp homo) with the money at your expense so it can be a twisted fucking FREAK!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 29 2020, @12:53AM (3 children)
Just FYI your posts are so nuts no one has to even slog through one sentence in order to ignore it.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 29 2020, @01:47AM (2 children)
I laughed my ass off when this was pointed out https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=41315&page=1&cid=1092282#commentwrap [soylentnews.org] and since barb the twisted tranny ran afterward you know it's clownwig is spinning on its bald yet want to be a woman flipped out head so fast flames are erupting. So much for barb's bragging on known bs C cgi bin work it stated it did had issues with.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 29 2020, @07:12AM
How does the gender essentialist legality rule for bald women who have had at least 3 menstrual cycles, such as breast cancer patients?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 29 2020, @08:48AM
Made it that far and didn't click the link, you are just that transparent.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 29 2020, @04:12AM (1 child)
Taxation rates of 90% were entirely theoretical. Every kind of stupid exemption and credit was available to avoid that tax.
Tax rates, as actually paid, haven't really changed.
I happen to think that a tax code full of crazy exemptions isn't reasonable. It favors the people with good accountants.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday December 29 2020, @03:54PM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 5, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Monday December 28 2020, @10:53PM (5 children)
50-year study of tax cuts on wealthy shows they always fail to "trickle down" [salon.com]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @11:05PM (4 children)
Trump raised taxes on rich people in places like California, New York, and Massachusetts. They used to have an unlimited ability to deduct local taxes from federal taxes. Trump got that limited to $10,000 and tried to go lower.
In that same effort, he increased the standard deduction. This helps the non-rich. Most people got lower taxes.
Biden wants to undo that. Voting for him was voting for "trickle down", so I'm sure you didn't do that.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 29 2020, @09:06AM
Wow, you sock puppeted that shit up to 2 and one sucker added another to get you to 3?
Saddest troll around.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 29 2020, @09:35PM
lol
"Trump made blue states pay a bigger share of the red state social programs, pissing on the principle of states rights. You should be grateful, because he also did something nice that was really obvious."
"Also, even though he literally has never said he'd undo the increase to the standard deduction, he's totally going to because
Republicanpoliticians always oppose every idea the other side has even when it's good."There are real arguments to be made, but I'd be casting pearls before swine doing any more than mocking this tool.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 29 2020, @09:54PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Cuts_and_Jobs_Act_of_2017#Distribution [wikipedia.org]
Want to try again?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 30 2020, @05:31AM
Until two years ago. In 2019, those making the *least* started paying *more*. And in 2021, that will apply to those making less than $40,000/year. And by 2027, anyone making up to $75,000/year will be paying *more*. [wikipedia.org]
Those making more than $75,000/year will continue to suck at the government teat indefinitely.
And the corporate tax cuts, those are permanent.
Yeah, Trump did the middle class a *huge* favor. Yeah, right.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @11:15PM
> Trickledown never worked in all of human history.
It certainly did work. It has kept people arguing back and forth for decades.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 29 2020, @12:18AM
Tranny hudson's HISTORY of incompetent stupidity https://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=14501614&cid=59043858 [slashdot.org] shot down publicly in front of 1,000's after "it" essentially states "how great a coder I am" on THIS site, parent to this here that proves otherwise https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=41274&page=1&cid=1091104#commentwrap [soylentnews.org] with documented FACT of twisted tranny barb fuckups (bar = all talk, no action, no proof of mere talk) and further errors after that too here https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=41274&page=1&cid=1091785#commentwrap [soylentnews.org] AND the great admin barbara hudson, no proof as usual, more bullshit lies SHOT DOWN IN FLAMES yet again on her "it" admin skillz https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=41315&page=1&cid=1092189#commentwrap [soylentnews.org] for being a bullshit liar sucking WELFARE IN CANADA, below retirement age, faking being BLIND but using YOUR TAXPAYER DOLLARS to spout it's SWINERY online, leftist (that ain't "right") bullshit. "Social spending" on REJECT defective product mentalcases like barbara (alias TOM) hudson = waste of TIME trying to fix a BROKEN from BIRTH freak like "it" or anyone LIKE it. Barbara Hudson will just buy another "clownwig" (it does wear one, tom hudson = BALD weasel whimp homo) with the money at your expense so it can be a twisted fucking FREAK!!!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday December 29 2020, @12:31PM (41 children)
I've seen this cognitive dissonance before. We can't trust businesses to do anything except pay for our shit, followed by fantasies about how voluminous the shit they'll pay for. The obvious rebuttals to the above two points is first, if you consider history for real, like the last 50 years for a glaring example, you'll see that businesses don't do their best to "make up the difference". Instead, they move or close up. Off-shoring and automation are things and they've been done for far less than what you've proposed here.
Right now in the US, we're running a test of your model and it's failing. California believes, much as you do, that businesses are merely a tax revenue source which can be tapped heavily. They similarly have a remarkable disregard for the effectiveness of what that tax revenue is spent on, that "social spending". Meanwhile Texas among other states, doesn't have that venal attitude.
What do we see? Considerable movement of businesses out of California into more business-friendly places like Texas. I think it'll be far more educational than your version of history what happens to California and Texas next.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by barbara hudson on Tuesday December 29 2020, @04:16PM (35 children)
Look at tech - where's the innovation since the turn of the century? Windows is still Windows, OSX is based on FreeBSD. Linux is a Unix (1980s) wannabe. Smartphones were around in the 90s. So we're the tablets - we just called them PDAs.
Chromebooks? We had dumb terminals like forever. Graphic browsers to access the Internet? Some guy created one in the 80s that worked over dial-up and allowed interactive graphics, and user-defined graphics and interactions.
Innovation is dead, it's just everyone competing to create the latest iteration of old ideas to try to become a unicorn.
Is open source any different? No - just look at the 2,000 different distros. All with the same software.
The innovators at the beginning of the small computing era were done by one or two people in a garage, or on their kitchen tables. They didn't try to get a billion dollars before they had a product. It was interesting times with interesting people doing interesting things. You're not going to find the interesting innovative new stuff from the big guys, but by a new generation of individuals and small groups who aren't chasing the big deal and have to limit what they do to avoid scaring off investors.
So neither Texas nor California are going to do anything but give us more of the same shit, different day.
And both California and Texas are untenable long term because of global warming. Already Texas ranchers have to be careful not to let cattle overheat when grazing. What's it going to be like 25 years from now?
10 million domestic climate migrants.
50 years from now? >p> 100 million domestic climate migrants. Because when things tip, they snowball.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 29 2020, @09:53PM (5 children)
Normal business has never directly invested in much of anything avoidable. That's a job for banks and the stock market. They still invest.
Innovation in tech has been huge. CRISPR gene editing is new. Quantum supremacy (for computation) has been claimed. We invented the AGM-114R9X bladed missile to limit undesired casualties. You sound like the patent inventor who quit around 1900, saying there was nothing left to invent.
Open source also innovates. The rr debugger is a fine example, bringing reverse debugging without relying only on snapshots or emulation. Another example is rust, able to create safe unchecked native code without garbage collection.
Dismissing upgrades as "more of the same shit" is terrible. I like the Ford Mustang much better than the Ford Pinto, and I like that much more than the Ford Model T.
Your fears of global warming are way overblown. Fear is how news reporters get eyeballs, and fear is how politicians make you hate the other candidates, so of course you get a 24x7 feed of fearmongering. If people have to move, so what? Alaska is huge. We can sacrifice Hawaii to make Alaska comfortable. Note that I'm definitely not in agreement that this will happen. I bought a Florida house near the beach.
If we end up needing walls to hold back the ocean, costs will rise. We'd best have our economy in good shape. That means not going down your desired path, which leads to being like Venezuela. People in Venezuela might need to live in the mountains because they can't afford seawalls. That's what happens when you fuck your economy with leftist shit.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday December 30 2020, @12:41AM (3 children)
You can't grow much in the boulder fields and moraines of the North.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 30 2020, @05:07AM (1 child)
Soil in the Amazon rainforest is terrible. It's lacking lots of nutrients. Somehow, plants grow. That is because the Amazon isn't really fucking cold like Alaska.
So of course you can't grow much in the boulder fields and moraines of the North. Plants need heat. They also like carbon dioxide, with nearly all plants growing much better if you increase the levels. In other words, we need to burn more coal.
Florida is also lacking nutrients. Much of the state is pure white sand. Oh well, fertilizer exists. It's like hydroponics. Tomatoes grow really well in pure white sand if you fertilize them.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday December 31 2020, @04:20AM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 30 2020, @09:55PM
They also left a bunch of glacial till which is excellent for making new topsoil. That incidentally means that a lot of those glacial lands are excellent places now for growing crops, due to the topsoil that has been created since the glaciers retreated.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday December 31 2020, @03:41AM
The re debugger isn't new and innovative. There have been commercial c/c++ packages that allow you to unwind the stack, change variables, and proceed, set break points and step through execution, reverse and change thevprogram flow, etc. since the 90s. So once again, open source is decades late. >p> I was quite happy to pay for commercial development tools because I got support. Because the people working on ithwm weren't scratching an itch. And money was available to pay people to fix bugs , which most people would rather work on new stuff.
This year the app stores made over $100 billion, passing $70 billion on to developers. Apple generated 68% of that, despite having a smaller market share than android. So while android tries to pass itself as open, if you want to be able to support your product long term, that takes money. Apple is the place to be for developers, especially since they're lowering the cut on projects that make less than a million (and if you're making over a million a year, cry me a river).
The Linux distros are a mess. Too many, distro hopping is still a thing after decades. There needs to be consolidation but it won't happen. You know it, I know it, so does every user.
Progress in Linux is yet another distro, with the same packages everyone else has, yet another package manager, yet another non-intuitive UI change. The distros from the turn of the century were more intuitive.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 29 2020, @10:15PM (27 children)
So what? Business can't avoid that and they invest in plants, factories, etc. As to tax policy, that's a ridiculous claim. I'll note that higher nominal tax rates increases the incentives to evade or avoid the taxes. It will backfire just like it did back then.
Why is reinventing the wheel considered innovation?
They would have had to be just as careful 200 years ago. Not every climate problem has magically shown up in the past 40 years.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday December 30 2020, @12:35AM (26 children)
And the temps in Texas are now too hot in some areas to graze traditional cattle, so they're looking for genetic bloodlines that can tolerate the higher heat and lack of good grazing grounds. This was not a problem 200 years ago.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 30 2020, @02:18AM (25 children)
Except of course, when they have so invested.
Actually, those retained a great deal of worth. The problem wasn't the alleged worthlessness of the securities. It was way overestimating the security of the securities and then massively overleveraging. There is nothing in the world that is sure enough to support the 50 to 1 (and greater) leverage (that is, borrowing $50+ for every $1 of assets you have) that was being bet on mortgage securities at that time (with behavior corresponding to that amazing lack of risk awareness such as ignoring large scale fraud).
As I already noted, that's not new. I suspect rather that those ranchers are expanding into areas that are traditionally hostile to cattle because of the temperature, using climate change money. It'd be far from the first a perceived crisis is used as a pretext to fund an existing scheme that has little to nothing to do with the crisis.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday December 30 2020, @03:34AM (24 children)
And the government bailed out the banks because so many of the properties had a negative worth. One bank tried to just give 8,000 properties to the city. The city said okay, if you pay the costs of bulldozing the homes and disconnecting the utilities. So the bank still holds the properties, they're totally worthless (gutted for wiring, plumbing, fixtures, windows and doors, full of mould, squatters, roof fallen in, fire damage. Some of these places had been flipped sight unseen by one speculator after another, $500 ballooning to $155,000 and then defaulting.
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(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday December 30 2020, @03:37AM (15 children)
Cities offer them for auction, nobody bids because the cost of bulldozing them and turning them into worthless vacant lots is a losers game.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 30 2020, @03:51AM (14 children)
I think that illustrates the problem handily. This alleged problem has nothing to do with securities. And all this real estate is less than twenty years old in good locations. It doesn't cost that much to bulldoze a house and turning it into valuable vacant lots, even if you couldn't flip the house for a profit. I suspect the "cities" of the quote are cities with substantial problems that go way beyond some overbuild of shoddy houses from the last boom. Like Detroit, for a glaring example of a city that has trouble selling homes for auction.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday December 31 2020, @06:29AM (13 children)
Chicago, Baltimore, much of California's Inland Empire, which was a high growth area (drive until you can buy) with million dollar homes on brand new streets that became worthless during the recession.
So it was both urban slums and suburban rich folk housing that was affected. That's what happens at the end of a speculative property boom when one in every 83 workers is a real estate agent flogging properties that end up being sold multiple times before the first shovel of dirt is dug.
And banks approving no-doc mortgages where you don't even need to show a pay slip or tax return. Search for "stated income mortgage."
Lots of fraud. People would get a mortgage based on their "stated income", then get a bogus HELOC based on an evaluation from a "cooperative" to take out cash to live on and make the payments, flip the house, and do it again. -p> This isn't that far in the past. It's all documented.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday December 31 2020, @12:39PM (12 children)
I see I nailed that problem. Deal with the urban management problem and you'll deal with the low value of property that became "worthless".
Except that it wasn't so.
Irrelevant. In a market bubble where risk blind traders can do almost anything and still make money, this is the sort of thing they do. It's not news. We'll see that again and again, each time there is such a bubble. It didn't make property worthless then or now.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday December 31 2020, @08:53PM (11 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday December 31 2020, @10:03PM (10 children)
Yet. A bunch of property that nobody will touch is a symptom of growing blight.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday December 31 2020, @11:34PM (9 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 01 2021, @02:16AM (8 children)
You just said they were negative dollar homes. Not buying the semantic shift here.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 01 2021, @04:13AM (7 children)
You couldn't give them away because just the taxes exceeded the income of the suddenly jobless, and they were too far away for someone who was having a problem keeping gas in the car (or was living in their car).
It's all out there. But you're too needing to keep up your fake reality that you won't even search.'
Same as you don't know what it's like to have a real job.
Why don't you have some sort of career? Given up? No real qualifications? No real experience? No real interest? No talent? Too lazy? Too afraid of failure? Personality issues that make you unemployable? Periods of delusion? Constantly delusional? Too busy shit-posting? The aliens gonna get you if you go outside? If you work most of your pay will be garnisheed for debts or fines? Outstanding warrants? Electronic ankle tracking bracelet? Too gross? Tourette's?
Come on, there's got to be some reason your only job experience was part time at a concession stand years ago. Got caught stealing? Criminal record?
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 01 2021, @04:55AM (6 children)
As I've already noted, that sort of shitshow is how you kick off urban blight. There's a reason some places have this problem and others don't. And it doesn't have anything to do with too little taxes.
What's your career again? As I see it, I don't need nor want whatever you think a career is.
I guess 11 years in hospitality accounting isn't really a job, right? At least, it pays the bills, and leaves a bit over 50% after taxes and bills for me to save.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 01 2021, @05:33AM (5 children)
No wonder you don't have a clue.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 01 2021, @12:20PM (4 children)
I notice you don't apologize for getting it wrong. Yes, you hit the Azuma sore spot where the person just says shit about other people, and doesn't care in the slightest if what they say is right or wrong. Basically, constructs their own fantasy world and then tries to make everyone play in it.
Sorry, I'm not interested.
As to your questions, in the (non-covid) summer (this being seasonal work), the "small place" is a resort with 300 hotel rooms, 280 cabins, and 440 campsites, plus several restaurants, retail shops, and a Marina - in the middle of a park that sees more than four million visitors a year. and "hospitality accounting" just means that I do a different sort of accounting than the people who figure out what account to charge the office party cake to or strategies for minimizing tax exposure. In particular, it's a combination of auditing all sales transactions in that location plus monitoring that employees are handling money correctly.
Because? This is a pathetic argument from authority without an authority. Last I heard, you worked in the past as a coder and now, are retired and volunteer work at a local food bank. Doesn't sound like you have the life experiences necessary to judge people based on flimsy evidence, right? Maybe you could come back to continue this argument when you do get such experience? It should only take a few decades.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 01 2021, @01:55PM (3 children)
You keep projecting.
Get a real job for once on your life. Seriously, a camp ground? That's like somebody saying they work on a cruise ship. In other words, unemployed.
It's funny. Once my vision is fixed, I'll be using my retirement pension to subsidize my software development. And I'll make money at it, because it's what I do. I should be able to do it through my 90s, in part because I'm not going to open source anything, so no nagging from freetards about features they want that I think go in the wrong direction, or competing with forks of my own crap.
The extra money would be nice, as would being back in the swing of things.
Or to quote Foghorn Leghorn - "where's your ambition, boy?"
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 01 2021, @06:21PM (2 children)
Who would have thought that they would have campgrounds in the woods?
Given that this is coming from the person whose present career is cat-sitter, the accusation doesn't have the sting it might otherwise have.
I also find it interesting how we segued from talking about the futility of high taxation (using your own examples!) to my supposed lack of a career and insufficient ambition unbecoming of a SN hack. I guess I better drop a gill net and catch some massive red herring because the school is here.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 01 2021, @06:42PM (1 child)
I'm retired. That's what people in their mid-60s do. I spend my weeks volunteering. You tried to give the impression you were an accountant or whatever, but your posts where you have no clue whatsoever about money say you're full of shit, like usual.
Nobody believes you. Absolutely nobody.
Then again, what can you expect from a hick living in Hicksville.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 01 2021, @10:00PM
Welcome fellow deadbeat. Bring the XBox and I'll bring the Cheetos and skunk beer.
Yes, I'm an accountant and yes, I have on occasion tried to give that impression as well. So what? Have I ever argued that you should agree with me because of my authority as an accountant?
I notice those alleged posts didn't happen in this thread.
So anyway, I've been thinking about why you're bringing this apparently completely unrelated thing up in a thread about increasing taxes and I got it figured out. Your problem is that Canada isn't taxing you enough - that is, you need your taxes increased just like Apple does. That's why you're a deadbeat retiree rather than a real job careerist. Here's hoping that Canada fixes that and makes bank at the same time!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 30 2020, @04:03AM (7 children)
Sure, they do. Needless to say, I think Occams razor cuts differently here.
First thing here is that this unnamed city (not cities) here probably has serious problems in the first place. After all, they too are letting that property rot.
Keep in mind that the bank can hold those properties at an inflated value, thereby reducing their costs of maintaining reserve (among other things, meaning they can lend out more money). A gutted building still has value to them.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday December 31 2020, @06:17AM (6 children)
There's plenty of videos out there of new buildings being demolished by the property owners. They get an immediate 100% tax write off on the building, reclaiming some of the taxes they paid on sales at the height of the boom. Gives them cash flow. And a vacant serviced lot.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday December 31 2020, @12:45PM (5 children)
Why would there be "too high" taxes on a building with negative value? Last I heard, taxes were more or less proportional to the value of the property.
In other words, they destroyed good property because of bad tax law. Among other things, it's the broken window fallacy. And I find it remarkable that you think holding raw land for two decades is better.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday December 31 2020, @08:50PM (4 children)
If you're a developer and you can't rent out or sell a warehouse, it's value decreases with time while it's carrying costs increase. After a while just the passing of time means it's no longer grade a, so it's less desirable than vacant land that can be custom built to a tenants needs.
It's why many commercial buildings are either bulldozed, imploded, or gutted after 50 years - they're worth less in their current state than the land on which they sit is worth empty.
It's like swimming pools. They used to add value to a home. Then they came to be seen as a negative feature with high maintenance and the need to add restrictive ugly fences that took away the aesthetic. People were deducting the cost of filling in the pool from their offers.
same with fireplaces. Can't use them even with catalytic chimneys, so deduct the cost of removing and repairs to the walls.
The benefits in terms of fewer winter smog days made the banning of fire places worth it. In most cases, even with heating inserts, they were still net losers of heat, and raised insurance rates. People don't miss them after a while.
Same as they don't miss the old diesel buses when the hybrids are quieter and cheaper to run, and the electrics even quieter and cheaper. Less pollution and air conditioned are just plain nice bonuses. Tax payers like that. Same with school buses.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday December 31 2020, @10:12PM (3 children)
Because you wrote "new homes" and "brand new warehouses". That's not a sign of a healthy economy when valuable real estate gets destroyed merely to lower property taxes.
Sorry, that's not it. You started this thread talking about real estate from the last real estate bubble. Most that is less than 20 years old. I have no problems with old structures being razed to make way for a more valuable use of the property. That's human history ever since we started building stuff thousands of years ago. What's different here is destroying new property merely because of taxes. It's particularly ridiculous since you started this thread advocating for high taxes. So we see here that one of the problems of your higher taxation is that it encourages more destruction of good real estate. That's dumb.
I also am less than inspired by your examples. I assure you that in warm climates those pools are still seen as advantages. And making fireplaces and diesel buses costly via regulation is just more of the same bad ideas you've been having.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday December 31 2020, @11:40PM (2 children)
After all, dead people don't contribute to the economy, or the tax base.
'kind of like the story of your life. And you're never going to have any sort of professional career. Simply not qualified by either temperament or ability.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 01 2021, @02:17AM (1 child)
Communities are notorious for being unable to make such calculations.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 01 2021, @03:57AM
We banned fireplaces years ago. Winter air is noticeably cleaner.
The hybrid buses are quieter, and use less fuel despite being air conditioned.
Which is why there's almost a billion being spent on an underground garage for the new electric fleet, and more $$$ for another 800 all-electric buses. And 5 billion or more for an electric regional transit system to connect to the existing electric subway system.
So maybe communities in the USA are still shitty at defying lobbyists, but that's your problem. Not mine. We've got tons of clean green electricity, might as well use it.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday December 31 2020, @01:09AM
Unix was already around in the 70's.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 30 2020, @12:06PM (3 children)
You've been busy spewing your Randian crap here the last day or so.
Are you this active because you're concerned you won't be around much longer, once arrested for felony assault [koat.com]?
Enquiring minds want to forget you.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday December 31 2020, @12:48PM (2 children)
Thinking is better than whining that I went off message.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 31 2020, @02:32PM (1 child)
Who said you were "off message?" It's pretty much the same sociopathic randian bullshit we've come to expect from you Khallow.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday December 31 2020, @10:00PM
What I find particularly telling is that there is no interest in how well the money is spent. That indicates to me a huge lack of awareness of both how much is currently spent to little effect and the high likelihood that higher spending will feed the parasites rather than create societal benefits.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday December 31 2020, @09:18PM
Other countries with less US-type economic and social policies are doing better, while countries that went all in copying the USA model (UK for the last decade) are fucked. Both economically and covid-wise.'
You need to stop confusing the stock market and the real market
And reality with your fantasies.
No wonder China will beat you in terms of the largest economy in 5 years.
And you have a president pulling shit that, if it were anywhere else, you'd be screaming "coup."
You can't even run an election properly because you've got 70 million whackos, many too stupid to wear a mask during a pandemic. That's a special kind of dumb. The US and the UK - two countries that show themselves in the foot repeatedly the last 4 years. And will continue to do so.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by bussdriver on Monday December 28 2020, @11:18PM
It is an omnibus bill NOT a relief bill; but relief is naturally included.
Many things that would end up in other bills including some which would never pass until they could be stuck into big budget or military bills etc. It's also not had the full process because it's a rush job -- not all of it; the relief part has been going on for months. This is a merger of other bills and amendments those bills would have. It has pork; but everything does and it's 5k of pages so it naturally will have more pork since it is so huge... and because it's a compounded disaster if they don't.
Some truly evil politicians needed to be bought off to vote for this and playing politics to make them stand out while citizens literally DIE is just not worth it-- especially when about half the country is so stupid they'll die praising the people who are indirectly kill them!
Some of these "pork" bits will never end up happening as they are in the bill.
The felony for streaming copyright, we can repeal later, but then if we can't it would have happened eventually anyway.
Some bits I read about were vague committee $ allocations being twisted and lied about which is not new other than how far the lies were going with it. It's not usual for some pork to get some spending oversight and in the end maybe never get spent (or to be twisted into unforeseen pork.)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Monday December 28 2020, @11:50PM (4 children)
Fair point. But do not forget that it sucks because of Democrat pork ALSO -- like that $10m to Pakistan for gender programs. https://nypost.com/2020/12/22/covid-19-bill-contains-billions-of-dollars-in-foreign-aid/ [nypost.com]
It is possible that more money will be exported from America than will be used to help Americans.
(Score: 3, Touché) by FatPhil on Tuesday December 29 2020, @08:33AM
All in all, it's probably 99.9% pork. Americans should be hanging their head in shame at how terrible their political process is, how almost all of their representatives are absolutely not representing the voters who voted for them, and are lying about what they're actually doing. Why have they forgotten what the 2nd amendment was for? The other boxes didn't work, you now have the right to resort to the ammo one. If you disinsentivise corruption amongst politicians enough, through public floggings, say, it will eventually become a recessive trait. In particular if partners and offspring are included in the floggings - it will even drop out of the genepool that way.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 29 2020, @10:20PM (1 child)
Hello old fart, I know the whole acknowledgement of reality with the scary pre-existing gender issues really frightens you, but you really chose the worst example to pick on.
A) $10m is peanuts compared to the rest of the grift
B) Pakistan is probably one of the countries that most needs support coming to grips with the reality of human gender issues
C) Letting your old person prejudices out because you think they are so obviously correct only alienates yourself
Hint, political correctness may have gone overboard with some of the *ugh* "cancel culture" stuff with relatively innocent people getting unfairly punished however the underlying issues are very real. The best part is how you old white assholes are now so ANGRY about being called racists when you don't think that you are. Don't let the IRONY hit you in the ass too hard, you might find out you like it.
You might have more luck complaining about the ACTUAL piggies. Sending money to Pakistan is by definition NOT pork.
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Tuesday December 29 2020, @11:10PM
It used to bother me when types like you called me racist having been non-racist all my life, but I've come to understand that what you mean when you say "you're a racist" is "you're such a meanie to not agree with me, boo on you" and at that point, it stopped working. When you redefine words to mean ridiculous things and hope to get the grit and vigor of the original word, well, it works for a time until people figure out you're just a bullshitter. So that's where I'm at. You can expect to see more and more people become unfazed by your word games over time, at which point you'll basically have nowhere to go. The words racist and nazi used to be powerfully negative terms but once you've burned those down, what's left? I don't have any ideas for you, but best of luck with that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 30 2020, @05:41AM
So I guess you're not aware that those particular appropriations were *specifically requested by the Trump Administration* [whitehouse.gov], and not by some amorphous Democrats?
You need to pay attention, because you're all wet hemo.