Right, but getting fined in this situation means the government is incompetent. They should just tell retailers the "right" thing to do and not fine any retailers that follow the guidelines.
The idea that this is complicated legally is an example of why so many Americans are so frustrated with their government. Common sense should rule the day, not mindless legalism.
The issue with "common sense" is there's no way to run anything based on it because you'll get 100 different ideas of what that means in any situation. 90% of customers would be fine with the rounding to the nearest 5 cent plan but there's a streak of stubborn people who'd refuse to accept it and waste some legal time trying to get proven 'right' so the stores want legal clarity so they don't have to deal with that.
Agreed: If I was working with a human interior designer I would still want them to provide me a curated list of options on what decor to buy. Blindly trusting a person seems risky, a robot even more so.
> She claimed to be unaware of the contents, and that she had been given the bag by her fiancé, Nezar Hindawi, a Jordanian.
Certain groups perform attacks of this kind.
It's not necessarily because they are backwards or evil or something. They just can't resist militarily, so they go for soft targets.
If the situation was reversed, and there was some kind of hegemonic global Islamic caliphate with an ostensibly unbeatable military, perhaps you would get some random Poles or Spaniards blowing up planes.
People who aren't in groups in those kinds of situations, don't do things like that. Why would they? Why do we pretend that they would?
Yes, but a large component of worse health outcomes is due to bias on the part of healthcare workers.
Overweight people frequently have their problems ignored or downplayed, or given treatments for issues that they aren't experiencing, which leads to worse health outcomes.
I'm not denying that being overweight can be bad for one's health, just pointing out that when doctors provide worse treatment to a group of people that group has worse health outcomes and makes obesity more dangerous that it would be in a world without weight stigma.
Yea, my dad died of something similar - was morbidly obese among a lot of other problems towards the end of his life, they attributed a lot of those problems solely to his weight, but it turned out he had severe obstructive sleep apnea that was never treated. Had it been, I think his outcome would have been a little bit different. he was never even tested. We'd been telling him for years to get it looked at but his doctor convinced him the issue was weight.
It is a risk factor, but it is not 1:1. Lots of people have obstructive sleep apnea that are not obese. Sleep apnea can also contribute to weight gain.
The "registry" is signing your name on a sheet of paper on a clipboard - less than 1% more work for the pharmacy employee's overall job, approximately 0 new jobs created.
I don't understand the distinction you are making: two couples (4 people) meeting at a restaurant is, to me, equally social as one couple going to another couple's house to eat dinner.
With respect, you're making your own feelings clear. I'm not ascribing any emotion to you.
However, it is clear you lack the perspective to understand how globally unusual or fundamentally broken your community and your interactions with it are.
Not really, nobody goes "ooh, the stock price is up 5% this year, we can hire 5% more employees!"
Most stock wealth isn't doing anything for the company. If the stock price of Apple went down by 90% tomorrow for no reason, the main effect on Apple would be... almost nothing.
The employees who get equity compensation would be mad but they don't use their stock value to fund R&D or expansion or salaries.
But if you have "unrealized gains" tax you should also have "unrealized losses" tax deduction.
Also, instead of Apple try imagining NVIDIA: their stock went up like 1000% in two years, they are now a trillion dollar company. If they had to pay tax on that it would bankrupt them. Or, they could use all their cash + borrow some money against the stocks to pay tax. But then the stock can suddenly crash 90% and the lenders, seeing how their collateral is now 90% down might start demanding repayment of the loans, again, bankrupting the company.
"Unrealized gains" tax simply does not make sense. It's just greedy government attempt to squeeze more money from businesses.
You aren't arguing against what I wrote: an investor currently pays no tax on their own stock going up.
I'm suggesting if an investor in NVIDIA uses their $100 Million in stock that they bought for $10 Million to get a loan they would have to pay capital gains on that $90 Million capital gain. Just like they would have to pay capital gains when they sell the stock.
No stock sale has to occur - the investor could pay $18 million in taxes out of their loan.
When we decide to tax things is inherently arbitrary: I'm suggesting that we count "borrowing" against an asset as a taxable event which is a simple and straightforward change that makes buy-borrow-die more equitable: government gets taxes at the same time as the investor gets the benefits.
But that’s the thing: until you sell all the “capital gains” are illusionary: you borrow against your stock and tomorrow it falls down 50% and now you’re double screwed because you owe tax on those illusionary gains and your bank is also after you, demanding extra collateral on your loan. So your proposal would essentially ban borrowing against stocks completely
Getting a loan against assets is another way of "using" it, so why not make that a taxable event?
Just like now your stock value would not be taxed while it is invested. But now it would be taxed if you use it as collateral for anything. If you don't want to pay capital gains by selling the underlying stock then you can just get a bigger loan and pay the taxes out of that.
There, now you don't have to liquidate but the taxpayers benefit too when the wealth is "used" by the owner.
This still leaves open ‘buy, don’t borrow, die’ as a way for the dynastically wealthy to opt out of paying capital gains tax.
I think the sensible option is making death a taxable event, rather than borrowing (with perhaps exceptions for the family farm, but not for the family billion dollar business).
And the second best solution is eliminating the step-up basis, which without deemed disposition at death is just a free gift of capital gains tax rebates to heirs of the most wealthy.
Or another way to think of it: your estate has to settle all outstanding tax bills after your death, including the gains in assets that have remained untaxes your whole life.
Only issue I can forsee is that every loan, except a credit card, personal loan, and student loan, is typically loaned against an asset. I guess you could make carve outs for mortgages and auto loans.
Why would there need to be a carve out for home/auto loans?
1. No one really borrows against the value of their (paid off) car.
2. Property taxes already, generally, are against the assessed value of the home, so it's already happening for that case. There are some minimal exceptions, like CA Prop 13, of course, but generally speaking, if I want to take out a second mortgage or something, my home's value is already appropriately "stepped up."
I guess I'm not sure how this mechanism would work without being abused. I assumed when I take out a car loan, the bank is giving me money, in which the collateral is the car or home.
But I now assume the tax would be on the assessed change value of the asset, for which a new car or home would be 0, so no tax.
Calling any of this "radical" is rather dramatic and framing it as "obedience" misses the point.
If someone says "My name is spelled e. e. cummings" then writing it "E. E. Cummings" is weird. It feels either uninformed or a deliberate, though tiny, mark of disrespect.
It would also be weird to spell the Motorola "Razr" phone's name as "Razor" as that's not the spelling Motorola gave it.
It isn't about "obeying" the poet nor the corporation but rather following social norms to spell things as the named person (or the namer of the item) prefers it to be spelled. And if you don't follow this convention then... oh well, most people will probably forget about it seconds after they notice it as they have other things to think about.
I remember many years ago representatives of Photoshop® visiting forums to tell us that we must always add the registered trademark symbol whenever we mention Photoshop® - sorry, Adobe Photoshop® - and that we mustn't use the verb "photoshopped" but must instead say "digitally altered with Adobe Photoshop® software". And we told them to fuck off. But as you say it all depends on social norms and conventions ... which are not homogenous, so these things are always being tacitly fought over.
The idea that this is complicated legally is an example of why so many Americans are so frustrated with their government. Common sense should rule the day, not mindless legalism.