quote:Some people falsely assume that money is ‘backed’ only by something that already exists – something that exists before new money is issued. They imagine a fixed quantum of gold, for example, or some other commodity or precious metal. When these people hear pundits or politicians attacking the Fed for ‘printing money,’ they accordingly assume it’s a bad thing – something that automatically causes … inflation.
But this is a mistake – a mistake with huge consequences. And it’s not hard to see why.
Let’s start with inflation. The thing to remember about inflation is that it’s a relation. Say that again: Inflation is a relation. To simplify slightly, it’s a relation between the quantity of money on the one hand and the number of available goods and services on the other hand. Hence the colloquial definition of inflation as ‘too much money chasing too few goods.’
I know that some of you will criticize me for not putting my answer in my own words but at this point, I don't understand some of the concepts enough to know the words.
Once Phat has made the corrections himself, I will remove this from mine. Please reply to Phat's own message, not to this one.
Edited by dwise1, : ABE: QS of portion of Phat's message with format corrections
This experience with recent chatbots has left me feeling that perhaps some significant aspect of what we deem progress is merely change combined with forgetting a lot of what the previous generation knew. Who thinks that virtual buttons are an advance over real buttons? Who thinks that TV as it transitions to streaming has gotten better? Has anyone here had a car accident or near accident because they were forced to look at the touchpad while driving because the buttons can't be felt? I have a universal remote with real buttons. I don't have to look at it for most functions. I tried one with virtual buttons a little over a decade ago, it was the high-end popular one but I forget the name now, and I programmed it up the kazoo, then abandoned it after only a week. I don't like having to look at my remote to hit a button.
I had an iPod, then when its battery died I upgraded to an iPod Nano. I loved that trackwheel and consider it one of the only things that Apple really got right. I had my daily playlist that I would set to shuffle and then put the Nano in my shirt pocket. If I decided to skip the song that came up, all I had to do was to reach into my pocket and skip it completely by touch. My friend at work drove a motorcycle and would do the same thing with his.
Then they discontinued the iPods and replaced them with the iTouch. Now you had to free up both your hands, hold the iTouch in one hand, look at it (a wonderful idea if you're riding your cycle), and use the other hand to press a virtual button. No more trackwheel!
I never got an iTouch, but rather kept my Nano and used it at work until I retired in 2018. For a few of those last years I never used iTunes, which is still on my Windows box, but rather charged my Nano on my work computer's USB. When I recharged my Nano a few months ago iTunes wanted to start deleting songs, so I quickly pulled the plug and recharged the Nano on my laptop (no iTunes there).
As I said, I loved that trackwheel and still think it was the best thing that Apple ever came up with. I mean, when I got cable I was extremely disappointed that I didn't have it on my remote so that I could fast-forward so much more efficiently ("What do you mean you can't do that?"). And they dumped it! Though I recently saw an ad for an Apple streaming device and I'm pretty sure I saw a trackwheel on its remote. Still sticking with my Roku.
Also, virtual keyboards on phones with AutoCorrupt just drive me crazy for anything more than a quick text. Nothing beats touch-typing on a computer keyboard.
My current church is probably Ed Taylors Calvary Chapel. dwise1 remembers Chuck Smith in California. (The Jesus Freaks and all that. Calvary Chapel became somewhat of a franchised name, but if I understand correctly, each individual Calvary Chapel has a character and (perhaps) a specific mission or calling of its own.
I seem to recall from long ago as new Calvary Chapels were springing up in other parts of Orange County that they were independent, but there was also some tenet of faith that they had to maintain, or maybe some kind of organizational requirement. I think the one in Mission Viejo was the first new one and that it was founded by Chuck Smith's son. All I heard about it was from a couple with young children who joined our UU church: they had gone there and were appalled by being commanded to beat their children, so they left and were glad to find our church. Also, conversation in the dancers' group of the 50-plus singles ministry of Rick Warren's Saddleback Church turned to talking about that same Calvary Chapel church and how extremely legalistic they were -- you know, like the NT mischaracterization of the Pharisees as being, obsessing over every little dot and tittle of every little law (even though the Golden Rule came from the Pharisees who taught that it replaced all the other laws). IOW, those fundamentalists were exactly like they accused the Pharisees as having been.
Chuck Smith's (he died a few years ago well before the pandemic) Calvary Chapel was the first one, to my knowledge. It's called "Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa" even though for as long as I've known of it (starting around 1969) it has always been in Santa Ana -- actually, on the Santa Ana side of Sunflower Avenue, which forms the border between Costa Mesa and Santa Ana. My older sister and her husband are members and he verified my suspicion that it had gone through its own "church in a box" phase (as our UU church had done during which we'd get a public use permit to use school auditoriums) and that they would meet at a member's house in Costa Mesa.
But while each Calvary Chapel can have its own "personality", I've noticed that that personality can evolve over time. I have noticed that happening with the Costa Mesa church.
I use the analogy of the evolution of a virus as presented by Michael Crichton MD in his book, The Andromeda Strain. Basically, a virus will evolve into forms with strategies that enable it to reproduce more (basic natural selection in action). In the case of the extraterrestrial virus in the book, it started out very aggressive and deadly, but it's not a very good strategy for a virus to kill the host before it has a chance to spread, so variants that are not so deadly will spread more readily and take over. Thus there's a tendency for a virus to become less deadly over time. In the opposite direction there's the example of syphilis which was fairly benign in the native American population where lack of much clothing allowed for it to spread readily through skin contact. But it became virulent when Europeans brought it back with them and it could not spread as readily through the layers of clothing Europeans wore, so becoming more virulent was its new strategy.
Church personality evolves in a similar way. At first, it was going through explosive growth which was driven by aggressive street proselytizing (not unlike your plan to accost and covert school children in back alleys, remember that discussion?). During that time, you couldn't turn around without somebody trying to convert you. In fact, that trait of that church still impacts it as non-members, remembering having suffered through that time, still want nothing to do with fundies and regard them with contempt. At first the term "Jesus Freak" was meant as an insult, but like blacks have done with the "n-word", the fundies chose to embrace the name. Though it probably didn't hurt that many of them were burned-out hippies and "freak" is another name for "hippy" and some of their slogans were borrowed from their former drug culture (eg, "Hooked on Jesus" was a popular bumper sticker at the time.
It was during that time that I read their proselytizing training materials (much use of cartoons depicting a "conversation" with the intended victim in which the "saved one" would hit his mark with difficult questions intended to be unanswerable by the mark and hence would either throw him off balance and more open to conversion or else to discredit him and his position in the eyes of bystanders. Half a century later, we still see that tactic being used by creationists like Kleinman and Dredge (candle2 and eWolf have tried it, but they're even weaker at it than Dredge is).
In that initial "Jesus Freak" phase, they were very virulent using hardcore proselytizing tactics against everybody they could and it did work in growing their numbers, so it was successful and persisted ... for a time. A key teaching, more of an obsession for many of them, was The Rapture and The End Times. And finding "666" everywhere they could -- in barcodes (eg, claiming that the Mark of the Beast would be a barcode tattooed on your forehead in order to buy anything), I'm pretty sure I saw a gov't building (IRS or Social Security I seem to recall) in Santa Ana at the time with a 666 street address, but the one that they have all missed in the present day is Jared Kushner's NYC address of 666 Fifth Avenue.
True story: at one job our company president was third-generation fundamentalist and his son was fourth-generation. Since their connection predated and bypassed the Jesus Freaks, they did not engage in proselytizing and were actually very nice people to know and to work with. The son graduated from high school and went to attend Northwestern in Chicago, but he'd fly back home between semesters and would work with us (automated greenhouse control systems). After his first semester he said school was going OK, but he felt lonely since he didn't know anyone. Knowing that many colleges have campus Christian clubs, I suggested he try one at least for fellowship. He said he had tried that and would never make that mistake again. All those clubs would do would be to devise plans for converting the other students. That was around 1990 and they were still at it.
So what changed here? The story goes that early Christians took Jesus' promise to return within their lifetimes very seriously to the point where they wouldn't even plant trees because they would never mature to bear fruit before the Second Coming. But finally they had to admit that it wasn't going to happen so they returned to planting trees and other activities for building the future.
The same happened at Calvary Chapel. These burned-out hippie Jesus Freaks started getting a life and having to start building a future: they fell in love and got married, got a job or even a profession, bought a house, had children, then grandchildren. Their numbers were already up and growth in church membership came from having children (which would then drive a later phase). As a result they engaged much less in overt proselytizing and more in simply "witnessing". Not only did they have less need to drive up membership, but they also had other priorities (the ones that come with getting a life) as well as less free time to engage in proselytizing.
Oh, that drive to proselytize is still there, but it seems to be funneled into anti-abortion and creationism. And they always did and still do push for what's now called Christian Nationalism (formerly Christian Reconstructionism, Dominion Theology).
One thing that may have weaned them off the End Times fanaticism was when it came to something of a head in the 80's with the arrival of a conspiracy theorist who claimed to have formerly been a practicing Satanist with stories of newborn babies being sacrificed, etc. He stirred up a lot of trouble at Calvary and Melodyland (a theater-in-the-round across from Disneyland when then became a church). I've asked them casually about it and nobody wants to talk about it; I'll allow that the stories I heard are probably exaggerations.
Well, now they seem to be entering a new phase of more aggressive proselytizing because of their children -- the chickens are not coming home to roost, but rather are fleeing the coop. Even churches' own youth ministries admit that they have a very serious problem as about 75% (figures range from 65% to 80%) of their children raised in the faith are fleeing, running as fast as they can away from religion. Youth ministers are trying to figure out what's causing it and they blame everything else that they can but never consider that it might be caused by those children's experiences growing up in that religion. Of course, I immediately want to blame the pack of lies which is creationism and will point to instances of deconversion after discovering the truth about science and evolution (and the age of the earth, etc). But if you read the testimonials at deconversion sites such as
ExChristian.Net: Testimonials
you find that in many cases it they deconverted because of psychological damage that the religion had done them.
But whatever the causes, there's still the fact that churches are losing the next generation, so their membership is dropping. When you lose the kids, then you have to go out and recruit new members. Which from what I hear it's what's happening at Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa. My sister and brother-in-law are about 80 years old and they are feeling disaffected at Calvary. Besides losing their old friends and Chuck Smith, the mood/personality of the place has been changing. MAGAt influence, COVID denial, Christian Nationalism, Qanon conspiracy theorizing, push to return to hardcore proselytizing, etc. I think my sister still meets with her Bible study group, but they no longer feel very much at home there now. They are getting ready to move to Georgia and will probably look into attending a church there.
So while an individual church can have its own "personality", that personality can and does change over time.
Members of my high school friend's family converted to fundamentalism through Chuck Smith's Calvary Chapel. He and I, both still atheists, became "fellow travelers" where we learned what they were teaching and preaching.
I had left Christianity half a decade before because I started reading the Bible to see what I was supposed to believe and I found that without a doubt I could not believe what I was reading, so I left. My mistake was assuming that I had to take what I was reading literally, which I don't even know whether my church required that. So it's ironic that now I was seeing a church that explicitly required my stupid assumption, biblical literalism, which means that I really couldn't believe what they were selling. Then studying creationism a decade later succeeded in permanently immunizing me from such religious nonsense.
My friend and I would read their materials and discuss them. A popular genre were "novels" about the End Times, all of them badly written. Many months ago (years probably) I watch a YouTube video discussing why Christian movies are bad; I think that it is this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50_3J6Go5Ng&t=421s . Either this or another video compares Christian films and normal films for their cinematography and editing showing where Christian films fall flat and why they do. This video gets into a reason for that, which is that, whereas normal films are made by filmmakers whose goal is to make cinematographic art, Christian films are made by preachers whose goal is to preach a sermon. And I think that the same was true of those Christian novels and which was why they were so poorly written.
We also read every Chick Pubs tract we could lay our hands on (and they were laying around everywhere). Always good for a laugh. A few decades later in a public restroom someone what left Chick tracts in every stall, which I found to be a poor idea. The pages are too small for effective use as toilet paper in case the regular stuff ran out -- Sears & Roebuck catalogs they ain't!
His temper with feedback is extremely short. He seems to get very angry very quickly with people who challenge him on anything. I usually don't find him to be wrong on his actual facts, but I do find him to be pretty wrong on his tactics and the way he deals with people who do not agree with him.
I've watched several of his videos and that is not what I have seen. Rather, he gets angry with people who refuse to discuss but instead try to derail any hope of a discussion.
We've seen that too often. In the recent past every time a Trump apologist would be interviewed (eg, Kelly Ann Conway on Bill Maher, Ben Shapiro at any time), her "reply" to a simple question would be a fire-hose torrent of rapid-fire nonsense that had nothing whatsoever to do with either the question or with the topic being discussed. And while that is going on, the host is left with trying to stop the torrent and get an actual answer, but all in vain. Once that fire hose is opened, nothing can stop it and all hopes of any kind of discussion is washed away.
I see so many of callers to Matt Dillahunty on Atheist Experience pulling that same kind of crap as they call in with their bald assertion followed by a steady stream of preaching during which they completely ignore Matt's attempts to ask the necessary simple questions.
Unlike Bill Maher et alia, Matt is able to put the caller on mute as he tries to get through to the guy. And before he has to do that, Matt repeatedly warns the caller to please stop voluntarily before he has to force it by putting him on mute. In my experience, Matt always gives fair warning. And he always puts them on mute in order to get a word/question in in edgewise, never just because they disagree with him.
And when Matt has to hang up on a caller, I've always only seen it to be because of the caller's disruptive behavior and never only because the caller disagreed with him.
You've heard of "And don't let the bastards grind you down!" (adopted by US Army General "Vinegar" Joe Stilwell as his motto during WWII). Matt has been at this for years, during which time "the bastards" have ground down his patience, much as creationists have ground down mine over the past four decades. As a result, he knows that he has to keep them on a tighter leash, especially if he doesn't want everybody's time (and the show's air time) to be wasted. And he will be less forgiving with them. Though he does always explain why he hanged up and what was wrong with the caller's position and/or arguments.
It could well be that Matt might be attracting those miscreants with his "Hang-up" reputation. In order to feed their hunger for fake stories of persecution, they call his show and misbehave deliberately in order to get him to hang up on them so that they can then go back to their churches to use this "treatment" as further evidence of their being "persecuted".
Consider this article reposted from Quora:
quote:Why do people get angry when I try to share the word of God with them? I only do it because I care about them deeply and don't want them to end up in hell. I feel like some people avoid me because of this. Is there any way to get through to them?
by Doug Robertson, studied at University of Maine Updated Dec 11 2018
The entire process is not what you think it is.
It is specifically designed to be uncomfortable for the other person because it isn't about converting them to your religion. It is about manipulating you so you can't leave yours.
If this tactic was about converting people it would be considered a horrible failure. It recruits almost no one who isn't already willing to join. Bake sales are more effective recruiting tools.
On the other hand, it is extremely effective at creating a deep tribal feeling among its own members.
The rejection they receive is actually more important than the few people they convert. It causes them to feel a level of discomfort around the people they attempt to talk to. These become the "others". These uncomfortable feelings go away when they come back to their congregation, the "Tribe".
If you take a good look at the process it becomes fairly clear. In most cases, the religious person starts out from their own group, who is encouraging and supportive. They are then sent out into the harsh world where people repeatedly reject them. Mainly because they are trained to be so annoying.
These brave witnesses then return from the cruel world to their congregation where they are treated like returning heroes. They are now safe. They bond as they share their experiences of reaching out to the godless people to bring them the truth. They share the otherness they experience.
Once again they will learn that the only place they are accepted is with the people who think as they do. It isn't safe to leave the group. The world is your enemy, but we love you.
This is a pain reward cycle that is a common brainwashing technique. The participants become more and more reliant on the "Tribe" because they know that "others" reject them.
Mix in some ritualized chanting, possibly a bit of monotonous repetition of instructions, add a dash of fear of judgment by an unseen, but all-powerful entity who loves you if you do as you are told and you get a pretty powerful mix.
Sorry, I have absolutely no wish to participate in someone's brainwashing ritual.
Another version of that refers directly to creationists and how talking with them is like playing chess with a pigeon:
quote:"Debating creationists on the topic of evolution is rather like trying to play chess with a pigeon; it knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and flies back to its flock to claim victory."
Forrest Valkai is still young and hasn't been ground down to the point of no longer being able to enjoy a skirmish. It's the difference between the FNG and the old veteran (eg, SFC Hulka, Stripes (1981): "I'm getting too old for this shit!").
Besides Matt's reputation serving as a lightning rod attracting the worst kinds of caller, the editorial choice of which shows to release to video might filter out most of the calls wasted on bad callers while releasing ones that enhance Matt's reputation. Just mentioning a possible source of bias.
Edited by dwise1, : Quora quote: set title to boldface as in original
Let me recommend to you a documentary that I recommended to Faith on 26 Feb 2020 in Message 5067: The Brainwashing of my Dad -- it's even on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FS52QdHNTh8 as well as streaming for free on Pluto, FreeVee, Plex, Filmzie, and FREE, as well as bring available through a subscription (Gravitas) or rental (eg, Prime).
It would be a good idea to watch The Brainwashing of my Dad (website at https://www.thebrainwashingofmydad.com/, also streaming on the Roku Channel, Pluto, Vudu, Amazon Prime). The revocation of the fairness doctrine gave rise to right-wing talk radio. The format of talk radio carried over into Fake News Network where the host raises his voice and becomes angry, thus inducing and feeding anger in his audience. No facts, just a lot of angry noise.
From Wikipedia:
quote:Synopsis
As Jen Senko tries to understand the transformation of her father from a nonpolitical Democrat to an angry Republican fanatic, she uncovers the forces behind the media that changed him completely: a plan by Roger Ailes under President Richard Nixon for a media takeover by the Republicans, the 1971 Powell Memo urging business leaders to influence institutions of public opinion (especially the media, universities, and courts), the 1987 dismantling of the Fairness Doctrine under President Ronald Reagan, and the signing of the 1996 Telecommunications Act under President Bill Clinton. The documentary aims to show how the media and the nation changed, which leads to questions about who owns the airwaves, what rights listeners and watchers have, and what responsibility the government has to keep the airwaves fair, accurate, and accountable.
Content
Senko's father, Frank, was originally a "nonpolitical Kennedy Democrat" who began changing into a far-right Republican in the 1980s, she said.[1] On her father's lengthy commute to his place of employment, he listened to conservative talk radio, which Senko believes started the change in her father's personality. In particular, he listened to Rush Limbaugh and watched Fox News. Towards the end of his life, Frank's views mostly changed back to being somewhere in the middle due to his wife exposing him to less biased media. He died in January 2016 at the age of 93.
Like many Americans, especially retired men, her father started listening exclusively to conservative media (talk radio, FOX News) and subscribing to a conservative email site, all of which fed him a constant stream of far-right content. I worked with people like that and would walk in on them having a heated self-affirming discussion about huge Democrat conspiracies that I had never heard of. They hear nothing besides that content which is designed to enrage and terrify the elderly (eg, Ailes has been quoted as requiring content that would "scare your grandfather" -- fear and anger shuts down the neocortex, thus disabling rational thought).
Another victim of that media was interviewed in the film, a truck driver trapped long hours on the road with nothing to listen to on the radio except right-wing talk radio. The interviewee described the effect on him, turning him into a FOX-bot, until one day he stumbled upon NPR, a rational and informed source to listen to. We should also remember that poll testing respondents' knowledge of current events found that conservative media viewers/listeners knew significantly less about current events than did those who didn't follow the news at all.
Watch it. It is after all on YouTube and hence, in your mind, must be true.
Define your acronym, please. What the hell is a CBDC?
A standard writing practice I learned either in college or in the military (the latter, I seem to recall) is that you define an acronym the first time you use it in a document ; eg:
Examples:Name first then acronym:
Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
Or reverse that order with acronym first followed by its definition:
CBCD (Constant Bearing, Closing Distance)
In addition, larger documents (including books) may include a glossary of acronyms.
The object is to clearly communicate information, not to baffle your audience with your bullshit. Hiding the definitions for your terms is the kind of crap that (at risk of being redundant) stupid lying deceiving creationists constantly pull in their boundless zeal to do Satan's work. Do not be that guy!
Part of the problem with acronyms is that they are extremely ambiguous: the same acronym can mean many different things depending on context. For example, NBC and ABC can be broadcasting networks (first radio networks, then TV), but they can also stand for types of warfare: Nuclear, Biological, Chemical, earlier Atomic, Biological, Chemical. Or scores of other meanings (see NBC; researching the meanings of ABC is left as an exercise for the reader).
BTW, you should have noticed that my own frequent practice is to define the acronyms I use the first time I use them.
For example, your use of CCP kept confusing me, since it looked like you were using Cyrillics, ССР (translit: "SSR"), for Soviet Socialist Republic.
And for CBDC (four different meanings given), are you sure that you didn't mean CBCD, which describes the sensor track of incoming ordnance or enemy craft on an attack run against your ship? That would certainly make more sense considering your sense of dread, since CBCD does have a definite effect on one's pucker factor.
quote:Usage of the unqualified term pound reflects the historical conflation of mass and weight. This accounts for the modern distinguishing terms pound-mass and pound-force.
I provided that link so that Phat can follow it and learn more.
So because of the conflation of mass and weight, they went ahead and defined an new kind of pound which measures mass instead of weight. But when one merely says "pound", what exactly is he talking about? By creating a distinction between pound-mass and pound-force, unless one is very careful with one's wording, statements about pounds can be very ambiguous, especially in the context of gravitational fields different from standard gravity (9.8 m/s2 or 32 ft/sec2), such as the moon's.
Ambiguity increases when talking about gold since that could introduce a different kind of pound, the troy pound, which Wikipedia says is a unit of mass.
I am so glad that in my physics class we only worked in the metric system. They did have us play with slugs for a while, but then thankfully we went back to metric.
Well, except for the fact that he supports the politicians who are voting to do away with Social Security and Medicare because they don't know the difference between socialism and social programs, and because they are just fucking assholes!
Or because it's just business.
As I recall the figures, 15% of wages goes to payroll taxes (FICA) in order to fund Social Security and Medicare. The employee pays half of that (7.5%) and the employer pays the other half. If it's a large company then payroll taxes can take a sizeable bite. It seems to me that that is the reason Republicans keep trying to kill Social Security and Medicare, because that's what their owners want.
An interesting corollary grift during the Trump Administration was when Trump declared a moratorium on paying payroll taxes, a deferment. For the rest of the year (about 4 to 6 months as I seem to recall) businesses could choose to defer those taxes (ie, it was voluntary for the companies). He tried to sell it to the public as benefiting them by "giving" them more take-home pay, but what he didn't tell them was that in the beginning of the next year they'd have to pay twice the normal payroll tax, thus reducing the amount of their take-home pay. The only one to benefit was the company who could report larger earnings or have extra money to work with (eg, invest). The companies who chose this would profit from the extra money so that having to pay it the next year wouldn't bite as much (if at all), but the employees would have spent that extra money instead of investing it and so would be made to suffer for Trump's "largess".
Kind of reminds me of G.H.W. Bush's "worker tax break" which was only reducing the amount withheld for federal income tax, but without reducing our income tax. We still had to pay the same income tax, but now we had less withheld with which to pay it. So the nasty surprise for many was that they not only wouldn't get a tax refund, but they actually owed money and suddenly needed to come up with the cash.
Going further back, there was Reagan's much touted "huge tax break" which in my case (a young engineer with a family just starting out, so definitely lower middle class) nearly doubled my federal income tax.
Needless to say, every time Republicans start promising to reduce our taxes, I become very afraid.
I've not been as ingenious. I opened a 401K when I finally worked where it was offered (about 25 years before retiring) and chose to contribute the maximum when I could -- if you never see it you never miss it. Then I just forgot about it and it grew quite nicely.
In the meantime, I had always paid away more on the balance of our mortgage. I taught myself using a spreadsheet (Multiplan on a TI-99) and one of my first projects was to map out all the payments of the 30-year mortgage on our first house. The point where we would get the principal down to half was around the 24-year mark -- sickening when you see it. Hence wanting to pay that off all the sooner. After the divorce, my pay-off schedule was reset, but I accomplished it in about 12 years (not being married anymore, my expenses were much less). And since I had paid off our credit card debt with a consolidation loan over a decade earlier and instituted a policy of paying off the balance every month, after I paid off my car I have been debt-free.
My Social Security check covers almost all my expenses and my military retirement (reserves, so about 1/5th of a pension from active duty) covers "balloon payments" (eg, property tax, car and home insurance). I am about to take my first Required Minimum Disbursement (RMD) from my 401k, but there's nothing I need to spend it on. And I don't have to worry about medical expenses due to my military retirement benefits.
But on the matter of tax planning, my tax situation is simple and basic. However, working out withholding when I was married was tricky. We both made about the same amount (she a bit more at the time of the divorce), but the W-4 calculations were based on a single wage earner, so they always withheld too little especially when her income increased to approach mine. One year, we owed more than is allowed, so something had to change.
My solution was the only ingenious thing I did, or at least the only actual financial planning that I did. I created a spreadsheet to estimate this year's taxes based on last year's return and to estimate how much we needed to withhold based on that estimate. Once I knew how much we would be short, I submitted a W-4 with that amount added as additional withholding. That worked out well and I continue to use a variant of it, now to also examine how my RMD will affect this year's taxes (basically, it increases my taxable income to nearly double the RMD, since it makes more of my Social Security taxable). BTW, my goal was to come as close as possible to just barely covering our taxes, since that big refund others look forward to is just our money that the government has had and been using interest-free.
It was because of that spreadsheet that I was able to avoid GHW Bush's nasty trick.
. . . would you be upset if your sister was raped?
Apparently it depends on who the rapist is.
Like with the million or so people Trump wanted to die during COVID to achieve that illusionary "herd immunity" (which would have required 3 million deaths), and should happily sacrifice their lives in order to improve Trump's polling. The only person who matters to Trump is Trump himself; the rest of the human population is only there for his personal benefit.
Well, not so fast, maybe it completely depends on who the rape victim is. You know, by his publicly repeated rants, I'd guess dark-skinned, non-christian immigrants?
You're moving the goalposts (forgive me for using a [voice=utter disgust]sports[/voice] reference).
First the "victim" in question was Phat's own sister, but then you changed it to some random female "who was just asking to be raped" (as a pro-rapist would put it, just as a pro-rapist would oppose referring to her as a "victim").
So since the violation of Phat's sister would have hit home for him, unlike the case of some "dark-skinned, non-christian immigrant", the nature of the "victim" does not enter into his calculus outside of it being more personal for him. Rather, the key question would remain as being the identity of the rapist. If it's Trump, then he'd probably be fine with it.
Rape is absolutely reprehensible. But when Trump does it (or any other of many reprehensible things) then that's perfectly fine to Trump's supporters and to anyone who would want to vote for him. That is the point. What donester was probing is the question: How far could Trump go before his supporter would say, "That's going too far!"? Specifically to dronester's point, they're fine with Trump being a serial sexual assaulter and an adjudicated rapist, but is there any point at which they would finally stand back and say: "Stop! Enough! You, sir, have gone too far!" Where does that line lie?
I have a favorite line in Er ist wieder da (2015, German: "He is back", English Title: "Look Who's Back"). The premise is that a healthy Hitler mysteriously reappears in 2015 Berlin (even he doesn't understand it) and becomes a popular TV figure which he uses to return to power. The film used the Borat technique of filming the actor in character interacting with the public. Based on a 2014 book and released in 2015, I watched it on Netflix in 2016 in the midst of that year's Presidential campaign and was shocked to see its overpoweringly strong parallels with Trump's MAGAts -- since it was filmed the year before, it was not about Trump, but rather about the disturbing rise of alt-right nationalist groups in Germany (it ends with actual footage of those groups' violent demonstrations):
Wikipedia:As Hitler's film finishes, he senses a political comeback. More popular than ever, he sees hope in nationalist Germans for his return to power. As he and Bellini ride in a car amidst images of nationalist demonstrations, Hitler says to himself: “I can work with this.”
I haven't been able to find it in streaming, but it is on YouTube (a good place to find rare movies, including 50's and 60's Heimatsfilme):
Build-up for that favorite line: during the Borat-like tour of Germany with a film producer capitalizing on this "street performer who weirdly never breaks character", Hitler shoots a dog (in self-defense, since the dog, a terrier, had bitten down on his hand and refused to let go). As Hitler is rising in TV popularity, someone releases that film resulting in the German public, renowned for their love of animals, turning against Hitler -- regardless of all the massive death and destruction that he had caused, shooting a dog was crossing that final line for Germans. But then he made a comeback and became even more popular, prompting his TV producer to exclaim my favorite line, "Who could possibly stay mad at Hitler?"
Back to Trump, in my notes (pending-evcforum.txt) I found the following that I had saved from the 2020 election:
An anguished question from a Trump supporter: ‘Why do liberals think Trump supporters are stupid?’
The serious answer: Here’s what we really think about Trump supporters - the rich, the poor, the malignant and the innocently well-meaning, the ones who think and the ones who don't...
That when you saw a man who had owned a fraudulent University, intent on scamming poor people, you thought "Fine."
That when you saw a man who had made it his business practice to stiff his creditors, you said, "Okay."
That when you heard him proudly brag about his own history of sexual abuse, you said, "No problem."
That when he made up stories about seeing Muslim-Americans in the thousands cheering the destruction of the World Trade Center, you said, "Not an issue."
That when you saw him brag that he could shoot a man on Fifth Avenue and you wouldn't care, you chirped, "He sure knows me."
That when you heard him illustrate his own character by telling that cute story about the elderly guest bleeding on the floor at his country club, the story about how he turned his back and how it was all an imposition on him, you said, "That's cool!"
That when you saw him mock the disabled, you thought it was the funniest thing you ever saw.
That when you heard him brag that he doesn't read books, you said, "Well, who has time?"
That when the Central Park Five were compensated as innocent men convicted of a crime they didn't commit, and he angrily said that they should still be in prison, you said, "That makes sense."
That when you heard him tell his supporters to beat up protesters and that he would hire attorneys, you thought, "Yes!"
That when you heard him tell one rally to confiscate a man's coat before throwing him out into the freezing cold, you said, "What a great guy!"
That you have watched the parade of neo-Nazis and white supremacists with whom he curries favor, while refusing to condemn outright Nazis, and you have said, "Thumbs up!"
That you hear him unable to talk to foreign dignitaries without insulting their countries and demanding that they praise his electoral win, you said, "That's the way I want my President to be."
That you have watched him remove expertise from all layers of government in favor of people who make money off of eliminating protections in the industries they're supposed to be regulating and you have said, "What a genius!"
That you have heard him continue to profit from his businesses, in part by leveraging his position as President, to the point of overcharging the Secret Service for space in the properties he owns, and you have said, "That's smart!"
That you have heard him say that it was difficult to help Puerto Rico because it was in the middle of water and you have said, "That makes sense."
That you have seen him start fights with every country from Canada to New Zealand while praising Russia and quote, "falling in love" with the dictator of North Korea, and you have said, "That's statesmanship!"
That Trump separated children from their families and put them in cages, managed to lose track of 1500 kids, has opened a tent city incarceration camp in the desert in Texas - he explains that they’re just “animals” - and you say, “Well, OK then.”
That you have witnessed all the thousand and one other manifestations of corruption and low moral character and outright animalistic rudeness and contempt for you, the working American voter, and you still show up grinning and wearing your MAGA hats and threatening to beat up anybody who says otherwise.
What you don't get, Trump supporters in 2019, is that succumbing to frustration and thinking of you as stupid may be wrong and unhelpful, but it's also...hear me...charitable.
Because if you're NOT stupid, we must turn to other explanations, and most of them are less flattering.
BTW, Presidential candidate Kamala Harris has stated that she knows Trump's type and she has prosecuted his type.
ADDENDUM:
Since that had been written in 2019, Trump has gone on to be adjudicated a rapist, to have his business convicted of fraud, to have so grossly mismanaged our (lack of) response to COVID as to have caused the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans, to have directed an attempt to overthrow the lawfully elected government (06 Jan 2021), to have stolen and released government defense secrets (the Top Secret classification is for information whose release would result in exceptionally grave damage to the country, but TS/SCI is far worse), etc. To us non-lawyers, those last two constitute TREASON -- as a 35-year veteran who had worked directly with classified materials, I am preparing to unload on that.
By choosing to support and vote for Trump, Phat has decided that all that is just fine by him. So we have to ask him how far Trump could go that he would decide was going too far.
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