Wow, neither of you actually finished the article. Both of you are claiming the author believes viewpoints that the author presented in order to show problems with them.
Ultimately, the TLS didn't even claim a viewpoint. They merely presented a variety of opinions and critiqued them.
Speaking as a alcoholic with some sobriety, those laws were little more than a speed bump when I was drinking. I drank as both a child and a homeless guy with little problem.
I'm not saying those laws shouldn't exist, but they serve as a source of revenue, not as something that protects the public.
"Parole" refers to any situation where someone is given some trust for a period of time before they are given complete trust. It usually refers to people who get out of prison but have to check in with a parole officer for a while, but in this case it refers to immigrants being allowed into the country but having to check in with DHS.
Of course we would want that, but that's not what we get. The rich pay few taxes and the international rich pay even less, given they already have offshore tax havens by the nature of being from another country. Given a green card allows establishment of US companies which are exempt from some tariffs which are imposed on foreign companies, there's no reason to believe that giving the rich green cards will be a net gain for tax revenue. It is indeed sometimes a net loss.
They may pay a lower percentage of taxes on wealth gains than middle class or upper middle class, due to being able to delay income realization, lower capital gains taxes, and other means that are more accessible to the rich than the middle class or the poor.
But rich people still tend to pay more taxes than less rich people.
Demonstrably not true in absolute terms in many cases, or as a percentage of income in others.
Spend 15 minutes talking to an accountant on the premise that you don't want to pay any tax. If you've got enough cash, that's not a problem, anywhere in the World.
A humorous way to express the same idea is that the non-rich are actually sponging off the rich:
"The average American household of 2.64 people receives almost $13,000 worth of federal benefits, services, and protection per annum. These people would have to have a family income of $53,700 to pay as much in taxes as they get in goodies... Only 4.8 percent of the population -- 12,228,000 people --
file income tax returns showing more than $50,000 in adjusted gross income. Ninety-five percent of Americans are on the mooch." -- P. J. O'Rourke [1]
The data you link to shows that the top 5% income people pay 58.55% of all taxes, while the the top 50% pay 97.22%, as you indicated.
So as a simple-language summary we might all agree that the rich pay a majority of the taxes, while the richer half of the country pays nearly all the taxes.
Note that the "richer half" starts at the median income. For the US, the median income is about $52k. That isn't particularly wealthy. When the bar for "nearly all the wealth" is set at that point, it is not surprising at all.
> The government doubled the price of the plan or more, and is paying with our tax dollars the difference between my $270 and $780.
Do you have evidence that the government is the main cause of the increase of the price of the plan? It could have merely been the companies using the ACA as an excuse to raise prices.
These loans are added as a tax assessment on the property so the local government adds the premiums on the tax bill and collects with tax payments. Because its added as a tax assessment if you stop paying on your loan its the same as if you stopped paying taxes. Which means the city seizes your entire house.
This structure makes it so the PACE loan is ahead of even the mortgage holder in the creditors line.
That's even assuming its possible to seize your solar array, central air, insulation, or windows. These loans are for adding permanent features; permanent features of a house can't just be seized individually. They can't seize your solar array in the same way they can't seize your extra bathroom.
If that's not bad enough these loans are being issued without a credit or income check. They are being issued based on the amount of equity the borrower has in their property without regards to financial health or ability to repay and without the same lending disclosures required by other loans.
> If anyone can answer what the 'correct' interpretation of a piece of writing is, it's the author.
Why is that?
There are a myriad of ways to analyze a piece, and many focus on reader response rather than authorial intent. You can dismiss reader response as merely incorrect initially, but this becomes complicated when you try to analyze works written by reader response critics. Indeed some authors like Burroughs take this to the extreme, introducing randomness (via cut-up technique) to their writing in an attempt to eschew even the possibility of authorial intent. Burroughs was somewhat limited in his approach by the technology of his day, but it's not hard to imagine approaches using modern technology which remove an author from the system completely.
I am not saying I agree that reader response criticism entirely: just because authorial intent isn't special doesn't mean that reader response is the answer. Frequently reader response is used as a way for critics to use a piece of literature as a soapbox for their own ideologies, and I find that distasteful. But I do think that there's some validity to the idea that authors don't have any special authority to interpret their own work.
For example, look at the song "I'll be watching you". Sting had said that he intended this song to be about government surveillance. But almost universally this song has been (mis?)interpreted as being about a stalker. Any analysis of the song which focused solely on Sting's intent would be incomplete, because the interpretation of the consumers of the song is far more related to its cultural relevance.
