U S Department of Agriculture Office of Inspector General Northeast Usda Form

The trade war will end when the US and China work out an agreement to end Chinese trade abuses, including forced technology transfer and cyber theft, intellectual property rights, services, currency manipulation, agriculture trade and non-tariff barriers to trade.Why not just end the trade war? These issues are more important than the temporary disruption to agriculture trade (which can be compensated.) You would think a person with a PhD in decision making would understand that.

First the 1040 is an exercise in sets:Gross Income - A collection and summation of all your income types.Adjustments - A collection of deductions the tax law allow you to deduct before signNowing AGI. (AGI is used as a threshold for another set of deductions).ExemptionsDeductions - A collection of allowed deductions.Taxes - A Collection of Different collected along with Income TaxesCredits - A collection of allowed reductions in tax owed.Net Tax Owed or Refundable - Hopefully Self Explanatory.Now the formulas:[math]Gross Income - Adjustments = Adjusted Gross Income (AGI)[/math][math]AGI - Exemptions - Deductions = Taxable Income[/math][math]Tax Function (Taxable Income ) = Income Tax[/math][math]Taxes - Credits = Net Tax Owed or Refundable[/math]Please Note each set of lines is meant as a means to make collecting and summing the subsidiary information easier.It would probably be much easier to figure out if everyone wanted to pay more taxes instead of less.

Taxes can be viewed as having 4 uses (or purposes) in our (and most) governments:Revenue generation (to pay for public services).Fiscal policy control (e.g., If the government wishes to reduce the money supply in order to reduce the risk of inflation, they can raise interest rates, sell fewer bonds, burn money, or raise taxes. In the last case, this represents excess tax revenue over the actual spending needs of the government).Wealth re-distribution. One argument for this is that the earnings of a country can be perceived as belonging to all of its citizens since the we all have a stake in the resources of the country (natural resources, and intangibles such as culture, good citizenship, civic duties). Without some tax policy complexity, the free market alone does not re-distribute wealth according to this "shared" resources concept. However, this steps into the boundary of Purpose # 4...A way to implement Social Policy (and similar government mandated policies, such as environmental policy, health policy, savings and debt policy, etc.). As Government spending can be use to implement policies (e.g., spending money on public health care, environmental cleanup, education, etc.), it is equivalent to provide tax breaks (income deductions or tax credits) for the private sector to act in certain ways -- e.g., spend money on R&D, pay for their own education or health care, avoid spending money on polluting cars by having a higher sales tax on these cars or offering a credit for trade-ins [ref: Cash for Clunkers]).Uses # 1 & 2 are rather straight-forward, and do not require a complex tax code to implement. Flat income and/or consumption (sales) taxes can easily be manipulated up or down overall for these top 2 uses. Furthermore, there is clarity when these uses are invoked. For spending, we publish a budget. For fiscal policy manipulation, the official economic agency (The Fed) publishes their outlook and agenda.Use # 3 is controversial because there is no Constitutional definition for the appropriate level of wealth re-distribution, and the very concept of wealth re-distribution is considered by some to be inappropriate and unconstitutional. Thus, the goal of wealth re-distribution is pretty much hidden in with the actions and policies of Use #4 (social policy manipulation).Use # 4, however, is where the complexity enters the Taxation system. Policy implementation through taxation (or through spending) occurs via legislation. Legislation (law making) is inherently complex and subject to gross manipulation by special interests during formation and amendments. Legislation is subject to interpretation, is prone to errors (leading to loopholes) and both unintentional or intentional (criminal / fraudulent) avoidance.The record keeping and forms referred to in the question are partially due to the basic formula for calculating taxes (i.e., percentage of income, cost of property, amount of purchase for a sales tax, ...). However, it is the complexity (and associated opportunities for exploitation) of taxation legislation for Use # 4 (Social Policy implementation) that naturally leads to complexity in the reporting requirements for the tax system.

Although the U.S. claims to cling to free market principles, how did its government, through its agriculture department, end up providing food for poor people, something done by charities elsewhere outside of Communist countries?This is the ‘no true scotsman fallacy’- a form of circular argument.No true Scotsman - WikipediaHere, the group definition of ‘free market’ is ‘does not give out food aid’, so excludes any possible counter example.Of course, the real answer is that ‘free market’ is actually a spectrum. Only the total absence of government is a truly free market- even a prohibition on selling smallpox and thermonuclear weapons to North Korea is a limit on a free market!Imposing limits like this does not suddenly make a country communist, because it is not an absolutely free market.As such, a country can have a fairly, but not totally, free market.

If I’m also head of state, I start with a free trade agreement with Japan and South Korea, making a bunch of concessions to break the decades-long gridlock that their FTA has been through, and an investment treaty to try and help the two Koreas thaw a bit. If I am head of state, this agreement will also help me in the transition toward “high-quality growth”, and any time I get domestic complaints about the slowing economy or rising unemployment, I can deflect it a bit by saying that I’m just honoring international agreements. The Chinese government did the same thing during the WTO entry process.Now I need to focus on Taiwan. The success of this policy depends a great deal upon domestic Taiwanese politics, but again, my strategy is to deflate my enemies by killing them with kindness, openness, and wealth. Simplifying visa procedures, facilitating trade, featuring TV serials and public museums highlighting the role of the KMT in the Civil War and cooperation with the CCP, as well as praising Taiwanese investment and historical achievements, relaxing restrictions on Taiwanese media and supporting media aimed at Taiwanese audiences (that doesn’t suck; inviting Taiwanese directors and talented film students to produce them, maybe). Proposing exhibit exchanges with the Palace Museum in Taipei, perhaps. signNowly increasing academic exchanges, particularly sending students there from rural inland China, where a lot of the greatest nationalist and aggressive sentiment is located. There’s a lot of room for growth and improvement here even if Taipei is insistent on resisting me. I’m taking a similar approach to countries around the Nine-Dash Line, particularly Vietnam, the Philippines, Singapore, and Indonesia, defusing tensions, relaxing territorial disputes, inviting joint development, working out agreements. Call it the Beibu Bay model.Now I’ve undermined the political basis for the American presence in Asia. It’s time to get them to pivot away.One option would be to engage them on their home turf and freak them out, then negotiate each other roughly back into our own ‘zones’. This would mean military bases with friendly nations in Latin America, and perhaps Africa. Say, in eastern Cuba, around the lovely city of Guantánamo. Venezuela. Nicaragua, maybe, where we could back a second canal that is financed by a private Chinese mogul but has long been stymied, possibly as part of a deal to break their recognition of Taiwan. Or, since we’re trying to make friends with everybody, maybe just gloss over the whole thing. Hell, let’s have a tour of all the Bolivarian Republics, a cruise of a Great Red Fleet, with each port stop accompanied by a multicultural celebration, feasting, beer, and the signing of mutual economic agreements. America’s lost so much face that I doubt they have the leverage to kick us out of anywhere except Central American holdouts like Honduras and El Salvador. For the record, this doesn’t have to exclude the US; we can invite American MNCs and diplomats to come to these events and benefit from these new economic agreements and partnerships, but the US will probably try to put a freeze on this wherever possible.So now we’re in America’s backyard, and much of the US should be freaking out now that we’re in the MonroeZone. But suddenly, oh no! A distraction! Some civil war has broken out in some poor country, probably at least partly as a complication of some major US policy blunder from a decade ago. Ethnic cleansing! Constant social media updates of chaos and terror! Refugee crises! People changing profile pictures to faded flags! With Europe and the US locked in internal bickering and lacking liquidity, who should step into the fray but China, long the UN’s largest contributor of manpower and now beginning to become active in determining their deployment! Finally, China has a voice as well as a body on the world stage! Using our leverage with the developing world, we declare an end to the violence and push forward a UNSC agreement to approve military action, without which we would be aggressive imperialists committing an illegal act of military expansionism, of course.And hey, USA, Britain, France, would you like to be our allies in this struggle for peace and freedom? *kicks Russia under the table, tells them to stop laughing and play along*So now a very confused but pleasantly surprised American military is working alongside the PLA, probably alongside other NATO militaries, in some poverty-stricken corner of the world, and we’re learning to trust each other, accomplish tasks together, and specialize in certain roles. They hit hard targets and do the heavy lifting logistically, we get the power back on, restore public order, and help developing countries develop, basically doing modern versions of all the cool shit that helped the Red Army swell to its massive 1949 victory, and becoming a source of national pride and unity that is helping to vastly deflate a lot of the nationalist and protectionist criticism I’ve been getting for my other, liberal, “revisionist” policies. America now has another overseas military base to make up for the (hopefully) one or more major bases it has been forced out of in Asia by now, we have another ‘pearl’ on the Belt and Road, and both the US and China have a lot of bargaining chips with each other to achieve whatever goals we’re interested in pursuing. We’ve also gotten a very good look at each others’ hands, militarily speaking, and may well have given each other basing rights thanks to our alliance, at least on an emergency or conditional basis.America may have lost some face, but they’re now downgraded from being the lonely superpower to a much more manageable role for them, with more clearly defined interests, and their only real competitor has now essentially become a close ally that has basically aligned its foreign policy with everything they’ve wanted. Who needs Yokosuka when you can have the occasional stopover at Shanghai and Hainan? The hookers and booze will be cheaper anyway.Okinawa may well be closed now, perhaps replaced by alternate bases in someplace rural and out-of-the-way like Shikoku or Hokkaido, but the US military has largely pivoted out of Asia, because their only remaining prominent targets are North Korea, which I am helping liberalize and discreetly directing as much American capital as I can to get the two of them to a detente, and Vladivostok, which hasn’t been a real threat in decades and is more than deterred by the odd US submarine. Russia’s probably pissed off, but drawing them into the northeast Asian FTA would probably help a lot. Essentially, I’ll remove the Americans by “joining their team”, on my terms (which I have disguised as “their terms”, taking a long view), and by taking advantage of their sloth, negligence, isolationism, and weakened reputation to build my own circle of influence.You may have noticed by now that China is well on its way to becoming a pan-Asianist, economically and culturally liberalizing nation that is inching closer to the phrase “social democracy” (sorry not sorry), one that is still led by the Communist Party, is partly globally activist but isn’t trying to force a military agenda down the world’s throat like 2003 Iraq, is an advocate of free trade, and resembles South Korea or Taiwan a lot more than it resembles the North or even Vietnam at this point. It has also basically disarmed its greatest external threats, and mostly needs to contend with unemployment and nationalist reactions to these liberalizing policies, one possible response to which may be “the Silk Road Corps”, essentially a Chinese Peace Corps for the Belt and Road and countries with which we are presently or formerly engaged in peacekeeping and foreign aid operations. Other solutions will be required, as government coffers are shrinking, but the free trade and increasingly liberalized movement of people that goes with the FTA (and long-delayed hukou reforms) should help.Now, this assumes that I essentially have a level of control over Chinese politics and the military that one could not normally find outside of a 4X video game, and probably requires at least as much concentrated power as Xi Jinping has now. If I am just a general, my options are much more limited, and are largely tactical.In that case, I’m limited by the army and equipment I have, and I’m probably more or less going to follow the Assassin’s Mace strategy that has been fairly clearly laid out in Chinese military papers and would be pretty obvious even if it hadn’t: massive numbers of missiles, offshore fighters, torpedo boats, extremely stealthy if relatively short-range diesel subs, and perhaps targeted satellite strikes or other infrastructural disruptions to destroy anybody who gets close to China’s littoral. This relies on American aggressiveness for them to get close in (probably a safe bet), but it’s also my least preferable scenario, as this has probably wrecked my economy and infrastructure and made me a much less attractive business partner, to say nothing of killing millions of my nation’s sons and daughters.And most importantly, I wouldn’t have accomplished my goal. I can blow up Yokosuka and Okinawa. Maybe I can even sink an aircraft carrier or two. But I’ll lose whole cities, and instead of kicking the Americans out of Asia, I will have invited them to stay forever. My goal is not to be Hitler, to start with half of Europe and be reduced to a divided and occupied Rheinland, Bavaria, and Western Prussia because I wanted it all and I didn’t care how many toes I stepped on or what the body count was. My goal is to undermine the US as it has been in Latin America and in Central Asia. I want the locals to think of the Americans, “we don’t like you, we don’t want you, we don’t need you, we’re fine, goodbye.” Not “My god, look at all those missiles, the Chinese are going to kill us all! Where are the Americans? When is their next carrier getting here?”For that matter, I also need the Americans at home to think “They don’t want us here, why are we here, what’s the point, when can we leave? Why are we trying to fight the Chinese, they’re on our side and we’ve been going to their restaurants since my grandparents were young?” I’m trying to change the decades-long policies of some of the world’s richest and most powerful countries from an outside, potentially hostile position. Force won’t work.Much better to win without a fight, or at least without a fight against the strongest and most prepared opponent with allies and bases that surround me.Feel free to offer suggestions, I’m an amateur in the field of military studies and many of the tangential disciplines required to realize this strategy.