Income Tax Quashed, Ballmer To Cash In Billions 650
theodp writes "Washington's proposed state income tax not only prompted Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to spend $425,000 of his own money to help crush the measure at the polls, it also inspired Microsoft to launch a FUD campaign aimed at torpedoing the initiative. 'As an employer, we're concerned that I-1098 will make it harder to attract talent and create additional jobs in Washington state,' explained Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith. 'We strongly support public education, but we're concerned by key details in I-1098. This initiative would give Washington one of the top five highest state income tax rates in the country. I-1098 would apply this tax rate to all income, including capital gains and dividends, and would not permit any deductions for charitable contributions.' Nice to see a company take a principled stand, backed by a CEO who's not afraid to put his money where his company's mouth is, right? Well, maybe not. Just three days after the measure went down in flames, Ballmer said in a statement that he plans to sell up to 75 million of his Microsoft shares by the end of the year to 'gain financial diversification and to assist in tax planning.' Based on Friday's closing price of $26.85, the 75M shares would be valued at approximately $2 billion. All of which might make a cynic question what was really important to Microsoft — public education, or a $2B state income tax-free payday for its CEO?"
No surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
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that may be true about not "maximizing" a profit but as soon as the company is not on the profit side the shareholders either sell their stock, or hire new management. At some point it IS after all a business - not much point in having it if its not profitable
Re:No surprise (Score:4, Informative)
Re:No surprise (Score:4, Interesting)
That's a large chunk to be selling off just because of a tax. 75 million shares when out of something like 400 million total is more than just a tax issue.
Behind the scenes, he must not have much faith in Windows Phone 7 making them much money. But he would know that Microsoft has lost billions and billions on lots of products which have been, and continue to be, money pits.
LoB
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Agreed 100%. I live in Washington and voted this down because the sales tax is already at 10% for us living in Seattle. No way I'm giving the legislature the ability to add an income tax on top of that. If they want to make the tax system fairer, they should pass a constitutional amendment removing all sales taxes and instituting an income tax. Like you said, one or the other, Not Both!
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I've always found it odd that Washington has such a regressive state tax (only sales tax), while just south in Oregon we have a very progressive tax (only income tax).
There must be some historical reason because overall the demographics of each state are very similar.
Re:I live in Seattle. (Score:5, Insightful)
You are lying or out of your mind. A sales tax hurts low income people because they have to spend everything they make in order to live, and every cent they make is taxed. The rich can spend a tiny fraction of their income living in style, and keep the rest entirely tax free.
Anyone moderating his post as insightful is a moron.
Re:I live in Seattle. (Score:4, Informative)
If you eliminate income tax, sales tax will have to increase considerably. Probably around 10-15 percent. At that price, people would likely shop elsewhere to avoid the state's sales tax. Especially on expensive items. Again, only the rich would have the means to do this. So you end-up killing local businesses as well as hurting those who have limited income.
Re:I live in Seattle. (Score:4, Informative)
WA sales tax (Score:3, Informative)
Well, Washington won't have to increase their sales tax after eliminating income tax because they never had one in the first place. The sales tax [wikipedia.org] is 6.5% in Washington, with counties adding from 1.5% to 3.5%.
For most states and municipalities, things were going swimmingly before the bust. With revenues up, they double-downed on spending: half-billion dollar schools, $1.5 million city manager salaries. The problem is they refused to cut the fat during lean times.
Even if you believe in Keynesian economics, sp
Re:National or state makes quite a difference (Score:5, Informative)
In other words, you actually paid the plumber $65, and of course, that's as much, or more, than the service you got, and you paid the government $35;
You just desribed a tax on INCOME rather than a tax on PROFIT.
That's not how it works. Nice try though.
Re:National or state makes quite a difference (Score:4, Informative)
Income tax is precisely how it works, son. Welcome to the real world.
If you genuinely think that's how it works, I suggest you ask an accountant what "tax-deductible" means... briefly, you're paying a plumber $100, and as part of the same transaction he has to pay an electrician $65, then he does not get taxed on that $65.
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My provincial government has been implementing something like this, cutting income tax and broadening the sales tax.
The way it's working is businesses don't pay sales tax (actually reimbursed it at 100%) which is the selling point, attract more business. So it's only regular people who pay taxes.
And people don't get pay raises anymore because with the lower income tax they have more money. In practice wages are dropping as in the plumber example up the page. Before he charged a $100 and took home $65. Now h
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I didn't say it was part of the same transaction. You did.
Actually you said:
So the net tax rate on the plumber for that transaction is 57.75%.
...implying that there was a single tax rate of 57.75% on one transaction.
Poor choice of wording aside, the argument still falls down on a number of grounds:
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Well, there is an easy solution to that, and we have had that in Europe for ... hum, let's see, in some places 100 years now ... strange how much time these radical ideas about a more equal society take to arrive USA.
The solution is different sales taxes for different kinds of goods. A very high one for luxury goods (an iate or sports car), a normal one to non absolutely necessary goods (plasma TV for instance, cars, etc.), and a very low one, or complete exemption for indispensable goods (non processed fo
Re:National or state makes quite a difference (Score:5, Informative)
There are a bunch of arguments for why the rich should pay more (not just dollar wise but percentage wise).
Off the top of my head:
1. They can afford to. It costs $X to run the government and lowering the burden on the poor by increasing that on the rich is considered a reasonable thing to do by many people (not you obviously).
2. They use more government resources and hence it's fair they pay more. The military provides more benefit to the rich - they lose more if the Russians invade and confiscate all the property. The legal system provides greater protection (in terms of the value protected) for their property.
3. The marginal propensity to consume falls as income rises. If you think the economy is demand driven then taking more money from the rich and less from the poor will be better for the economy.
4. Income exhibits diminishing marginal returns in terms of utility (a person earning $100,000/year gets less utility from an extra $1000 than a person earning $25,000/year does). Hence taxing the rich at higher rates than the poor will result in higher total utility than a flat percentage system.
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It isn't. It would take a constitutional convention to legitimately gain such authority. I have no problem with that. In fact, I think it's something we've needed to do for quite a while, for any number of reasons. And it's a far better thing than what they do now, which is whatever they want, regardless of what the constitution says.
Any further questions? That was a pretty good one, by the way. Not that
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And once income tax is eliminated you only pay the plumber $65 cash to avoid the service tax so he has the same take home cash. Of course when he spends that $65 at the grocery store he discovers that the bill is actually $75 due to the sales tax.
So you're ahead $35 due to only paying $65 cash instead of a $100. Which is lucky as your employer has cut your pay to keep your take home the same. The plumber is behind $10 due to sales tax. And the government is behind $25 due to the underground economy that spr
Re:National or state makes quite a difference (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't need to tax them at higher rates. Percentages already do that. Just tax them at a flat rate.
Do the math. You get taxed 10% on $25,000.00, they take two thousand, five hundred bucks from you. They tax some rich person at 10% on twenty million dollars, and they take two million dollars from them.
Flat tax, two people contributing, one is you at about two thousand, five hundred bucks the other is the rich guy at two million dollars. Total is two million, two thousand five hundred dollars. Of which YOU paid about 1/800th of the total. Say they build a highway from this taxation. Now you and the rich guy can drive on it. Does that feel like you're not "redistributing the wealth"?
Isn't that enough, without the rich guy paying an even higher percentage?
You're certainly entitled to your opinion, but me, I'm not rich, yet a flat tax rate seems pretty severe already, and I'm perfectly satisfied with it. The problem as I see it is that the rich aren't paying that rate. Look at what Google just paid in taxes. And it's perfectly legal, by which I mean to say it's perfectly broken.
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Re:I live in Seattle. (Score:4, Insightful)
Fair tax isn't what they're suggesting. This is a way of allowing Billionaires to pay even less tax than they do currently. Under it you'd pay absolutely no tax on investment income or income of other sorts. Meaning that as long as you don't spend it you don't pay tax.
The problem with that is that at some point somebody has to pay taxes. This is the same sort of incompetent tax policy that the GOP has been pushing for years. Cut your taxes and then we'll all have more money. The problem is that you can't cut taxes and have an out of control military budget. You get one or the other, not both.
The best plan I've heard that we could reasonably see implemented was Steve Forbes' flat tax proposal. The tax as I understand it is actually lower than what most folks pay now, with generous rebates for people in lower income brackets that are behaving responsibly.
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I agree with you that the military budget isn't the only villain when it comes to out of control spending.
But your assertion that the military budget has been decreasing for the past fifty years (except for post 9/11) is not a convincing argument. "Post-9/11" means the past decade, during which the budget has increased a LOT. A good portion of military spending has not even been recorded in official budget figures, because it was in the form of emergency funding rammed through congress to support the war on
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Run the numbers for Fair Tax over a longer term period. It continues to shift wealth to the wealthy, further increasing the income disparity between classes in our nation. The bottom line is that money makes more money, and the only way to stabilize disparity is to raise taxes on those with more money. I'd be happy if we could keep the ratio of class wealth consistent, instead of watching the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
I think you'll find that this is impossible. Richie Rich has a billion dollars and makes 20 times more interest in a year than he spends. His net worth goes up over time unless you tax him at over 95%, and if you do anything even resembling that, he moves to a country with a lower tax rate. Joe Sixpack makes $35,000/year and spends all of his after tax income, regardless of whether his tax rate is 100% or -100%.
The trouble with class warfare is that it isn't really a war. Poor people are never going to have
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The other thing about the poverty level is it varies a lot depending on where you live. Generally it seems to cost more to live where there is any work.
Re:I live in Seattle. (Score:5, Insightful)
You, moron, need to read the national fairtax bill. It reduces the taxes on the poor to absolute 0. If you make below the poverty limit, you get a 100% refund of the taxes, with an increase for each dependent. If you did not work at all this year, you would get a refund of taxes up to the poverty limit, as if you had worked (the same refund, for doing nothing). So your argument is null. Under that tax system, the poor would pay absolutely nothing, and would even get paid, if they didn't work.
Now if you are rich on the other hand, the tax would apply to all kinds of luxury expenses. Buying a ferrari? Well then you are paying 23% of the purchase price in a tax. Buying a plane? The same.
By all means, keep supporting the progressive tax system. I will be more than happy to make millions I can keep shifting through tax loopholes because you are unwilling to close them. The reason a consumption tax is better, is because you can determine your tax overhead at the beginning of the year. No need to manage taxes for your employees paycheck, figure out your deductions, find tax credits, buy your car with your company, buy your vacation home as a company asset. It would no longer matter, because all of these things would become moot points. You would pay taxes on them, end of story.
It's a shame that you started an otherwise cogent retort with 'You, moron', because that typically makes people tune the rest out. Try civil debate sometime; you may find that you get better results.
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Ah, Moron's calling Moron's Morons. Seeing as that's the game this Moron will join in. You Moron.
The beauty of any tax proposal is to convince everyone else to raise their taxes so you can pay less. If all things are equal and the same "tax" revenue is required, the only way to lower taxes for ANYONE in the system is to raise taxes on someone else. More than 50% of the population doesn't even pay federal income tax right now. In fact a significant percentage pays "negative" taxes through the earned income c
Re:I live in Seattle. (Score:5, Informative)
Standard Deduction: -$5,700
Taxable Income: $24,300
Tax on first $8,375 @ 10%: $838
Tax on remaining $15,925 @ 15%: $2,389
Total Tax: $3,227
Did you look up what current tax rates are? That person would pay about 37% more in tax under your plan ($4,409 vs $3,227). They'd have to put nearly $5,000 per year into savings just to end up with the _same_ tax burden.
On the other hand, a person making $250,000 per year and spending $150,000 of it would end up paying less than half of what they do now ($65,736 vs $32,009). Even if they spend every penny, they'll still only pay $55,000 for a savings of over $10,000.
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Fuck anybody ever for suggesting that people should be getting money for doing something.
There are enough doers, fuck in the ass anybody who wants to produce and pollute incessantly, filling the world with crap and ways of making people buy more crap, for their own personal profit.
I'd shoot anybody in the head for this proposal alone.
Re:I live in Seattle. (Score:5, Informative)
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Or maybe you've just elected poor leaders who've squandered all your money.
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Let me be blunt again: Fuck public education. It's not more important than educating my children. I care about my family. That's it. My wife, and my children.
This attitude is how we get No Child Left Behind producing legions of dipshits who are going to have no choice but to enlist in the military because no one else will hire them, and to serve as cannon fodder because any more desirable job requires the ability to use your brain. These useful idiots will continue to pad out our standing armies so that we have the power to project our might across the globe for economic gain for the same people who convinced you that public school is a bad idea. The bad idea is
Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
...something is to be said for unenlightened self-interest. I am just not sure as to what.
He wouldn't be paying income tax on that (Score:4, Insightful)
Income tax is on income, not capital gains. He wouldn't have been paying income tax on his share sale anyway.
And his argument was that it would hurt his ability to attract talent. Unless by talent he meant himself I fail to see how what he does with his assets has to do with this issue.
Re:He wouldn't be paying income tax on that (Score:5, Insightful)
I also fail to see the story. Ask any business manager and he will be against higher income taxes, in part because it makes it harder to attract new talent when your area has income tax higher than average. That means you have to PAY higher than average just to let the person break even on net bring home income. It doesn't so much matter WHAT the tax increase would be used for, as politicians have a habit of claiming that a tax increase is earmarked for a certain project, and in reality it just goes to the general fund.
Here in NC, they sold the idea of a lottery that way, the "education lottery", as "all the money will go toward education". Sure, and for each million in additional lottery money, they just cut the budget by a million, so the net effect is ZERO advantage to education and for all intent and purpose, the money goes into the general fund. But you can "feel good" about voting for the lottery, since it means you are thinking of the children. Politicians love new money, just as businessmen love low taxes.
Re:He wouldn't be paying income tax on that (Score:5, Insightful)
Ask any business manager and he will be against higher income taxes, in part because it makes it harder to attract new talent when your area has income tax higher than average.
Miracle! If you frame the question as getting more than giving, everyone pipes up in full agreement. Uniform consensus is usually a dead giveaway that the question is half framed. It's also hard to attract talent if your civic structure decays until only Batman is holding the fort.
Around here people are opposed to the HST (harmonized sales tax). This raises more revenue for the province, and helps to balance the books. There are only two alternatives: increase a different tax, or cut programs (unless you count waving the magic wand of waste-free administration, as much beloved by the pumpkin pie in the sky sect). The programs large enough to achieve the necessary cost savings are most likely the usual suspects: education, health care, and pensions.
What people are really in favour of is decreasing taxes while increasing programs. You can sell that proposition any day of the week. You can even return from the political grave to mobilize heroic opposition. (Damn, I thought we had put a stake in that guy. Bill Voldemort. I dare not speak his name.)
Government is a necessary evil. Solutions proposed by the cheerleaders of polarization (no government/all government) are worse than the disease. The useful debate is on subjects such as accountability and effectiveness, not self-interested wishful thinking by sober capitalists cloaked in the gravitas of expensive suits while fixing their beady eyes on their next quarterly bonus payment.
The joy of capitalism is the pursuit of narrow self-interest. That's why it works, and that's also why you don't solicit the people involved for balanced perspectives.
Besides, fat cheques speak louder than words.
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Around here people are opposed to the HST (harmonized sales tax). This raises more revenue for the province, and helps to balance the books. There are only two alternatives: increase a different tax, or cut programs (unless you count waving the magic wand of waste-free administration, as much beloved by the pumpkin pie in the sky sect). The programs large enough to achieve the necessary cost savings are most likely the usual suspects: education, health care, and pensions.
Is that Ontario or BC?
For BC at least, the issue is not just about HST itself, but about how it was sneaked in - a supposedly fiscal conservative party got voted in by claiming, in public, that they would absolutely not support the introduction of HST, because it's so bad and awful. One month after the election, they proudly proclaim that they're signing up for HST, and go ahead to explain how totally awesome it is, all while saying that they didn't quite understand it before the election. It's no surprise
Re:He wouldn't be paying income tax on that (Score:5, Informative)
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Wrong. California is no longer a jobs magnet. (Score:4, Interesting)
You're wrong. High tech companies are fleeing California for low tax states. In fact, high earners inevitably flee high tax states for low tax states [wsj.com]:
Here's a comparison between California and Texas that explains, in great detail, how and why Texas is kicking California's ass. [texaspolicy.com]. This is also why more than half the new jobs created in the last twelve months were created in Texas [nationalreview.com]. Another reason is strong vs. weak or no public sector unions [nationalreview.com]. One thing that articles notes:
High tech employees are fleeing California for Texas, because they can keep more of what they make, the government isn't going bankrupt, and the roads and schools are now better in Texas. Despite all the money California spends on a a bloated public sector, the actual core services delivered are worse in California than they are in Texas [city-journal.org]:
Here's a slightly older analysis from 2007 [alec.org]. Since then, of course, things have gotten better (relative to the rest of the nation) for Texas and worse for California.
Low taxes and small government create jobs. High taxes and big government destroy jobs.
Re:He wouldn't be paying income tax on that (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends, I'd love to hand minnesota ~$300 extra this year if it would help fix the damn roads, or build a train, or make the buses work(by work, i mean have enough routes to enough useful places at enough times and not turn a 30 minute drive into a 1 hour 45 min ride.)
Re:He wouldn't be paying income tax on that (Score:5, Insightful)
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Of course, there is nothing preventing you from stroking an extra check to the govt. Asking/requiring/demanding your neighbors do the same...not so good.
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Re:He wouldn't be paying income tax on that (Score:4, Insightful)
There's also the people that want to spend the money. They'll claim they're "happy to pay" higher taxes for service X. But what they really want is for you to pay higher taxes so they can enjoy service X. When they say they're "happy to pay", they're essentially saying "I'll pay an extra $10 so I can spend $10,000,000 on things that I want".
Meanwhile, there's nothing keeping them from paying as much extra tax as they want already. Your local, state, and national treasuries are happy to accept any additional amount you'd like to send them. But the "happy to pay" people don't send any extra money. Because "happy to pay" is a disingenuous fraud.
Re:He wouldn't be paying income tax on that (Score:5, Insightful)
Europeans.
What amuses me is how America's system of 'trickle down economics', whereby they keep average wages down whilst all the proceeds of growth are sucked up by a largely non-producing elite, has left it in such dire economic straits that only reckless borrowing (both private and government) keeps the whole house of cards propped up, yet no-one actually questions this system. It's as if the more the system fails, the more people believe in it. The more money made by the rich at the expense of the workers, the more people think taxes on the rich are too high; the more average people struggle to stay afloat, the more people think wages are too high and unions should be crushed so people can earn even less.
After firing millions of workers, corporate profits are soaring. So what do the people do? Vote for the candidates backed by those corporations. It's almost as if the American people are committing economic suicide.
Re:He wouldn't be paying income tax on that (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:He wouldn't be paying income tax on that (Score:5, Insightful)
They had their chance to contribute to the healthcare bill, for instance, and not only did they opt out, but they chose to make up outlandish lies like the death panel lie and do whatever they could to kill the bill.
Re:He wouldn't be paying income tax on that (Score:4, Insightful)
My state went from light blue to dark red. We've got like 2 democrats left in the House, every other major elected position is republican.
With outcomes like that, why would you expect the republicans to do anything but lie and stall? That seems to work wonders. And it once again leads me to idle thoughts about how we could require an IQ test for voting, as a way to weight votes. If you think that the democrats started death panels and are utter failures for not stopping two wars and fixing the economy in 2 years, your vote shouldn't count for much. It's not reliable in the least.
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Trickle down economics? The system you described is exactly not trickle down economics. That's the one where it doesn't matter that the rich get richer, because they are then willing to pay higher for the services and goods they use, thus letting the money 'trickle-down' to the lower economics strata.
The problem is that 'trickle-down economics' only works when you have continuous wealth generation. India is a perfect example of how it works well when you have an insane 8.5% growth rate. The US has not exact
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Sure, German banks hold Greek bonds. So basically Germans have had to lend money to Greece and then let it go. That counts for about 45 billion Euro. And then the total bailout package cost about 120 billion Euro. I don't know how you figure that the Euro came at the expense of "places like Greece". Places are Greece are not forced into the EU or the EEZ. They vie for it. And Germany has always been the most generous funding source for the EU.
As Time puts it [time.com] :
According to polls conducted in Germany last week, 53% of people want Greece tossed out of the euro zone if it can't resolve its deficit dilemma without outside funding — a financial helping hand that a full 71% of Germans don't want their government to extend. Though no similar surveys have been conducted in France, leaders there say the public sentiment is much the same. "There are cultural differences for why the French wait for something to happen before reacting when the Germans respond as they see it developing, but opposition to a bailout — if that happens — is likely to be similar in both [countries]," says an adviser to French Economy Minister Christine Lagarde, who commented on background due to the sensitive nature of the situation. "Try explaining to public opinion you're using its money to help Greece after it kept building up debt and lied about it the whole way."
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Since there was no capital left after the last fiasco, the social programs (which the vast majority support) are being raided to provide more capital so the Ponzi schemes can continue to benefit the few.
Ha
Re:He wouldn't be paying income tax on that (Score:4, Informative)
You didn't even make it through the entire summary, then. It said "I-1098 would apply this tax rate to all income, including capital gains and dividends".
Re:He wouldn't be paying income tax on that (Score:4, Insightful)
I-1098 would apply this tax rate to all income, including capital gains and dividends
Which is a wonderful idea if you ask me. I don't see why some sources of income should be magically exempt - and it gets particularly suspicious when those are the very same sources most heavily used by the richest (and are what is largely responsible for the growing wealth divide).
Re:He wouldn't be paying income tax on that (Score:4, Insightful)
Stop using logic when Slashdot is having its 2 minutes of hate for Microsoft! And for the love of There-is-no-God don't point out the fact that Ballmer will be paying more $$ to the Federal goverment in Capital Gains taxes in this one transaction than all of the collective readers of this Slashdot story will pay in any form of taxes for their entire lives combined. Ballmer is rich, and therefore must have stolen the money from the Government! Anyone who makes more money than the Slashdot poster bashing the rich is automatically an evil rich bastard!*
* (Exceptions apply to CEO's of companies we are fanboys of, and billionares who dump money on left-wing "grassroots" causes like Moveon.org, with an exception-to-the-exception being Bill Gates who is still evil even though he dumps money on causes that the group would approve of if anyone else dumped the money)
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I think you're exaggerating a bit. The Two Minutes Hate is really reserved more for Apple and Facebook these days.
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Really? Interesting claim. Let's examine it a bit.
It' not entirely unfair to assume that each member is a reader. In fact, we can safely assume that there are more readers than members, but there are also inactive members (i.e. people who used to read, but don't any more), but since you d
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No, you have probably been called a racist because of making sweeping statements about groups of people you don't see yourself belonging to.
In the very post I am replying to you show a tendency to make sweeping statements about groups of people, to pigeon-hole others, and to view the world through a mechanism of "us and them".
All in all, those things are a recipe for disaster. Or not, if you seek to rule.... Do you think the holocaust could have happened if it weren't for prejudices in society that the Nazi
And so what? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:And so what? (Score:4, Insightful)
There's nothing socialists hate worse that failing to get their hands on someone else's money.
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What you described is not capitalism. Just because a bunch of statist pricks have hijacked the term doesn't mean the meaning of capitalism has changed.
Re:And so what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And so what? (Score:5, Insightful)
So what are you proposing? Some kind of Federal Council of Does-He-Really-Deserve-That-Paycheck? Would it say "yes" to Tiger Woods and "no" to Ballmer? How about Oprah, does she deserve her payday?
Or maybe Ballmer is the *only* one the Government should get to make that decision about? Single out a single person? That's Democratic, right?
What, in practical terms, are you proposing exactly?
Re:And so what? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:And so what? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why replace him with a random schmuck just because they'll work for nothing?
It's common enough for people below the C level. So much so that it has a special name: "offshoring". So why not? The unemployment lines are filled with people who were ready, willing, and able to work for one company for life and who routinely went the extra distance when it was necessary.
Quite a lot of people routinely go over 8 hours a day and quite a lot of people have a much bigger impact on people's lives than Ballmer. They typically make 40-100K/year.
Odds are, there's a nuclear plant close enough to you that you are really glad the people running it have made good and timely decisions every day. Their decisions affect millions of lives. The level of impact could be described fairly as life or death. If they screw up, they could easily kill more than 90,000 and leave a fair portion of their state uninhabitable for generations to come. People in other countries could easily suffer for their mistake. They don't make even 10% of what Ballmer does.
Airline pilots work crazy hours, rarely get to sleep in their own bed, and routinely have hundreds of lives in their hands. They would work more hours except that the FAA has determined that their job is sufficiently difficult that they cannot possibly do so without endangering lives. If they screw up, those lives will be over. Screw up enough and thousands more on the ground will die as well. Likewise they don't even make 10% of what Ballmer does. Instead, they keep getting asked to take pay cuts.
Meanwhile, Ballmer is "so confident" in his own ability that he wants to diversify in case MS flames out.
Cynical? Its a corporation the answer is obvious (Score:2)
It's not as if Gates's philanthropy is a mantra of MS as a whole. It answers directly to the shareholders most of which could care less what impact things like this have on the state...as long as it doesnt effect their net worth.
There's more to it. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Which is exactly what happened with the federal income tax - originally it was just a 1% tax on the "evil rich" and then the government kept taking more and more money from more and more people. It's good to see that the people in Washington learned from history and didn't let the bill pass.
Also, income taxes are a very inefficient form of taxation because it discourages people from working (Economist Gregory Mankiw wrote an article in the NY Times recently about this). Consumption taxes (sales tax) are m
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Also, income taxes are a very inefficient form of taxation because it discourages people from working (Economist Gregory Mankiw wrote an article in the NY Times recently about this). Consumption taxes (sales tax) are much more efficient and fair system of taxation.
Consumption taxes mostly affect the poor. Why? Because they spend a larger fraction of their income on goods. So in that sense it's a much more unfair tax. On the other hand, concerning the argument that an income tax discourages from working: with an income tax you have more money if you work more. How's that discouraging? Could you expand on Mankiw's argument?
Re:There's more to it. (Score:4, Insightful)
So his argument is that consumption taxes encourage saving money. But that makes it even more unfair to the poor who don't have money to save. Rephrasing his argument: people who can afford to save money can gain more with a consumption tax than with an income tax. In other word, it's a gift to rich people. Which was exactly my first point.
As for the second point and your reply (your sister). I would wonder if it's not actually a gain in quality of life for her that working overtime is discouraged. Her boss certainly won't expect her to do it if there's nothing in it for her. Maybe he'll hire another person -- it will certainly be cheaper for him to hire another person than to pay your sister adequately for the extra time if your numbers are correct. I.e. everybody benefits, it seems. And if she actually enjoys working so much and my point concerning quality of life doesn't hold, then she will certainly also enjoy working overtime without compensation ;)
Lastly, yes, if people benefit extraordinarily, I don't see why they should not also contribute extraordinarily (your point about the taxation quantiles).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How do you figure? The top marginal tax rate (for income above $373650 in 2010) is 35%, not 90%. The way the tax brackets work is that higher rates kick in at higher thresholds of income, they kick in on only the income *above* that threshold. So, for example, below $34000 the rate is 15%, above that it's 25% (assuming you're filing single). If you make $36000, you'
Re:There's more to it. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is actually total horseshit. For most high-paid jobs that end up in the top brackets, there are way more people willing to do the job than positions available. No-one's going to turn down a seven figure paper-shuffling job because they only get half of it.
Re:There's more to it. (Score:4, Insightful)
FUD (Score:3)
I believe the biggest reason was that in only two years the law makers could modify the tax to include all Washington tax payers, not just the rich.
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. That's one of the talking points the anti-1098 campaign was using before the election. It was FUD then and it's FUD now.
Here's why: if the legislature wanted to pass an income tax, they would've done it already.
"Only two years" is how long it takes after an initiative passes before the legislature can change it. The anti-1098 campaign baselessly speculated that the legislature would extend the tax to cover everyone, even though they've been free to do that all along and have ne
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You are obviously not a Washington State citizen or resident, or if you are - you are profoundly ignorant of the political situation here.
Nobody in the State House or Senate will ever propose an income tax. Ever. It's a third rail issue here, and even proposing an income tax could be a career ender. Voting in favor of an income tax would be political suicide.
Every time an income tax has been placed befo
Not just Microsoft (Score:5, Informative)
It wasn't just Steve Ballmer or Microsoft fighting I-1098 ... this measure was very unpopular all across Washington State and failed at the polls by a 65% - 35% margin [ballotpedia.org]. Washington State is one of the few states in the US without a personal income tax (the sales taxes here are very high to make up for the revenue deficiency). I-1098 would have introduced a personal income tax on the "richest" residents (those making over $200K individually or $400K as a family), but the reason it failed by such a wide margin is that most Washington residents (including me) believed that once they introduced a personal state income tax here, the politicians would plead "necessity" and keep lowering the threshhold over time to the point where most residents would be paying it, and without any decrease of the sales tax to compensate. The majority of the population here is all in favor of education and healthcare, we just don't believe that a state income tax is the way to fund them.
FWIW, Microsoft and other large businesses in Seattle do have a legitimate interest in avoiding a personal state income tax, as for recruiting and keeping high-priced talent there is an advantage for them to come to Redmond and live in a state with no income tax vs. going to some other company - say, in California - and paying the tax rates there. An equivalent pay job offer in the Seattle area vs. many other states actually means more take-home pay here.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Precisely. You can see why 1098 failed in another initiative that passed: Initiative 1053 (which requires a 2/3 vote of the legislature to raise taxes). This is the third time Washington voters have instituted such a restriction. The legislature keeps getting rid of it after the requisite two-year waiting period. It's clear to most Washington voters that if an income tax in any form were to be passed, the reaction would be much like a junkie employed by a pharmacy: just wait until the boss leaves the st
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Talent arguments are not the bane - the real story is getting corporate influence out of our government. Sorry - but Business leaders in government
Microsoft's Lost Decade (Score:5, Interesting)
It is staggering to look back at the decade Ballmer has been in charge:
* Stock price has been effectively flat for an entire decade
* Lost hundreds of billions in market cap since Gates left
* The cellphone market failure
* The Xbox fiasco
* The search market failure
* The online services failure
* The portable music market failure
* IE's stagnation and market-share shrinkage
* The resurgence of OS X market-share
If Ballmer is soon to get dumped from the top spot at Microsoft it is bad news for Linux and Apple whoever replaces him can't possibly do any worse than Ballmer's disastrous decade at the helm.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I tried to forget it as well but the nasty little thing still creeps in on users laptops every now and then.
Re:Microsoft's Lost Decade (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft's Lost Decade (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
419? (Score:5, Funny)
The other way to look at this... (Score:4, Insightful)
The payday comment is a lie (Score:4, Interesting)
> ...a $2B state income tax-free payday for its CEO...
He is selling the stock this year. The new income tax wouldn't be retroactively applied to this year. Whether it passes or not, it has no effect on the sale. Why lie and try to make it appear that they do? Your agenda is showing.
Gates vs. Ballmer (Score:5, Informative)
The summary should have mentioned that the tax proposal was authored by Bill Gates Sr., and was supported by Bill Gates Jr., which is some pretty good evidence that Gates Jr. really has managed to separate himself from Microsoft.
As to why Ballmer is selling now, there's a pretty good chance it was for tax planning purposes. Many think there's a high chance the capital gains rate is going up soon, and so taking long term capital gains this year is indicated.
Why I voted against WA state income tax (Score:5, Interesting)
Right now in washington, the income tax is political suicide. In order to take more money, they're trying to get the voters to pass it. Sure, they can't adjust it for 2 years, but after that.. well, we'll just lower the threshold by 10%. It'll only affect a small number of people. The rich people will already be taxed (so why do they care), and people below $180,000 still won't be taxed, so why do they care?
Next year.. wash, rinse, repeat.
That's why I voted against it even though I wouldn't have been taxed.
Stupid question in summary (Score:5, Informative)
All of which might make a cynic question what was really important to Microsoft — public education, or a $2B state income tax-free payday for its CEO?
If the measure had passed, the tax would not have started until 2012, so that was a pretty stupid question. Ballmer's stock sale was income tax free regardless of what happened with 1098.
Maryland has a state income tax (Score:4, Insightful)
Amusingly enough....Maryland has also been a leader in the nation for job growth for a large duration of the "recession". We were far less hit with it than anyone else around us.
Re:Maryland has a state income tax (Score:4, Informative)
Amusingly enough....Maryland has also been a leader in the nation for job growth
Yep. That is mostly due to huge deficit spending by the Federal government, a lot of which somehow failed to make it out of the "Washington area", including Maryland, which surrounds D.C (for those unfamiliar with the geography.) You can see the effect of this here [washingtonpost.com]; the Baltimore–Washington Metropolitan Area [wikipedia.org] has seen far less decline than the rest of the nation.
Government hiring, spending spurs D.C.-area job creation [washingtonexaminer.com]
Choice quotes:
"The hundreds of billions of dollars of stimulus money -- that was an enormous shot in the arm, and we really benefited from it in this area,"
Federal hiring accounted for roughly 19,700 of the D.C. area's new jobs...Federal spending also led to increased hiring in D.C.'s private sector. Professional and business service firms, which often provide contract work for the government, added about 13,500 new jobs last year thanks to an estimated $84 billion in government procurement spending.
Thing to keep in mind is that we just had an election here in the US. The stated goal of our newly elected House of Reps leadership (the folks actually responsible for writing the budget) is to revert discretionary spending [wsj.com] to pre-TARP/stimulus 2008 levels. That 'discretionary' spending is the part that has propped up your local economy.
I suspect the next few years may be less 'amusing.'
Strange bedfellows (Score:3, Interesting)
The income tax initiative was pushed by Bill Gates Senior, the father of Slashdot's favorite person. His son also (eventually) came out in favor of it. But Ballmer and Allen were both against it, IIRC.
Washington state has a very regressive tax structure, with a stupidly high sales tax rate that IMO puts way too much of a burden on lower income people. But the stupid thing was that the income tax measure didn't really address the sales tax inequity - instead, it was going to lower parts of our property taxes and also cut the B&O tax - neither of which would directly benefit low-income people. I voted for it anyway because I thought it was a small amount fairer than the current system - but it didn't really get at what I see as the underlying problem here.
That's the thing about the income tax initiatives that've come through our state. There've been a few in the last 30+ years, and they never make a significant dent in the sales tax rate.
I doubt 1 million people in WA make 200k (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, we didn't vote for the status quo - we sent a clear message to Olympia to trim state spending. The state budget has grown 80% in the last decade, and we're tired of paying for it. We're tired of the Legislature overriding the express will of the people (by twice removing the limits on tax increases put in place by initiative). We're tired of the Legislature raiding earmarked funds for other purposes. Etc... etc...
Taxes are going up on your entire net worth (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't you worry about income taxes.
I am against income and payroll taxes (that's my bias) I am also pretty much against all government.
---
Realize that taxes are going up. Not only taxes on your income, don't you worry about your income, taxes are going up on your entire net worth.
Gov't is printing money.
Fed is printing hundreds of billions of dollars.
This automatically takes away your purchasing power.
Inflation is rampant.
Fed is causing rampant inflation by printing money. By printing money they are taking away your savings in form of dilution of your purchasing power.
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Your purchasing power is going down with every new dollar the Fed is printing.
Note, that the Fed came out (helicopter Ben) with a promise to print 600 Billion dollars more over the next 7 months.
That's just by June and it's about equal to the amount that the Federal gov't will borrow over the same amount of time. This means they are the lender of last resort to themselves. This also means that they know the US bond is on its last legs - nobody wants to buy more.
US gov't is broke. It's monetizing its debt and it's trying to cover that they are doing it, but it's not working as a cover, it's too "in your face".
Abandon ship, get rid of your US holdings, they are becoming worthless fast.
Why be cynical? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why be so cynical? Can't it be both? I know that so many here are incapable of anything other than binary reasoning, and want their moral conundrums to be perfectly black or white, right or wrong, good or evil, and that is pretty much what drives the "wannabe nerd" moral outrage 'round about these parts, these days... but the real world isn't binary, you know.
Hell, the real world isn't even digital - it's analog. And let's face it: Analog is messy, at best.
And, I think I just created my new sig *grin*
"Life isn't binary... Hell, it's not even digital. Life is analog, and analog is messy, at best".
Regards,
dj
There's a lot more to this than Ballmer (Score:5, Interesting)
I live in Washington. Here's the deal. The State has increased its spending 80% in the last ten years when inflation and population growth has been 40%. No one can see a 40% increase in services. They just spent more money. Now that the recession has reduced the state coffers the State is whining that it has a deficit. If the State went back to a 40% growth rate over the last ten years there would BE no deficit.
Now, this is like the umpteenth time the voters have said NO to s state income tax. Why? Because we know it's just the camel's nose in the tent. They're trying to get a class war going so all the people will want to tax the "rich," then when that is implemented, in two years the state legislature will reduce the threshhold so that we all pay or inflation will be so bad we'll all be in the 'rich' bracket. No one trusts the legislature.
One of the ploys was to say "it's for the children." Right. Just like the lottery was supposed to be for education, the legislature has shown its stripes so many times by raiding earmarked funds that it makes a travesty of the claim.
Voters also passed, for the third time, an initiative calling for a 2/3 vote of the legislature to raise taxes and fees. The legislature has managed to override the last two. One of the complaints was, why should 51% vote for a 2/3rds majority? OK. This time we approved the intitiative by 67%. Capiche? We don't have a revenue problem in Washington. We have a spending problem.
I don't care one whit what Ballmer & Co do with their money. I just know my money is more precious than his because I don't have anywhere near what he does. And I'm tired of having it confiscated by a state that doesn't understand it has to live within its means.
Re:There's a lot more to this than Ballmer (Score:4, Insightful)
There's an even more pressing concern. The income tax proponents state it as only taxing the rich (i.e. 200k+ income per year). Just like the AMT in federal law, though, it is not indexed for inflation. So even if the state legislature left it unmodified by some miracle, people would start falling into the tax trap.
Anyone who believes we're not in for some massive inflation is in a fantasy world. The Fed is printing money left and right.