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Anyone can make a chart with numbers. Without testing and usage conditions, those numbers are meaningless.

about 3 hours ago on HTC One 'Google Edition' with stock Android reportedly in the works 1 reply 5 recommends

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Health care premiums were soaring at the exact same rate before passage of health reform. And now health spending overall is growing at its slowest rate in a decade. And the non partisan estimates like the CBO estimates $1 trillion over 10 years not $500 billion over 2. Of course, if you’ve been listening to Hannity or Limbaugh they’re probably telling you the ACA will cost $100 trillion by 2015.

about 3 hours ago on 'The Daily Show' rips fawning Senators at Tim Cook's tax hearing 1 reply 4 recommends

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If you’re only making $50 for losing half a weekend then you’ve got bigger problems than the tax rate. The tax rate only goes up to 40% and if you’re making that little in overtime you probably wouldn’t have made more than $70 even if the tax rate were 0%. The scenario seems even more forced now.

about 3 hours ago on 'The Daily Show' rips fawning Senators at Tim Cook's tax hearing 1 reply

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First of all you completely ignored what I said so I guess that’s a tacit admission that you were making a strawman argument about wanting to destroy the rich.
And you ignored that blanket taxes don’t make companies voluntarily choose to make less money.
It was also the height of the housing bubble. A bubble economy may bring temporary prosperity but long term decline. Are you now going to congratulate the Presidents of the 20s for bringing unparalled prosperity without mentioning that boom led to the Depression? The CBO estimates the Bush tax cuts already cost $1.6 trillion and maintaining them for another 10 years would cost another $4 trillion. The US doesn’t have that kind of money to blow.
I never said the middle class is suffering to the extent you imagine I said. I simply want fairness. The whole XBox thing is moot because only tech nerds and gamers are arguing over that not the general middle class.

And flat taxes are inherently regressive. The person making $20000 a year and paying 20% might have to skip on food or gas. The person making $200,000 and paying 20% wouldn’t miss much.

about 3 hours ago on 'The Daily Show' rips fawning Senators at Tim Cook's tax hearing 2 replies 1 recommend

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Tell that to the Supreme Court. After Citizens Corporations United, now legislators will be more bought off than ever thanks to ALEC, AFP, the Kochs, Crossroads, etc.

about 4 hours ago on 'The Daily Show' rips fawning Senators at Tim Cook's tax hearing 1 reply

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Your comment serves as a perfect example of the strawman argument. Nowhere did I indicate I want the rich gone. I said I want the rich to pay fair tax rates not pay lower tax rates than average working people. I doubt paying a quarter or so in taxes would have made Google decide to let Apple take over the smartphone market uncontested nor would it just let cable companies rule just because it has to pay taxes. The notion that companies will choose the worse economic option simply because they would pay taxes on any resulting profit is ludicrous. Corporations want the maximum amount of money and making less money will not net them more money than making a lot of money regardless of taxation.

about 4 hours ago on 'The Daily Show' rips fawning Senators at Tim Cook's tax hearing 1 reply 3 recommends

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One tax rate across the board puts undue burden on the poor.
Imagine a 100 pound starving person and a 200 pound body builder. Ask both to lift 50% of their weight. The 100 pound person will find it much harder to lift 50 pounds than the 200 pound person lifting 100 pounds. Equal rates mean unequal burden. That’s why graduated tax rates work.
And your example distorts how graduated tax rates work. You’re taxed based on yearly income. By working overtime a person would go up one tax bracket at most and only that income above the bracket. Tax rates only go up to 40% so the nightmare scenario of a calculus limit approaching one maximum number doesn’t ever happen. The curve eventually goes linear. Your scenario could only happen under a system with a perpetually increasing tax rate.

Money invested due to government incentive means money not spent elsewhere in areas which would have been more economically sensical for the person if not for state intervention. So by giving such an incentive the state gets less revenue and the person makes the less economically wise decision.

about 4 hours ago on 'The Daily Show' rips fawning Senators at Tim Cook's tax hearing 2 replies

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The problem is big businesses won’t agree to anything higher than 1%. Anything higher than that and it will cost less to hire accountants and lawyers and reduce the tax rate to 0, or in the case of AIG, get $17 billion back for bankrupting the company.
If we’re going to cut loopholes and rates, it has to be around 25% with no fooling around and none of this “shift to offshore subsidiary” crap. But corporations always find a way to get around that so unless Congress is really going to make a no nonsense law, it lower rates for nothing.

about 4 hours ago on 'The Daily Show' rips fawning Senators at Tim Cook's tax hearing

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What, you think poor people wrote up the corporate jet tax deduction? Or how about tax breaks for “research and development of oil technology”, depletion of oil wells, use of advanced oil drilling techniques, and a “manufacturing” credit for an extraction activity? Don’t even get me started on the “foreign taxes” and “foreign investment” deductions. Did Monsanto and other agribusinsses write up the deductions for all sorts of crops or did poor people lobby for that? How did hedge fund managers end up getting taxed at 15% for regular earned income? Did Joe Johnson lobby Congress or professional Wall Street lobbyists?

about 4 hours ago on 'The Daily Show' rips fawning Senators at Tim Cook's tax hearing 1 reply

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A free market does not artificially encourage one way of spending money over another. The market invests if the profit of the business outweighs the initial investment including risk. No tax rate will change that fundamental economic situation. Therefore it’s best to let the market determine how much investment happens by setting all tax rates for all forms of income equally.

about 4 hours ago on 'The Daily Show' rips fawning Senators at Tim Cook's tax hearing 1 reply 1 recommend

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Let me introduce you to double bind.
A. There is no such thing as double taxation. The corporation and the investor are completely separate entities with separate bank accounts and if one goes bankrupt it doesn’t drag down the other and there’s legal liability barriers. In exchange the corporation and investor pay taxes separately.
or
B. Everything is double taxation. Money circulates and does not move linearly toward a predetermined destination. I get taxed when I get my paycheck then I get taxed when I pay sales tax then the corporation gets taxed when it gets my money from a purchase then the investor and the employee get taxed from the payouts. Everything is taxed at some point and the circularity of money movement means “double taxation” is inevitable.

Capital gains should match income taxes anyways. Treat all income equally. There’s no reason the rich should get a free ride compared to a working class person.

about 4 hours ago on 'The Daily Show' rips fawning Senators at Tim Cook's tax hearing 1 reply 1 recommend

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So if the government listens to corporations the tax problem will get better? You do realize that the tax code got this way in the first by Congress listening to corporations right?
It’s like asking factory owners in China to determine national policy on worker’s rights.

about 4 hours ago on 'The Daily Show' rips fawning Senators at Tim Cook's tax hearing 1 reply

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The problem is that they define “all the countries they operate in” in a very interesting way. Somehow most of the divisions in countries with high corporate tax rates make little to no profit and the tiny countries where Apple barely has a presence have subsidaries with all the profit.They forward their income to subsidaries and divisions in Ireland and dodge taxes that way.

about 4 hours ago on 'The Daily Show' rips fawning Senators at Tim Cook's tax hearing 1 recommend

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The record labels are stubborn and are doing everything they can to take away rights from Pandora. There’s no way they would let Pandora have rights in other countries.

about 4 hours ago on Pandora still hasn't named CEO as losses widen

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It’s a known bug in the Android app the Verge has thus far declined to do anything about. That and tablet UI.

about 5 hours ago on Apple Sues over Google Now

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I guess the multiple Nexus OEMs rumor is coming true, although much later than anticipated. I sure do hope people stop complaining about the price. $650 is what an unlocked phone costs everywhere else in the world.

about 5 hours ago on Stock Android HTC One confirmed (almost) 1 reply