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Comment Re: Stop Fighting About Who To Tax (Score 2) 205

The U.S. existed longer without a federal income tax (137 years) than with it (112 years), but the gap is closing.

Before the federal income tax, the government primarily raised revenue through tariffs, excise taxes, and land sales:
        1. Tariffs (Import Duties) â" The federal government relied heavily on tariffs, which are taxes on imported goods. These were a major source of revenue throughout the 19th century and helped protect domestic industries.
        2. Excise Taxes â" These are taxes on specific goods, such as whiskey, tobacco, and other commodities. The infamous Whiskey Tax (1791) led to the Whiskey Rebellion, showing how unpopular direct taxation could be.
        3. Land Sales â" The U.S. government sold large amounts of federal land, particularly as it expanded westward. This provided a steady income, especially during the early 19th century.

These methods worked when the federal government was smaller, but as government responsibilities grew, tariffs and excise taxes became insufficient. This led to the push for a permanent income tax, which was finally established in 1913 with the 16th Amendment.

If the government shrinks we could keep more of the money we make, and not need so much âoehelpâ from the government. If there are local issues in each of our states we want solved, people can start charities or non-profits and donate their own money to them to fund those things on their own. Government does the worst job of actually solving any problem. No accountability, no sense of budget, full of fraud and waste, no incentive to solve the actual problem.

Comment Re: There goes my karma (Score 1) 303

Good point. But the government health department should not be putting fruit loops as healthier options for breakfast over eggs. They have this level of corruption because the âoehealth departmentâ has lobbyists that want their foods to be able to be sold in the schools around the country and there is a requirement prohibiting unhealthy foods to be sold at schools marketed directly to children. The law has good intentions, but then corruption bends to the lobbyist, manipulating and morphing the system to help those with the most money, and not those that the law was initially intended to help.

Comment Re:There goes my karma (Score 5, Insightful) 303

How about, crazy though this sounds, we just let people have their own relationship with their body and respect their choices even though they may be different than ours....

The idea that you give two craps about anyone else's state of health is laughable. If that were the case, you would be just as irate about a thin person who eats garbage.

Just let people live their lives. They don't need anyone to tell them how to live.

Recent studies indicate that approximately 77% of young Americans are ineligible for military service, with obesity being a leading disqualifier. Who are we going to have defend us if our political leaders get us into world war 3? Also as people are more obese they have shorter lifespans, quality of life issues not able to participate in activities they might want to, depression, amongst many other issues. All of these things compound. Maybe you don't care, but the solution is actually quite simple to put different food in their mouths, but the resistance is deep.

Why do we care? The more obese we are as a society there are huge implications. Shorter life spans, health care costs increase, more susceptible to disease like Covid that basically targeted overweight people. People freak out that government is going to take away social security or Medicare, but if our population lifespan changes, or people can't work and on living off the government pay checks, then guess what happens to social security and Medicare?

People are not actually eating whatever they want. People are eating what's around them, what's readily available, or what "feels good" like a drug. To eat Doritos, people aren't growing potatoes in their gardens, preparing them, and slicing them up, baking or deep frying them, coating them with flavoring just to eat them. If they were going to go through all that hassle they probably would just make something else and it would be significantly more healthy.

Simple tweaks to our diet can be profound. I've seen it first hand. Eating different foods I lost a lot of weight. Working out helped some, but until I changed my diet my body was still obese.

Comment Re: Good? (Score 0) 204

100%. The left wing of the democrats have been praising these riots. Look up quotes from Rashida Tlaib, Jamaal Bowman, and others. Educate yourself. If you canâ(TM)t identify an actual policy of Trumps that you hate, other than repeating opinion then you too have been brainwashed. I can recite hundreds of policies of trumps that I align with, and hundreds of policies of Bidenâ(TM)s agenda that I disagree with. The media doesnâ(TM)t want us to have a conversation about policy. They want us divided and talking about how Trump is worse than hitler but they wonâ(TM)t explain how Trump is worse than a murderer who attacked the Jews and destroyed large portions of Europe starting world war 2. Let me think, which president was it that was in office when Ukraine got attacked? What about Israel? What about China sabotaging and harassing our forces in the sea? Who gave billions to Iran to help them fund their resurgence in the mid east? Was that Trump? No. The world was unsure of how trump would respond to these types of tactics. With Biden, they know exactly what he would do, so they take advantage of weakness.

Comment Re: Bullshit (Score 1) 162

No, there is no debt cancellation. It was paid by tax payers. The colleges got their money already from the government when the person got accepted into college and signed the paperwork for the loan. The loan repayment program is supposed to bring money back into the program to pay for loans for others to go to college.

Have you ever researched these college Endowments? Harvard has over $50 BILLION endowment.

This supposed debt cancellation does not solve anything. It helps colleges hike their tuition up even more, lower their standards of who they accept into programs knowing they will still be paid in full even if the person drops out or has a degree that doesnâ(TM)t help the individual get a job that pays enough to allow the individual to make enough money to pay the loan.

I would fully support this if Biden negotiated with the colleges to refund the money back to the government for individuals who file for a hardship and unable to pay their loan.

Look at these college endowments, the whole system is insanely upside down. The government should be completely removed from the student loan to these institutions The government should focus on community colleges, building up graduate programs and degrees that actually benefit society.

Any college with a multimillion dollar endowment should repay the tuition money back to the government for those that canâ(TM)t afford their payments. Keep in mind institutions on this list have endowments in the billions, not millions.
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.usnews.com%2Feducati...

Comment Re: If they had cancelled the debt (Score 1) 162

How does any of this help anybody except for the people that currently have debt? How does this help future generations? How does this help my daughter that is 16 who wants to go to college in the future?

This effort to cancel student debt short term scam to buy votes. It doesnâ(TM)t solve anything except for some relief of a specific voting population. It is not a sustainable solution. Nor does it actually enhance the education of the citizens of the United States.

Ever since Oboma passed the healthcare and reconciliation act of 2010, ALL student loans now have to go through the government. And ever since then tuition has sky rocketed, due to several factors but a primary reason is due to the backing of the loan from the government. This causes institutions to be more open to higher prices and less concern of accepting individuals that dont qualify for their program and will probably drop out or not get a job with the degree.

If the government wanted to actually solve something the government should:

1. hold the institutions liable for individuals that can not pay for their degree making the institution repay the loan back to the government.

2. Enhance the local community colleges to offer graduate programs to compete with the ivy leagues. Community colleges are quite affordable.

Comment Re:easy peasy japanesey (Score 1) 186

I figured out the math on this, it doesn't pan out to charge an EV with a gas generator.

To fully charge a Tesla Model S (100 kWh battery) using a diesel generator, you would require approximately 40 gallons of diesel. The total cost for this, given a diesel price of $3.50 per gallon, would be $140.00 USD.

DANG! That's not efficient at all.

Comment Re:easy peasy japanesey (Score 1) 186

what you do is, you buy an electric generator, diesel or petrol, put it in your trunc and connect it to your charger port. Done.

Oh my gosh, how hilarious would that be? That would be the best environmental climate agenda troll ever! All these people with EVs in apartments end up buying diesel fuel generators to charge their EVs. I mean, that's not actually that bad of an idea.

Comment Re:140GW? (Score 1) 72

Is it possible that enough windmills extracting energy from the wind may impact the jetstreams, gulf streams, weather, and/or global climate?

I haven't seen any articles or discussions on this topic, but it would seem that an exchange of energy would cause an impact, even if small. But over time, much like the "butterfly effect", couldn't this man-made subtle global impact cause other potential challenges?

I've seen recent articles discussing potential recent changes to the gulf stream which some speculate could cause climate catastrophe.
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fen...

As I mentioned earlier, I haven't seen anyone discussing this, but as with the laws of thermal dynamics, energy isn't free. You take energy from one area, and it will impact another area.

I just don't understand why we don't invest into more research to come up with a distributed, self-contained, nuclear solution. Either something per household, or something big enough to power a square mile neighborhood, but small enough to be able to security it and contain it from potential environmental impacts (earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, sabotage). For example, in the event of a natural disaster or tampering, have a failsafe of granular carbonate materials like calcite and dolomite surrounding the core of a nuclear reactor which would drop into the core to prevent any meltdown scenario and have the unit built in a concreate & lead container to prevent leaking of radiation.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fphysicsworld.com%2Fa%2Fhow...

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