The fact that this is skewed a bit to favor those who paid in based on their state of origin I am certainly ok with. The state had a strong hand in creating the business environment for people to thrive in such a way that they could become wealthy to begin with.
So I'm okay if some federal dollars have to be shaved off so states can take care of themselves. I do not believe there is an endless incentive for states to raise taxes at the expense of the federal government.
Actually, I do like this incentive structure when put in this way. I think incentivizing people to take responsibility for themselves with only limited amounts of help from the federal government is the right thing to do.
That's not what this structure does, though. It just incentivizes states to collect more revenue than they otherwise would, at the expense of federal collection.
It is not a 1:1 ratio though as it really only lowers your taxable income. I agree that it should be limited but states should be incentivized to not need the federal government for much.
In theory, I agree. However, why should California and the rest of the blue states be financing the whole country when the other states can collect their own taxes to pay for disaster relief and other items they need. They are already getting more taxes back than they paid in.
Blue states are getting screwed and really aren't getting adequate federal government representation at the levels their tax dollars and populations would in theory dictate they should have.
Shouldn't states be more responsible for their own well being rather than what we have now a situation where states just offload their responsibility as a state to the federal government? ...and the states are subject to the whims of whomever is in power in the federal government at the time which has higher risk than people are accounting for and as you have already alluded to is being abused even if it ultimately is in theory the right policy?
>why should California and the rest of the blue states be financing the whole country
The tax code doesn't say that blue states have to pay more, it says wealthy people have to pay more. As a result, wealthy states pay in more than they get out.
Taxing the rich to fund social programs to help the poor means money will flow from Silicon Valley and Hollywood to rural West Virginia.
Part of it isn't even "wealth" as much as it is "higher cost levels". There's no simple policy answer to this, but increasing marginal tax rates are meant to be a proxy for the diminishing marginal utility of money. In states with a higher price level, citizens are getting taxed at higher rates than their level of wealth would otherwise imply, just due to the inefficiency of the policy.
It's the equivalent of failing to adjust for inflation, just spatially instead of across time. As I said though, there's no easy fix that let's you define cost levels in a principled way and adjust for them, so this isn't quite bad policy as much as an unfortunate imperfection in it.
Being able to pay higher costs shows you are wealthier. Living in California is a luxury good which no one is required to purchase. If I suddenly decide to trade my Toyota in for a Porsche that doesn't lower my taxable income.
I don't really disagree with that. But you'll need to convince democrats of this to make it happen. They are the ones who want really high taxes for wealthy people.
> However, why should California and the rest of the blue states be financing the whole country when the other states can collect their own taxes to pay for disaster relief and other items they need
Is it unproductive spending? What makes you think that workers who want to live a decent life are spending unproductively? Why is it more productive to spend money on space flight initiatives?
Id argue it was a 4 way split honestly. Mobile Safari absolutely dominated the mobile browsing space which was growing by leaps and bounds at that time.
This article is dead on the money. Some of the mistakes I made career wise were related to not fully understanding the differences between startup engineering and corporate engineering.
I can see now that in two cases I was the wrong person for the job. Simply because I didnt understand the type of engineering that was actually needed and neither did the management. Management wanted me simply because of the titles and I could pass their technical exam. However, if they had just been honest with me we couldve both saved time and stress.
On at least two occasions I believe I was not told the whole truth about the company. The Glassdoor reviews were useless because they would game those reviews. So I could not make a good decision. With that said I still blame myself for taking jobs I did not know enough about. I shouldve asked uncomfortable questions and believed in my gut.
I think the popularity of Uber and Lyft is a direct result of the lack of adequate city transit solutions. If big city transit was robust and at least at the level of NYC or more people would likely opt for it and the big cities could plan their real estate around it better.
Funnily enough, I am one of those people-my partner and I have one car between us (in LA), and I rely pretty heavily on Uber pool (or the Lyft equivalent) to get around on a day to day basis.
However, it feels unsustainable. I can't imagine the fares remaining this low, and because of people like me, transit ridership is declining. I don't think these rideshare companies can sustain such low prices indefinitely, and my guess is it's delaying real improvements to transit infrastructure.
Not really. In transit poor cities people own cars and drive their own cars. In transit rich cities you can feasibly live without a car and use rideshare to fill in the occasional gap. Transit and rideshare are complementary. Only rich people and businesses use rideshare as chauffeur rather than necessary transportation.
Not necessarily. When on vacation I used rideshare everywhere I went in Texas as I didnt rent a car. When I lived in Texas I had my own car because ride share isnt an option I could use regularly. In NYC I never needed ride share at all. I used it once in a blue moon. NYC grew in population but number of transit riders has remained steady or declined since 2015. Even the NYT did an article on 8/2018 linking Uber to the decline in transit usage.
Something else to consider is that traffic was bad way before ride sharing companies started popping up. Secondly, additional taxes will ultimately end up being paid for by people who do not own a vehicle. A better way to help alleviate traffic conditions is to raise gas taxes across the board or maybe just using the tax dollars more efficiently to build public transportation like trains on top of the existing infrastructure that cars typically use. I don't know why California is wasting time on obviously bad legislation. Why do they feel the need to consider the crazy option?
Aren't garbage men paid like $80k/year US with great benefits? I could be wrong but it seems like they have a much better situation overall than these people and the mental health issues seems like a much bigger problem than potentially getting dirty or hurt on the job but maybe I have it wrong.
Thank you for your admission. I too am naturally arrogant. People think I'm being weird if I'm not arrogant. I get weird people saying they don't believe me when I'm being humble. Probably because arrogant is who I am as a person. I feel people like me more when I'm being my arrogant self. Oddly, when I was my least arrogant and most humble I exhibited most of the traits in this article.
I was quite sour over the fact that I felt like during the interview process I was lied to about the position and what it would entail. Naturally, I was a bit salty about it and the fact that people were doing things that I would get criticized for. It ultimately hurt my confidence in myself. This made me exhibit most if not all of these traits during my stay at this company. I was trying to make lemons into lemonade. Ultimately I was able help us get on the right path and I was happy with my contributions to the team even if it did ruffle feathers and those people hated me afterwards. I took their criticism and I still try to use it to be a better person to work with.
So I'm okay if some federal dollars have to be shaved off so states can take care of themselves. I do not believe there is an endless incentive for states to raise taxes at the expense of the federal government.