How we'll be paying for the bailouts

[swampy]

Dakota..You've got a point about American innovation and everybody else just doing a copy job. (Mmm doesn't Bill Gates fit in somewhere?)
------
Wags... Come on, what are you gonna do when you don't have Bush to kick around any more? And Obama's election (6%) was NOT a mandate, but I'm more than willing to give him all the same respect and support as POTUS that the yammering liberals gave Mr. Bush over the last 8 years. In fact, I've already started by calling him "liar". I guess I could include "murderer" based on his post Abortion medical care vote in the Illinois senate. He seems to be leaning toward a Big Three Bailout, so "Big Business Crony" may soon be added to the list. I'm holding off on "Hitler" until I see what he's gonna do about taking our guns away and where he goes with support for Israel.

Losing the election might even turn out to be fun. Getting to sling mud and name call and make accusations. Heaven knows the conservatives have learned how to do it from the best of 'em.

/sarc

[kj]

mattkime wrote:
[quote=kj]
>>>Too bad we limit the pool of innovators by making higher education inaccessible to such a large part of the population.

Get out of here. Higher ed is available to too many people. To get more people into college, we'd have to invent coloring book classes. kj.

I see it a little bit differently. There are plenty of people around the world willing to pay good money to be education in our world class colleges. If they're here for four years and get a degree they should be able to become citizens. Sure, it might need some tweaking but lets bring the brains here and keep them.
If you notice, nothing I said implies you can't get a worthwhile education in one of our many colleges/universities. kj.

[swampy]

KJ... I'll take it one step further and say higher education is avaliable to anyone willing to apply them self. College is not a right. You earn a degree. Do you say, "I'm righting towards a Masters?" No, you say, "I'm working towards a Masters".

[mattkime]

>>If you notice, nothing I said implies you can't get a worthwhile education in one of our many colleges/universities. kj.

Yes, my point was that we could open the doors wider _without_ lowering standards.

[OWC Jamie]

Our dollar usually seems to go pretty far over there.

With the 1 dollar now worth 7 kroner I doubt we'll be seeing too many Norwegians visiting the U.S. for a while.
How's the Euro doing ?

How's Iceland's krona doing ?

:-)

[Bill in NC]

Back on topic, VATs raise enormous amounts of cash.

And they can be tweaked to favor different sectors of the supply chain (depending on who spends the most on lobbyists)

And as a hidden tax (never broken out as a line item), there's no way for an individual consumer to know exactly how much they're paying.

[Acer]

Bill in NC wrote:
Back on topic, VATs raise enormous amounts of cash.

And they can be tweaked to favor different sectors of the supply chain (depending on who spends the most on lobbyists)

And as a hidden tax (never broken out as a line item), there's no way for an individual consumer to know exactly how much they're paying.

The exact same things are true of our current income and wage taxes, from a consumer's point of view. Even from the tax payer's POV, half the wage tax is hidden because the employer effectively deducts it from your wages before he prints your pay stub.

[mattkime]

>>And as a hidden tax (never broken out as a line item), there's no way for an individual consumer to know exactly how much they're paying.

the UK has VAT and its always broken out.

--

I'm very much AGAINST taxes being broken out. Mainly because companies tell you its gonna cost $9.99/month, but it ends up being $99/month with taxes.

[Gutenberg]

mattkime wrote:
I see it a little bit differently. There are plenty of people around the world willing to pay good money to be education in our world class colleges. If they're here for four years and get a degree they should be able to become citizens. Sure, it might need some tweaking but lets bring the brains here and keep them.

Oh my gosh, mattkime, that would frighten swampy. Think of all the Middle Eastern males between the ages of 18 and 23 who would come to this country for an education and then decide to stay. Horrors!

[swampy]

G.."Sure, it might need some tweaking but lets bring the brains here and keep them."

I would rather see us fix our education system. Push math and science. Get OUR kids the jobs.