Plus, if I’m poor and you apply flat tiers, you indirectly incentivize me to not make more than my tier as my tax expense goes up.

Capital gains is assessed on far more than millionaire hedge fund investments, meaning that it’ll be another one of those things that disproportionately affects the middle class—i.e., those who can’t afford a high-priced accounting firm to structure massive overseas tax evasion.

You could just as easily implement a progressive tax with flat tiers—no loopholes, no exemptions.

To note, I agree with you. On the other hand, other anti-choice Democrats exist, some in very high places. I know Bernie is going to be a lightning rod, because he acts as the “paragon of progressivism,” so there’s going to be an element of schadenfreude here; but what is the DNC’s overall stance on the support of…

That first one is such a classic narcissist/co-dependent relationship, sadly, which I figured out the minute he said he loved her far too early; and, unfortunately, she was in such a vulnerable state that she went along with it.

A fundamental problem is that “liberalism” is a functionally meaningless word, globally speaking. In fact, in most places outside of the U.S., “liberalism” is a synonym for what we would consider “conservatism”—that is, “economic liberalism,” thus the right-wing “Liberal Party” of Australia and the right-wing…

I mean, Pratt likely isn’t the best advocate for this position, but I’m not sure he’s wrong. I think about a lot of the sitcoms of the 1970s and 1990s that depicted working-class Americans—Norman Lear’s sitcoms come to mind, along with “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Laverne and Shirley,” then also “Roseanne” later on.…

Much of the cruelty of Christianity is inherited cruelty from the Roman Empire. Even then, much of the cruelty of the Roman Empire was imported from the earlier Persian Empire, while if one combs through the Old Testament, there are tons of references to earlier Sumerian/Babylonian and Persian taboos/prejudices. …

The difference, perhaps, is that liberal Christians quite regularly reject Biblical fundamentalism and embrace textual criticism (I would take issue with that translation of 1 Corinthians 6, for instance), but then that’s also not limited to liberal Christians—the conservative Vatican also has both of those stances,…

The reality is that all these terms are misused and essentially meaningless—the goal, ultimately, is a “mixed economy,” which basically describes every Western country from the capitalist U.S. to social democratic Scandinavia, where obviously the role of the private and public sectors is going to differ between…

A good review of history shows that religion follows culture, not the other way around—acting as a sort of “confirmation bias” for existing beliefs or prejudices—so I think there’s a larger, more troublesome question to ask:

While we’re at it, the Democratic leadership, as a whole, needs to think about retirement—they’re too old, and their refusal to bow out is hurting the party’s future.

Frankly, these states probably want the prisoners to suffer, but they have to do it in a way that’ll make it past the Supreme Court.

It was a bad sign when the Vista installation disc was incompatible with my computer motherboard—it fired off a BSOD on the loading screen. The solution, ultimately, was to install it with less than 4 GB of RAM, manually download and install a patch (because it wouldn’t show up in Windows Update), then put the rest…

Heh...these people are likely narcissists, so they are only capable of seeing others as objects/extensions of themselves. Other people shouldn’t want to date them.

Modesty would certainly go a long way with these folks, and truly “hot people” know this, but they’re probably narcissists, so yes...run away, indeed!

If you really want to open that can of worms...

As a bit of a philosophy buff, I really enjoyed the ideas explored in this review! I’ve sort of enjoyed the nostalgia games that went the route of a more critical homage. “Axiom Verge,” for instance, is unmistakably a tribute to the original NES “Metroid,” but seems to have no qualms about taking advantage of the…

This is interesting from a historical standpoint, because it shows the malleability of political parties. To expand on that, prior to the Civil War, Democrats were mostly conservatives and Republicans were, by 19th century standards at least, more liberal. During Reconstruction, to avoid the taint of a defeated…

Well, she was primarily famous in the UK, for one, so I’d say it’s quite possible to not know who she is if you’re not from there or are not the kind of person to go out of your way to look for new music. I just tend to be a bit of an Anglophile when it comes to music, so I suspect that’s why I know and love her…