Word: taxing
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...Apple than you would on a comparable PC laptop. And in most cases, PCs come with more bells and whistles, like Blu-ray drives and more ports for special external hard drives and video connectors. So what kind of sucker would be willing to pay the Apple tax...
Plus, with the Apple tax comes peace of mind. A major virtue of Steve Jobs' control-freak ways is that if something goes wrong with your computer, you know whom to blame. You call Apple or go to the Genius Bar at an Apple store. End of problem. With a PC, though, you have to try to figure out if you've got a hardware problem or a software problem. Invariably, you will be wrong, and the Microsoft-support rep will refer you to the PC manufacturer. Or vice versa. Repeat...
...inimitably audacious editorial writers at the Wall Street Journal brought to the nation's attention the existence of a vast and allegedly pernicious class of "lucky duckies" who pay no federal income tax because their incomes are in sub-$40,000 territory and they qualify for one or more of the many credits added to the tax code in recent decades...
Since then, thanks to tax changes proposed and signed into law by President Bush, this impoverished yet fortunate class has only grown--to 45.6 million households, or one-third of all income tax filers, according to the Tax Foundation, a right-leaning think tank with a reputation for getting its numbers right. If the various tax cuts and credits Barack Obama has proposed on the campaign trail are enacted, the group estimates, that figure will rise to 63 million, while John McCain's tax plans would bring the tally to 62 million. Either way, more than 40% of the population...
What are we to make of this development? Some conservatives say it endangers the underpinnings of American democracy, echoing the 2002 Journal editorial: "Workers who pay little or no taxes can hardly be expected to care about tax relief for everybody else. They are also that much more detached from recognizing the costs of government." This argument is historically obtuse, considering that the federal income tax was initially designed to hit only a tiny minority of high earners and exempt the other 99% (it first became a mass tax during World War II). It's also misleading, in that lucky...