in the 80's

[[email protected]]

No, I'm saying that because I made poor decisions that I never had
anything left over to save. ;-)

Oh, well. Why didn't you say so?

 

[[email protected]]

Wireless full-duplex intercom systems, like you see the coaches on the NFL
sidelines using to talk with the defensive coordinator or whomever. Most
systems are set up so that, while you have upwards of a dozen or so users,
everyone is constantly listening to one guy talk, but only one other guy at a
time can hit "talk" to respond on that same channel.

Except that the NFL uses an all analog VHF system. ;-) All the colleges use
ours, though.

On a short wired connection this is actually pretty much a non-problem --
wired "party line" intercom systems have been around for ages. The problem is
the delay between when you speak and any echo that returns -- as that delay
gets longer and longer, it's harder for the echo cancellers to perform. You
still occasionally have this problem on, e.g., phone connections -- when I
dial up my mother in New Zealand from the states, it often takes the echo
cancellers a second or two to train and during that time you can still hear
your own echo a bit, and on rare occasion the entire system breaks down for
some reason and I have to re-dial.

Adding multiple parts just makes this all that much harder of a problem.
Keith's systems now let you have up to 5 simultaneous talkers, which is a
noteworthy achievement.

Five per base. Up to ten bases can be strung together for fifty talkers. The
connection between bases is (2-wire) analog, however. The largest system I
know of has eight base units (I think they actually use five).

 

[[email protected]]

There are several ways of looking at it. Don't forget the guy making
66K probably has a 300K mortgage and deducts 15K or more in interest,
so he probably makes 80K or more and scams the rest of us for the
mortgage and other BS deductions. He might also contribute 5K to a
401K plan and another 5K to a health savings plan (HSA), so now he's
making 90K, plus a bunch of tax free interest from municipal bonds,
and the list goes on.

A $300K mortgage on $66K income is a bit excessive, don't ya' think? At 5%
interest that's P&I > $1600, with taxes that could easily top $2K, on $5,500
gross or a debt to income ratio of 36%. Doable, but certainly asking for
trouble.

Who, in this situation, has munis? IOW, you're building a fine strawman.

And the top earners pay less than 20% of income.

http://www.tax.com/taxcom/features.nsf/Articles/0DEC0EAA7E4D7A2B852576CD00714692

"Their effective income tax rate fell to 16.62 percent, down more than
half a percentage point from 17.17 percent in 2006, the new data show.
That rate is lower than the typical effective income tax rate paid by
Americans with incomes in the low six figures, which is what each
taxpayer in the top group earned in the first three hours of 2007."

We may have a 1.5 trillion deficit from a 3.5 trillion budget, but
it's only 10% of GDP. So, if everybody paid 10% more, problem is
solved.

Why doesn't government spend less instead of stealing more? Static analysis
is only used by Demonicrats and other fools.

 

[JosephKK]

And notice that if you gross $66.5K you're in top 25%, paying 87% of
the tax.

Total income tax revenue is/was roughly $900B in recent years.
Multiply by 87% and you get roughly $800B paid by the top 25%.

We need roughly $1.4 extra trillion to pay for today's spending.

So, to pay for today's spending by taxing alone we'd have to roughly
triple the income tax of everyone making less than $67K.

Ahem, don't you mean triple the tax on _everybody_??

You could probably run the taxes on everybody receiving less than
$100,000 to 80% and not impact the deficit.

 

[[email protected]]

How about 6.65% yield? Didn't you know the cities are going broke?

http://trades.municipalbonds.com/bonds/recent/

Southern Calif Logistics Arpt Parity-airport Proj-ser A
CUSIP: 842472BD3
2030-Dec 4.500% 76.235 6.650 $5,000 Investor bought

So what? What does this have to do with your asinine strawman?

 

[[email protected]]

Ahem, don't you mean triple the tax on _everybody_??

You could triple the tax on the bottom two quintiles and raise, um, $0.

 

[[email protected]]

What about the 21% military budget for palaces like Afghanistan? Why
not pull out and let the drug lords throw stones at each other? Who
cares who wins?

Because those "drug lords" gave us a $1T black eye and could do it again
without much trouble. ...and it could *easily* be worse.

And your figure of 900B is a little low. According to wiki, tax
revenue was over 2 trillion in 2009.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#Federal_budget_data

"During FY 2009, the federal government collected approximately $2.1
trillion in tax revenue. Primary receipt categories included
individual income taxes (43%), Social Security/Social Insurance taxes
(42%), and corporate taxes (7%).[6] Other types included excise,
estate and gift taxes. Tax revenues have averaged approximately 18.3%
of gross domestic product (GDP) over the past 40 years, generally
ranging plus or minus 2% from that level.[7]"

-Bill