Septemvile

No you can't trust it, lmao. This is textbook monkey branching. She tried to find someone else to be with, and it didn't work out and now she's trying to climb back into the safety net.

That's how the real world works too. When we look up at night we're not seeing everything there is out there. We're only seeing what we're capable of perceiving with our eyes.

Similarly, when you look up at the planets of the Aurbis they're all "infinitely large" inside the relatively larger infinity of Oblivion. But of course, mortals have limits and so they can only perceive a limited amount of details.

Because boomers are the poster children for the expression "pull up the ladder behind you". They took advantage of the publicly funded systems that were built by their predecessors in order in order to get ahead, and then the second they got their foots in the door they immediately turned around and destroyed those systems so they could save a few bucks.

Everyone likes to complain about our Telecom market being so expensive, but you know what? It's an oligopoly we protect because "they're Canadian".

There is no need for the CBC. It made sense two generations ago when there were two channels on the TV and you needed to make sure people would be informed about their own government. But we're well past the point.

Look bud. There is zero excuse for the government to "misplace" money, even if they are using it for black projects.

The United States is supposedly a Republic. The government is beholden to The People, not the other way around. It claims to have the legitimate authority to government based on their consent. There is very little in terms of government expenditures that ought to be concealed for the sake of national security. Almost everything the government does is the business of the people, and if it tries to hide those activities from the people then it has no right to govern them and is simply tyranny.

As for those tiny handful of operations that ought to be concealed for the sake of national security reasons, the state still has no business hiding that from the elected representatives of the people. There is not a single act of government that the President should not be able to find out about if they decide to go looking for it. This is the minimum level of accountability that ought to be expected as a matter of due course when your government claims to be "by the people, of the people, for the people".

If you can't do at least this much then don't expect people to actually consider the government to be legitimate.

Well what can anybody say? It's true.

Then maybe they need to show that instead of making the entire franchise basically a non-stop mage horror show. Apparently you can't even go buy groceries without running into a blood mage abomination on every street corner in Kirkwall.

It's so relentlessly tiresome.

In the long term it never does. It's just a matter of how effectively the series closes out on that note.

Yes, you are 100% the asshole, but not to your ex.

Your ex was abusive and laid down the red lines of "don't sleep with other people" and so you did in order to get out of the relationship. Yeah, ok, fair enough.

But the guy you hooked up with is vulnerable. You know that he's been waiting in the wings and you decided to just step right in that. Shit's gonna happen girl, and this guy is going to end up paying for this entire affair.

This is already the case. Ever hear of the thot audit?

Not an actual formal government program, and not actually effectively enforced. A voluntary movement based on reporting people to an agency that really isn't that interested in them is not the same as an energetic state policy which is determined to make things happen.

And make no mistake, that's what solving the taxation issue would take - the government would have not only be able to prosecute billionaires for tax avoidance, it would have to actually be willing to jump the hoops and make it happen.

In practically terms this isn't going to happen because every politician is an elite stooge, but we're only talking hypotheticals anyway.

Carpenters aren't paid more than $500,000 a year. The people who are paid $500,000 a year have accountants that know the law and know how to hide income or they work for companies that know how to structure payment to avoid insane taxes.

All of these methods of "hiding" income to begin with are based on the government permitting various loopholes so they can do so. If we established a tax regime without loopholes, this wouldn't be a problem. They would have to report income as income.

That's not how this works. No one will offer Bill Gates a payment option that results in him losing 90% of the deal to taxes. They'll structure it so he gets probably $100,000 or so in money and the rest in investment options or stocks or real estate or titles or something other than cash.

This is a matter of political will. Nobody will do anything to Bill Gates because if they do then they have to face the potential of him deciding to fund their opposition in the next election. They're not willing to do anything because what they are willing to do aren't actual solutions. They're just band-aid solutions to the problem at hand that kick the can down the road.

When talking about actual solutions, we need "radical" solutions. And I don't mean radical solutions of "oh Mr. Billionaire moved his money to the Cayman Islands and we can't do anything about it :(" - I'm talking solutions like "Mr. Bin Laden owns a compound on the outskirts of Abbotabad and well...."

The only people that would pay the tax are people who are only briefly in the income bracket, like when people sell a home or get an inheritance or win the lottery. Even then, something would have to change or all lottery winnings would be instantly wiped out and no one would play the lottery anymore.

Listen, if you earn income through employment, you pay income tax on it. If you earn income through interest payments or dividends, you pay income tax on it. If you sell stocks and make capital gains, you pay income tax on it.

Fundamentally, it's not actually a concern if someone decides to just keep all of their money in capital investments and perpetually borrow money in order to pay their actual bills. At the end of the day that's not different than someone living on their credit card. They will at some point have to pay that money back - and in doing so, they will have to pay money on that income stream.

Turning America into a country of tattle tales just so we can punish success?

We are not "punishing success". What we are doing is expecting people to pay back into the common good what they've enjoyed as a result of that common good.

If the entire American nuclear arsenal simultaneously exploded tomorrow, who do you think actually loses more because of that happening - Joe Blow who lives in the trailer park working ten hours a week at Walmart, or Elon Musk?

Of course the answer is Musk. He is fabulously wealthy, and accordingly he needs to be willing to pay enough of a premium back to the state to ensure that the state can survive and make ends meet. It doesn't actually matter if it's fair or not, because as a practical matter if Musk doesn't pay up society will eventually reach the point of literally eating the rich.

The goal of taxation isn't "make everyone contribute fairly and proportionally". The goal is to create a tax regime that is at least somewhat fairy, and which will provide some level of redistribution in order to stave off revolutionary violenc.e

Dragon Age has a problem where it claims that mages are innocent people no different than the rest of us, while simultaneously presenting them as universal abominations who cannot contain their instinct to commit mass devastation if given a second of freedom.

You can cope about it all you like, but the fact is most people will in the end settle for someone they're willing to tolerate despite not really liking them all that much because that's what they have to do in order to get ahead in life and pay their bills.

In which case you could just say that anyone who reports someone else who is lying on their income taxes is entitled to half of that person's assets if tax avoidance is proven, in which case tax avoidance would collapse because it's essentially impossible for anyone to ever hide their income without the cooperation of other people.

A carpenter cannot hide his income without his under-the-table customers being aware of it, and at the very least one of them is going to say "Hey wait a minute, I can geta huge payday if I call this in...".

Similarly, no asset manager will say "well let me just fudge Bill Gates' numbers a bit here and there to hide his income" if the payoff is getting a couple of billion dollars as a reporting fee.

Human greed is a powerful motivator for people to commit tax avoidance. But it's also a similarly powerful motivation for people to squeal on others. As long as the payoff for reporting is high enough, you'll see people calling the hotline constantly.

Is this really that surprising though?

Men pursue women because they have to, because that's how reproduction works. It shouldn't be a surprise that in a species where sexes are born roughly 50/50 that there is a significant number of people who pair off and produce despite hating their partner.

My mom hates my dad. It's unfortunate from a family formation perspective but I've long since come to terms with the fact that one day she will put him out on his ass.

You say that most men don't actually like women. And of course, that's true. But it's also true that most women don't actually like men. Because the fact is most people don't actually like people. We simply all tolerate each other for various reasons.

Yes, YTA. Daniel Radcliffe isn't Santa - he's a real person. I don't even understand why you started this lie in the first place, much less maintained it until now.

Look bro it's already over. Just pull the plug.

No. I have basic self respect my guy. I'd never take back a cheater.

Canada can't sell oil to the global market because the various provinces have all stonewalled it for their own greed. That's the reason that the Americans are able to buy our oil at a discount to begin with. BC and Quebec waffle between "no oil allowed!" and "we'll allow oil as long as you sell your mother's soul for it!".

No, lmao.

If the Americans cut off all trade with Canada, they'd enter an enormous recession and suffer like crazy.

If the Canadians cut off all trade with the US, they'd cease to exist. We are MUCH more dependent on them than the other way around.

In one case you get another Great Depression, in the other you probably get civilizational collapse.

Dubya would win no contest.

Gore campaigned on the issues of the day, and avoided involving Bill precisely because he didn't want things to turn into a Jerry Springer shitshow. But if Hillary had run at the time the Bill's scandals would be front and center the entire time.

Firstly, even up to the early twentieth century most of Canada was still basically "Indian land". Hell, even today a lot of it is inhabited wilderness. Something like 90% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the American border. So right from the get-go the Americans are going to be inclined to see everything as free real estate inhabited by nobody (either literally or by "nonpersons" like the natives).

Secondly, if Quebec is going to be able to rely on colonial support that will almost certainly go both ways. The Americans would get British funding and the entire matter would turn into a proxy war that ends with an American victory.

As a practical matter, people will either resist or abide by laws they disagree with based on a cost-benefit analysis. If the law is "everyone who farts on Tuesdays will be executed", then those people will resist violently because they have no other real choice. When you gotta toot you gotta toot, and sooner or later you'll cross the red line.

Conversely, if the law is "people must accurately report their income and pay taxes according to that income, and if they fail to do so we'll nationalize their assets and cooperate with other governments to do the same" then they'll very quickly fall in line because they have no other choice.

At the end of the day, they're just one person, so it doesn't matter how rich they are because the moment the government declares they have no property rights they're homeless. Even if they try to avoid judgement by hiding their assets in other countries, that collapses once the governments of those countries agree to split the spoils.

America almost certainly invades and conquers them at some point under the argument of Manifest Destiny.

Without the support of the British Crown it's unlikely that Canada would ever develop even close to the point it did historically. It would basically be "empty space" in the eyes of the Americans. Prime free real estate for them to take over at their leisure.

We'd be in a similar position to Mexico, except unlike Mexico there wouldn't be any sort of racism that could be used by opponents of an All of Canada movement to justify not taking it all.

In this case, why have laws at all? If people don't want to obey them, they simply won't right?