Random Thoughts Thread

[pepharytheworm]

You cant just say to a child, or anyone, 'youre supposed to learn, so you're gonna. im giving you education, so absorb it, or you're the problem,' then expect them to enjoy and value learning.

[Jmustang1968]

You cant just say to a child, or anyone, 'youre supposed to learn, so you're gonna. im giving you education, so absorb it, or you're the problem,' then expect them to enjoy and value learning.

Yup, that's exactly what I said

[mjmjr25]

John - you're getting roped into the excuse and entitlement discussion again. Head, meet brick wall.

@zeroax - Taxes are nowhere near Euro zone standards. Income tax is about 10-15% for most on this board, and those with kids or in school will get most, if not all of that back.

Social Security Tax you don't get back.

VAT, I don't know what it is, I mean, I know what it stands for, but I don't think we have it at all. We don't pay taxes on imported goods if that's what it is.

Sales taxes are on the city, county, and state levels. They range wildly. Some states have ZERO income tax, but pay higher sales taxes.

Where I live, my state income tax is like 2.5%, my regional sales tax on say a hamburger is 8.75% (7.5 to the city, 1.25 to the state, or something close to that).

Property taxes also vary wildly, depending on how much you allocate for road work, police, and schools. We pay 4K a year where i'm at, 10 miles away in Cloquet, they pay $2,500 for a similar valued property (and they have worse roads and higher student to teacher ratios).

[Sano]

Does a cat know its a cat?!

[dsheinem]

Social Security Tax you don't get back.

But eventually you (might?) get to collect Social Security...

It's a good rule of thumb to expect about 1/3 or so of your paycheck to cover deductions (usually taxes and medical insurance). It's a good rule of thumb to expect about 5% of your remaining "spending money" to be allocated to sales tax.

[mjmjr25]

Social Security Tax you don't get back.

But eventually you (might?) get to collect Social Security...

Yeah, maybe, but I think it'd be poor thought to plan on it being there, or if it is there, to expect to live on it. I'm not wholly opposed to it, of course i'm in the privatization crowd, but if it's going to be govt. run for the foreseeable future, I actually wish they'd take out more so it's actually solvent and something to rely on.

[dsheinem]

Social Security Tax you don't get back.

But eventually you (might?) get to collect Social Security...

Yeah, maybe, but I think it'd be poor thought to plan on it being there, or if it is there, to expect to live on it. I'm not wholly opposed to it, of course i'm in the privatization crowd, but if it's going to be govt. run for the foreseeable future, I actually wish they'd take out more so it's actually solvent and something to rely on.

Yeah, it has many problems for sure and I won't pretend to know what the best solutions are. Still, my point was that the SS tax is an example of money the govt takes out to help a specific portion of the population and, ideally, would be money that will continue to be taken out to help us when we reach a point in life where we can collect. I wouldn't want to rely on it personally, but I am glad it is there to help those who might not be able to otherwise have retirement savings.

The thing with taxes is you can always find things you like them going to (e.g. the military or social welfare) or things you don't like them going to (e.g. the military or social welfare). In the end I think for the most part our tax system works fairly well, despite (or because of) being a comparatively low rate of taxation when evaluated against other countries with similar scores on various "quality of life" indexes. There's plenty of room for improvement and I think we should more aggressively tax those who earn $500K+ a year, but on the final balance much of it has held up for at least the last ~70 years or so.

[KalessinDB]

Hooooly crap.

So we're having a grilled cheese night at work. Front office gives us $100 to finance lunch for the holiday. One of our guys goes out on his time off and picks up a bunch of stuff to make some awesome grilled cheeses.... except he forgets butter.

Now the problem being, we're at minimum staffing so he really can't run out to the store. We're sitting here at work, asking various cops we know or kinda-know that are working in the area if they can come in, without much luck because honestly, the sgts are pretty careful on letting their ofcrs screw around, even on the overnight shift.

So doesn't one of our guys call his wife at 0130 to come bring us butter? I mean holy crap the cojones! Even more unbelievably, she said YES!

So yeah. Delicious grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch

[darsparx]

So income tax is less than 30%? That's not much. Also you are at the sweet spot for inflation (about 2%). Go much less than that and you get into the falling prices trap. Ask Japan about it and how it can kill economic growth.

Yeah but even with it falling below 30%(which by my math it's right at 24.5%) it still is a little too high. State wise it doesn't bug me, that's only 4(and some odd decimal)% but that literal percentage is why I'm scared to up the retirement part of it from 2 to 5%(even if even that seems like it won't earn much). I kinda like having some money I can touch now(and even the money i do see I only see 80% of it when I'm careful....so it's really seeming like i'm not seeing a ton of money right there and the instant response by a lot of people is to up the wage -_-)

[Luke]

Read it, digest it...

BoobyTrap

Backwards is:

PartyBoob


For you don't know who "Gavin from the kids in the hall" is, you tube it. It is so something he would say. "Did you know that Boobytrap spelled backwards is PartyBoob?".