Community Colleges are highly subsidized. You view the price to be "right" because you don't see what it costs you in taxes.

So, without federal aid of this sort, higher education wouldn't exist at all then?

Let's see China pull this off without constantly manipulating their currency to boost the manufacturing while keeping pollution half of what it is currently over those same 10 years. It's okay, because when inflation hits, the sh*t will hit the fan in China (look up the economic trilemma and see where China's weakness is... for the USA, we choose not to peg our currency to fix our trade gap).

Here is the actual data (just a few years old though)
http://www.cbo.gov/publications/collections/tax/2010/AvgFedTaxRates_Summary.xlsx

If you make only 30K (in pre-tax income) a year, that places you roughly in between the bottom two income quintiles.

You can clearly look that the bottom 40 percent pay no income tax as the numbers for the bottom two quintiles are negative for their share of tax liabilities. This means your refund at the end of the tax year more than offsets the federal income taxes you had to pay over the year. That said, you are correct about having to pay other taxes, but in terms of the federal dollars (since that's the focus, and some states have no income taxes and others have low sales taxes), there is no national sales tax - just excise taxes and safety net taxes.

Based on the numbers you cite above and the data provided by the CBO, your numbers don't match up. Your 2K seems to be in the Social Insurance & Excise taxes part, not Income tax. And in the offshoot chance that I'm wrong, I'd recommend getting a new tax accountant.

I like watching some Street Fighter 4 (or SF3) matches. Some of the things these guys pull off are amazing.

And there is always the famous Daigo vs Justin Wong match.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeM0rH_4ung

This further proves AC's point... the only way have extra dollars can affect anyone other than yourself is if it is used to twist the system (i.e. - buying advertising to get your candidate voted in), and you are back to the original point that government and corp. are in collusion.

If I buy a new pair of gold plated shoes at $15,000 ... this doesn't impact you in any fashion. Let's say I make 4 times the average salary compared to any random slashdoter... how would my purchasing patterns have affects you at all today? How would you even know what the typical slashdoter did today other than browse the website?

His analogy doesn't break done when you look at some of the services government often provides. Take Amtrak, the government owned railroad... last time I looked it up, they have only had one profitable year. If they cannot provide a service at a price people are willing pay, how do you suppose they make up the difference? If Comcast cannot do the same thing, how do they make up the difference?

Answer? Comcast closes it's doors (bail-out jokes for the banks and auto-industry aside)... the government does not. It is an effective waste of resources. That's not to say there is no use for government. It should uphold laws when individuals or companies try to steal, etc...

What do you mean you "can't switch away" ? You can always go _without_ !!

A month of PSN Plus? All they have to do is take the deals of the month away to make that deal worthless.

It's a good thing I already changed my credit card number and all of my passwords, just in case.

By the way, I just happened to use the same login and password on the PSN as I did for my GMail account. Gmail informed me the other day that someone had accessed the account from an IP in China. That when I started changing EVERYTHING and started watching my accounts like a hawk.

I claim the iWeb!

Enrollments are up because unemployment is up. Pure and simple. People lose a job, they go back and get retrained. Enrollment is up across the board - not just in Comp Sci.

The point being made is an economic one. It will wind up being a "bridge to nowhere" argument - that is to say it is a waste of resources that could have been put to better use elsewhere. This doesn't really fall into the category of items that a free market system cannot provide efficiently.

Mod parent up due to truth!

The problem here is how do you know who can manage it better? If banks mismanage money, they go broke (as many have). When the government goes broke, they just raise taxes (or inflate the debt away). They are not forced to shut down as a bank would be.

They should have just let those banks in question go into bankruptcy and put the bail out money into someone else's hands.

Nonsense! Trading doesn't have to be equitable for it to take place. Black marketplaces exist everywhere outside of any established regulation, but yet we still have a market place if exchange takes place. It's nice if obligations are enforced, but not necessary. All the homes in foreclosure show that aspect of it, yet it is still possible to get a house.

All of those items are desirable, but by no means are they necessary by any definition of a market. A market is simply when you have two entities trading.