RochesterRob

I took a marketing class while at college many years ago. A huge, huge amount of effort goes into marketing denim. Denim made clothes was one of the earliest industries to receive product placement treatment in movies and television.

There is so much wrong with Levi's. The product is crap compared to decades ago. Levi's has long lost its reputation as a company friendly to labor and American cotton producers. Levi's a few generations ago was not completely intertwined with the left like it is today. The message today seems to be if you are conservative don't buy our product. I don't. I have become exhausted on the whole culture Levi's stands for. I don't own any Levi's-like product anymore. I have clothes made from cotton but not styled like anything Levi's offers. Thanks but no thanks Levi's I can think for myself. I don't need to follow a herd of empty minded fools.

I think that the CO2 is getting to you. Maybe CO if you are sitting in your car idling in your garage.

Who provides the drivel that you post?

So that is where my gas for my lawnmower has been going. Do I now get sued for not placing it under lock and key?

Pay primarily comes from tax money. You willing to pay more taxes with it earmarked for law enforcement? Most agencies are not Hill Street Blues type districts so I would question your assertion on low pay. NYS troopers years ago were getting around 60 K and most likely today make more annually. The biggest problem today as said before here is criminals are showing an increasing willingness to make their own rules putting cops into difficult situations.

Nothing is going to happen with N Korea. Russia and China will not allow an act of aggression against N Korea over firing two missiles.

One of the extremely few ways for the liberal Democrats to screw things up for themselves politically is to introduce such a tax. The poor who are the bulwark of the Democrats will shoulder such a tax which they will ultimately rebel against. The only way to do it so rebellion is avoided is to introduce it in extremely small portions to the point where it will be almost invisible to the consumer which will have the effect of not reducing meat consumption. I would ask you what you have against logic, economics, and science when it comes to food production?

Who are you referring to when you say "We're?" Eating meat is a very primal function of humans and one that most people will not allow to be denied. Yes, I mean denied as the lower economic classes will be the primary victims of such a tax and it will amount to shifting to nothing relative to the expression "all or nothing." These same people tend to be supporters of the Democrats and/or liberals. No Draconian tax is coming anytime soon. To even get a 50 percent reduction would require going through three generations so the change would be very gradual.

The Swedes are not the same as the Swiss. Quite a number of nations prefer agricultural products to come from inside their borders to insure a degree of national security. Don't expect that to change. Even liberals eat meat so don't expect that to change. Many politicians believe in the mantra of do as I say and not as I do. Don't expect a government to eliminate meat production to placate a portion of the population that they consider minimally important. Don't eat meat as I don't care. Just for your information my diet is decidedly weighted in favor of grains including rice and vegetables but I do eat meat as well. You still ought to educate yourself as to the realities of food production as opposed to the philosophies of a political group. A potato has a much higher value on average per acre than beef. If potatoes were viable on a given acre of land that would the choice of production so economics does reward vegetable production over beef where possible. It just is not possible over a huge area of the Earth's landmass.

You have missed the point. Potatoes and rice can not substitute in a vast vast majority of areas in place of cattle. Poultry outside of subsistence agriculture requires feed concentrates such as corn and soybeans. Cattle can be grazed in many areas where grain production is not possible or not viable. What if your government decides to placate a certain portion of the population by reducing pollutants directly caused by you so others can have their steaks and burgers? You think that cattle is taking land away from other agricultural commodities when in fact cattle is the only viable commodity in many locations on Earth. Look at the Swiss who greatly rely on cheese produced from cow milk.

It takes several inches of loamy topsoil to grow vegetables and vegetables require water which a fair amount of the time comes from irrigation. Take a drive around WNY and look at the areas that lack several inches of loamy topsoil, lack the ability to irrigate vegetables, or have too short a growing season to grow vegetables. Growing vegetables in many areas requires insecticides to have a viable crop that does not wind up being a loss. These are problems that a lot of the world faces. Japan went to war during the 1930's and 1940's because it could not produce enough food which meant mostly vegetables. People can complain about digestive intolerances but wheat is the easiest mass produced crop to grow in the world. Large volume production of wheat and beef is simply a function of adaptability of those two commodities to most areas on Earth rather than a conspiracy perpetrated by rednecks.

Having a rich parent will only take you a small step. You still have to pass the courses and very few professors will bend a final grade for maybe a tiny percentage of super elites. It's not unheard of for a rich kid to be sent packing after a very poor semester followed by academic probation followed by another poor semester. But the consequences are minor as daddy has a job waiting once the kid returns home. Being derailed for a guy like me would have cost me dearly. One reason I never played college football. Most of those guys had a life waiting back home if they screwed up. If I screwed up there would have been the need to hunt for a mediocre job plus pay back the student loans.

Not sure how to take your merit comment. I had to have a certain GPA and had to have recommendations as well as an application essay. I can assure you NO corners were cut in my admission to Cornell. What anybody else had to go through I can't speak to as I don't rightly know. I don't know what else to tell you. Some people are only motivated to do very hard effort if there is tremendous reward at the other end including generational wealth. The trouble is that those same people have built, are building, or will build a large part of the American economy.

The world has not been, is not, nor will ever be fair. I consider myself fairly intelligent but am not especially well spoken or well written. It has cost me time and again. Having said that I was able to attend Cornell for two years after doing two years at a SUNY. For the most part I surely was not welcomed with open arms. I had to fight with instructors and fellow students and fellow student residents but I did exactly that and did not worry about feelings or bruised egos. My family most definitely had no wealth to get me in Cornell. As a matter of fact a girlfriend had a father who did a background check on me without her prior knowledge to destroy my relationship with his daughter. You can say good riddance if a daughter would not stand up to a father but I think that she needed time to grow but was not afforded it with me. While the wealthy certainly has access to schools such as Cornell I can tell you that a large number of students there came from ordinary backgrounds.

Assuming that you are correct how widely divided is that 11 billion? I know somebody that knows a middle aged Delano. That family is to the point where nearly all members live a upper middle class existence albeit without working. Their kids will surely know work or a harsh alternative. Unfortunately, the goal of obscene wealth is what gets people to stay late at the office or lab that results in products or services that benefit a huge number of people often globally. I would guess very few would have Microsoft type goals in terms of work but the compensation of a blue collar worker for such a company. Some days I get annoyed that I was not blessed with advanced mathematical abilities that would take me extremely far in the corporate world but I have no desire to tear down those that have special talents and can exploit those talents for the most gain. Dupont's, Melons, etc. if you tax them all the impact is extremely small when it takes many trillions to make the federal government go. Are you suggesting that there are trillions of dollars out there to be had in estate taxes annually to significantly take the burden off of the rest of us? Before you assume anything I run a small business and as of late struggled mightily in terms of finances but I do what I do because I have a fair amount of personal satisfaction involved.

I don't understand the fixation with the Rockefeller's which might help me understand where you are coming from. That wealth has splintered extensively for over 100 years since JD lost his anti-trust suit. I don't think any one Rockefeller has had one billion dollars since the 1960's and perhaps before that. Old JD himself gave away quite a bit the last couple of decades that he lived. Unfortunately, it is not within most people's abilities to build a General Motors Corporation, Ford, Microsoft, or Deere and Co of which those companies' products benefit a wide portion of the population. Taking Ford for example it took in part the efforts of HF II to build the company into what we see today. Imagine HF dying somewhat younger and the company not much more than a fledgling then taxing it out of existence. Then imagine a successor trying to round up capital only to be told it would be too risky in the event of premature death for the successor.

Where do you draw the line at? 100 acres can be very little in terms of an overall family farm or everything that is needed if vertical integration is there. That the farm sells raw product retail or processes product to make it salable. Apples or apple juice? People in many facets of life are involved with other family members in order to make a living. Many businesses are well past the boot strap stage in terms of starting from scratch. My mother's uncle made a go of being a Chrysler-Pontiac dealer many years ago by constantly reinvesting in the business. The margins are so slim at times you can't count on that in the auto business today. Look at all the consolidation in the auto business. It happened in part because as an average person with average means can't walk into a bank to borrow a million dollars to buy or build a facility. If you try and tell a GM territory manager you want to be a Chevy dealer but need to operate out of a crap hole facility that would end the meeting and any hopes right then and there. Too much consolidation in business as it is which results in higher prices to the consumer never mind an unfriendly tax system which would accelerate that. By the way the Rockefeller's and Kennedy's are not big names in generational wealth anymore. Walton's (not John Boy or Jim Bob) Walmart are in that group among others.

Got to disagree with you on this. Many farms are multi-generation in terms of effort but often one generation for various reasons in terms of actual ownership. Failure to get a transfer done before death may be due to credit institution interest/liens that prevent a change in ownership status. The younger generation may have been too young to go on a deed or be signatories on a note when that time came. If the tax structure that I made as an example came to be in reality (which I fear which was why I made it as such) 400,000 dollars of collateral in the form of cash would not be enough equity to secure a loan on the 600,000 dollars needed to purchase the land in full from the estate. Sometimes the window never opens in terms of establishing a trust to preserve a business due to ongoing liens against the business as it needs money to operate. But if the window was ever there in terms of being debt free or debts not secured by business assets a trust should be set up so the business can continue after the death of a primary stake holder. As to rich uncles agriculture has pretty well moved on from that. A foreign entity is a primary player in agriculture where I live and there are other exotic financiers as well which I suspect includes drug money. An uncle who left his nephew a half million dollars is not going far in WNY when quite a bit of good farmland values at 5,000 dollars per acre or more and new tractors are well into six figures.

I don't want to force a sale. A forced sale is something I fear with the changing political climate. I am allowing for it in my example to reflect what very well may happen. I am also saying that a drastically altered tax code may not allow for a basis for the purpose of a tax deduction. I don't know about NJ but a county wealth tax in addition to property tax gets mentioned more and more frequently in current times. One more thing that I am not in favor of but something I fear that may take place in the future.

I don't expect the estate tax to go anywhere and am bracing for it to take a bigger bite. I also expect that there will be far fewer deductions and allowances for basis. I expect the thresh hold for being taxable to be greatly lowered or eliminated. Not what I want once again but expecting our politicians to balance the budget on the backs of others. Example : 100 acres prime vegetable ground in Western NY. Value of 10,000 dollars per acre. Gross value 1,000,000 dollars. No allowance for basis so 1,000,000 dollars is the taxable amount. For easy figuring lets say the federal and state tax rates have moved to 30 percent each of the gross amount which is not outside the realm of reason given who is running the show in DC and Albany. The Feds get 300,000 and the state gets 300,000 dollars. This is without counties imposing an income or wealth tax which there has been talk of. 600,000 paid in taxes leaving 400,000 dollars to disperse.

At this point in time the proposed bar is set quite high but it will drift down in my opinion. As the middle class is further depleted it would not surprise me if it reaches down to under 100,000 dollars per household. That is what it will take to maintain the them versus us attitude by the liberals as the number of working poor increases.

If they start at 13 percent I am very skeptical that they will stay there. A gallon of gasoline over a generation ago had far less taxes on it than today. I don't see the state, county or anybody else locking themselves in at one percentage rate in perpetuity. The black market will become invisible to a fair portion of the population but will exist nonetheless. Start going to 20, 25, or more percent that will allow the black market to be more competitive. And with MJ being legal a fair number of the black market's headaches will go away. People joke about it being sold at Bills home games and it will be sold both by the stadium and by private individuals. Will the state and county send out "revenuer's" to collect the tax?

It's all about the taxes. It was around 15 years ago that 60 Minutes did a story about the resurgence of moonshine. Moonshine, you say? Why? The cost to the end user was less because liquor store alcohol was priced much higher due to tax. I'd be interested in knowing how much tax is on Washington MJ? Preliminary estimates are when MJ gets going in NY that the state taxes may add 25 percent or more to the purchase price. Then there are the opportunists such as the mayor of Rochester, NY who wants to levy her own tax to create social programs designed to keep her in office. I don't know Washington state's finances but NYS was in a poor situation before Cuomo ran the ship on the rocks with his COVID shutdown. Somebody is making up for the shortfall and it will not be Cuomo's limousine millionaire buddies.

Very few people grow their own vegetables so expect the same to hold true for MJ. Also, if you don't live in the best neighborhood then you have to worry about protecting your crop from others. Most people will just buy it then consume it in a matter of days to bypass problems.