majestic

Why I consider it double taxation is; lets say a relative has a pile of loot sitting in a bank account and they die. First of all, they already paid the initial income tax. Then they paid taxes on any interest these monies have accrued over time (which is rightfully considered "new income"). Now they pass this on to their child, and for no other reason other than passage of ownership, the monies are taxed again? Just because? Mind I'm referring to cash money. Physical goods, such as inheriting a house and then selling it, should be taxed as new income, I suppose. Let me give you an example from the ondoing debate here. The current situation is that there is no direct inheritance tax here. However, when you're growing old and infirm and for some reason need care (e.g. like my father's aunt who needed 24 hour care for the last few years of her life) the cost is paid out of your pension and if that doesn't cover the cost, which is very likely, your estate. Which means in order to pay for your care the nursing home is legally allowed to tap into your life savings, your house, your car, well, let's make it short: literally everything you own. In other words if you're infirm and in a nursing home for more than a year and a half it's very likely that the actual estate tax you'll be paying is 100%. Everything's gone. Bye bye. That actually amounts to real theft because it hits those with little to inherit. The more money you have the less indirect estate tax you pay. The proposed solution a 25% inheritance tax after a million per inheritor, so if there's a three million inheritance for three people none of them would pay taxes. In exchange the state (or rather the state owned insurance companies) would use the money gained to pay for all nursing costs. The idea was shot down something fierce. Mostly because the government wants to tap into poor grandma's savings. It still does, even harder than the inheritance tax would have - for 95% of us. Granted not everyone becomes old and infirm in a way that requires nursing, but the amount of money funneled into the econonmy by allowing families with little income to a) actually inherit something and b) afford nursing would have easily outdone the taxation. But nah, we'll just wait until that money trickles down. As if that ever worked.

Wow. I just found this pearl. You do realize that diabetes is among the top ten causes of death globally, right? So yeah, you really need "diabetes medicine" if you are diabetic. The skill with which you defeat your own points is... uncanny. I'm pretty sure that point is valid in Sharpe's paradise where milk and honey flow and a family home and a car easily exceeds a million dollars in worth. And yeah, count me jealous of that place. I want to be there too. Reminds me that at my last job all the Chicago smokers got their cigs from Indiana Oh, nice. Try that in the EU, you'll be fined to kingdome come and back. And then some. Heh.

I don't disagree per se. Under the current system most Western nations employ an inheritance tax isn't hurting the common rabble like Sharpe wants to pretend, nor would it be an unfair double taxation like Gfted1 claimed. At least when compared to other unfair taxes (whether taxes are unfair assuming one gets decent value out of them is a matter for an entirely different debate). I'm all for shifting the tax load away from income towards capital gains and a minute tax on financial transactions. In the near future more and more jobs are going to be automated, in addition to all the outsourcing that already happened. Combined with a lot of people working for less than the minimum taxable income means that the middle class carries more and more of the taxload. We collectively need to change that at some point. Because "sales tax" (in the US) is based on the value of a newly acquired product, not on income. Here in Illinois some products have higher sales taxes than others. For example, food and medicine are taxed significantly lower than "non-essential" products. And they REALLY bend you over on "sin taxes" such as booze and smokes. Ah, I get it. You're right, of course. I was just stating that you have to pay sales tax out of the income you already had taxed. Much like you would pay inheritance tax out of an estate that was already taxed in the past.

So, uhm, I don't see your point. Unless that post wasn't meant as a reply to mine. That's exactly the point I was making. Every cent you have was already taxed, why are there states that have a sales tax? Isn't that double taxation? Why is that okay while an inheritance tax isn't? edit: Or let's put it differently, the point I was making is that crying double taxation when arguing against inheritance tax is a bit strange especially when it only hits the top percentile while sales taxes hit quite frankly everyone. Removing sales taxes should be a thing. Heh.

Still working on wrapping up the Everspace DLC. It's not difficult but the randomness of it all makes it terribly annoying to scan certain objects or enemies for quests. I still have to scan two grey goos but it's been 10 runs since I last saw any. Meh. I really wish this would have been part of the normal game progression and not a DLC a couple months afterwards.

Like USA where such thing doesn't exist? You're right, it's not a VAT, they call it "sales tax" and leave it to their individual states to determine which goods and services are taxable and which aren't. Shockingly, most states do have a wide assortment of taxes that we generally subsume under VAT in Europe. But sure, whatever. Let's keep splitting hairs.

And German coalition talks failed. How... expected. Heh.

That "income" has already been taxed on the original earner. Now it should be taxed again because it was given to another? If I spot you a $20 for lunch, should you be taxed on it? Its "income" after all. Figured the other strawman when arguing against inheritance tax would eventually come up. That's a circular argument. Yes, poor grandpa was already taxed, but that doesn't change the fact that it is a sizeable chunk of income for you. When you get a corporate revenue bonus you need to pay taxes as well. But why? Corporations were taxed for their profits before. Might as as well argue against any form of VAT. I mean my income was already taxed, why am I paying taxes again? One can spin the wheel both ways and go down to silly arugments like the 20$ for a pizza for lunch (although the tax is of course there - for the one selling the food). I'm pretty sure most nations have some sort of tax for gifts above a certain volume. I know we do. *shrug*

Heh. You know, you're essentially using the same strawman argument (why tax something that's already been taxed) as everyone else, but in your case I at least can respect that - because you honestly believe, misguided as I think it is, but that is a matter for another debate, that there wold be better ways than taxation and receiving what the government offers in return (I mean I get it, you'd rather pay corporate price gougers than the inefficient government *polemic* *wink*).

So a family with a house and a car is top 1%? You have no idea, as always, what you talk about.Another example of why US education is tanking. What in the world are you talking about? We were discussing million dollar inheritances. 3% of homes in the US are worth a million dollars. https://www.trulia.com/blog/trends/million-dollar-homes-2016/ You flipped out on Ben because he wanted to tax inheritance properties worth over a million dollars. This stuff makes me miss WoD. Looking at average or median incomes per country also puts things into perspective. When it takes updwards of 20 years for half of the population to even earn a million dollars before tax the idea that a million dollar exempted inheritance tax hurts anyone suddenly becomes ludicrous. Not that I would agree with a 85% tax rate. Inheritance should be treated like any other income and taxed accordingly. Because that's what it is. Income. The topic is just emotionally charged and almost always boils down to "the government wants to tap poor grandma's life savings" or "the government wants to make poor grandpa's family homeless" as if such edge cases were anything but strawmen. *shrug*

So you support throwing families to streets because Grandpa who owned the house died. How German of you. Quoting someone is now making stuff up. r00fles To be fair the idea that someone with a multi-million dollar property could become homless by any form of inheritance tax after the first million is made up.

Nice post but people should really stop posting essays on Twatter. It's annoying.

I already do. It used to be close for a while but now I'm sitting at almost 500 games on GOG and no time to play them all.

STD's going on a hiatus until January. The past few epsiodes barring the timeloop disaster have been better entertainment than the earlier ones. Michael has become less of an **** (although she's still far from being truly likeable) and even Captain Malfoy has a softer side to him that hints at how he's become a Starfleet captain in the first place. Some of the actions of the crew, Starfleet officers* and some design choices are still completely stupid (hint: don't make sensors that are supposed to be placed in an enemy vessel blink and beep conspicously) and of course it's still not Star Trek, but that's it probably never going to be for as long as this Klingon war is on and I don't want to beat that dead horse... again. * So, here's to hoping for a better second half of a season.

I find it a bit bewildering that an industry veteran like MCA keeps dropping these childish, passive aggressive comments - and he seems to really enjoy teasing his fans who all want to know what really happened with the fact that he knows and can't - or won't - tell (maybe both). Well that's okay, I did that too. Back in fifth grade.

GOG's PoE version has had Galaxy achievements ever since White March Part I came out - including the silly Kickstarter backer one that makes a 100% achievemnt completion impossible for a lot of us (me included, obviously). So no need to buy that again, unless you want to support Obs for a job well done and throw some more money at the Great And Holy GabeN, which is never a bad idea, right?. Well GOG obviously doesn't have trading cards and craftable badges for that extra spit shine on you e-peen though. *shrug*

I think I posted this before but here goes nothing: Still laughing out loud every time I watch it. Or would, if I weren't weeping for the franchise.

Random musings on Everspace carried over from the last thread: Yes, the game has full HOTAS support since patch 1.1. The devs patched that in even though the Kickstarter goal for flightstick support was not reached. I still stand by not using anything else than keyboard & mouse for the game. It is not a space sim and the combat requires heavy strafing to get through. People who say they've killed warships are either talking about frigates or corvettes, or they're lying. Warship cannot be destroyed because they have no hitpoints (and they never had, at any point, in the versions available to players). I also disagree that the game has no sense of progression. The energy core and regeneration perks alone makes things a lot more enjoyable, not to mention easier in later runs, and any of the subroutines or gylphs can make for very interesting combinations. Blueprints and crafting perks make the first four sectors a breeze to run through. Oh and the DLC added a number of side missions, filler content the game maybe lacked outside of getting to the end to understand what the hell's going on.

Oh, it is beautiful all right: Can be a bit overwhelming at first, like all games with a roguelike core mechanic. Feel free to ask if you need anything.

I'd recommend not playing Everspace with a controller. It's a shooter in space, it was pretty much made for keyboard and mouse controls.

Oh, nothing. I'm just a bitter former WoW player who really enjoyed the game's aerial combat, the underwater raid and the Path of the Titans progression system... Granted Blizz has gotten better by simply promising less, in the past the game boxes had screenshots of features on them that didn't make it into the game. Those seem minor to me. Not just for WoW (WoD infamously got cut in half and redesigned) but for games in general. Minigames and glyphs-under-a-different-name aren't much compared to the stuff most devs pull, especially since cut stuff is generally compensated for i.e. Abyssal Maw/Firelands raids being consolidated into a larger Firelands Raid. Certainly not enough to hold a Molyneux style grudge IMO. Saying you quit Pandaland after launch because of it makes little sense to me because that had the best post-launch support of all expansions, at least up until WoD got delayed. Now, if you'd experienced WoD... Then I'd get it. Ah, I see, well that was a misunderstanding then. I didn't quite MoP because of the lack of support from Blizzard but because of the dailies insanity after an already poor earlier expansion.

Oh, nothing. I'm just a bitter former WoW player who really enjoyed the game's aerial combat, the underwater raid and the Path of the Titans progression system... Granted Blizz has gotten better by simply promising less, in the past the game boxes had screenshots of features on them that didn't make it into the game. Aerial combat wouldn't have been that fun, either with vehicles or just floating around. The playerbase hated Vashj'r (wrongly) so that's why they just left the Neptulon story unfinished. But yeah, after WoD's cuts, I'll just be skeptical about how awesome the new stuff will be. Well and how much they gate things by time or grinding for points I stopped playing Legion shortly after the Nighthold patch. We even had a decent Mythic+ group going (decent meaning members who were capable of clearing Guarm on Mythic with their raids at the time) but then the reality of Legion kind of caught up with me. Whlie I could "easily" heal the raids we ran things got more and more complicated in higher Mythic levels. The joys of being a shaman. Having a max level druid I figured I'd just switch classes for the dungeons and then I looked at the artifact weapons and, even with the catch up mechanics introduced, realized that it would take half an eternity of upgrading my class hall, grinding artifact power and finding useful legendaries (my shaman had three really good ones after all) and simply dropped my sub instead.

Oh, nothing. I'm just a bitter former WoW player who really enjoyed the game's aerial combat, the underwater raid and the Path of the Titans progression system... Granted Blizz has gotten better by simply promising less, in the past the game boxes had screenshots of features on them that didn't make it into the game.

The audio recording in question is genuine (i.e. from an actual police academy instructor). Sadly the Welt article is behind a paywall but quotes and repostings seem to infer that there are various problems with the students, ranging from a lack of respect and sleeping in class to being part of mafia clans. This isn't the first time that particular academy showed up in the news, reports like this come every now and then. Some of the older ones were fake, this one is more substantial due to the voice mail of an actual instructor. The police union commented that they're worried about instructors being threatened but nobody ever comes forward so they can't help. It's also interesting to note that this type of information seems to always come from a third party. So either the instructors are even more scared of their superiors (or the union) than they are of their problematic students or it's another case of racism in the police force. Most likely a mix of both*, and it's excacerbated by the fact that the police force has had problems filling its ranks for a while now (and not just in Germany, anyway). *Honestly, I can see why. The voice mail is the quintessential racist diatribe, the only thing it lacks is an opening disclaimer stating "I'm no racist but...".

Putting the "War" back in Warcraft... again? Much original, such wow, something something or however that meme goes. I'd be more excited for the expansion if Blizz had not made a habit out of quietly dropping half of the features announced for a new expansion. But yay, they now can morph terrain in real time now. That'll be all over the expansion, like rushing rivers were all over the Broken Isles in Legion. I think I'll sit this one out like I did with WoD and everything on Pandaria after the launch.