"If we are going to massively simplify taxes, then it needs to be done on the richest"
Why? This is a built-in assumption most people seem to be operating with and I've never understood the rationale that the rich should pay more.
Does a rich person wear roads out more than a poor one? And if they do, wouldn't it be better if they paid for how much they wear the road down? As in: a percentages of miles driven on it? As in: a consumption-based tax?
Anyhow, even if you decide to work with that flawed premise,
to me, if we're going to tax revenue, then "fair" translate to a very simple mathematical concept: fixed-rate.
Everyone pays 10% tax on their income. This way, the "rich" pay more, and the "poor" pay less. Because 10% of 1M is 100k and 10% of 100k is 10k.
The correct solution is to eliminate income-based taxes altogether, be they corporate, individual, derived from regular wages or derived from capital gains, etc ... and stick to a flat consumption based tax. But we're so deep down the rabbit-hole of our current system, we can't even imagine doing that.
Without going to that level of simplicity, it's worth noting that some countries have done away with capital gains altogether and are doing perfectly well socially. That would be a perfect first step.
The only solution to put an end to the current patent system is to overload it. The equivalent of a DDos attack. Companies should file as many frivolous patent as they possibly can. Eventually, we'll have all the IP lawyers at 100% CPU and the world will be a much better place.
>World History is going to world history no matter where you take it
I'm afraid you are very much mistaken here. Having had the chance to look at primary school history book in four different countries (FR, DE, JP, US), written in four different languages, they each tell a vastly different tale.
Which doesn't mean they were necessarily contradicting each other, but rather spoke of entirely different things, or shone a completely different light on a particular event.
To give two simplistic examples, try to compare what is taught about Napoleon in French history book (he's a national hero) vs. German ones (he's depicted as the Hitler of his time). And try to go read about the history of WWII in a Japanese history book, you'll be amazed.
Yes, and this was so much against their DNA that it required the chutzpah of a Carmack to get the Apple's CEO to implement the decision.
Apple is and has always been a strict leech on open ecosystems.
They try to build closed proprietary stuff first to lock you to the platform, and when what they build is bested by OpenSource, embrace it and move on to the next opportunity.
They did the exact same thing with BSD: grab a beautiful piece of OpenSource tech, bolt on a metric ton of proprietary closed source tech on top of it, and call the whole thing open source to get love and applause from the OSS crowd.
Very much in line with Apple's way of doing things. God forbid they'd adopt some sort of open standard - even though they've hugely benefited from them.
Why? This is a built-in assumption most people seem to be operating with and I've never understood the rationale that the rich should pay more.
Does a rich person wear roads out more than a poor one? And if they do, wouldn't it be better if they paid for how much they wear the road down? As in: a percentages of miles driven on it? As in: a consumption-based tax?
Anyhow, even if you decide to work with that flawed premise, to me, if we're going to tax revenue, then "fair" translate to a very simple mathematical concept: fixed-rate.
Everyone pays 10% tax on their income. This way, the "rich" pay more, and the "poor" pay less. Because 10% of 1M is 100k and 10% of 100k is 10k.
Fairness handled.