Day #20 - Taxes and Technology`

Well, it's day 20, and I guess you could call this a milestone.  Not only did I not believe I'd last writing this for more than 15 days in a row (all my friends bet against me making it, or I would have had more faith in myself), but I never thought, at this point that I'd be thinking about writing yet another set of these posts after the alphabet is exhausted.  I'd even have to expound on it further by saying, dear readers, that you comprise the majority of the reason that I plan to continue on.  Oh, don't worry...if this appreciation of you doesn't seem like it covers all the bases it should, look to the end of the afore-planned 26 day period.  I'll be so damn grateful for making it through by then, I should be falling all over myself doling out the gratitude.

So enough of that blather.  On to our fun-filled day!!

Oh, and in case you didn't notice right away, yes, it's yet another two-parter.  Oh, sure...I could have waited till the next go around of the alphabet, but sometimes the subject is so exciting, it gets hard to hold it all in.  Hence, two-parters.  No waiting.  Satisfaction guaranteed.

Aaaaand the lucky subjects of the day are??  Taxes will start off the bid as the more severe of our issues.  Then we'll move on to technology.  Technology isn't so much a problem, in and of itself, it's the levels at which we've embraced it that are the problem.  But I get ahead of myself.  Back to that age old man, U.S. taxes.

It would be fruitless and stupid of me to even try to define what taxes are.  I think we all know that definition.  It's that chunk o' funds that regularly gets swiped out of our paychecks...that comes out of our hard earned dollars every time we make a purchase of goods.  I don't think more is needed here that we don't know about like it's 2nd nature.

Let's start with the majority of taxes we pay on the open market.  The biggest of these is a state imposed sales tax, implemented, of course, to help pay for state related bills and salaries.  We then have numerous other taxes that we pay, from the manufacturers of goods all the way down to the consumer, and at every level we hit in-between.  There of course is no stone left un-turned to tax.  Some of these taxes include:

Manufacturer's sales tax (implemented during the sale from the manufacturer to the whole-saler);

Wholesaler's sales tax (implemented at the stage between the wholesaler and the Retail sales outlet);

Retail sales tax (put out to the end consumer when they purchase items from the reseller);

Gross Receipts Tax (implemented during the sale of a business);

The Excise Tax (implemented on certain products of national interest, such as gas, tobacco & alcohol, where the tax is decided to be placed on the manufacturer of these products, rather than the end user.  NOTE:  Taxed items in this category are given an additional tax called something else entirely to cover the expense paid in taxes by their manufacturers.  I believe the tax we pay to make up for their tax is called the same thing at the pump, but I can't be sure.

Turnover Tax, similar to a sales tax, but indirect.  I didn't get a very good description of this tax, so I can't legitimately write much about itt.

Use Tax, which is paid by the consumer on items where no tax is applied, or where there is no sales tax charged.

Securities Turnover Tax is paid when securities are traded in the market.

Value Added Tax, which is paid on all salable goods and is only applied to the difference in a price paid in each subsequent sale of the same item.  This tax is meant to get rid of the need of resale certificates when buying and selling goods.

There is yet another tax, not goods related, that is and has been debated about for over 15 years, and is still not good enough (or rather, isn't lining enough people's pockets yet to be considered logically) to pass, called Fair Tax.  In it's creation, it was supposed to be something more fair that would replace our current income tax system.  I could easily fill up two more complete pages in this blog defining what it is, and what it accomplishes over our current system of income tax, but it'd be much easier to just direct you to the Wikipedia Entry for review:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairTax

So America is taxed (to the limit, I'm sure), it's citizens are heavily taxed (suddenly Jesus, the Jews and their version of the IRS, the Pharisees, all come to mind), our lives are taxed, what we buy and sell is taxed, our jobs are taxed, and our deaths are taxed.  And it doesn't stop there.  If we leave goods or moneys to our relatives, their inheritances are taxed too.  I wouldn't be surprised if our taxes were taxed.  I know our tax refunds count, so maybe that's the definition of taxed taxes.  Don't ask me to explain the tax world, or our tax law, I wouldn't take it if you crammed it down my gullet with a large wooden spoon.

You've all read (or at least I hope you have) my article, under this particular blog, about the IRS.  Tax then, since it is the ferry that transports our hard-earned cash into our system of government, by default is inherently just as evil, and one of America's great sins against its people.  There I go on about the beginning of the Income Tax back in 1913, as well.  It's a story of government greed that should not be ignored.  Needless to say, a lot of this is covered as well in another day, about Greed.  Check 'em out.  Be informed.  Look into the Fair Tax, and let's see why it's been held back for 15 years, maybe it's a GOOD THING and that's why it's still on the floor in Congress.

So, since, up to now, as well as now, and probably well into my blogging future will taxes, government and the law that drives it will be more than beat over the head enough.  Let's move on then, shall we, to our next subject...Technology.

Here's another subject I've discussed more than enough.  Some shining examples are both the Video Ticketing and Internet Regulation articles in other areas of this blog, as well as the Elections/The Electoral College article under Day 5 of this series.  These all address how current technologies are massing together (obviously, through no direct fault of their own, since they are indeed inanimate) to hurt America.

The biggest weapons that technology carries in each arm is Naivete and Ignorance.  If you go and buy something that's brand new, for instance, and you only do it because a.) you've heard so much about it/them, or b.) all your neighbors and friends and relatives have one...but you have no idea whatsoever how to make it work, then in your hands, this new and budding technology is at its most volatile.  If you don't know how to use it, it's like a gun in the hands of a caveman. Until you read the instruction manual (or the help file, in today's world), it's a toy made for adults that somehow got into the hands of a child who doesn't know any better, and who may harm someone trying to figure it out.

People that buy tablets, cell phones, computers and laptops (as well as current gaming consoles today) that have no idea what they bought them for or what they'll use 'em for once they get a hold of one, are pretty dangerous.  Clickers by trade, they'll press every roll-over and enter information for months before they're told they have enough ad-ware and malware to fill up a small nation.  I've seen email accounts that belong to these tech tenderfoots that were carrying well over 1000+ emails in their spam folders, and that received over 100 emails, easy in any given day.  Every day that these people are asked for information so that they can get a free this, or win a 1000 gift card to Wal-Mart if they do that, are endangering themselves and the rest of the internet world.  They're tracked, and forced to carry files in their computer that attach themselves to innocent file systems just waiting to spread themselves, sneakily enough, onto the more protected systems through plain old-fashioned trust...either of family or friends.  "Uncle Harry's coming over...he wants to play his vacation pix that he took in the Bahama's.  He wants to know if he can hook up his laptop to our digital projector"...then next thing you know, the hard drive in your laptop crashes because you got a virus Uncle Harry picked up, transferred to your projector, which in turn transferred to your laptop in a business meeting when you hooked it up to the same projector.  It's all about playing the dumb ones...those who barely know how to turn on a computer in the first place.

Worse yet, with each new generation of tech that appears on the market, there are proportionately less and less people who know how to keep these gadgets from being hacked, and, what do you know, each one that comes out can be attached to the other, either wirelessly (usually utilizing BlueTooth technology), through wifi hot-spots or wirelessly through "4G" supernetworks, like the ones used by cell phones.  Also, as these new technologies emerge, there seems to be more and more of a need for people that can clean up the virus codes, mal-ware and cookies that are spread onto them.

I am, by trade, a computer cleaner/fixer.  I deal daily with hardware and software issues alike.  And where our computers are now faster and better than ever, there's also a lot more out there that messes them up for life.  This brought out a need to portion off sections of our included hard drives with entire virtual "recovery" drives.  Unfortunately for most, these drives are really only there as a recovery method that most people don't really want...what used to be the option of last resort:  Restoring your equipment back to it's original factory settings.  This option used to be used only when no manner of attempt at fixing your computer would work, and was and is the only guarantee that whatever screwed up your computer would be completely and utterly destroyed, never to return again.  With almost every virus or malware program being of the more destructive type these days, recovery back to the item's original out of box condition appears to be the only real logical end.  If you don't quite know what you're doing, the virus or malware that you're attempting to rid yourself of (which has, more than likely, imbedded itself into your memory or written itself into your registry, for the sole purpose of its re-reproduction) will re-appear like a bad penny to re-destroy everything again on a later date.  Utilizing this option will indeed put everything back to brand new condition, sure, but then you'll lose every bit of data as well as all installed programs you put in after purchase.  You then need to call every software company that you bought from and tell them that you made a mess of things; and that you'd love to be able to acquire a new license for them so that they can be re-installed.  A lot of companies will give you a great deal of grief on this issue, however, due to the fact that they've had a lot of pirating problems in their pasts; and the ones that have been around for ages will more than likely charge you for any kind of extended license.

With cell phones being precisely the same as tablets and like computers, they fall prey to exactly the same dangers as real computers.  Yet there's no real choices of anti-virus or mal-ware cleaning options for cell phones, or at least not yet.  The apps that are offered for cell phones and tablets number in the tens of thousands, and are advertised on every page of every store, or in Microsoft 8's store, and on Google...it just never ends.  A great portion of these apps are made by companies or individuals that no one has even heard of, so have the possibility of being 100% bad for your device.

Finally, as stated in many of my previous blog posts, every....single...device offered by today's tech market includes A CAMERA.  Some, like cell phones, offer cameras front as well as on the back.  And every techie gadget today is able to sync, hook up to, or be able to communicate to every other modern device...through the internet, as well as independently.  Should there ever come a day, kids, when someone where to pick up a sword and state that he was the current ruler of the universe, and that we should fall down and worship, I don't believe it would be too much of an effort to do so...as long as he does it in the room where the main central computer, the one that houses the majority of data issued out to the network is located.  That man could easily take over the world, no questions asked.

Mold and mildew encompass day 20.  On to the 21st.