This is a cyclical thing. It's like a person who only works in the winter, they don't starve to death in the summer because they are smart enough to realize that their income is cylical and they need to save money during the peaks so they can spend it during the troughs.

The baby boomers will not live forever, social security will go back to having "too much money" again in a couple decades.

How are you going to exempt money from a sales tax? Coordinate every business in the country with the new national ID card so that when you run over your $15K it magically starts charging?

You seem really itching to get your money's worth out of these illegals but frankly it's not a big priority.

1) There isn't much tax revenue being lost to illegals.

2) If you exempt the first $XX thousand dollars of income, you're probably going to exempt 90+% of illegals.


But there's a difference. When that person runs across the border to buy stuff, they have already paid their taxes on that money. The state is losing out of its sales tax, but all the payroll and income taxes are already accounted for. Under a federal sales tax system this money would be completely lost to the US.

Oh, and lets talk about immigrants for a moment. Legal immigrants. Do you know how much money is sent Western Union to Latin America and Asia from the US these days? Say bye bye to all that tax money, because they sure as hell aren't spending it here.

The accounting applications used by most large businesses were written before I was out of grade school. I don't think you realize just how bad things are.

 

i was thinking about this and it would have to be trash...
i filled up 4 garbage bags worth of packaging supplies because i order online so much.

in HongKong, the average consumer throws out 7 plastic bags a DAY.

 

have any proof of that? i ask because just today i was at an IBM iSeries seminar, and of all of the many corporations in the room, every one of them has upgraded their financial systems or are in the process of doing so. this holds true for all user group events i've been involved in, in at least the past year.

 

Obviously people would still file some sort of return, refund the money if they don't make enough. If they are illegals, they are probably not going to file a return, so you keep all of it, if they do file a return, you pack their asses back to Salvador or whatever.

I honestly had not considered people sending money to their family overseas. If they are able to save the money to support their family abroad, what the hell, they are still living here and spending cash while earning dough to send overseas. As far as spending out of the country and bringing things in, we need to improve the control of our borders anyway.

As far as all the accounting applications being completely archaic and outmoded, well, I think you are just mistaken. Even if you are not, software ain't rocket science, unless of course you are doing it for NASA

 

They may have upgraded or are in the process of upgrading their financial systems, but I bet all their old batch process stuff like payroll and whatnot is still written in COBOL. It may have a pretty web front end, it may be upgraded to COBOL 2000 specs, but I'll bet you the back end of it would make you hurl.

So what you're going to do is fully tax people below the poverty line, and then refund the money at the end of the year. That is just going to work awesomely.

That way when they get back all that money at the end of the year, they will get in a time machine to go back in time to buy the things they needed six months ago and keep themselves from getting evicted and make sure their children are well fed.

I think you're completely out of touch with how low income families live.

I think you underestimate the amount of money that people are sending overseas. In many cases, a son or husband, etc. will come to America while the remainder of his family stays overseas. Their sole support comes from his paychecks.


90-some percent of the cost of software is development. Once you have it, maintenance is very cheap. This causes many corporations to hold onto ancient software solutions because they still fit their needs.

 

38.78% for Illegal Immigration

I'm a little disappointed in the polls...this thread is "What is the greatest problem the US faces?" not "What is the greatest problem California faces?"

sheesh

 

Well when 75% of the board is from California...



And 75% of Californians think that there's nothing in the US besides California...


The grip on reality is rather tenuous.

 

When I interned at NASA a while back, a lot of our programs were written in COBOL and FORTRAN h:

 

Illegal immigration is the countries problem, not just California.

Illegal immigration causes many problems, nationwide, not just in the border states.

Sure, the border states may see the issues a little quicker and more directly -- but terrorists crossing the border illegally, or businesses consistantly going and farming out American jobs to illegal workers because of a pathetic immigration policy and an inability to track and punish those (businesses) who profit from it becomes an issue of the entire country.

This doesn't even begin to touch the economic hardship it incurs on the local population, then the community, then the state, and finally the country as a whole.

Northern states may feel fine calling immigration a Californian or Texan problem, but the instant a little terrorists runs across the border, builds a bomb, and blows up a little supermarket in Idaho it will instantly become their problem.

I'd rather not wait that long.

 

The rest of the country tends to follow the trend in California, which is not always so bad, but seems to be lately. Illegal immigration is a huge problem that will accelerate in its seriousness. See, if an illegal immigrant has babies in this country, they are automatically citizens on medicaid, you pay for that too my fellow American. I guarantee you there is more money spent on illegal immigrants and their progeny here than is sent abroad by legal immigrants by several orders of magnatude. It is not all on the tax revenue side, part of it is on the expense side.

It is obviously not going to be as simple as changing it from one messed up tax code to another, it will take some tinkering. If you are not taxing the necessities, like food for example, it is not like they will be starving. I am a small businessman, I think I know something about cash flow problems.

Let me apologize for saying this, but I can't resist. You must be a Democrat, you have lots of reasons why my ideas are terrible and would never work, but not much else to offer. The whole point of this thread was too stimulate discussion, so maybe someone else will come up with something constructive.