Texanadian

Getting back to topic....

I think the Volt would do well in Texas. Contrary to belief, not everybody drives a Hummer/Suburban/Full size pick up. I see a fair amount of Priuses around town. Let's face it. We feel the sting of high gasoline costs about as much as anybody else. Most of the big cites in the country are here. Rush hour traffic sucks with a gas engine. Texas cars are notorious for being high mileage. So anything that saves gas would be appreciated.

The wealthy have a raw deal here. After all, the FDIC limit is what $250K.. oh the shaaaaaame.....

Plus don't forget the whopping 35% tax on anything over $350K. How do they live?

15% on long tern capital gains, which is where many derive their wealth, is just wrong wrong wrong.

Not necessarily. For some people, it's 35% over $186K.

I don't mind the 15% long term capital gains. Let's not forget that for many, the long term capital gains rate is 0%.

STOP. The Tax cuts were for EVERYONE.

Agreed.

Before..........After

15%.............10%

15%.............15%

28%.............25%

31%.............28%

36%.............33%

39.6%..........35%

Interesting survey. Thanks for sharing.

The following states have 0 places in the top 100 - alabama, alaska, delaware, hawaii, louisiana, maine, mississippi, montana, nebraska, nevada, west virginia, wyoming. Some I can understand, like Alaska and Montana.

And the states with the most places in the top 100, at 5 each, are Colorado, Minnesota, New York and Connecticut.

Alaska is a place where you love it or you don't. If you like it, there is no other place that can compare.

Hawaii? How could this not make the list?

Mississippi and West Virginia? Mississippi was ranked the 50th best state to live in 8 years in a row. It's the fattest state. Lowest income per capita. Tallest mountain is 800 ft.

McKinney, Allen, and Missouri City? I would think Austin would rank higher on the list.

The last place I'd want to live would be New York.

Do people really have more than one kid because they think it's better for society? Good grief.

Actually just the opposite would be "better for society." Having less or no kids. Why? Think about how much the "green" environmentalism has grown over the last decade. Global warming, green house gasses, recycling carbon taxes and offsets etc. What is the difference between having zero or one child vs having three or four? More kids = more resources used, more materials needed, more garbage produced, more cars and car use, (gotta get a bigger SUV rather than small car when you have 3-4 kids. And they're each going to drive in the future), more gas, more food, more paper, more utility bills . The list goes on and on..........Now all the over the top pro environment stuff hasn't really touched on population yet. But that's because it's one thing to tell people to recycle paper and plastic. It's another thing to tell them it's socially irresponsible to have multiple kids. Especially more than 2 as that's increasing the population. That will anger a lot of people.

Getting back to the original debate of one kid vs many. My two closest neighbours growing up had 4 kids and 5 kids. I was an only child. I wouldn't have traded with them for anything. They were ALWAYS fighting, in an argument, complaining that somebody else hit them or took something. It was always noisy over there. I would have hated it. I liked time to myself. Sure I had school friends to hang out with. But when I was at home, I enjoyed time to myself. I still do. When I get home from work, I thoroughly enjoy some quiet time to myself before my wife gets home. The strange thing (to me) is that the neighbours did poorly with alone time. They were bored when their brothers and sisters weren't home.

For a couple of years, I was pretty much by myself at home. Step dad worked away in camp during the week. Mom worked until 6PM. Got home around 6:30. So from 3:30 until 6:30, I was by myself. I would have been age 9-12 during these years. Ironically I think it would have been less safe had I had a brother or sister as one of us would have tormented the other. Or got in a fight. And there would have been nobody to break it up. I remember my neighbour chasing his brother with a butcher knife one time. I didn't have to worry about that sort of thing at home by myself. During the summer when school was out, I was home by myself much of the time. But then again, I would go swimming at the pool. Or go bicycle riding with friends. Or play baseball. I kept busy enough. The odd year my step dad would be off for the summer (seasonal work). So we'd go to the lake and go swimming almost every day during the afternoons.

I wouldn't say I was spoiled. I wore $30 no name shoes and jogging pants, 2 year old jeans. Lots of clothes that Mom had sewed. The neighbours all wore Nike Airs (even when they were 5 years old). I probably had more toys individually. But combined they had more. But they got to go places in the family station wagon. I got to cruise around town in a 2 seater sports car. I have many great memories of riding in the passenger seat as a kid driving around at night. Going on trips to see distant relatives. During the summer, I got to go camping with Mom. The neighbours would argue the entire time about anything if they went camping. (He got more marshmallows than I did....) And they would always be cramped when it came to sleeping.

I think it's hard to compare the amount of time kids spend with parents. Because if you go back 30-50 years ago when everybody had 3 brothers and sisters, the kids played outside by themselves. They roamed the neighbourhoods. They walked to the movies or took the bus. Today, parents are afraid of everything. Kids must have cell phones. Parents must know exactly where they're at at all times. It's sad. Because kids don't learn responsibility. They don't learn how to keep themselves occupied.

As for having brothers and sisters for when parents get old? I don't think it makes any difference. Why? Because typically the parent will depend mostly on one child. If Mom is old and needs to live somewhere, she'll usually live with one of the kids. She won't live here for awhile. Then there for awhile. Then there for awhile. Often it's the child who lives the closest that cares for Mom. Or maybe it's the one that already has her own children grown up and moved out.

Isn't this essentially the same way of thinking that we have with the national minimum wage law.....Many states also have a minimum wage law which says the state minimum wage is whatever the federal min wage law is.

Taking your two points one at a time:

When will it be time to cut spending and increase taxes (primarily on the rich in order that the tax increase have the least possible contractionary effect)? It is a very good, impt question. If proper stimulus is in place, probably 1-2 years. Will Congress actually do it? Skepticism is warranted -- but which party was the last one to run a balanced budget? (Hint: Clinton was president then, and he put the budget on track toward surplus with his first budget in 1993.) Each GOP president we've had since Eisenhower (maybe Ford, but not really) has presided over an explosion in the deficit. Carter did a decent job holding the line -- a statement hard for many to swallow but go back and examine the facts.

Next, we still have a situation where, on average, there are 5 job seekers for each opening. The odds aren't good for job seekers and employers will tend to discriminate in favor of those whose unemployment is shorter rather than longer. (I would -- in fact in a previous recession, I did.) Studies by economics show that unemployment can encourage the unemployed to be pickier during good economic times, but your argument that the unemployed are discouraged from accepting new work is supported by the data, empirically, during severe recessions. Yours is a bias with a certain appeal -- but it simply isn't supported by the data. I have a strong bias (maybe my scientific/technical training kicks in) to act on fact when facts are available.

We've only had a handful of balanced budgets over the last 75 years. Government has taken the idea that they must spend into deficit every year to keep up full employment. Did Clinton really balance the budget and have a surplus? Or was it creative accounting that borrowed from here and deposited it there? Did the debt actually go down in those years? No. Having said that, I didn't mind Clinton. I'm not so much of a hardcore party person as I am a politician person. It's also one of the reasons I like NH's system where you can run under multiple parties. Candidate A can be a Democrat-Republican. Candidate B can be a Libertarian-Democrat.

The problem with taxes is that they are not tied to balanced budgets and surpluses the way they are for individuals. An individual will pay off their credit cards and put an extra payment on the mortgage if they get a raise or a better paying job. Congress will simply spend more money and keep the debt the same. The problem with using debt to GDP or military spending to GDP etc is that the other costs are higher now than in the past. Somebody who is 18 years old with no kids and lives at home can spend 30% of their income at the bars and clubs. Somebody who is 40 years old with a house and 3 kids can't spend the same 30% of salary at the clubs.

Taxation has 2 ways of thought for me.

1) Higher taxation results in more spending rather than less debt. As such there is no reason to ever vote for higher taxes. They can't make do with what they already bring in? Taxes at all levels are about 45% of the national income.

2) Taxes should rise to balance out new government spending. This puts some pain into the system. People who vote for people who "bring home the bacon" should suffer the effects of it. Candidate A supporting Candidate B in another state's request for funding (on the terms that B also support A's spending requests) would result in all of us paying more for it. It would also make the citizen take voting more seriously if we had tax rates that went up every year. This is a fairness issue. The trouble is that fairness and taxation are mostly exclusive of each other. This would also hamper the economy by going back to the tax rates of decades ago.

UItimately I have to side with # 1 above. I'll take principle over fairness.

I have disagree on taxing the higher incomes more rather than a broad based tax increase. That's one of the reasons I like the Libertarian party. It's a party where everybody feels the benefits and everybody feels the loss when it comes to government spending. The current idea of taxing one group more to give subsidies to another is what causes ever increasing spending and ever increasing demands for SOMEBODY ELSE to pay for it.

I got a laugh out of Gore and Kerry talking about Bush spending the 7 trillion dollar surplus and putting the country in debt. And just where was this 7 trillion dollar surplus? Oh that was the perceived future surplus that would have happened if everything stayed the same. At the time, the Bush tax cuts made sense. The budget was (legally) balanced. It was a time of peace. I definitely didn't support Bush's spending over his presidency though.

Alan Greenspan is an idiot.

This is an effect that you get when you have concentrated power by upper level government. I wouldn't say he's an idiot. You have to be pretty smart to get to that level. But he has made mistakes. Recommending that people take variable rate mortgages when we were at all time low interest rates was a bad idea. His job is not a job that can be easily replaced. There aren't a lot of people out there with a thorough knowledge capable of taking the job.

You and I clearly see two totally different realities. Other countries don't treat their government workers like #######, pay them poorly and then complain. Not only is this a moronic attitude, but the end result speaks for itself.

Small businesses get a hell of a lot of tax breaks and able to make use a large number of deductions. Whereas, as a salaried worker, I don't get pretty-much any tax breaks. Speaking of small business, I also wouldn't work for some small business for the life of me. Too demanding, expect a lot and don't pay anywhere near as well.

What gets me about every single Libertarian on here is your ability to go on and on about something based on opinion, yet flat-out ignore reality and often refuse to accept what is or is not working abroad. The Chinese Communist government will beat the US, yet you guys will still be going on about less taxes, less government etc etc etc.

The Chinese don't have a welfare state mentality. You have to work to make it there.

I think it's you who has it wrong about Libertarians. It's the status queue Republicans and Democrats who want to keep things the same. How has the war on poverty worked? There are more people claiming benefits. How has the war on drugs worked? We have a drug war right on the border. Has education gotten better with more federal control? Nope. Have increased gun laws resulted in a drop in crime? Absolutely not. Has increased government spending over the last 10 years resulted in better anything? In 1999, federal spending was 1.7 trillion. Now it's 3.5 trillion. The problem is not too low of taxes. It's the spending. How could it not be?

You are kidding yourself though if you think the honest poor in America have a sweet deal. Yeah a sweet deal versus those in various third world countries but hardly some sweet deal. Many live in squalor, in conditions and poverty that I have not seen since my trip to India; definitely not something I ever saw in AUS.

Canadians and Australians pay taxes, receive 100 times the benefits, have a much much higher Q.O.L and are hardly poor.

I think you're comparing the poor in the US to the middle cass in Canada. The poor in the USA have section 8, earned income credit, food stamps, medicaid, welfare. It costs the poor essentially nothing to provide these. They also get cheaper food than Canada, cheaper gasoline, cheaper cars, cheaper car insurance, and lower sin taxes. It's not the poor in the US that have it bad. It's the poor in Canada. It's much easier to get ahead in the USA as the cost of living (in most places) is less.

Federal income taxes, not federal taxes. Social Security and Medicare taxes are federal taxes.

Let's not forget the earned income tax credit which pays many people more back than they pay in, in the first place. I will admit that many people pay more in FICA taxes than they do with federal income taxes. The range of deductions for income taxes can mean huge net rate drops in tax percentage. But the FICA amounts are pretty much locked. It's always baffled me why there is a continuous never ending argument about income taxes. But very little on FICA taxes.

To be a bit on the cheeky side, SS and Medicare are not taxes (according to the government). They are "contributions."

New York needs to ditch the business attire. Japan has done that in the past when it gets crummy hot. They say no more tie and jacket. Just the shirt will be fine.

I've lived in heat waves, cold fronts, snow, no snow, dry and humid. The heat that the north-east is dealing with is nothing other than average weather by south Texas standards. We have the highest heat index in the country here in Houston today. As such, it doesn't seem that bad at all. It's a normal day. Very few people even wear shorts here.

But numbers are misleading. Going outside at 3PM in TX for a 20 minute walk to the grocery store will feel hot. But the relief comes early and often in the form of cold grocery store and cold home. I'll be sleeping fine tonight. I'll be cooking dinner on the stove with no concern.

But when you're in a heatwave with no A/C, it's all the other stuff aside from temp numbers that gets you. Wind speed plays a huge role. The complete and utter lack of sleep or at the very least, GOOD sleep takes it's toll on you. People get really grumpy after a few days of no sleep. Cooking at home is out of the question. It's either BBQ or cold cuts.

I completely understand the arguments of southerners not feeling bad about heat in the north and northerners not feeling bad about cold in the south. It's what you're used to and how your home/car/job is set up to handle. Central A/C is common everywhere here. Cars all have A/C. Jobs too for the most part (outdoor jobs, some warehouse jobs being the exceptions). Cold outside here is defined as when it's colder outside than it is inside.

Conversely, if you have a garage for your car. And a good natural gas furnace or wood stove, you're not going to feel the effects of cold winters like somebody with baseboard heat and a frozen windowed cold car parked in the snow. It's considered hot outside in the north when it's hotter outside than it is inside.

Time will come when the US needs to address our long-term fiscal problems, and they should be addressed with a combination of spending cuts and tax increases but only when the economy is operating close to productive limits. That time is not now.

We can afford to provide the long-term unemployed with extended benefits and it makes a lot of economic sense to do so.

And just when will that time be? When will the economy be roaring along at the very same time we're in dire straights in terms of deficit and debt? It's too easy to kick the can farther down the road and let some future government and population deal with it. It's been almost 30 years since we went over the trillion mark in debt. Prior to that, I doubt anybody outside a mathematician had ever even heard of the word trillion before.

As far as unemployment goes, I'm not completely against it. But it should be limited. At least it's something that's earned by prior work. But 2 years worth of unemployment payments? Where is the motivation in that? People get content to stay at home and collect their check.

When you have 47% of the population paying no federal taxes, is it any wonder that at least as many people support higher government spending (aka spending by somebody other than themselves) in order to help create jobs and stimulate the economy? Benefits which probably will effect those same people.

It's the same issue with the deficit. It's an invisible tax, just like inflation. Nobody sees it on their pay stub. Nobody says we're not going out to eat dinner this month because the deficit is larger. Credit card debt is visibly felt by the person in debt. Government debt is an invisible weight on the same person. Of course nobody supports the idea that individuals should max out their own credit cards in order to create jobs and stimulate the economy.

People need to start thinking for themselves rather than acting like some great statesman who is all for "the general benefit of society."......Society will figure it's own way to progress and do things. But when you have somebody who thinks that their idea should be mandated for the good of society, those measures will only work by making somebody else do something they don't want to do. Pay for something they don't want to buy. Or alternately not do what they want to do or not being able to buy something they would like to buy.

Mme Jeanne Calment, who was listed as the world's oldest human whose birth date could be certified, died at 122. She had begun smoking as a young woman. At 117 she quit smoking (by that age she was just smoking two or three cigarettes per day because she was blind and was too proud to ask often for someone to light her cigarettes for her). But she resumed smoking when she was 118 because, as she said, not smoking made her miserable and she was too old to be made miserable. She also said to her doctor: "Once you've lived as long as me, only then can you tell me not to smoke." Good point! [uSA Today, "Way to go, champ," 10/18/95].

When Mme. Calment died at 122 in l997, the new longevity champ became 116-year-old Marie-Louise Meilleur, of Canada. Mme. Meilleur had chain-smoked all her adult life (as her grandson said, "She always had a cigarette dangling from her lips as she worked,"--AP, 8/15/97, reported in Miami Herald, p. 2A). She did give up smoking, however, when she was nearly 100.

I remember in 1994 when the federal and provincial gov'ts in Canada cut tobacco taxes to cut down on illegal cigarettes. Ontario had one of the largest cuts, at $19.20 per carton. It was very successful, increasing tax revenues and shutting down illegal smoke shacks. Apparently, taxes have slowly increased again over the intervening years such that they estimate that 50% of the cigarettes are illegal there now.

The link has some of the stats about this in it; note that it is a piece by an MPP that wants to decrease smuggling by decreasing taxes again.

Link

They do it backwards in BC. They raise the tax and then put a portion of the new tax money towards anti-smuggling efforts. Go figure.

New Hampshire has the right idea. They intentionally set the state tobacco tax rate lower than all the surrounding states. There is also no sales tax in NH. As such, they do a good legal cross border business with people from surrounding states.

Texas went from 41 cents to $1.41 awhile back. Now all of a sudden, people are going to Louisiana (36 cents) to buy cigarettes. I'm surprised that California is still at 87 cents. You'd think they would have raised that long ago.

The chemicals in cigarette smoke are uniformly bad for human health.

So what? Shouldn't people be allowed to choose for themselves how to treat their bodies? Some people go jogging at 4AM. Then go to the gym at 5AM. I prefer to sleep at that time of day. Some people are vegetarians. Some people love meat. Some people play in rock bands with no ear plugs. Other people work in silent libraries all day long. People work in factories that have questionable emissions. Others work in organic gardens. Heck, you can even buy organic cigarettes to really throw a monkey wrench in there. I don't think organic tobacco is really any better though as the leaves are caked in flies.

Some people ride a bicycle to work instead of drive. But again, some people ride their bicycles without a helmet.

The bottom line is that nobody wants to be told how to live their lives.

The government should lay off the sin taxes and start taxing a broader base of people. Let's say internet taxes. At $5/day in taxes, it should bring in quite a tidy sum of revenue. You don't have to use the internet. Might be hard to quit it. But you could if you really wanted to. Hey, they're running deficits. They need the money. Same with the child tax credit. It should simply be the child tax. No credit. You got kids? You pay more. Somebody has to pay for all that SCHIP and the schools are always looking for more money anyways.

It amazes me that people are all for free speech even when there are hateful groups. And against censorship even if it means things you don't like will be allowed. But bring up the topic of smoking and all freedoms go out the door. Why are people anti-freedom? I've even seen people complain about having to breath in 2nd hand smoke while they're sitting in their cars idling in drive-thru lanes at fast food restaurants. (smoking area for the restaurant being outside near the drive-thru lane)

Nobody has any "right" to go to a restaurant, bar, or mall and not breath in cigarette smoke. Everybody has a "preference" to go to a restaurant, bar, or mall and not breath in cigarette smoke. Major difference. Go into just about any bar or club late at night and you'll be subject to loud bands playing on stage. Loud enough that your ears ring for several hours afterwords. You have no right to tell the bar owner that they can't have loud bands playing. You only have a preference..........But in today's society, we tend to think that the majority's preference should be a right. This is no different from the racist segregation laws of the past. People demanded government not allow races to intermingle. That was the majority.

Something like 20% of the population in the US smokes today. It varies by state. About 14% in Utah up to 30% in Kentucky and Nevada. Restaurants should be able to institute their own no smoking rules independent of government. Want to eat out with the family? I bet you a restaurant that caters to non-smokers will do better than one that allows both. In another way, it means people have to wait in line longer for tables. In the old days, you had smoking and non smoking in restaurants. The non-smoking side would have a 15 minute wait. Or you could go sit in the smoking section right now. Today? You gotta wait. Conversely, bars that allow smokers to patronize the establishment tend to do better than non smoking bars. This doesn't mean a cloud of dense smoke inside. The bars that have large opening french doors to the patios, and high quality filtration and ventilation, will attract both smokers and non smokers alike. The ones that have the foggy ceilings will attract no non smokers and even smokers will pass them by.

But instead, we take the easy way out.. We kick the smokers outside to the patio or outside the front door. And then we complain that non-smokers can't enjoy sitting on the patio or walk by the front door without getting smoke in their general area. And it's outside for crying out loud! Well why is that? Who decided to make these people go to the patios and front doors in the first place?

Nothing wrong with pooling your money together to benefit your country, state, city, community and ultimately yourself. Mismanaging of taxes is a totally different issue. If you guys recall, for years now I have been illustrating the utter waste here because of the system. In summary, a situation where every city and county has its own police, school, fire, etc versus it being handle by the state. California has 58 counties. So think of the massive duplication of the aforementioned versus having it managed by the state or a few regions.

Like anything, the problem is with the system yet people will look for anything else to explain it rather than address the real problem. If benefits and tax rates was the case, then surely Canada and Australia would have been bankrupt 100 times over by now. Surely they would not be weathering the global financial storm so well. In reality, I have never heard of any of similar cuts happen there that are taking place all over America today. Also keep in mind that not only do they receive about 100 times the services, you have 1,000 times better and more modern infrastructure.

The trouble with running things at the state level vs the local level is that the individual citizen has less say in how things are run. MORE money is wasted the higher up the government level goes. A city budget will be debated at city hall, covered by the news organizations, and complained about by the local citizens. You can go there in person and raise hell. A state budget, you have much less say in how and where the money is spent. At the federal level, you have essentially zero say in what happens. As such, cities tend to figure a way to balance their budgets. States less so. The Federal government? Not even close.

Mismanagement of taxes is a direct result of the sentence you typed before it. When you're spending somebody else's money, you will never be as methodical and stingy or as efficient as when you're spending your own. This is yet another way that larger centralized government handles money worse than local government. They have more of other people's money.

Infrastructure varies by region. The Trans Canada highway is mostly 4 lanes across British Columbia. Nothing too exciting to write about there. When the BC government built a new highway on Vancouver Island, they chose to put stop lights in the city areas every couple of minutes rather than put in overpasses and underpasses. This is nothing like the multi-layered stacks we have in Texas. Ditto the Texas turnarounds that make the highways a breeze to get on / off / turn around on.

The country does not even have a federal sales tax, which means there are massive loopholes and tax losses. When someone from one state buys from another, particularly online, zero tax is paid period. You also have a massive black economy here thanks to no GST or VAT; furthermore, people like illegal aliens pay negligible tax. Now how many hundreds of thousand of illegal aliens are there in Jersey alone? How many billions would be saved if services to them were cut and residency tested?

And just how would a federal sales tax benefit the residents of the USA? I'm not talking about reducing income taxes (or some other tax) and replacing it with higher sales taxes. I'm referring to the sole imposition of a sales tax which doesn't exist right now. If I were to buy a set of spark plug wires from Louisiana for $99, I wouldn't pay LA or TX sales taxes. How would it benefit me to pay the extra $8 to either state?

What you call a black market economy, I call a thoroughly efficient non regulated non taxed economy. Black market economies tend to be good economies. Economies where sellers can move product better and buyers can get better deals.

One needs to look at what Social Security is without all the emotion and just stick to facts.

• It's a lifetime annuity program which you have to contribute to. Even if you're 30 years old and have terminal cancer. You still have to contribute to it.
• It's an annuity program which has zero choice in how and where to save money for future use. You have to use the government's social security system.
• It's a regressive tax on wages to a maximum limit. Therefore it's hardest on the poor.
• The poor and middle class pay taxes to support everybody else including the rich. Donald Trump can collect a SS check paid for by the rest of us in the future (assuming we're younger than he is)
• It has nothing to do with saving for your future and everything to do with the young who are working subsidizing the old, who are not working.
• Curing cancer would be the worst thing that could happen to Social Security.

Now having said that, is there anybody out there who thinks we should get rid of IRA's and Roth IRA's? Get rid of 401k plans too. And instead pay more into Social Security? I don't think so.

Let's face it. The revenue for SS is going down and the future costs are going up. We have to raise the age rate or we have to pay people less in the future. The third option is to pay certain people less or none at all. Ask which one is the fairest and you'll get three different answers. The 75 year old would say raising the age rate to 70 is the best option and to leave the payment amount schedules as is. The young person wants the payment amounts lowered but the age rate the same. The poor person wants the rich person to be exempt from collecting but not exempt from paying.

I see no good way of fixing while maintaining the system as it stands. Could raise the income rate at which people are taxed to unlimited like Medicare is. But this brings up the question of why would you tax million dollar salaries for a supposed retirement program aimed at that particular person's benefit? In Canada, the Canada Pension Plan stops taxing you around $42,000 of income/year. It's already $100,000 in the US. Raising this changes it from a redistribution of income not just from young to the old. But also from the rich to the poor.

The south needs to wake up from such idiocy. Fools like him have kept it the butt of jokes and dirt poor for decades, conning the naive and exploitable with such horseshit.

They need to go visit Vancouver or Sydney and then tell me whether taxes are bad. Two cities that could crush Alabama between their index finger.

Actually people in Vancouver are up in arms over the British Columbia government changing from PST to HST.

Canada has GST (5% federal sales tax), PST (7% provincial sales tax), or HST ( 12% harmonized sales tax). Essentially what HST does is change what can be taxed by the province and instead uses the GST's taxable item list (which is everything!)

So something like your utility bill. That would have GST on it but no PST.....Now with HST, it will have both. Cigarettes will have both. Restaurant food will have both.

"I'm a Libertarian. And the market will save you."

To break it down to the simplest way of putting things, the good businesses and products survive. The crummy ones don't. Nintendo made a good product. They still do. Atari didn't. They're gone. The companies that sell cars that people like are still around. The ones that build cars people don't like are gone. Similarly the car companies that put in good financial ideas for the future are doing well. The ones that promised lifetime health insurance and full pay job banks for layed off workers are not. The unsafe products disappear from the market. The safe products stay.

Public-private plans generally don't work. You get private industry getting subsidized by low cost deals offered by government. Why should any private business pay less than the going rate? A forest owned by government will rent the land out to a logging company. The logging company will clear cut the forest and make the money once. The land is then baron. A privately owned forest will be logged and then re-planted. This is the financially smart thing to do. Long term planning. But to government, the cost of replanting occurs now for a benefit that exists after the current government is out of office. Thus there is no reason for government to re-plant.

Enron? This is a perfect example of Libertarianism and why it works. What was the result of Enron? Skilling is in jail for 25 years. Lay is dead. The people working there making $100K/year were unemployed afterwords. If they had a company pension plan, that doesn't exist. If the government had an obligation to fund the company pension plan, the government (aka taxpayers) would be on the hook. At least Enron had a matching 401K plan. It was the Enron worker's own fault for maxing out their 401K plan with company stock.......But how and why did the California power crisis occur? Again, it was a public-private partnership. The local utilities had to sell the electricity to the residents at a fixed rate (mandated by state law). But the private companies could set higher rates. The result was a bankrupting of the local power utilities. Government law in California said that out of state electricity would be sold at a higher rate than local electricity. This caused Enron to sell California electricity to other states and then buy back the electricity at a higher rate to sell to Californians. Enron and California wouldn't have happened in either a government monopoly or a fully private system. In a private system, it makes sense for power companies to run full power. Sell as much as they can. In a government monopoly, you get inflated prices due to government laws prohibiting others to sell in the marketplace. Or you get rationing caused by a lack of new capital spending by government (because government is always broke). The same happens in public school systems. They're always underfunded because they're run as government monopolies. It's in government's best interests to underfund them and have crummy test scores. They have little competition.

I don't know why people assume that Libertarians are Republicans. Libertarians are neither left nor right. They're their own party separate from both. Libertarians are just as much against subsidizing business as they are subsidizing the public. Let's take something as simple as house insurance. If you live from south TX to south FL (anywhere along the lower gulf states), it's expensive to buy house insurance. The Libertarian answer is "Tough. Too bad." You live in an area that gets hurricanes. It's going to cost more. The Democrat answer is to have people in Seattle pay higher federal taxes so that people in Miami can get affordable house insurance from government. The Republican answer is to subsidize the insurance industry. Either the Dem or Repub is the same net effect. The insurance company gets subsidized by the taxpayer in one way or the other. By not having to insure risky areas (Dem) or by some loophole/tax break/write off (Repub)

Libertarians believe strongly in allowing companies to fail. Dems and Repubs don't. BP is in a world of trouble right now. They may not make it through this. One of the biggest companies in the world could be bankrupt. They chose to skimp on safety and testing. They're to blame for their loss. Other oil companies who may or may not have similar cost cutting measures are going to think twice about this. Go back to my 1st paragraph.

The reason people have hard core left or hard core right looks at government is simply because what starts off small grows and grows. Income tax started off at 1% in the USA.. It went up to 94% in the USA. It was only a "temporary" measure. Uh huh. What starts off as a basic subsidy to the individual (standing in line to state your case for welfare) became a streamlined measure where all you have to do is go to the post office box and get your mail. Heck, they probably do direct deposit these days. You are now "entitled" to it. Along with section 8, medicaid, dental coverage, foodstamps, and earned income credit.

The Great Depression was obviously terrible for people who experienced it. But the post Depression result has been that people think that government somehow saved the day. But it was government that took a moderate recession and turned it into a global depression. Even as late as 1933, the federal reserve was cutting the money supply. Currency was reduced by 30% from 1929 to 1933. Prior to the federal reserve, the natural booms and busts occured. But once they decided to try and stop this natural occurrence from happening, all hell broke loose. In an effort to have "full employment," the US government has run deficits every year except for two or three years since then. The result is inflation has eroded our purchasing power. Unemployment actually was below 10% in 1930 until the government put up tariffs. (Smoot Hawley) After that, unemployment never dropped below 10% until World War II started up. (Unemployment numbers drop when you take millions out of the labour market and send them to war)

I don't know any Libertarians who supported a bank bailout. A car maker bailout. A continued war effort in the middle east. Or a stimulus program where government taxes people to create more government jobs and/or projects which are not that important

Medicare? Ha. Government is talking about a 21% cut in doctor's payments. And doctors are already saying that Medicare doesn't pay enough. Old people are having trouble finding doctors that take Medicare right now. And the new health care bill aims to pay for itself by future savings in Medicare (aka paying less and for less procedures)

From another board, there was a question about moving to New York and cost of living.

I looked at a 1br rental... it was $1300 and when I got there, it turned out to be section 8. the lowest priced seem to be $1,400/month for a ****ty apt.

One of the people who answered said the following.

First of all, toss out the idea of living on your own. The rent range you're quoting realistically is in Bushwick, which is a very rough neighborhood.

I currently have three roommates in Brooklyn, two bedrooms for 1800 - a steal in NYC. In exchange or that, we get an apartment building that is infested with mice (all food must be put in Tupperware to protect it) and water controls that don't work in the shower.

It's the little things about NYC that eat you to death financially. No apartments, not even new construction, have central heat and air. So plan on paying higher (sometimes significantly higher) utility bills for similar living conditions. You're not going to get a washer and drier for under 2k a month, so factor in the expense of having to go to the laundromat regularly (I drop off - who has the time for that #%$?

Gas is 50 cents a gallon higher than anywhere else I've been except for Hawaii. Sales tax is high. Not only is there a New York State sales tax, but there is a New York City income tax that will gobble 200 a month or more from you.

I would say over half of all vendors in NYC do not accept credit cards, so you're constantly losing two bucks here and there for ATM fees. Car insurance is significantly higher here. And I gotta tell ya -- two cars in NYC? You realize you'll be parking on the street, right? And that two days of the week you won't be able to park on a particular side of the street (alternates) without a $150 ticket.

Similarly, expect your car to be broken into more than once. You can mitigate the risk of this by making sure that nothing, not even a gum wrapper, is visible inside. A club installed on your wheel also helps. People can and will tap, dent, and scratch your bumpers regularly if not the sides. New Yorkers think this is normal and "no big deal."

Texanadian: I know the person who wrote the above. He moved to NYC from Austin, TX. I can't even imagine how frustrating the above must be compared to living in Austin. This is his first time paying state income tax nevermind city income tax. And that rent would get you an extremely large home in TX. The rest of it would be annoying too.

I agree on Texas being a clean state. The people here take their trash seriously. "Don't Mess With Texas" is the state anti-litter slogan.

Taxes are only a single factor out of many which would drive a company to locate in one place or another.

Even with the state low taxes, it doesn't benefit the average person very much. Income per capita are well below the national average. Granted in some places the cost of living would be pretty low.

I have no doubt that New York City has higher wages per capita than Dallas or Houston does. But the costs to live in NYC (and LA too) far outstrip the costs to live in TX. The side benefit of living in a low cost state is that your federal taxes are lower at the same standard of living as a more expensive place in the north-east.

This is so trivial, it's ridiculous.

The argument is essentially that Americans won't do the jobs that illegals do for the wages that illegals get. I don't know of anybody who wants a $3/hr job with no overtime (which would be $4.50/hr) that requires 12 hour days out in the sunlight. At least farmers are surrounded by grass and dirt rather than hot radiating concrete like construction workers do.

But raise that hourly wage, as it obviously MUST be raised due to low supply of workers, and magically those jobs will start to fill up. The college kid who is working graveyard shift at McDonalds all of a sudden figures out it's worth it to work on a farm for the summer. The gas station cashier who can barely pay his rent figures out that working on a farm for a year can mean getting ahead financially.

People who own farms obviously don't want the above to happen. They want the status queue with no enforcement. But it's the same way in any business. The employer wants to pay the minimum required to satisfy his demand for a good work force, while the employee wants the maximum possible compensation for his labour.

The trouble is putting money into interest bearing accounts with or without inflation is that the current group of retired people would get nothing. I don't mean earn anything for the future or not get a gain. I mean they wouldn't even get a check at all in the mail. 100% of the money going into SS is spent on people already retired. The money that I will get will be paid in by people who haven't even been born yet as of today.

So why is the average Australian and Canadian are worth more than 3 Texans [combined]? AKA Tax theory goes straight out the window.

Cheap taxes are good for business. Last time I checked, the majority of Americans don't own a business, therefore, rely on income. As such,I am interested in what goes into my pocket. Why would I give a #### if my company pays zero tax or 90% tax.

Being a Canadian/Texan, I can say that the cost of goods in TX is far better than the cost in Canada. My parents are always trying to figure out what they can bring back to Canada when they visit me. Figuring out how much or little it will cost in taxes once it hits the Canada border. Even without taxes and looking strictly at price, the same stuff is cheaper in TX.

As for NY/LA being more connected than TX? I don't think so.

Foreign governments have established 89 consular offices in metropolitan Houston. Forty foreign governments maintain trade and commercial offices here and 23 active foreign chambers of commerce and trade associations.^[85] Twenty-five foreign banks representing 13 nations operate in Houston, providing financial assistance to the international community.^[86] In 2008, Houston received top ranking on Kiplinger's Personal Finance Best Cities of 2008 list which ranks cities on their local economy, employment opportunities, reasonable living costs and quality of life.^[87] The city ranked fourth for highest increase in the local technological innovation over the preceding 15 years, according to Forbes magazine.^[88] In the same year, the city ranked second on the annual Fortune 500 list of company headquarters,^[6] ranked first for Forbes Best Cities for College Graduates,^[89] and ranked first on Forbes list of Best Cities to Buy a Home.^[90]

If I were to move to somewhere else in the USA, it would be either Colorado, Hawaii, or New Hampshire. Reasons are fairly obvious.

Has any police officer ever been put on unpaid leave?