Mega Thread The Random Thoughts Thread Part 1

[Jim Dixon]

He's a pretty speculative mod for mine.

Welcome back Feel. The other name was okay but them Feel avatars were missed.

 

[Grave Danger]

Both sides of the media and politics are guilty of exploitation in this case.

Difference is the lefties can't see they have done anything wrong.

That's cos they're progressive.

 

[I Dont Care]

I think the lesson we can all take out of this is that bullying really works [emoji106]

Thank you Portia. His other name was Terrorble

 

[Janus]

The cynic in me thinks he was planted in the Q&A audience. O'Dwyer & the other goose clearly thought this but that shouldn't detract from his argument or lessen the harshness of their responses.

Always felt there'd be some vendetta against this bloke but never thought it would be so thorough and vicious.

The media are playing their hand quite cavalier here, especially as many have become more savvy in discerning how manipulative they can be. Already has backfired with the tax issue yesterday, really thought that'd be the end of it.

******* grubs.

What argument does this guy actually have?

The rich people he's complaining about are saving a whopping $225 per year due to the tax threshold from 32.5% to 37% moving up 5k from 80k to 85k. But they are still paying tax. That $4.30 per week is really gonna make a huge difference. All that is doing is compensating for rising inflation - it's not a tax break at all. However, if you moved the tax free threshold up 5k from 18,201 to 23,201 - he's now paying $2111 a year in tax, or $40.50 a week - a saving of $962 per year. And that's not just for him - that's for everyone that pays tax.

This means if you earn less than $18,200 in a financial year, you do not need to pay income tax. If you earn more than $18,200 in a financial year, you will only pay income tax on your earnings over $18,200.

For every dollar he doesn't want to pay, someone else has to. The guy didn't get a higher education? Neither did I but I understand how the system works. Lefties always want someone else to pay for their shit.

 

[Leaveit2charlie]

I think the lesson we can all take out of this is that bullying really works [emoji106]

Absolutely. The old media is actually more powerful now because of it. Along more dangerous and untrustworthy.

 

[bomberclifford]

Haaaaaallooooooooowed Beeeeeee Thy Naaaaaaaaame !!!


Adrian Smith is the man.

Was a great gig.

 

[bomberclifford]

What I want to know is, who the hell pays money to a gofundme campaign to buy a toaster for some guy they saw on telly.

Middle-class guilt is a strange affliction.

 

[Papa G]

Yep you gotta love the Labor ad on TV saying that the couple making $250k between them get a $1,700 tax break whilst the poor couple with 2 kids on $79k get nothing. Brilliant. If we assume the couples earn equally and are employees with no significant deductions, in 2015/16 the couple on $250k will pay around $73,000 in tax. The couple with kids will pay just over $9,000 in tax. The couple with kids will also get family tax benefits reducing their actual tax liability further. The truth of the matter is that families with incomes of less than $80k pay very little tax in this country as it is.

 

[manureid]

But toasters guys!

 

[bomberclifford]

Piston_Broke and others - In the desert outside Las Vegas, Hyperloop One has demonstrated a futuristic transporter that might one day carry people or cargo at speeds of more than 1000 kilometres an hour. The three metre prototype hovered over magnetically charged rails enclosed in tubes. A three metre sled hit speeds of about 186 kilometres an hour before crashing into a pile of sand. It was meant to end this way as the early version does not have brakes.

Brogan BamBrogan, Hyperloop One's co-founder and chief technology officer, was happy with the demonstration. "Well that's what it was supposed to do. So we always like it when engineering tests go that way." Any number of things could have gone wrong. That's engineering on the edge of a new frontier. Mr BamBrogan is a former engineer with Elon Musk's SpaceX company, the 25th employee hired. He's thrilled by his latest challenge. "Technology development testing can be a tricky beast, so you never know on a given day if things are going to work exactly like you want, so I'm happy for the team and certainly I'm happy." Read more at http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2016/s4460817.htm

What a great name - for a great engineer - working on a great idea. This is the story behind his name
http://www.techinsider.io/how-hyperloop-founder-brogan-bambrogan-got-the-greatest-name-ever-2016-5
BamBrogan formerly went by "Kevin Brogan." He formerly worked at SpaceX where he was fondly called "K-Bro." But in 2013 he married a woman named Bambi Liu. As part of the nuptials, according to Forbes, the couple decided to merge names rather than hyphenate. Hers became "Bambi BamBrogan" and his, simply "Brogan BamBrogan." Forbes wrote about the name change in a long story about BamBrogan and Hyperloop One here:
"...it’s easy to poke fun of Brogan BamBrogan. The singular name came when the former Kevin Brogan decided last year to merge more than just lives with his new wife, Bambi Liu, now Bambi BamBrogan. He’s got a Sgt. Pepper’s-era handlebar mustache and wears deep v-neck T-shirts and a skeleton key around his neck. But get behind the pretension and you find a world-class engineer, who did all of the design work on the second-stage engine of the Falcon 1 and was the lead architect for the heat shield of the Dragon capsule."
http://www.techinsider.io/how-hyperloop-founder-brogan-bambrogan-got-the-greatest-name-ever-2016-5

This is what happened today.



This is how its supposed to look in the future

Packing passengers into a super-sized bullet and shooting them at sonic speeds towards a major city centre.

What could possibly go wrong!

 

[bomberclifford]

He was always going to be a shady grub I mean look at him

He's from Geelong. Nuff said.

 

[Doctor Feel]

What argument does this guy actually have?

The rich people he's complaining about are saving a whopping $225 per year due to the tax threshold from 32.5% to 37% moving up 5k from 80k to 85k. But they are still paying tax. That $4.30 per week is really gonna make a huge difference. All that is doing is compensating for rising inflation - it's not a tax break at all. However, if you moved the tax free threshold up 5k from 18,201 to 23,201 - he's now paying $2111 a year in tax, or $40.50 a week - a saving of $962 per year. And that's not just for him - that's for everyone that pays tax.



For every dollar he doesn't want to pay, someone else has to. The guy didn't get a higher education? Neither did I but I understand how the system works. Lefties always want someone else to pay for their shit.

The issue is the proportionate value of the dollar. Someone who earns 18k is going to value a dollar more than someone who earns 80k, that said - a study was done recently which suggests that those earning more can just as easily live as close to the "living pay cheque by pay cheque" line as those earning less. This is due to self inflicted debt however (i.e big mortgages and therefore higher rates, new cars etc.)

In a sense, both the person earning 18k (option a) and the person earning 80k (option b) have self inflicted issues. One may be through lack of education, taking on a job, laziness while the other is being stupid with their finances. Now you would rather be in option B. However it is worth noting that a sizable chunk of option A are through choice just as much as option B.

Changing the tax brackets is shuffling the deck chairs as you have said, as someone ultimately needs to pay for any tax breaks. There are reasons for both sides and the whole trendy "trickle down" economics thing theoretically rings true with the tax breaks for the rich, they anticipate that 255 a year will be spent going back into the economy in one way or another through investment, which we know in reality it will just go on piss or smokes - same as if we gave 255 dollars to the person in option A.

Difference is, option A needs a chance to make something of that 255 dollars while Option B really already has or has had a chance with their wealth and has spent it on cars and whatnot.

Low income earners/people on welfare value 1 dollar more than someone on 80k, IN THEORY. What the actual dollar ends up going towards is the issue here. If the rich are to fund more tax to go to the poor, they have the right to know that it will go towards the betterment of that person and their family rather than smokes, the TAB or for them to sit on their ass. Welfare needs to be quite strict for this reason. Welfare is incredibly complex and every individual is a different case, especially asylum seekers. I'm not fond of them, but I accept them as a fact of life and a burden we have to bear as a rich nation - we can't totally say no to them for more complex reasons and by binding laws through the UN etc., but they do need strict regulation which is undoubted given the examples in Europe.

TL;DR: Shuffling the deckchairs.

lol how cool would it be if the rich could sponsor a particular welfare recipient and get letters on how they are going in regards to education, finding a job and so on. I'd do that. Some of these people genuinely need mentors, they can't break the chain of the fourth generation career welfare recipient if they have never seen someone succeed before. They don't know what success looks like.

I'll mentor him/her to get a government job and post on bigfooty about welfare recipients.

 

[JimmyBeerCans]

I preferred Terror

 

[Portia]

What I want to know is, who the hell pays money to a gofundme campaign to buy a toaster for some guy they saw on telly.

Middle-class guilt is a strange affliction.

There were probably even a few Liberal voters among them, which ties in a bit to Feel's post above.

Being able to donate to a specifically less needy person feels good, you can kind of feel like you're getting a return, and you can tell your friends, and be part of the `aren't we lovely' crew. And if you can donate conditionally then thats an even more rewarding feeling of exerting your power, but in a socially positive way. Left & right wing both agree.

By contrast, when taxation funds welfare - where's the satisfaction to the rich in having dollars go somewhere you don't know? How will that affirm to the world and yourself that you really are a marvellous person? And they spend that money on bad things because they are poor and stupid! And they aren't even properly grateful!

Example; Donald Trump has a cavalcade of people in lower economic classes who praise him. He's a generous tipper, blah blah blah - but all of that generosity is predicated on the requirement that people from lower economic classes please the Donald. If you are a properly subservient pleb, then you will be rewarded. If you are not, you deserve no largesse; you aren't owned by the system enough. And if you aren't owned by the system then you are not only disrespecting the wealthy, you are a little bit dangerous. Revolutions have happened before, you know, you can't trust those cigarette smoking povos.

Private charity to disprivileged groups isn't really as good as we make out, its a stopgap, and a sign that society is very much continuing its disprivilege.

Funding mental health, public housing, education, microfinance for small business ventures, and basic meal entitlements are probably more important than paying banks to block spending on alcohol, for example.

 

[I Dont Care]

Packing passengers into a super-sized bullet and shooting them at sonic speeds towards a major city centre.

What could possibligh go wrong!

Edited for you

 

[I Dont Care]

But toasters guys!

No toaster for me

 

[JimmyBeerCans]

Do they still have the work the dole scam scheme

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

Packing passengers into a super-sized bullet and shooting them at sonic speeds towards a major city centre.

What could possibly go wrong!

Probably the same sort of things that happens in an aluminum tube that travels at 800km/hr but not in a vacumn.

 

[Doctor Feel]

Do they still have the work the dole scam scheme

Yes, some bloke recently got rekt and the insurance companies are refusing to pay **** all because he wasn't technically covered by any policies.

 

[bomberclifford]

There were probably even a few Liberal voters among them, which ties in a bit to Feel's post above.

Being able to donate to a specifically less needy person feels good, you can kind of feel like you're getting a return, and you can tell your friends, and be part of the `aren't we lovely' crew. And if you can donate conditionally then thats an even more rewarding feeling of exerting your power, but in a socially positive way. Left & right wing both agree.

By contrast, when taxation funds welfare - where's the satisfaction to the rich in having dollars go somewhere you don't know? How will that affirm to the world and yourself that you really are a marvellous person? And they spend that money on bad things because they are poor and stupid! And they aren't even properly grateful!

Agree with all of this. Particularly the bolded.

I would laugh if he gets the $60k donated and blows it all on an ice-fuelled gambling binge.

Funding mental health, public housing, education, microfinance for small business ventures, and basic meal entitlements are probably more important than paying banks to block spending on alcohol, for example.

Yep.

There's been some interesting articles recently about the concept of a basic minimum wage, provided to everyone, regardless of employment status. Studies show that when put into the hands of the people, money is actually utilised more productively when spent by Big Daddy Govt. Sure there'll be the blow-it-all-on-smack-crack-and-t'bacc crowd but the vast majority will spend wisely.

No votes down that path though.

 

[SgtSchulz]

I side with the struggling PTSD battler over the monopoly print media.

 

[Jim Dixon]

There were probably even a few Liberal voters among them, which ties in a bit to Feel's post above.

Being able to donate to a specifically less needy person feels good, you can kind of feel like you're getting a return, and you can tell your friends, and be part of the `aren't we lovely' crew. And if you can donate conditionally then thats an even more rewarding feeling of exerting your power, but in a socially positive way. Left & right wing both agree.

By contrast, when taxation funds welfare - where's the satisfaction to the rich in having dollars go somewhere you don't know? How will that affirm to the world and yourself that you really are a marvellous person? And they spend that money on bad things because they are poor and stupid! And they aren't even properly grateful!

Example; Donald Trump has a cavalcade of people in lower economic classes who praise him. He's a generous tipper, blah blah blah - but all of that generosity is predicated on the requirement that people from lower economic classes please the Donald. If you are a properly subservient pleb, then you will be rewarded. If you are not, you deserve no largesse; you aren't owned by the system enough. And if you aren't owned by the system then you are not only disrespecting the wealthy, you are a little bit dangerous. Revolutions have happened before, you know, you can't trust those cigarette smoking povos.

Private charity to disprivileged groups isn't really as good as we make out, its a stopgap, and a sign that society is very much continuing its disprivilege.

Funding mental health, public housing, education, microfinance for small business ventures, and basic meal entitlements are probably more important than paying banks to block spending on alcohol, for example.

Also the Murdoch media love to pump up stories like this and make the main issue about personal taxation. They do this because it's an emotional thing, and people get worked up about it.

That way people don't have a careful look at the way in which corporations have rigged the tax codes around the world so they pay f-all in taxes, perfectly legally.

Taxes have consequences. Who pays, and who doesn't and where the money goes.

Follow the money!

 

[Doctor Feel]

There were probably even a few Liberal voters among them, which ties in a bit to Feel's post above.

Being able to donate to a specifically less needy person feels good, you can kind of feel like you're getting a return, and you can tell your friends, and be part of the `aren't we lovely' crew. And if you can donate conditionally then thats an even more rewarding feeling of exerting your power, but in a socially positive way. Left & right wing both agree.

By contrast, when taxation funds welfare - where's the satisfaction to the rich in having dollars go somewhere you don't know? How will that affirm to the world and yourself that you really are a marvellous person? And they spend that money on bad things because they are poor and stupid! And they aren't even properly grateful!

Example; Donald Trump has a cavalcade of people in lower economic classes who praise him. He's a generous tipper, blah blah blah - but all of that generosity is predicated on the requirement that people from lower economic classes please the Donald. If you are a properly subservient pleb, then you will be rewarded. If you are not, you deserve no largesse; you aren't owned by the system enough. And if you aren't owned by the system then you are not only disrespecting the wealthy, you are a little bit dangerous. Revolutions have happened before, you know, you can't trust those cigarette smoking povos.

Private charity to disprivileged groups isn't really as good as we make out, its a stopgap, and a sign that society is very much continuing its disprivilege.

Funding mental health, public housing, education, microfinance for small business ventures, and basic meal entitlements are probably more important than paying banks to block spending on alcohol, for example.

I like that you have made me feel bad for donating to world vision because I have the money to do so. I'm not sure those with money can ever win from that viewpoint.

Donate Money
Feel bad because you have the money to donate and are enforcing class divides

Be Taxed
Feel bad because you aren't taxed enough and are enforcing class divides

Get taxed more
Feel bad because you still aren't taxed enough and the government doesn't give the money to the poor, therefore enforcing class divides

Invest your money into business
Feel bad because you have the money to invest and corporate entities serve to make the rich even richer, you should be handing that money straight to the government to administer.

Invest in property
Feel bad because you are rich and can afford property, driving the prices up for those who can't afford it.

Have an education
Feel bad because even though education is available to all not everyone wants to do it and those who don't go to Uni shouldn't be punished by the difficult job market

Inherit money
Feel bad because your forefathers made money at the expense of others and you didn't work for the money.

Pay your HECS back despite skyrocketing levels of people not paying their education bills back
Feel bad because everyone should have a choice what education they should have, even though their degree will lead to no job and no return to the economy or debt repayment through HECS.

Have no money
Feel good because the wealthy should feel guilty for being wealthy despite distributing a portion of their wealth to you for free through their tax, donations or investment into the economy.

Now obviously the uber wealthy (as in multimillionaires) could do more, but targeting those on 80-140k is soft. The system is inherently geared towards not touching the uber wealthy, and that is where the issues come from. Governments feel that in order to promote business they have to leave the uber wealthy to do as they please despite them having inconceivable amounts of disposable income. Long story short, target billionaires and multimillionaires for higher taxes, not the average person which in all seriousness is anyone earning 18k-180k.

 

[I Dont Care]

I like donating to the Salvos

 

[LukeSA]

All you liberals out there can sleep easier tonight knowing that the murdoch media has successfully campaigned for that Q&A guy to not get any money from that crowd funding campaign.