I recently wrote this paper for my English 102 class. It’s supposed to be a satyrical guest column with the readers of the State Press (ASU’s newspaper) as the audience.
FairTax Act(tually?)
On days when I’m not thinking about alliteration, I often ponder preposterous paradigms. When those days come, probably in the late afternoon when a Monster Energy Beverage assumes optimal control over my brain, I find myself learning a great deal of information and look towards an optimistic future in my First Year Composition course.
My most recent ponder has been on taxation and reform proposals. Like many ASU students, I don’t make enough money (a taxable income) to know that my instate tuition is partly covered by taxes. But what else didn’t I know? I didn’t know that the FairTax Act is (…as I look at synonyms for “narrow” before typing the next phrase to sound more smart…) limited and unwise.
The “Submission of Americans for Fair Taxation on the FairTax Comprehensive Tax Reform Proposal to The Presidents Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform” does have a huge name, but the AFFT (Americans For Fair Taxation) redeemed themselves when naming their Act. They masterfully combined 2 words, ‘Fair’ and ‘Tax’, into one word, FairTax, but continued to capitalize each individual word to lessen confusion. Unfortunately, the squiggly red line under FairTax doesn’t know that it’s actually a word, balancing out my lost confusion.
Apart from the proposal’s perplexing presentation, there is a proffer that may waste (proportionally) as much space as it’s pretense. AFFT Chairman, Leo Linbeck Jr. states, “The FairTax Act intends to do away with income taxes and other taxes imposed by the Internal Revenue Code, and enacting a single-rate tax on new goods and services.” The AFFT basically wants to create a national sales tax, eliminating income taxes. Like the Communist Manifesto, this submission only looks good on paper. At least Karl came up with a shorter name.
American’s for the FairTax act focus on the pie slice, ‘when their money is taken from them’ rather than the whole pie, ‘their money is taken from them,’ and have come up with a fine proposal according to those tiny spectacles they see the world through. Fortunately, most economists wear soft contact lenses and can see the whole pie for what it is. This would explain why both liberal and conservative economists believe that the real tax rate would end up even higher. Sorry to say, it is not the EFFT, and if it were, it would probably be the EFRT (Economists For Rational Taxation).
Let me show you another slice you can “chew on.” I can by all of my goods offshore. Even if the US government decided to tax the money before it was dropped into an account, I can open an offshore bank account and make all of my purchases through it. Unless the FairTax Act decides to limit many of my financial freedoms (which is opposite of what they’re getting at), you’ve gone roundabout to a reasonable form of taxation.
A suggestion for the AAFT: Acuvue 2 contacts are cheap (a little extra for colors). And, if you like what you see, possibly upgrade to the Night & Day brand.
As you know, I have been very inactive in my blogging lately. Even so inactive to not change the banner color to inform you of my inactivity. I apologize and plan on resuming at the start of summer!
You may or may not be aware that I am a first year college student at Arizona State University. Me and my friends have had many great conversations and have come up with something that has literally change our lives for the better. It is on the basis of analytical thinking, decision making, the conscious mind and unconscious mind. We really feel as if our ideas have not been published before (though we have not done deep investigation) but if they have, more people need to know about it because of the positive affect in our lives. We see proof of our theorizing every single day in all aspects of ourselves, human personalities, human behavior, and human relations. We could possibly explain the Universe! ;]
Me.dium is a plug in for Firefox that tries to make surfing the web a more social experience. Once you sign up for me.dium, which is now public, you then download the plug in which adds a sidebar to your Firefox browser. In this side bar you will see personalized map of the Internet based on where you are, which will change depending on where you visit. You can then see, meet, and chat with people that are doing similar things that you’re doing
“Me.dium brings you all the contextual and social value you get from being around people in the real world, to you online world for the first time… Me.dium brings to you to that hidden world of people and activity behind your browser.”
Everyday millions of people search the Internet looking for answers; who is Deep Throat? How did rock band “The Killers” get their name? What exactly is a Libertarian? For the most part, these people’s priority is placed in the justification rather than the jury and they will accept any popular response as valid. Google, showing Wikipedia as a top contender in many search results, and Alexa web traffic rakings would tell you that Wikipedia is very popular reference on the Internet. But when does 2+2=5?
I first discovered Wikipedia early in high school at a time when learning was a forced activity. After my discovery, I found my self going through embedded links like nobodies business; first outer space, then Jupiter, then Jupiter’s moons until eventually I realized that learning can be fun. Since then I have been visiting Wikipedia everyday to read the featured article. I consider this increased interest in learning a good thing, but I am not the only one doing it. Wikipedia has created an entire culture that can easily find answers to curious questions, and is doing it daily.
Unfortunately though, like with many newfound abilities, people find a need to boast or present and will stand behind their name. An example could be shown like this: I have a piece of information that I don’t see presented to the public anywhere else. I then get more satisfaction in the thought of me showing this information to people rather than the information being completely flawless. Next, I quickly publish my information using the easiest medium to do so. When doing more research on other published information, I find it to imply my information has flaws. “If only I could edit their information and show that my label is ‘completely true’.”
You see this a lot in Wikipedia; people changing controversial dates because their politically active middle school history teacher pounded one into their head. Vandalism, such as pornography, random pictures, profanity, etc. is easy to spot. What’s not easy to see is the majority of the errors; the ones dealing in opinion. I think that because Wikipedia and its users are young they have a hard time understanding how this whole, “publicly created database” idea works, since it hasn’t been done before (at least to this magnitude). As time goes on and people read more articles like this one, Wikipedia will become more stable. In the future people might decide to add a “citation needed” tag at the end of the sentence instead of quickly altering it to what they know correct. But until then, I have raised a stake on the current controversy.
Having researched the reliability of Wikipedia and having understood the viewpoints of all stakeholders, I have created a quality opinion on the controversial issue. I look at Wikipedia simply as an organized version of the Internet. Users will visit the webcity in search of information and will find answers, but should use the same precautions they would when doing any other Internet research. Wikipedia is a great place to curiously stroll through, learning various things, but like most primary research, I would not stamp my name on something who’s creation has been principally created through the Internet.
Facebook Pages are special profiles used solely
for commercial, political, or charitable purposes.
Ever since Facebook decided to go public and take on networking giant MySpace, we’ve adored them. Less tacky, cleaner, safer, more networkable, and just plain ol’ cool all around. But there was one thing that we did miss from myspace. Bands. After using Facebook for months, we would go to concerts and hear bands promote their MySpace page. We then would get the familiar sick feeling in our stomach of having to use that website again.
Now, not only does Facebook have clean pages for bands, but for businesses and products too. You can visit Radiohead’s page and listen to a few of their songs, or see what Costco is all about (I’m their 19th fan!). This makes the “I am a fan of” application a lot more useful, and allows to see what your friends like. Check it out!
I obtained a copy of Microsoft Office 2007 and began doing my school work. Saving the document multiple times, I began to think. Why doesn’t it always save? I then thought of multiple instances where things would be better if they were relatively “live.” My Segway checks 100 times per second to make sure that it is balanced upright; how come my web browser requires me to manually check (yeah bandwidth issues but why not). How come my Gmail only updates every minute or so, and every five minutes for Outlook on my phone. How come on I don’t see topics moving up and down on my favorite forums? Is it all really just a bandwidth issue. I thought about this also when using my Mac, where most of the settings are live. When I change my font on Adium, I don’t need to hit “OK,” as goes for most setting in Macintosh system preferences. Vice versa, why don’t I need to save my World of Warcraft character every so often?
I know that the internet is heading this way. Look at XHTML, Atom/RSS feeds; they’re all live.
Today Aaron Patzer, founder of the money management website, Mint, released it publicly. Having been involved in the private beta of the site, I will write about it. We couldn’t do this before, because of an agreement that goes along with being in the beta.
Before I got into Mint, I always used my online banking just to check my transactions everyday and make sure they were correct. It was rather tedious having to log into various internet websites to check my multiple accounts. With Mint, it links all your accounts together. It shows you transactions, spending trends, and “ways to save.” It’s nice seeing all of your transaction on the same list, AND in English. Rather than some foreign code it shows the location/store where you made the purchase. This then plays into spending trends. Mint has categories such as; shopping, dining, entertainment, gas, health care, bills, etc. The program will then take all of your transactions and make these nice charts and graphs showing you where your money is going. With me moving this past month for college, I did a little more shopping than normal. Mint then sent a text message to my phone telling me that. Along with warning me when I start spending to much, I can also make it email/text me weekly holdings in my accounts, and recent transactions. Aside from polished spending trend displays, Mint can also updates with new deals that are going down. Savings, credit, billing, mortgages, student loans, etc. One thing that is a downer about Mint, is that it is not real time. So, if i go $100 under my checking, Mint will not notify me until I log in, and it syncs with my accounts.
At the end of the day, a lot of people don’t know how to handle money. This will help them, and if it doesn’t, it will definitely tell them what they’re doing wrong.
I thought about this once when they released the 80gb iPod, and now I feel the need to write about it since the release of the 160gb iPod. From what I hear, most people think that it is a ton of space and no one uses it unless they have movies like nobodies business. Right now, unfortunately that is true. Unless you have your torrent clients running day and night downloading movies, or you’re a true audiophile and have heard of “better quality music,” then you would never fill that space. Let me shed some insight:
Right now there is a war going on between Bluray Disc and the HD-DVD. Every few years, we upgrade our media and redo everything. The same thing is happening right now with audio. There is a war going on between the Super-Audio CD (SACD), and the DVD-Audio. People do not know about this because everybody listens to mpeg-3, which is really too bad. Mp3 format is even lower quality than WAV, which is what is on a regular CD. Ipods are nice because they allow you to play most any file you want, including WAV, but with that it takes a memory toll. With 160gb, this is completely fine. One problem, iTunes only sells .mp3 (quality) which was outdated 5 years ago. Everybody only sells .mp3.
I almost wish that the iPod touch didn’t come out at the same time the 160gb did. I think one of the reasons Apple has not decided to upgrade their music is because their main product only has 16gb memory now. Does anyone else think 120kbps is a little obnoxious?
Like every kid I always wanted a cool pet, but unfortunately, like you, I was the kid who only had 2 goldfish. In recent years, I have not liked pets so much and I thought it was because I didn’t want to take care of them. Then someone gave me a better reason not to like them. “Most animals intelligence quotients are so low that rather than doing things for other beings, they do everything for themselves.” They like you because you give them food and water, because you keep them in your climate controlled house, because you scratch them, et cetera. Perhaps it hit me harder than it will hit you because I loved to feed fish when I was ten. I really do not think that most animals have certain emotional capabilities, including love. Am I too harsh?
::Update::
Since writing this, I have learned about the limbic system in mammals, which is responsible for emotion. I am now agnostic towards the idea of pets and their ability to feel love.
Every single time I withdraw money from an ATM machine I have like a nanosecond of frustration when I realized that what I withdraw has to be a multiple of the 20 dollar bill (or 50). I quickly throw it to the back of my brain when I tear my receipt. Finally, just recently, I stopped for a second and gathered that nanosecond of deep realization that things didn’t have to be this way.
Why can’t I get my money in multiples of tens, fives, or why not oven ones? Why can’t I withdraw 13 bucks? The technology to do this has always been available. It’s because the same company (Diebold) owns the majority of them. I would even go as far to say that big business usually cares more about business and less about innovation. Every time I go to The Home Depot I always get 10 dollars cash back because… well I can, and should be able to. It just reminds me how there are so many little things that could be made, or presented better.
A little more insight about getting cash back. If you need to, and you are at a gas station, Wal-Mart, or something of the sort, you can always buy something, then get cash back from the cashier. You shouldn’t have to pay $2 to withdraw YOUR OWN money. At least when you get cash back at one of the aforementioned places, you get something for your 2 dollars.
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Me.dium is a plug in for Firefox that tries to make surfing the web a more social experience. Once you sign up for me.dium, which is now public, you then download the plug in which adds a sidebar to your Firefox browser. In this side bar you will see personalized map of the Internet based on where you are, which will change depending on where you visit. You can then see, meet, and chat with people that are doing similar things that you’re doing
I obtained a copy of Microsoft Office 2007 and began doing my school work. Saving the document multiple times, I began to think. Why doesn’t it always save? I then thought of multiple instances where things would be better if they were relatively “live.” My Segway checks 100 times per second to make sure that it is balanced upright; how come my web browser requires me to manually check (yeah bandwidth issues but why not). How come my Gmail only updates every minute or so, and every five minutes for Outlook on my phone. How come on I don’t see topics moving up and down on my favorite forums? Is it all really just a bandwidth issue. I thought about this also when using my Mac, where most of the settings are live. When I change my font on Adium, I don’t need to hit “OK,” as goes for most setting in Macintosh system preferences. Vice versa, why don’t I need to save my World of Warcraft character every so often?
Today Aaron Patzer, founder of the money management website, 
Like every kid I always wanted a cool pet, but unfortunately, like you, I was the kid who only had 2 goldfish. In recent years, I have not liked pets so much and I thought it was because I didn’t want to take care of them. Then someone gave me a better reason not to like them. “Most animals intelligence quotients are so low that rather than doing things for other beings, they do everything for themselves.” They like you because you give them food and water, because you keep them in your climate controlled house, because you scratch them, et cetera. Perhaps it hit me harder than it will hit you because I loved to feed fish when I was ten. I really do not think that most animals have certain emotional capabilities, including love. Am I too harsh?
Every single time I withdraw money from an ATM machine I have like a nanosecond of frustration when I realized that what I withdraw has to be a multiple of the 20 dollar bill (or 50). I quickly throw it to the back of my brain when I tear my receipt. Finally, just recently, I stopped for a second and gathered that nanosecond of deep realization that things didn’t have to be this way.