You don't wanna get me started!! :mad:

Yep, its called the 2% HotelMotelRestaurant tax. You pay 10.375% total to eat out in Fayettenam, Arkansas.

Denver is proposing that it pay Walmart $12.5 million to build a store on the site of a strip mall that is currently occupied by about 7 or 8 small local independent businesses. WalMart for God's sake!!

Businesses exist to make money for the owners. Everything else is lagniappe.

Its okay to parasitize a little but you don't want to debilitate the host.

Could the plant have stayed in business had the rates been lower? How many employees would be working if the plant had been profitable?

On the other hand, Miller sucks. Maybe local micros benefitted.

...funny you should mention it. Olympia has a very nice microbrewery here called Fish Brewing Co. (I'm drinking a Wild Salmon Pale Ale right now), but they're still too small to benefit one way or another. A bunch of local commie pinko types are currently putting together a plan for the community to buy up the plant, redistribute the water rights, and then develop the 180 acre site for all sorts of commercial and public benefit ventures.

The idea is developing some traction so we'll see...

Capitalist businesses sole purpose is the pursuit of profit, but they better damn well prove to be a relatively benign parasite.

Miller was bought out by the Anglo/South African conglomerate SAB. They're busy globalizing their way into more profitable communities to squeeze.

250-340--only 40% were permanent Union guys, the rest temps.
Why should the local non-profit Hospital employing 2300 workers pay full pop while, those corporate scheisters sleaze their way into a 50% rate? Scumbags...I worked with several local political organizations to fight that deal, and it still smarts.

Atlanta property taxes have been steadily rising for years, while we remain the #49 state in the performance of our public schools that these rising taxes are supposed to be improving. Not to mention the state lottery money.... I don't even know what they're wasting that on, because it's obviously not being used to improve state schools.

Now our water/sewage rates are about to skyrocket to 2-3 times what they have been, thanks to YEARS of procrastination by our Democratic city government in making upgrades and repairs to the city's public works. Now the problem is acute, and it's going to cost 2-3 billion to fix, by current estimates (which we all know are always low). In the meantime we've been pi$$ing away more taxpayer money, for several years, by paying millions in fines to the EPA for the related environmental violations, instead of addressing the problem!

:mad:

Mike

Big taxes? How about this. Here in UK, there is VAT (sales tax?) of 17.5% on almost everything. Income tax (on your salary) is 20%, plus something else (National Insurance) about another 10%. Higher earners get 40% tax, plus the national insurance. SO, I earn 100 $, I see maybe 70 $ in my wage packet, I buy something costing 70 $, they take another 12.25 in tax. So my 100 $ has bought 57.75 $ in goods.

Another one: I'm currently in the market for a new house. I get taxed 3% of the purchase price for a 400 K dollar house (not much these days), whammo.

Not to mention all the g0ddamn lawyers/real-estate guys with their hands in my pocket during the process (apologies to all you g0ddamn lawyers).

Why should there be a non-profit hospital?

...cuz profiting from human misery is immoral?

All the doctors, nurses, surgeons, chiropractors, dentists, orthodontists, gynecologists, assistants, researchers, pharmacists, massage therapists, specialists, urologists, EMTs, acupuncturists...

So they are all immoral because they get paid to relieve human suffering?

:rolleyes:

Z, your recurring pinkness never ceases to amaze me.

Mike

Aw, come on. Were that true, Marx would have never been published.....the crusades would have never happened, the medical industry would still be using little other than leeches and incense....

...huh?

...uh, no.

Here we go yet again:
The mission of many non-profits is to provide services--period.
The mission of any for-profit enterprise is to provide a profit to the shareholders--period.

It's profitable to restrict services, cut corners, and withhold access to the uninsured. That's immoral.

To those list members from outside the U.S.--yes, in the 21st century, America has tens of millions without access to healthcare--crazy huh? Our healthcare 'system' is populated by parasitic profit-seeking middlemen who tack on administrative fees and burdens that boost overall healthcare expenditures to approximately 14% of the nation's GDP. All this expense, and approximately 75 million Americans are still either uninsured or under-insured. That's immoral.

France spends approximately 8% of their GDP AND provides universal coverage--oh those superbly moral Frenchman.

People who want medical coverage should pay for it.

...so those with more money may receive more healthcare, and those with no money should receive no healthcare. I love it.

Works great, just like our 'justice' system...I'm lovin the 'free' market the more I think about it. It really 'frees' a fella up from worrying about anyone else doesn't it?

Quite liberating...a social conscience is such a burdensome thing.