US Residents.. will the new SL sales tax effect your Premium Purchases?

[Scylla Rhiadra]

1 minute ago, Paul Hexem said:

It might, but now that I know LL gives out 30 day relief to people under hardship, maybe I'll ask for some of that if it gets too expensive, to make up for when I kept paying through the pandemic.

Just let them know when you're sheltering in a subway with your kids because cluster bombs are being dropped on your neighbourhood, Paul.

I'm sure LL will be very understanding.

[Maximillon Lefavre]

On 3/3/2022 at 6:19 PM, Lindal Kidd said:

Here's something from the Tax Foundation:

• In 2019, Americans will pay $3.4 trillion in federal taxes and $1.8 trillion in state and local taxes, for a total bill of over $5.2 trillion, or 29 percent of the nation’s income.

• Americans will collectively spend more on taxes in 2019 than they will on food, clothing, and housing combined.

...and the USA is not the country that has the highest tax burden!

Why was it that we had that revolution, again?

Because those crazy British Red Coats wanted to tax the ever loving hell out of the Colonies without providing the Colonies with representation in Parliament.

[Maximillon Lefavre]

11 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

Why could Downing Street decide that all states would leave the EU, while the majority of Scots were against it?
Why was there a referendum years ago to get Scotland independent?
Why do they compete as one country in the Olympics?
They were as one nation member of the EU.
They are one country already with several states, IMHO.

It sounds as though we need to help free the Scots.

[SarahKB7 Koskinen]

16 hours ago, Maximillon Lefavre said:

Because those crazy British Red Coats wanted to tax the ever loving hell out of the Colonies without providing the Colonies with representation in Parliament.

The British America colonies of the 18th century were denied representation in Britain's Parliament because the British were not in the America's to build new nations there, or to make the America's an extension of Great Britain.

The Crown colonised the north and east of the northern American subcontinent (the closest parts to the British Isles) with trading posts in order to exploit and profit from the abundant natural resources found there.

The British America colonies were first established in Jamestown, Virginia in May 1607 as a private business venture by the British Crown - a legal business entity with the British monarch as its CEO.  These British America colonies were Crown property and managed by the newly formed Virginia Company on behalf of the Crown, the legal entity which "owns" the UK as well as many other non UK Crown colonies and oversea territories.

British America was also established as a Crown penal colony which gave deported British criminals a second chance in life without the fear of a hangman's noose back home, or from rotting in an overcrowded prison in Great Britain for the remainder of their lives.

The British America colonies were often invaded by other European colonial countries who had their own neighbouring colonies in the Americas like the British had.  Britain imposed taxes on the British America colonies as a method for its American colonies to pay for their own local defence, without taking money out the British economy to pay for these, from their perspective, low priority distant overseas problems.

The new colonial taxes were rejected by the colonists, who protested "no taxation without representation" to the British Parliament , which fell on deaf ears and was ignored.

(Opinion - Just think about it, why should a private business venture in a foreign land get a seat in the British House of Commons? In turn, would you give Apple UK Ltd a seat in the US Congress?! )

This disagreement escalated with a British colonist rebellion against the British Army (a weird overseas British Civil war if you think about it!), with the famous dumping of tea into harbours and then the signing of a joint petition by the thirteen of the British America colonies,  more commonly known as "The Declaration of Independence"....

(Opinion  - You know the rest of the story, but Britain did retain the majority of British America found to the north of those rebellious thirteen colonies. Americans see the so-called "Revolutionary War" as a major victory, while the British see the loss of some of its trading outposts and penal colonies as a minor footnote in their own broader history. )

The War of 1812 began after the newly formed United States ambitiously crossed the northern border into the remaining British America colonies in order to expand its own territory.  The US forces looted and burnt the British colonial city of York on 27th April 1813.  The British army retaliated and fought the retreating invaders back south to the US.

The Royal Navy fleet and British Army, freed from their duties and victory in the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, sailed into Chesapeake Bay and up the Potomac River in August 1814 and opened fire on US towns in the Battle of Bladenburg, 8 miles from Washington DC, as an act of revenge for the US invasion of British America. With the battle won, the road was clear for the British to invade Washington DC.

On 24th August 1814,  The British Army's East Essex Regiment took Washington DC in the Battle of Washington in which the British Army burnt several public US buildings, including the US Capitol. Treasury and War Office. The British soldiers were under strict orders not to target civilian homes.

They then arrived at an evacuated US Presidential Mansion and found the mansion's dining room table had been set for a Presidential dinner for forty diners, all who had fled. The British soldiers took advantage of this free hospitality and dined until their belly's were full.

After their free meal, the British then proceeded to burn down the Presidential Mansion.  The building was gutted by flames and the exterior facade was left scorched by flames and blackened by soot. The burning of the Presidential Mansion and Washington DC was an act of revenge, for the US had looted and burned the British colonial town of York earlier in April 1813.

After the British victory over the US (!) and the signing of a peace treaty in Ghent (now in Belgium) on 30th December 1814, the US Presidential Mansion was repaired and the exterior stonework was given a coat of white paint to hide the black scorch marks and soot damage. The freshly painted Presidential Mansion then became known as "The White House" thereafter.

Meanwhile, north of the border, the British colonial city of York, destroyed in 1813 by the US invasion, was rebuilt and had its name changed to Toronto in 1834.

By 1867, the remaining British America colonies were merged into one and granted a self-governing Dominion status and had its formal name changed to The Dominion of Canada, or just Canada for short.

The Dominion of Canada, self-governing but under British control, fought along with the victorious Allies in two world wars during the twentieth century. In the post WW2 and post-colonial world, Canada became a sovereign country on 1st July 1982 when it was granted full parliamentary independence by the Crown - without a single bullet being fired or from the throwing of tea into harbours!

Today, Canada is the second largest country in the world after Russia. Canada remains a Constitutional Monarchy with a Parliamentary Democracy and still recognises Queen Elizabeth II as its formal Head of State. Canada is also a member of NATO and the Commonwealth of Nations (formerly British Commonwealth of Nations), which now has a membership of 54 nations, some of which were never part of the former British Empire and have joined voluntarily.

 

And as for Scotland, it has had a national "Scottish Parliament" since 12th May 1999, which is not a sovereign entity, as Scotland itself (along with England, Wales and Northern Ireland too) are no longer seperate sovereign countries since the formation of the present UK.

The Scottish Parliament is based at Holyrood in Edinburgh and has regional authority like powers and is lower in status and than the overall UK Parliament which is sovereign.

Scotland has representation in the UK Parliament with 59 of the 650 UK Parliamentary seats.  Most of the 59 seats currently have Members of Parliament who are aligned with the Scottish National Party, or SNP.

The UK Parliament granted Scotland a "once in a generation" Independence Referendum on 18th September 2014, in which Scotland voted 55.3% to 44.7% to remain part of the UK.

England does not possess an "English Parliament" of its own any longer, as the UK Parliament superceded and replaced it. There are also no English Nationalist political parties in the UK Parliament.

Edited March 5, 2022 by SarahKB7 Koskinen

[Lindal Kidd]

I like Sarah's view of history. My teachers would've considered it revisionist, but it's instructive to have another viewpoint.

[Maximillon Lefavre]

59 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

I like Sarah's view of history. My teachers would've considered it revisionist, but it's instructive to have another viewpoint.

Should we tell her that the Americas were colonized by more than just the Brits? For instance, the state I live in was never a part of the British Empire or its territories. California where LL is located was also never in British hands.

[SarahKB7 Koskinen]

12 minutes ago, Maximillon Lefavre said:

Should we tell her that the Americas were colonized by more than just the Brits?

I had already known and had already mentioned in my previous post.

Edited March 5, 2022 by SarahKB7 Koskinen

[Scylla Rhiadra]

My favourite critique of the American Revolution has always been Samuel Johnson's highlighting of slave owner's hypocrisy in his 1775 pamphlet, Taxation No Tyranny:

"[H]ow is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?"

(Johnson, the most influential and important writer in English of his era, despised slavery.)

[Silent Mistwalker]

51 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

My favourite critique of the American Revolution has always been Samuel Johnson's highlighting of slave owner's hypocrisy in his 1775 pamphlet, Taxation No Tyranny:

"[H]ow is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?"

(Johnson, the most influential and important writer in English of his era, despised slavery.)

I keep seeing Johnson and reading Jackson. 🤨

They seem to have similar views on slavery, so I think I'm ok.

[Lindal Kidd]

20 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

My favourite critique of the American Revolution has always been Samuel Johnson's highlighting of slave owner's hypocrisy in his 1775 pamphlet, Taxation No Tyranny:

"[H]ow is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?"

(Johnson, the most influential and important writer in English of his era, despised slavery.)

Isn't it obvious? People want liberty...for themselves and people like them. Not for EVERYONE, good heavens, that would be terrible!

(Today's Republican authoritarians tend to espouse this viewpoint. Which is why I am no longer a Republican, although I remain a conservative.)

[Laylah Yaseotoko]

I don't spend money I don't have, if I was stretched on making my tier/premium payments already I'd not add those to my plate to begin with. As such I am in a place where I can comfortably pay it and I am fine with doing so. As such it's not going to affect my monthly spending.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

2 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Isn't it obvious? People want liberty...for themselves and people like them. Not for EVERYONE, good heavens, that would be terrible!

(Today's Republican authoritarians tend to espouse this viewpoint. Which is why I am no longer a Republican, although I remain a conservative.)

Indeed. One of the points Johnson was making was that southerners fighting for independence were specifically fighting for the "liberty" to own slaves, an important point given the rising calls in Britain for an end to the slave trade. In the years leading up to the American Civil War, the same arguments and motivations buttressed the fight for "states rights" in the growing conflict between free and slave states in the union.

None of this, btw, "exonerates" Britain. The British Empire of the 18th century (especially the acquisition of Canada and India) was funded by the slave trade. As importantly, the Industrial Revolution in the UK, which made that nation the most powerful in the world by the mid-19th century, wouldn't have been possible without the immense wealth it generated. The British are only now coming to terms with their role in this historical monstrosity: it's no longer possible to smugly condemn the US for a barbarity that was actually a British innovation.

[Persephone Emerald]

3 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Isn't it obvious? People want liberty...for themselves and people like them. Not for EVERYONE, good heavens, that would be terrible!

(Today's Republican authoritarians tend to espouse this viewpoint. Which is why I am no longer a Republican, although I remain a conservative.)

Though I'm a proud left-coast liberal Democrat myself. Looking at the current Republican party makes me think the Libertarian party might be looking more appealing to some. It has the conservatism and individual freedom goals of the Republican party, without as much hypocrisy. There are cringy characters in all political parties however.

[Jennifer Boyle]

Answering the original question: No.

I pay sales tax on everything else I buy, so I'll pay it on SL, too.

To those of you who are complaining about paying sales tax for SL, complain to your elected representatives. They are the people who are responsible, not LL.

To those of you who are complaining about paying too much for taxes, the US is declining to third world nation status. Our infrastructure is in disrepair. Our healthcare "system" (Haha) isn't one. Our education system is inferior to many countries'. ETC. And it's all because we are too cheap to pay for the things it takes to make a nation great. I weep for our country.

Edited March 7, 2022 by Jennifer Boyle

[Charlotte Bartlett]

Honestly I thought this was all going to be resolved by Prince Harry's second child growing up and becoming US President so we would take you American's back into the family and sort all these tax dollars out.

But then we Brits.... did a thing.  
Well you know the rest of that story.