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Yeah, I am sure that for most teachers whether or not they have to spend an extra two hours per year on their bookkeeping will determine if they would rather be a piano teacher or a cashier at Wal*Mart.

At least you are now being honest about your true intentions with this thread: to make political propaganda based on your own emotional distortions to try to fit this story to your own ideological biases rather than to have a reasoned discussion of the likely minor impact of this proposed requirement on piano teachers.

As long as people continue to vote uninformed and emotionally in the US based on television propaganda, bias and slogans rather than based on informed positions, education, and rational and critical thought -- often voting directly against their own interests and those of their community after being bamboozled by distortions and falsehoods -- then Americans will continue to have less and less self determination, get more incompetent government and wind up with the kind of society developing over the past 30 years where the rich get richer, the poor get poorer and ever more ignorant, the middle class continues to disappear and culture, music education and piano teachers slowly become completely extinct.

I wouldn't have put it quite so strongly, but indeed the quasi-political aspect of the OP (and a couple of the follow-ups) was the thing that made me first suspect that something here was awry and which made me look into the details.

The erroneous and exaggerated ways of looking at the requirement, and the seemingly stubborn and resistant follow-up, seemed very reminiscent of some of the discussion (back in the day) of the Equal Rights Amendment -- "unisex bathrooms" and whatnot -- as well as much that we hear currently from Tea Partiers. Does that mean it's where he's coming from? I don't particularly think so, although I agree it's remarkable that now he talks about the elections rather than perhaps spending that space on correcting the errors in what he has said. (If I were him, I'd also feel compelled to apologize for them, but never mind.)

I'm happy just to have the discussion of this subject be what it has become. It has gotten good.

Us Americans here in the US are *such* doofusses And apparently not adults, either - at least not the ones who might find drawbacks to this, according to you!

I think I should move <snort>

Cathy

Well, I certainly wouldn't agree with your blanket black/white statement.

But I would say that your post doesn't come across as being very thoughtful, serious or mature.

I thought that was the only way to vote.

it is clear to me that music and politics do not match.

Hm. Guess I needed the "sarcasm on/off" icons as well.

If you don't agree with the blanket statements perhaps it would be better if you didn't make them that way in your posts. If you, for instance, said "some people aren't adults", or "some Americans vote ignorantly". MHO, of course

I often like your posts. But the ones here seem, uh, smug, to me - and overly generalized

I'm sure you don't see them that way. That's life

Cathy

I reckon TheJourney is expressing a fairly mainstream view when looked at from a global perspective.

A discursive thread essential to US politics is the idea that *anyone* can (and almost certainly will) get rich in the United States of America, and, because this notion is so widely subscribed to *against all evidence*, people with no hope of spectacular financial advancement find themselves voting to reduce taxes for the super-rich while reducing services for themselves.

This is, at least, how it appears to really anyone observing US politics from the outside, and of course, I'm sure many from the inside as well.

In addition, the federal structure of the government allows for complicated taxation systems, different from one state to the next, making conducting business much more difficult than in a nation with a national taxation system. Here in Australia we suffer a little from this duplication in government, but to nowhere near the same degree as in the US.

Surely, however (getting back to the topic), no one can really know what they are worried about until the IRS announces how the legislation will be implemented? And if Australian experience is anything to go by, if a reporting requirement is onerous to the point of convincing people to shut down their businesses, politicians *will* change it.

Really? Maybe I should move to Australia.

(no sarcasm or kidding!)

Yes (usually).

Sometimes if not often, things get passed in a legislative bill without enough thought, and with unintended implications. Those things almost invariably get fixed.

A famous recent example was that in the health reform bill (probably the exact same one that John is talking about), if I understand right, the Senate unknowingly terminated its own health insurance.

I don't know how or if that has been fixed yet, but obviously it will be.

Back to the subject at hand: Not only don't we know how the IRS will implement it, but as seen from some of the posts, there's a lot of misunderstanding even just regarding simple aspects of what the regulation says. We're getting it cleared up as we go along (I think) .....and that's good.

Yes, of course, obviously this would be fixed.
Now fixing things that will help small businesses and not the government? Not sure on that one...

You're quite right.
Congress won't necessarily be as motivated to fix things for people other than themselves.

But presumably motivated enough.

Assuming the "if" that you said up there: "....if a reporting requirement is onerous to the point of convincing people to shut down their businesses" (and I would add, or anything close to that).
And it's far from clear that this is so.

Well, I'm glad you added the disclaimer, because if "anyone can get rich" is an "idea" that's "essential" to US politics it's news to me It sounds like maybe that "idea" is perhaps an overdramatization of "self-reliance", or "pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps" or "land of opportunity" or even "all men are created equal" - I dunno. I'm sure there are people who believe so. And many who don't. I suspect the idea that a great many people vote for those who would reduce taxes for the super-rich while reducing services for themselves is - over-simplified. I suspect it's much more nuanced than that. But hey, that's just me. I come from a not-rich family in Oklahoma - where boom and bust alternated all the time. And it was fairly obvious that those who were roughnecks on the oil rigs weren't likely to get rich But we were pretty conservative in our views of how much government was needed



I guess overall I don't really know how much more or less difficult it is to conduct business in the US than some other country, so I'll pass up commenting on it. But there's certainly strong historical reasons for the pull between federal and local governments, from the very beginning. Whether the U.S. was simply a federation of independent states or a stronger union was a *huge* issue among the states as they hassled over what government organization they needed. It was a huge part of the issues that led to the Civil War/The War Between the States (depending on your point of view), which wasn't fought *only* about slavery or the expansion of it. States rights are still a live issue here, and that balance is being worked out continually in U.S. politics. And taxation is part of it. There was some discussion in the beginning even about import/export taxes between the states. There were issues of large states vs small states in representation in whatever government there was, and western states vs eastern states, and some of those issues are still quite live.

In my opinion, there is *no* ideal form of government, if for no other reason than that people won't agree on what "ideal" is There are always trade-offs. I'm not familiar enough with Australia to comment, but I'd be willing to bet there's trade-offs there, too. *Everyone* trades off, and different individuals are willing to make different trades, including on tax issues

There are legitimate concerns and values from many different perspectives. I may not see everything the way John, or rocket88, does, but the fact that each of us has a different viewpoint does *not*, as far as I can tell, mean that any one of us puts *only* *our* interests first. We have different views of what we want for our communities, and what makes them communities in which we want to live.

And those different views don't make us not adults, either

That's the way I see it, any way.

And just to be clear, rocket really plays them blues

Cathy

You are right. A number of my formulations was insufficiently nuanced. I was also trying to be kind in my response to John by saying "people" rather than "you" which might be considered as a personal attack. In another post I formulated more correctly with constructions such as "to the extent that American people..." and "as long as people <engage in the specific mentioned behavior>".

However, in a democracy, what matters is often what a majority of citizens do.

The fact of the matter is, if I wanted to make the most accurate generalization of the voting behavior of Americans than that would have been more like this:

Perversely, a majority of Americans does not even bother to exercise their democratic right and privilege to vote in all the elections in which they have the opportunity to vote, making voter turnout and democratic participation one of the lowest in the developed, democratic Western world.

http://www.idea.int/vt/survey/voter_turnout_pop2-2.cfm

One reason for this can be the fact that, effectively, Americans are only allowed to meaningfully vote for one additional huge nebulous party than was allowed in the one-party Soviet communist system. National elections are organized around mass-marketing a personality cult of the "winner takes all" Presidential candidate rather than credible, differentiated political platforms to which government is held accountable for achieving. Voters can feel disconnected when they feel their vote doesn't matter (such as many local elections where only one candidate may be running for a position or in national elections when the popular vote is ignored to have the government appointed to the loser and a member of a wealthy, elite political dynasty by the supreme court or where no matter whom they vote for government appears to be only working for the companies that bought their Congressmen fair and square not the voter or that it appears that promises are impossible to keep or nothing really changes).

jotur, the other qualification I should have added to the bit from me that you quoted: "in comparison to other countries".

Like many citizens of the world who aren't citizens of the US, I appreciate the historical events that have led to the US being the nation it is today - it is a fascinating history.

I'm typing explanatory text and find myself deleting it because I keep making jokes about Glen Beck. Argh.

Anyways, seriously, (and I'm now addressing anyone concerned about taxation) if businesses are going to be saddled with an reporting requirement and attendant accounting expense (time/money) that renders the business unviable you can bet your bottom dollar government (even in the home of anti-capitalist-sentiment US! haha!) will change the reporting requirement.

Of course, if you believe that government exists to exterminate business then you will not share my point of view.

Here is a link to what's happening with this new law:

http://roadrunner.com/news/topic/ar...work_nightmare_A_struggle_to_fix_new_law

And, in closely related news, here's what's happening with the efforts to block any hard needed support to America's endangered small businesses while the big businesses who tanked the economy got away with a no-strings attached, hundreds of million dollar heist of the Treasury to keep paying themselves millions in bonuses while unemployment in the US is as high as 35% locally.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/us/politics/30cong.html

Amazing the ability of US Congressmen to speak out of both sides of their mouth for political advantage.

What's amazing is that according to many posts on these forums, sleazy politicians only appear to live in the United States of America.

Politicians in all the other countries on the planet, on the other hand, are apparently as pure as the wind driven snow, because we never see posts blaming other countries for anything here on the Piano forums. But we see lots of anti-American statements.

That would seem to be simply your biased assumption. Unless you can actually point to posts indicating that "Politicians in all the other countries on the planet, on the other hand, are apparently as pure as the wind driven snow."

That is not a "biased assumption", but rather is an observation of a dichotomy.

You are right...there is a virtual complete lack of posts accusing politicians from countries other than the United States of sleaziness, malfeasance, idiocy, "not being an adult", etc, etc.

However, accompanying that lack is a continuous onslaught of anti-American statements, including statements against American politicians, most of which emanate from a tiny handful of posters. Those poster(s) use even the slightest and most oblique opening in a discussion about pianos and music to bash America, its Presidents, its laws, etc, etc.

I could post more than a few of those from just the past few months, Journey. Some of which you might find familiar.

But I will not, because this is a piano forum, and already I have contributed to breaking the forum rules by getting into politics.

But it is a rule I am willing to break, upon occasion, in defense of my country on threads where others have already broken the rule.