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FTC bans TurboTax from advertising 'free' services, calls deceptive advertising

cnn.com

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Re: FTC bans TurboTax from advertising 'free' services, calls deceptive advertising

#211

Post by KMag »

Dalewyn wrote: post #192
dcow wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For fractions like 1/3rd and 1/4th all it takes is common sense.

I speak, and thus think, in both English and Japanese. English says "1/4", or "1 over 4", or "1 quarter". Japanese says "4 bun no 1", or the practical equivalent of saying "4 under 1" in English. I consequently routinely say the numbers in reverse, confounding both myself and anyone around me before I realize my brain engaged in furious tentacle sex with the numbers.

> I speak, and thus think, in both English and Japanese.

The vast majority of processing is happening outside language-related areas of the brain. There's certainly leaky interfaces between areas of the brain, but if you literally thought in a language, and that distinction persisted throughout the brain, that would seem to imply that speaking 3 languages would require 3x the number of connections in the brain.

The strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis would presumably be true if we literally thought in a language, but the strong form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has been thoroughly discredited.

In other words, "thinking in a language" is an illusion.

Re: FTC bans TurboTax from advertising 'free' services, calls deceptive advertising

#212

Post by euroderf »

zo1 wrote: post #181
ckw wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why didn't they start selling 1/5 pounders?

Quarter and pounder rhymes so rolls off people's tongues. Fifta-Pounder? Fifth-Pounder? Five-Pounder? For all we know, marketing vetoed it cause they were lazy.

How 'bout a five-ouncer ?

Or would that suffer by seeming microscopic when listed close to "32 ounce" drinks ?

Re: FTC bans TurboTax from advertising 'free' services, calls deceptive advertising

#213

Post by figassis »

al_borland wrote: post #164
KTibow wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While that does sound good I think the previous comment was saying how it's not free without insurance so it's not technically free

I suppose. Where I’m at, and I think almost everywhere in the US, drivers are legally required to have car insurance. Assuming the chip repair places don’t require a premium level of insurance, it should be a non-issue, as the requirement is something everyone is already paying for.

It is still not free. We need to stop redefining things.

Re: FTC bans TurboTax from advertising 'free' services, calls deceptive advertising

#214

Post by euroderf »

yurishimo wrote: post #208
redrove wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you make $250k/yr+ in the US all of those problems melt away due to the availability of disposable income. In the EU you top out at €100-150k. I say this from experience as a European who's lived on both continents.

But this also depends almost entirely on where you live. €100k in the almost any city in Netherlands, France, or Germany is a great income that can support a family with one earner. $250k might only put you in "solidly" middle class if you have to live in SF or NYC. The difference is that the $250k salaries are 99% of the time only widely available in these extreme HCOL cities. Healthcare for a family of 4 in some pa…

Efficiencies from health care competition are illusory when you properly scope it to include paperwork hassles, time hassles, and pressure on provides to skimp.

Re: FTC bans TurboTax from advertising 'free' services, calls deceptive advertising

#215

Post by throwaway26192 »

consp wrote: post #200
redrove wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, in Sweden the taxes are also insane. I’d rather have to pay some middleman a paltry sum every year than pay 30% more tax just for the privilege of the government automatically calculating them for me. Not saying the US shouldn’t do this automatically, I’m merely pointing out it’s not a 1 to 1 comparison.

If you include healthcare, daycare, state pensions, disability insurance, employment insurance etc as a tax (which it is in most cases with more tax) the "insane" amount isn't that insane anymore.

The US spends more per capita in healthcare than Sweden and Finland combined [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...

Re: FTC bans TurboTax from advertising 'free' services, calls deceptive advertising

#216

Post by tialaramex »

wharvle wrote: post #76
cityofdelusion wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This story has to be apocryphal, as fractions aren't _that_ rare, especially in the U.S. with its imperial system and third of a cup measurements or quarter inches or half miles and so on.

Anecdotally, it seems like working with fractions is where a lot of people fall off the math-train and never get back on. … yes, that early.

Forty years ago we learned fractions with chocolate bars. A trustworthy child would be chosen to walk from the primary school to the local store (about 5 minutes walk for an adult, probably about two minutes for a child who was just given money by a responsible adult to buy chocolate) and bring back some chocolate, and then kids who raise their hand and give the correct answer to fraction questions get the fraction in its physical form as chocolate. What's half of this third of the bar? A sixth, and now because I knew that I get to eat 1/6 of a bar of chocolate, whereas the kid who enthusiastically answered that it's a quarter does not because that's wrong.

Re: FTC bans TurboTax from advertising 'free' services, calls deceptive advertising

#217

Post by doikor »

redrove wrote: post #197
mfi wrote: post #168

In Sweden, for most citizen the tax authority does the tax declaration for you. If you don't want to do any changes (which most people doesn't have to), you simply write a text to them [1]. [1] https://skatteverket.se/servicelankar/otherlanguages/inengli...

To be fair, in Sweden the taxes are also insane. I’d rather have to pay some middleman a paltry sum every year than pay 30% more tax just for the privilege of the government automatically calculating them for me. Not saying the US shouldn’t do this automatically, I’m merely pointing out it’s not a 1 to 1 comparison.

What does the tax rate and prefilling tax forms have to do with each other? The system would work the same with 1% and 99% tax rates too.

Re: FTC bans TurboTax from advertising 'free' services, calls deceptive advertising

#218

Post by vdaea »

fantasyfacts wrote: post #158
burkaman wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who live paycheck to paycheck are very good at budgeting because they have to do it to survive, they don't need any more pressure. If anything it's richer people that could use a little prodding, but either way we don't need the government to be withholding extra money from people it thinks might have bad habits. > they get a big paycheck once a year to pay off whatever If you have something big to pay off, yo…

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Re: FTC bans TurboTax from advertising 'free' services, calls deceptive advertising

#219

Post by fyrn_ »

bsimpson wrote: post #4

> This decision is the result of a biased and broken system where the Commission serves as accuser, judge, jury, and then appellate judge all in the same case Interesting argument, but also a distraction from "we lied in advertising." > It could also clearly disclose the percentage of customers that actually do qualify for the free service, somewhere close to the “free” claim advertised, the commission said. They ran…

Honestly, not thsg interesting of an argument to me as a citizen. This is exactly the kind if thing I want the FTC to have the power to handle without getting tied up in court for 15 years like everything else seems to.

Far to easy for a corp to delay while it pays otherwise.

Re: FTC bans TurboTax from advertising 'free' services, calls deceptive advertising

#220

Post by kidsil »

maximus-decimus wrote: post #65
cityofdelusion wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This story has to be apocryphal, as fractions aren't _that_ rare, especially in the U.S. with its imperial system and third of a cup measurements or quarter inches or half miles and so on.

I did teacher's college in Canada and the teacher who taught math said his biggest surprise when he moved from Europe to Canada is how terrible people were with fraction. I think he asked a barista to fill his cup to 2/3 and they couldn't do it because they didn't know what 2/3 was.

I had the same shock but with reading. They're very much ahead in Europe in terms of reading levels.
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