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Might want to look that one up; he's a law professor of some repute.

Here's some more information of interest:

https://www.cato.org/survey-re...

https://today.yougov.com/news/...

http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...

I believe, if you scroll up, that the original post was:

Dissenting opinions can be punished by the state, or the herd, but either way, the outcome is the same.

Just tracing the problem back. People like to portray Chinese imports as Chinese brands, not as the result of American business engineering.

While I'm often critical of how litigious our society has become, I'm also glad for it as vendors marketing Chinese made children's toys containing lead paint can be sued, whether or not they made the design decision. For a society that provides examples of extreme callousness such as bridges made of garbage, American businesses have good reason to be extremely diligent in monitoring supply lines.

Along with middle-class and minimum-wage workers who can buy more quality goods and live at a higher standard of living.

Again, with the problem of income inequality, only being able to afford chinese 'goods' even as majority of families are dual income makes a declaration of higher standard of living questionable. I fail to see how this will be a net benefit in the long run.

Healthcare they can't afford, and don't need? That's laughable. So when they do get sick, I'm supposed to pay for them? Isn't that what you fucking people incessantly rail against all the fucking time? That's all I ever hear my dopey fucking sister ever say - "I'm tired of having to pay for these people!! I'm tired of having to pay for these people!!' She sounds like a fucking parrot. It makes me want to shove a god-damned cracker down her throat, followed by my fucking fist. Since Obama got the unemployment back down so fucking low after inheriting W's god-awful mess, they shouldn't have any trouble going out and finding a fucking job, so they can afford healthcare. If you're tired of paying for them, then why do you vote for a system that virtually guarantees you will have to pay for them (and their fucking kids) for the rest of their lives?

"Trump Bump vs Obama Effect." So, no, probably not sheer coincidence. However, seeing how unpopular Trumps policies are, it is my firm belief that the Trump Bump is due to the market's confidence that he'll fail to put most of his damaging policies into place.

You stupid fuck. Do you seriously think Shumer is going to allow that fucking crybaby have his wall? He can have all the temper tantrums he wants, but even most Repugs agree - HE"S NOT GOING TO GET THAT FUCKING WALL.

You'd think if Shumer was lying about the wall offer ever having been on the table, then Trump surely would be calling him out on it After all, it's been all over the fucking news. Funny that's not happening.

Things took a YUUUUGE Democratic turn with the last election cycle. Boy, I can't fucking wait until mid-terms. Gonna slap your bitch around.

Hey, the next time I see Chuck, remind me to ask him what tune he's playing on that violin. I kind of like it; it sounds like a waltz.

You misunderstood my point entirely. I feel that what the law IS conflicts with what the law WOULD BE under an equitable system that is a democracy instead of an oligarchy. By public opinion, corporate tax rates should increase, but policy does not reflect public opinion.

It's similar to, and directly related to, how lobbyists are the least trusted profession because the public perceives their role as bribery. Legally, it is distinct from bribery, but it is a legal distinction without a practical difference.

The law can be and often is a farce, as anyone who has studied history will know well.

Americans really are stupid sheep, (and I am one!).

No, we're not. People who make sweeping generalizations are.

The red state vs. blue state comparison is flawed because there are no purely red or blue states. What there is instead are urban and rural parts of the country. Urban areas are deeply blue and rural is deeply red.

To see the truth of this, just look at an election map by precinct for your state. Compare it to a map of urban vs. rural.

To truly compare, you need to cut across geographical boundaries. The Pew Research Center did that by correlating political party to food stamp usage. Democrats are TWICE as likely as Republicans to have taken food stamps.

Source: http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...

This makes good common sense, too. Democrats in the urban core are obviously much more supportive of a large, active government, and Republicans in rural areas want smaller government.

Red States vs Blue States. Folly. Has anyone ever thought that one country with 50 states and Puerto Ricco would be better off if the country was divided into 4 regions, with each region being semi-atonomous. Within each region you could create laws that are needed by that region. Further more, the cost of doing government would drop sharply. The response time to get government action would be much less. The inter-region state-to-state trade would continue, as it does, its just realizing that congress is too large, the senate to large, and decisions take a long time and are not always equitable.

The 4 regions would have representatives to the United States Global house. I could see NY, NJ, Mass, Va and Connecticut forming one region. Another 12 states forming a second, etc.
Consider the following: Every seven workers need one boss, every seven bosses need a super boss, ever seven superbosses need one boss. How high is the pyramid?
Now look at the height of the pyramid for each region. Do the head count. Yes, its easier and faster to get things done if the USA was divided politically into regions of atleast 12 states per region. Everyone would still be American, only Washington could disappear as you know it.

The red state vs. blue state comparison is flawed because there are no purely red or blue states. What there is instead are urban and rural parts of the country. Urban areas are deeply blue and rural is deeply red.

To see the truth of this, just look at an election map by precinct for your state. Compare it to a map of urban vs. rural.

To truly compare, you need to cut across geographical boundaries. The Pew Research Center did that by correlating political party to food stamp usage. Democrats are TWICE as likely as Republicans to have taken food stamps.

Source: http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...

This makes good common sense, too. Democrats in the urban core are obviously much more supportive of a large, active government, and Republicans in rural areas want smaller government.

Average amount of a Hindu bank account. $8/1billion=$.00000008.

Hindu is a religion. Indian does not equal Hindu. Hindus living in the U.S. are likely to have larger incomes (and hence bigger bank account balances) than people of most other faiths: http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...

The first citation shows only that the majority of persons in the bottom fifth are unemployed. It makes no claim about full time or part time, only whether they earn or not.

I think the way you phrased the original assertion is a little misleading. It would tend to suggest that poor households are poor because they are only working part time, and not full time. At an average earnings of $30k per earner in these households, that is very much not the case. For a full time job, this equates to about $15 per hour. Since part time jobs pay less not more, it is unlikely that the typical scenario is someone earning $30 per hour for 20 hour weeks. The more likely answer is the $15 per hour full time i mentioned above. I was unable to find any information either way, as the BLS seems to not know or not care.

The data in the links you provided strongly suggests that the fundamental problem is unemployment in low income households, whether it is a result of unemployability, or more likely, child rearing / eldercare.

One other thing to note is that While the Adjusted household income ha remained flat since 1965, the number of earners needed to gain that income has increased from 1.25 in 1950 to 1.7 in 1990. This means that from 1965 until 1990 real wages dropped across the board, but the decline was masked because the workforce expanded to compensate. This is the reason for the economic boom of the 80s: More workers at cheaper wages means vastly increased economic output for the country. The fundamental problem with this is that from a societal point of view, all of those extra workers were not "unemployed" before, they were homemakers. They performed childcare and eldercare as well as housekeeping and other duties. Many families, especially those without social safety nets simply cannot provide the 2 full time workers that are required to continue earning the median household income, so they fall to the bottom, and since childcare / eldercare is essentially a lifetime commitment, they are basically screwed.

There are two fundamental components to the solution to basic poverty. The first is universal health care. A person can ignore or deal with just about any bad happening, and recover to a position where they can earn a living. The only real exception is health. If you loose your helath, you have nothing, so you must do whatever you are able in order to keep your health so that you can earn a living. Without universal health care, people do what they always do when faced with a problem they cannot handle. They ignore it until it bites them, and then they die, but not before costing our healthcare system far more than the cost of universal healthcare. A $500 medical problem can easily become a $50,000 medical problem if you ignore it long enough, and hospitals are not allowed to refuse life threatening emergencies. Someone pays the bill eventually, and you can bet it isn't the person who is on deaths door.

The second part is child/elder care. For obvious reasons this causes people to loose the ability to work in most cases. The only people for whom paying for childcare while continuing to work makes financial sense are those who are already in the upper middle class or better, and they are not the problem here. Universal childcare would go a very long way to leveling the playing field for the bottom 5th.

You act like race riots and political riots don't happen. Or that domestic terrorism doesn't exist.

As far as immigration goes, Miami has a larger percentage of immigrants than San Jose and note that Los Angeles is not very far behind San Jose. And the violent crime rates of Miami and Los Angeles dwarf that of San Jose. San Jose kind of bucks the trends - I think having billions and billions of dollars in "sillycon valley" makes that happen?

Or perhaps it's not the fact they're immigrant, but whether or not those immigrants are here legally? After all, illegal immigrants are about 3.4% of the population but they overwhelmingly commit most of the violent and drug crime in the US.

Or perhaps it has to do with the race of those immigrants? You do realize that 61.4% of all immigrants in San Jose are from Asia, and Asians have some of the lowest crime rates. So maybe the fact your immigrant neighbors are here legally, making big money, and from ethnic backgrounds that for whatever reason have a much lower crime rate, you're in a unique spot and cannot being to extrapolate your experience to nationwide - because it is so different than most of the rest of the US?

You act like race riots and political riots don't happen. Or that domestic terrorism doesn't exist.

As far as immigration goes, Miami has a larger percentage of immigrants than San Jose and note that Los Angeles is not very far behind San Jose. And the violent crime rates of Miami and Los Angeles dwarf that of San Jose. San Jose kind of bucks the trends - I think having billions and billions of dollars in "sillycon valley" makes that happen?

Or perhaps it's not the fact they're immigrant, but whether or not those immigrants are here legally? After all, illegal immigrants are about 3.4% of the population but they overwhelmingly commit most of the violent and drug crime in the US.

Or perhaps it has to do with the race of those immigrants? You do realize that 61.4% of all immigrants in San Jose are from Asia, and Asians have some of the lowest crime rates. So maybe the fact your immigrant neighbors are here legally, making big money, and from ethnic backgrounds that for whatever reason have a much lower crime rate, you're in a unique spot and cannot being to extrapolate your experience to nationwide - because it is so different than most of the rest of the US?

The US per wikipedia has a total of about 12 million illegal immigrants.

Which were absorbed over a long period of time and who came to work for depressingly low wages. It wasn't 12 million all at once. Many of them have been here literally for decades. The total number of illegal immigrants in the US hasn't risen for about a decade and in fact has declined somewhat from the peak.

Migration has been a relatively minor problem for Europe.

It isn't a minor problem. It's not to the scale justifying any sort of panic but any time you get a million new refugees in a relatively short time frame that creates a lot of very real problems. These people need to be fed, sheltered, to find work and school, etc. This isn't a trivial undertaking by an measure. It's made worse of course by the inevitable racists and xenophobes who want to shut the borders to keep anyone different out.

Real refugees have 2 primary goals 1) To reach the nearest location where the immediate danger they face is no longer present. 2) To return to their origin as soon as it is safe to do so.

In the case of Syrians, the locations matching those criteria would typically be within Syria itself. They could find safety without ever leaving the country.

I take it you know nothing about the Syrian crisis, then.

What place in Syria is it that you believe is "where the immediate danger they face is no longer present"? The few places within Syria that aren't in a war zone with boundaries that are constantly changing... are jammed to overflowing with the eight million people who are already displaced within Syria; the largest internally displaced population in the world. About six in ten Syrians are now refugees, most of them internally.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34189117

You know, we spend more on education than just about any other country. There is always a hue-and-cry for single-payer medicine to control costs, but we have, essentially, single-payer education, and costs are high - and the results aren't very promising. Maybe those poor school results aren't a result of "gutted budgets" (even though they tend to be the highest in the world), but a bankrupt mentality of how to educate, and what forms the basis of a good education?

If you're spending so much on Education and aren't managing to have a decent education system, you need to look at how the system is run. The problem with Education in the US is the same with health care. the US govt spends twice what the UK govt does per person per annum on health care but does not provide the same standard of service as the NHS and the US health care recipient has to pay out of pocket. The problem is the US health care system is made to fit an ideology that does not support an affordable health care system... the US education system is the same, designed to fit the ideology of those who control the purse strings, not to service those who need or want education.

To fix education in the US, you need to do what we did in Australia or the UK and take control away from the Government and let the service be measured and guided by its results. Of course this means that some bible basher congressman from East Texas cant ban schools from teaching things like Evolution.

You do realize that Republicans like illegal immigration, because it forces working class wages down, right? If someone lowered the boom on people illegally employing illegal immigrants, it would solve a lot of problems. The Republicans aren't about to do it.

The mainstream Republicans are weasels about immigration, but it was the Democrats who pushed abominations like the Motor Voter law

https://leginfo.legislature.ca...

Existing law makes it a crime for a person to willfully cause, procure, or allow himself or herself or any other person to be registered as a voter, knowing that he or she or that other person is not entitled to registration. Existing law also makes it a crime to fraudulently vote or attempt to vote.
This bill would provide that if a person who is ineligible to vote becomes registered to vote by operation of the California New Motor Voter Program in the absence of a violation by that person of the crime described above, that person's registration shall be presumed to have been effected with official authorization and not the fault of that person. The bill would also provide that if a person who is ineligible to vote becomes registered to vote by operation of this program, and that person votes or attempts to vote in an election held after the effective date of the person's registration, that person shall be presumed to have acted with official authorization and is not guilty of fraudulently voting or attempting to vote, unless that person willfully votes or attempts to vote knowing that he or she is not entitled to vote.

I.e. they're adding illegals to the voter rolls and decriminalising them voting.

And Democrats are even now fighting Trump's Wall. The reason for this is that Hispanics voted 2:1 Democrat to Republican

https://www.nytimes.com/intera...

And you have people like this

https://www.theguardian.com/co...

Saying that real change will only be possible when whites are a minority. Which, thanks to their immigration policies will happen in 2043.

There will be no bans on hate speech. In the US, "hate speech" is a matter of personal opinion, and will continue to be

40% of Millennials support bans on hate speech.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...

Given the Democrats believe the constitution is a living document and have already managed to reinterpret it to make gay marriage a right, and Hillary believed that DC vs Heller was wrong and that the Second Amendment needs to be reinterpreted so that individuals do not have the right to bear arms, who's to say that the Democrats next major initiative might be to reinterpret the First Amendment to say that hate speech bans are fine?

Thank the GOP got in and got Gorsuch on the SCOTUS basically. Otherwise Hillary would have nominated someone who'd have blown away big chunks of the Bill of Rights so the Second Amendment ended up meaning what it does in NYC - you have the right to bear arms, so long as you're a cop, an ex cop, rich or know the right people. Actually NYC passed law against misgendering too, so the First Amendment means jack shit there too. I'm sure if Hillary had got in she'd have nominated a SCOTUS judge who've have pushed this crap on the rest of the country.

Not to mention she said 'the unborn person has no constitutional rights'. Which honestly sounds like the Democrat position prior to the civil war that slaves people had no rights.

Given a choice between the somew

You know, we spend more on education than just about any other country. There is always a hue-and-cry for single-payer medicine to control costs, but we have, essentially, single-payer education, and costs are high - and the results aren't very promising. Maybe those poor school results aren't a result of "gutted budgets" (even though they tend to be the highest in the world), but a bankrupt mentality of how to educate, and what forms the basis of a good education?

Americans sometimes wonder why real wages have stayed stagnant since the 1960s. The simple answer is supply and demand: in response to the toxic effect of unions, businesses have been lobbying for us to dump more people into the workforce. This increases supply and thus reduces wages, which allows business to counter-act unions. We have been flooding the workforce since the 1960s with women, Hart-Cellar Act third world labor, illegal immigrants, H1Bs, and now digital helpers like computers and (soon) robots. Each one of these dumps cuts wages. What Trump is doing is pure business logic: he is reducing supply, increasing demand, and therefore, raising wages.

...here in America, we're losing English of any sort out to Spanish.

English proficiency is rising among U.S. Latinos. The share of Latinos who speak Spanish is declining.

...here in America, we're losing English of any sort out to Spanish.

English proficiency is rising among U.S. Latinos. The share of Latinos who speak Spanish is declining.

And you're confusing accumulated debt with deficit spending.

The debt is just the sum of the deficits.

We can easily afford universal health care simply by implementing a fair equitable tax system so that the rich pay their fair share.

The top 2.7% pay 51% of all individual income taxes collected. And the top 0.1% pay 39.2% of all taxes collected. It's hard to imagine how they're not already paying 'their fair share'.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...

In 2014, people with adjusted gross income, or AGI, above $250,000 paid just over half (51.6%) of all individual income taxes, though they accounted for only 2.7% of all returns filed, according to our analysis of preliminary IRS data. Their average tax rate (total taxes paid divided by cumulative AGI) was 25.7%. By contrast, people with incomes of less than $50,000 accounted for 62.3% of all individual returns filed, but they paid just 5.7% of total taxes. Their average tax rate was 4.3%.

The relative tax burdens borne by different income groups changes over time, due both to economic conditions and the constantly shifting provisions of tax law. For example, using more comprehensive IRS data covering tax years 2000 through 2011, we found that people who made between $100,000 and $200,000 paid 23.8% of the total tax liability in 2011, up from 18.8% in 2000. Filers in the $50,000-to-$75,000 group, on the other hand, paid 12% of the total liability in 2000 but only 9.1% in 2011. (The tax liability figures include a few taxes, such as self-employment tax and the "nanny tax," that people typically pay along with their income taxes.)

All told, individual income taxes accounted for a little less than half (47.4%) of government revenue, a share that's been roughly constant since World War II. The federal government collected $1.54 trillion from individual income taxes in fiscal 2015, making it the national government's single-biggest revenue source. (Other sources of federal revenue include corporate income taxes, the payroll taxes that fund Social Security and Medicare, excise taxes such as those on gasoline and cigarettes, estate taxes, customs duties and payments from the Federal Reserve.) Until the 1940s, when the income tax was expanded to help fund the war effort, generally only the very wealthy paid it.

Since the 1970s, the segment of federal revenues that has grown the most is the payroll tax - those line items on your pay stub that go to pay for Social Security and Medicare. For most people, in fact, payroll taxes take a bigger bite out of their paycheck than federal income tax. Why? The 6.2% Social Security withholding tax only applies to wages up to $118,500. For example, a worker earning $40,000 will pay $2,480 (6.2%) in Social Security tax, but an executive earning $400,000 will pay $7,347 (6.2% of $118,500), for an effective rate of just 1.8%. By contrast, the 1.45% Medicare tax has no upper limit, and in fact high earners pay an extra 0.9%.

All but the top-earning 20% of American families pay more in payroll taxes than in federal income taxes, according to a Treasury Department analysis.

Still, that analysis confirms that, after all federal taxes are factored in, the U.S. tax system as a whole is progressive. The top 0.1% of families pay the equivalent of 39.2% and the bottom 20% have negative tax rates (that is, they get more money back from the government in the form of refundable tax credits than they pay in taxes).

Even if you confiscate 100% of all wealth from all the billionaires you'd get $1.7 trillion, and only once.

https://www.quora.com/How-much...

US has about 425 billio

Apparently the Christians get more schooling than the Muslims.

In sub-Saharan Africa, Christians average six years of formal schooling, compared with fewer than three years for Muslims.

These are exactly similar to all those advertising. Each portion of the content discloses only a part of the fact but never state it in full, or audiences would find that it is false.

The wall is about to go up, and nobody can stop it.

What was the full promise again? Yes, Mexico will pay for it. Hmm... Really? Are you that stupid dumb f**k who still believes that part too? No, you don't believe that part but rather intend to ignore it, or you would have included this portion in your post. Well, you voted for him, then you will PAY for it (including all other innocents).

Illegal aliens *will* be deported. If you're illegal, you should have straightened that out long ago.

You are not only stupid but also ignorant. Deporting illegal aliens happened in many other presidents including the one you and your overlord are accusing. There are many sources if you just really use your brain to do some googling. Oh wait, you aren't capable of doing that, I forgot.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-pol...
http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics...

You had plenty of warning. Trump is the FIRST politician to ACTUALLY do what he SAID he would.

No, he is the same as all politicians that DO WHAT THEY SAID IN PART and COVER OTHER PARTS THEY DIDN'T DO. The only difference is that he always attempts to CLAIM ALL CREDITS THAT ARE FOR OTHERS.

No, for logistical reasons. There are around 235,000,000 eligible voters in the US, across 3,797,000 square miles. There is no "federal ID" or "drivers license", each State "does it's own thing". This is per the US Constitution, in the 9th Amendment. Something like that would require a Constitutional amendment, and a Constitutional Convention. The last time was 1933, and would NEVER happen in the current US political climate.

As of September, 2016, 13% of US adults still don't use the Internet, so this would have to be addressed first. Maybe, if there was some giant national "push" this could be fixed in the next 10 years. So no, this idea is unworkable in the US.

I'm thinking the Facebook numbers are closer to reality. After all, there are a LOT of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. at this point,

Gee, if only someone had ever tried to quantify the number of illegal immigrants in the US...

Lorenz says another thing employers need to understand is that wages need to rise, even at entry levels, if they want to fill jobs. He says he is telling manufacturers, "If you are below $12 an hour, I don't know that I'm going to be the person to be able to help you with those jobs."

That's because in the past year, job openings have nearly doubled in western North Carolina where he works, and the supply of additional workers is shrinking fast.

Cappelli says another part of the problem is that employers haven't adjusted to new conditions. For years they've had their choice of workers desperate for a job. Now, the labor market has tightened, but many employers haven't responded, he says.

Pretty obvious what's going on here:

Normal Economy: Recession ends -> labor market shrinks -> wages rise.

US Economy last 40 years: Recession ends -> labor market shrinks -> immigration fills the gap.

US Economy under cartoonishly anti-immigrant government: Recession ends -> labor market shrinks -> immigration goes down anyway -> OMG what do we do!!!?

Obviously wages either have to go up, or managers will have to move the work overseas. Given the attitude of US management for the last 40 years about sharing their wealth increases with workers, I know which I'd bet on...

People who actually adhere to Christian teachings believe their highest command is to love others as they love themselves.

Unless they are women, homosexuals, Satanists, peoples of conflicting denominations, etc.

For some reason, the purported "Christians" who are intolerant get a lot of press. (The Westboro Baptist Church, for example-- a church which isn't even affiliated with the Baptist alliance; they just call themselves Baptist-- has 40 members. That's it: 40. But it has had literally hundreds of thousands of news stories.)

But this is not all Christians, however. I remember back in the day when some churches were putting up big billboards with "God says this, God says that", the church near my house put up a sign saying "God loves you. No exceptions."

An interesting list here: http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...

I did not read DigiShaman's posts because they were modded too far down for me to see without effort; however, I did want to comment on the Sharia law on all Americans thing.

Islam is designed to gather as much control as possible, as are some other religions. Sharia law is demanded by many (how many? can't give exact numbers) Muslims. Many places where a government is weak have implemented Sharia law, except Saudi Arabia where the government is strong and supports Sharia law explicitly.

Fearing that Sharia law will come to America is a legitimate fear. It is practiced in some Muslim communities in addition to regular "law and order" regardless of whether or not a government recognizes it.

The lack of ability to point to a specific American Muslim person supporting Sharia is not a huge problem. I am sure it would not be difficult to actually ask American Muslims if they would support Sharia law and find some that say yes. Here is a link discussing actual numbers but take it with a grain of salt: http://www.pewresearch.org/fac... as there is no number given for American Muslim support for Sharia. It is still safe to say that there is more than one.

All of that being said, hatred, stereotypes, racism, nationalism, religionism(?), sexism, etc are all repugnant to me.

Christianity (maybe others too?) teach that God is Love. That is respectable (but I am not Christian). If you act with love in your heart, you will find that violence and such is a VERY rare need in this "modern" world.

You are confusing technological advancement with purchasing power. The “luxuries” that you cite are not included in the areas where people actually spend most of their money. Housing, transportation, food, education, and medical care account for 88% of dollars expended by the average person. All of these have risen in real terms outpacing or equaling income gains for most.

  (As a side note, the luxury features you cite in cars are actually a function of higher real prices. When base costs of something go up, relative cost added by options decreases and those options are consumed in greater quantities.)

By your reasoning, Andrew Carnegie would be the poorest person in the world for no amount of expenditure by him could have purchased an iPad..However, few would agree with you.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...

But unlike Nazi Germany, our economy is actually doing quite well.

No, and also no, and have I mentioned no?

Our economy is doing quite shit. And the information is right there if you want the truth, not the comforting lies like the "unemployment rate", which has been a blatant out and out lie as long as I can remember.

Women make up 18% of college CS students.

That's a good point, and the basis for a lot of receipting effort to put girls and women in STEM.

On the other hand, women's enrollment in college is outpacing that of men.

So now we see a general trend developing since the 1970's and getting worse, so where's the effort to close this 10 percentage point gap?

I'm the 1% of the population who doesn't give a fuck about social justice. Not even four years ago I was living below the federal poverty level for the 10 years of my adult life with my crowning achievement being a 20 hour a week minimum wage job at Staples where I mostly just manned the till and stocked shelves. And according to this I'm now within the upper class, and I didn't need any stupid social justice.

I didn't have an inheritance of any kind, parents didn't pay for a thing that I needed, I didn't have any special privileges, and the only opportunities I had were ones I created for myself. I just went to college, got a job with a so-so but comfortable salary, then got laid off, then got another job with a very good salary. Both jobs were asking for much more experience than I even had, and the only reason I landed both jobs was because the interviewers were just impressed with the knowledge I gained from a no-name community college associates degree.

I honestly feel that somebody who thinks they're deserving of some kind of justice for whatever shitty situation they put themselves in is just being lazy. I know this because I've been there.

More important question, are men with lower sperm counts more of less happy than men with higher sperm counts.

Weogh! That was a hard to parse as a Sarah Palin speech, so I'll just hit on the basics.

Your noting that a lot of men avoiding having children is part of another trend Men are becoming less interested in marriage, and oddly, women are becoming more interested than a few years back. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... And given some other trends, the numbers might decrease yet more. Certainly given that college campuses are trending a 10 percent gape between female and male and growing, http://www.pewresearch.org/fac... there wil be a lot of educated women - who probably do not want to marry lesser educated men - who are going to have an issue with marriage and reproducing.

There might be some relationship between lower testosterone levels and men dropping out of society and marriage and children - I don't know enough to make that presumption. Generally when you ask those men who choose to opt out, thier ansers tend to be that marriage and relationships are just not a good deal for men. They do make an argument that is fairly convincing and rational. But once we get into social matters it is hard to get definitive causes and effects.

I carry cash when I need to spend it, not simply to have something in my pocket, and not once has anyone, anywhere, ever tried to rob me.

Those whiners who think carrying cash is dangerous are the same ones who will whine about how dangerous flying in planes is when there's a crash. That completely ignores the 10,000 other takeoffs and landings which took place that same day without an issue.

What is dangerous is carrying a cell phone. Between running into objects or distracted driving because you're engrossed with whatever text message you're trying read/send, having a cell phone is orders of magnitude more dangerous than carrying cash. This doesn't even include people robbing you of your cell phone which then gives them access to your accounts because you've conveniently put all that information on your phone.

The question becomes, which is worse: losing the few dollars you had in your pocket, or giving someone access to all your bank accounts?

Same Sex Marriage around the world. Given that India, China, and SE Asia comprise about half the world's population and same-sex marriage is NOT allowed there, it's easy to see that the majority of the world does not accept gay marriage.

Did you know that there are 1.8 BILLION Muslims in the world and that Islam is the fastest growing religion ?
I'm not afraid that the U.S. will become an Islamic theocracy anytime soon, but we ignore the trend at our own peril. Islam is a global force to be reckoned with and it's getting more powerful.

Did you know that there are 1.8 BILLION Muslims in the world and that Islam is the fastest growing religion ?
I'm not afraid that the U.S. will become an Islamic theocracy anytime soon, but we ignore the trend at our own peril. Islam is a global force to be reckoned with and it's getting more powerful.

Damn big cult, seeing as more than 2/3 of the Islamic population support Sharia Law

Oh the horrors! You know, I realize Sharia Law is a big bogeyman for a lot of folks, but this is no more meaningful than believing the 10 Commandments should be supported.

Stoning gays for being gay. How very progressive.

Speaking of things that Christians resoundingly support...

The problem is you are working under the mistaken belief that the Islamic regressives are a small minority of the Islamic population. They are not. They are the clear majority.

The problem is that you are working under the mistaken belief that chastising "progressives" for what you purport is their acceptance of "Islamist regressive" is somehow overcoming the bigotry and viciousness which you don't want to admit is what "progressives" have an issue with, on a variety of sides, including the one claiming to oppose "Islam" out of some high-minded nobility. Except it is not.

. At some point, the left will have to deal with this schizophrenic conflict between what used to be called 'liberal values' and islam.

It's not as hard as you think, and it's not a schizophrenic conflict. It's garden variety human hatred. There's Islam, and then there's the hateful cult that justifies itself in its name.

Damn big cult, seeing as more than 2/3 of the Islamic population support Sharia Law ...

Stoning gays for being gay. How very progressive.

The problem is you are working under the mistaken belief that the Islamic regressives are a small minority of the Islamic population. They are not. They are the clear majority.

Even though a large number of older adults are getting news on mobile devices, that doesn’t mean they prefer it. Across all adults, a clear majority of those who get news on both mobile devices and desktop/laptop computers prefer to get their news on mobile (65%). But those 65 and older are the only age group in which less than half prefer to do so: Only 44% prefer mobile, compared with about three-quarters of those 18 to 29 (77%), figures that have remained steady for both groups over the past year. In the next-highest age group, those 50 to 64, about half now prefer to get their news on mobile (54%), up from about four-in-ten (41%) a year ago.

(TFS didn't claim that 80% preferred mobile, but I thought it was mildly ambiguous.)

Seems about on the level of, "Doctors claim vaccines don't cause autism, but Jenny McCarthy doesn't agree," which started from and is largely maintained by the left.

Started by "the left"? Say what? "Left" and "Right" have nothing to do with this. "Doctors" are at least as likely to be members of "the left" if by that you mean social liberals as opposed to conservatives. Oh, wait, they are more likely:

https://www.psychologytoday.co...

http://www.reuters.com/article...

http://jamanetwork.com/journal...

The last article is very thoughtful and analyzes trends in political contributions specifically, fractionated by gender, race, and subspeciality. It indicates that left/right even for physicians is more likely to be a question of income, gender, race, speciality, and age than it is of "intelligence" per se, but it is a simple matter of fact that on average liberals are smarter than conservatives.

Now, if you want to get into pseudoscience, we can talk about the "conservatives" in Texas and Kansas and Missouri who are passing legislation to make masturbation a misdemeanor crime (Texas), teach intelligent design on a par with evolution in the schools, rewrite history so that the founding fathers are Good Christians as opposed to deists or atheists and suppress evidence to the contrary to prevent it from being mentioned in school, let alone taught.

Personally, I tend to think of science as mostly being social value neutral, but the glaring exception to this is when science collides (as it so often does!) with religion. This is beautifully reflected in surveys like this:

http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...

although it is perhaps better summarized by this piece:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

To quote:

The more religious a person is, the more conservative he is, and this relationship is strongly mediated by the value placed on tradition — respect for customs and institutions. But even though religiousness and spirituality are highly correlated, the more spiritual a person is, the more liberal he is. This relationship is mediated by the value placed on universalism — social tolerance and concern for everyone’s welfare.

As with previous studies, conservatives were more conscientious (organized and self-disciplined), while liberals were more agreeable and more open to new ideas and experiences. The trend of conservatives being more religious and liberals being more spiritual held even when controlling for these personality factors, and when controlling for age, gender and socioeconomic status.

As a scientist, I interpret this as the more orthodox religious a person is, the more likely they are to accept absolute nonsense as truth just because it is written down in a scriptural text somewhere and hence exempted somehow from the ordinary rules and methods of reason. The more spiritually religious they are, the more likely they are to accept absolute nonsense as truth just because they "feel" like it must be true and their feelings are again exempt from the ordinary rules and methods of reason. You can see the problem -- liberals and conservatives are almost equally likely to accept at least some nonsense as truth if they are religious, and liberals and conservatives who are intelligent enough not to do this are, almost by definition, less likely to accept nonsense as truth whether or not it is religious simply because they apply the rules

• Republican 41%
• Democrat 66%

Liberal Democrats even go up to 78%, which is the highest among any group.

Unfortunately, these don't compare directly liberals to libertarians. While I agree libertarian number should be higher, you can't say liberals aren't pro-weed, or "they never supported it, still don't".

Exactly what I was going to say, but I will add that this is what allows us to conclude that Conservatives are less educated than Liberals.

You keep talking about rich people, but they make up a tiny fraction of the population.

And pay 51.6% of federal income tax which accounts for 47.4% of individual income tax. Of course, there's another 32.8% of federal tax that's payroll which is lopsided towards the middle way since after you earn $118,500, you don't pay additional Social Security. In general, though, the more money you have (especially as the while top bracket includes a very large range of incomes (which explains why it's greater than the next bracket down)), the less it matters either way if you're taxed more.

Anyone earning under $200k benefits immensely from tax cuts, in fact the lower someone's income the more they benefit. The money is usually immediately spent on goods or invested into markets (for the upper income bands).

(1) How is it a "benefit" that "money is usually immediately spent on goods"? That implies people who spend whatever money they have without seeing much benefit from it. As for "invested into markets", how is that innately a benefit? We've seen the whole IRA shift in the 90s that caused a massive change in the stock market. But is it the thing that's spurred great benefit to anyone? The evidence is basically, no. Instead we've seen repeatedly financial crisis heavily tied to having such massive sums in the stock market, which have caused massive losses to those who invest.

The economic benefits of cutting taxes are well known and logical.

The economic of cutting taxes are also well known and logical. Without any sort of plan to deal with financial issues during down years, it makes no sense to cut taxes during good (or even mediocre) years. The whole idea of cutting taxes that hinges on "economic benefit" is a scam precisely because that's not the reason to cut taxes nor would it be a reason to raise or not raise taxes. The point of taxes are to pay for goods and services the government provides. Don't want those goods and services? Start by cutting those and paying for the goods and services, the debt, that we've been collecting. Only then can we start considering cutting taxes*.

Sure, you need balance and to fund public institutions and services. But to demonize cutting taxes rather than making it a goal (if even through more efficient government services) is the scam.

I'll demonize anyone who thinks it's a good idea to thinking about driving away from the pump before paying or even bothering to remove the pump from the gas tank. That's just stupid.

* And I realize it's not really an either-or. But we're not even meaningfully cutting enough goods and services or pay back the debt meaningfully. We're so far removed from that that cutting taxes shouldn't even be a thought for years, at least. Instead, every good in goods or services is almost immediately met with a "cut taxes of equal or greater amounts, based upon the most optimistic projections on what cutting those taxes will result in or how we won't really double back and still pay in part or whole on those goods and services because of public outcry".

So what you're saying is, despite your claim that 2% raises don't add up over time, inflation numbers suggest that the 2% raises HAVE added up over time, increasing the actual value of their salaries faster than inflation has eroded them?

Please educate yourself.

But after adjusting for inflation, today's average hourly wage has just about the same purchasing power as it did in 1979, following a long slide in the 1980s and early 1990s and bumpy, inconsistent growth since then. In fact, in real terms the average wage peaked more than 40 years ago: The $4.03-an-hour rate recorded in January 1973 has the same purchasing power as $22.41 would today.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/09/for-most-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/

Well, you're sort of right, in that people have other priorities. They are very pro-humans-in-space in general, as mentioned in the link here. There isn't a lot of support for increasing NASA's funding, but there is broad support of around 60% for current levels of funding (or more).

Despite these positive opinions of the space program, just a two-in-ten Americans in the 2012 GSS survey said that the U.S. spends too little on space exploration. Four-in-ten believed the current spending was adequate, while three-in-ten believed further cuts should be made to the program. Instead, Americans strongly preferred increased spending on programs closer to home, including education (76%), public health (59%), and developing alternative energy sources (59%).

Canada, Germany, Norway, etc. have higher tax rates for the wealthy

Top marginal income tax rates are about 53% in the US, significantly higher than both Germany and Norway. Worse yet, top marginal income tax rates in Europe start applying to people in the middle class, often barely above the median. Furthermore, comparisons to Canada and Norway, two resource-rich countries in favorable locations and with small populations, are invalid anyway; we couldn't run the US like Canada or Norway if we wanted to. The only really valid comparison of the US is to the EU as a whole, rather than cherry-picking the wealthiest European states. Otherwise, you ought to compare the US to at least the larger countries, like France and Germany.

and their MEDIAN incomes are about the same or higher than USA

Among industrialized Western nations, the US has some of the highest pre-tax MEDIAN incomes in the world. More importantly, the income tax burden on low and average income earners is substantially lower in the US than in Europe, and Europeans pay massive and regressive VAT taxes on top of that. German/Scandianvian style social welfare states are paid for by the middle class. (Note that the Tax Foundation actually understates US taxes.)

and WITH better social safety nets.

The US has one of the highest amounts of per capita social spending in the world, higher than all of Europe and most of the Nordic countries. Even as percentage of GDP (an invalid comparison because it's absolute spending in $PPP that actually matters), US spending is very high. Countries like Germany have cut their social safety nets massively because they found that generous social safety nets result in people staying out of the workforce. And the services you get from the government in Europe are shitty: long wait times, limited choices, demeaning rules.

We don't have to theorize, their middle is doing better.

No, we don't need to theorize. Have you actually lived in Europe? And I don't mean as an American expat with full access to American opportunities whenever you want to? I have. The European middle class is highly taxed, has limited economic opportunities, and is less economically well off than the US middle class. Much of the European middle class lives below the US poverty line (that is, when you don't cherry-pick Norway and Luxembourg for your comparisons.) The situation in Europe is grim, both economically and politically. And if the US were really as repressive and miserly towards the working class and the middle class, it wouldn't be the migration destination of choice for so many people.

So he did nothing?

Read more carefully:

he has done little to nothing of what he said he was going to do, none of it in any way close to exactly how he said he was going to do it, and everything he has done, he has compulsively lied about due to his tendency for braggadocio and irresponsibility.

Pretty much says he has done things, but failed to do it as he said he would, and lied about it.

If I had wanted to say he had done nothing, I could have said that, but no, I merely stated he had done little to nothing, and none of it was exactly how he said he was going to do it, and I certainly wouldn't have said that he has lied about everything he has done if he had nothing.

Stopped chemical weapons being used in Syria

Lied about stopping Chemical weapons being used in Syria, lied about his wasteful airstrike on an airport that was back in operation almost immediately, and certainly did not fulfill his promises on it. In reality, the Syrian Civil War is still a humanitarian crisis, and the use of Chemical weapons, no matter how deplorable they are, is only a small fraction of the tragedy.

And of course, Trump claimed he would solve the problem, which he hasn't, making his failure a lie. That he had previously denounced such missile strikes as he ordered as theater only harms your defense of him.

Increased S&P 500 by 5% (Real money gained by middle class)

Not directly attributed to anything he did, so...huh Thanks for showing the braggadocio though...the trend was already up and really, trying to assert it is real money gained by middle class? Ah, lies.

Unemployment claims at a 17 year low

A fuller perspective shows the lie.

Unemployment claims have been dropping steadily. Attributing it to Trump is like claiming that he put out a fire that was already mostly extinguished. Of course, he also claimed the same employment numbers were lies before relying on them for his own benefit, so there's another broken word of his. You really can't win with this, either Trump takes responsibility and admits that the complaints he made about unemployment statistics were false, or Trump has still left 90 million Americans without a job.

Illegal immigration drop by 75-90% depending on your source

Or you could at that some more. That isn't even getting into his already demonstrated lie about a Wall, his executive order, and his false sanctuary cities claims. Not to mention the toddlers and senior citizens added to his dangerous criminal list.

His handling of that has been yet another cavalcade of deceits, failure, and incompetence.

Supreme court nomination everyone agrees is good

Well, there's a lie. Your hyperbole betrays you. All it took is one.

There are others. 45 in the Senate alone.

Thats quite a bit for 3 months.

That's quite a bit of lies for 5 Sentences. No wonder Trump is your hero

If you still claim he did nothing, then y

Poor people paid most of the taxes that put fiber in those rich neighborhoods.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's the exact opposite of true. At least at a national level (Federal income tax), the top 16% of earners (those will incomes of $100K or above) account for 79.4% of all the individual tax revenue paid to the government. In fact, the top 1% of earners account for 51.6% of the IRS individual tax revenue all by themselves.

true, in absolute dollar terms, but only in that particular tax category

however, the poor pay far more in taxes if you look at the tax burden imposed

the poor must pay all they earn or get, just to survive, the wealthy have a vast surplus

it seems the "burden" isn't distributed equally, or fairly

Poor people paid most of the taxes that put fiber in those rich neighborhoods.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's the exact opposite of true. At least at a national level (Federal income tax), the top 16% of earners (those will incomes of $100K or above) account for 79.4% of all the individual tax revenue paid to the government. In fact, the top 1% of earners account for 51.6% of the IRS individual tax revenue all by themselves. Maybe taxes in California are radically different, but I doubt it.

From pewresearch.org:

http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...