The Gates Foundation Engages Its Critics

As Steve Jobs might conclude by arcite · 2012-09-04 11:31 · Score: 1, Flamebait

Better to rule in hell than serve in heaven. The Gates foundation is self serving, promoting tax shelters through trusts, and self promotion masquerading as charity. their " charity" amounts to token amounts compared to their corporate investments. Regardless, the world will never love Gates, the road to personal redemption will be long and lonely.

Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by 1000101 · 2012-09-04 11:43 · Score: 3, Insightful

F-you. Comments like these are so, so easy from arm-chair quarterbacks who look at the world through a pin-hole lens. The Gates Foundation might not donate to causes that you believe in, and it might provide tax shelters for some individuals (based on current U.S. Tax Law I might add), but I'd rather see the kind of work that they do and the funds they provide than nothing at all.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-04 11:47 · Score: 4, Insightful

OF COURSE their corporate investments are larger than their givings. this is how foundations without a steady stream of new income work.
they do their charitable work using their investment incomes.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by sam_handelman · 2012-09-04 12:47 · Score: 4, Interesting

Stripped of the invective, AC is 100% correct - did you actually READ any of the articles above?
In either story?
The fact that the Gates Foundation can do more-or-less whatever it wants (Karl Rove is an even more egregious example) and deduct that from their taxes is a minor problem. The real problem is that they're using their combination of leveraged money and free P.R. from fools like you to take over vast quantities of [b]our tax dollars[/b] and redirect that money into their coffers and the coffers of their allies like Pearson Education, Murdoch, etc.

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The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by nbauman · 2012-09-04 12:49 · Score: 5, Informative

A lot of the reforms the Gates Foundation has brought about in public education are actually bad. The "Criticism" section in that Wikipedia article doesn't begin to describe it. The best explanation you can easily get is by doing a Google or Wikipedia search for "Diane Ravitch" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Ravitch and her longest explanation I know of, outside of her books, is her New York Review of Books article.
She refers to Gates as a member of the "billionaire boys club" that is "reforming" education according to some fads that they picked up, which aren't supported by scientific evidence. Ravitch was an assistant secretary of education under GHW Bush and Bill Clinton. She started out believing in charter schools, free market incentives, high-stakes testing, and all the other neocon reforms. But she said that when the data came out, it didn't support those reforms.
The one factor that is most strongly associated with student achievement, according to Ravitch, is family income. So when you reward teachers for raising student test scores, you're mostly rewarding them for having high-income students, and when you fire them for missing the test targets, you're firing them for teaching in poverty schools.
The Gates education reforms depend heavily on high-stakes testing. But according to repeated analyses, the tests they use today to fire "underperforming" teachers are statistically invalid. There was a debate over that in Science magazine last year, in which the author who was defending the tests admitted that they weren't valid, and his argument was that we should continue to use them and try to improve them.
New York City gave all its math and English teachers rankings based on their students' scores in a standardized test (which wasn't scientifically validated), and education commissioner Joel Klein made the results for individual teachers public, despite the risk of unfairly shaming teachers. One fundamental problem is that they don't have enough statistical power to evaluate individual teachers. A science teacher did a standard statistical analysis, and he found out that they had an essentially random distribution. He made the point that every teacher knows that beginning teachers improve a lot from their first to second year (conversely, most teachers agree that they had a lot of trouble in their first year). But yet, when you compare the scores of the teachers in their first year to the same teachers in their second year, the correlation was random. According to these tests, teachers don't improve with experience. It doesn't make sense. And yet, NYC is firing teachers on the basis of these tests.
Financial incentives and bonuses for teachers have been tested in randomized, controlled studies -- and they don't work. Students don't perform any better when their teachers get bonuses for higher test scores. OTOH, it's hard to be a dedicated teacher if you don't know whether you'll have a job in 10 years, your pay is going down because NCLB has destroyed your union, and politicians like Joel Klein attack you, call you incompetent, and humiliate you.
If you needed proof that these reforms aren't working, look at Michelle Rhee's experience in the Washington DC schools system. Her followers were touting her as a genius who was tough on students, got rid of incompetent teachers and principals, and rewarded the master teachers and principals who raised the test scores with generous financial bonuses. They it turned out that the teachers and principles were raising their tests scores by cheating, which was picked up by the internal verification procedures in the tests -- and Rhee knew about it. There have been cheating scandals in high-stakes testing schools around the country. When you fire teachers who don't raise test scores, what do you expect them to do?
Bill Gates and the other "reformers" have turned teaching from a comfortable, respected job where people were paid well but not extravagantly, and motivated by
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by Alan+Shutko · 2012-09-04 13:15 · Score: 1

If, as you say, the teachers are not correlated with student results, we'd might as well have cheaper teachers and get the same results.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by nbauman · 2012-09-04 13:52 · Score: 4, Informative

Teachers' ability is correlated with student results. The tests that they use to measure teachers' ability is not correlated with student results. The same teachers rank in the top 10% one year, and the bottom 10% the next year. Obviously the tests aren't measuring the teachers' ability.
The effect of student poverty is far greater than the effect of teachers' ability. The test scores are primarily measuring student poverty, according to Ravitch.
Teachers' ability is correlated with experience. Teachers who have been teaching for 20 years can get better results than charter-school teachers who are on the job for 3 years and quit, as many of them do. If you want teachers to stay on the job for 20 or 30 years, you have to pay them enough to raise a family and send their own kids to college.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by VortexCortex · 2012-09-04 14:07 · Score: 1

F-you. Comments like these are so, so easy from arm-chair quarterbacks who look at the world through a pin-hole lens.
It's fools like you who fail to realise that everything is in perfect focus thanks to my pin-hole vision. If we could just get everyone to see everything through pin-holes, then everything would always be perfectly clear!
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-04 14:13 · Score: 3, Insightful

Two flaws in your premise. The first is that NYC is firing teachers based of statistically irrelevant results. The truth is that they've finally got an excuse to finally fire misdemeanor level bad teachers. Felonies were, until this, the only way to get rid of a teacher, short of the completely unfair harass until they quit approach.
The second is that you have proposed no measurable way to determine if the students have learned anything. Standardized tests are bad, in the same way democracies are bad. There just hasn't been any better way demonstrated. I'd love to ditch the stress of standardized testing. However, I've got nothing else to measure, in any objective way, student learning. Essays? Standardized tests that measure vocabulary (parental income) and attention span. Orals? Not at all objective. Give me something to use.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by trout007 · 2012-09-04 14:19 · Score: 1

These "reforms" fail because they are running into the same problem that all central planners run into. There is no objective way to assign value. It's impossible. Value is completely subjective and is based on human choice. There is no way to create a test, flow chart, matrix, or anything else to figure out if a teacher is doing a good job with a particular student.
It's would be like having a board whose job it is to determine where you should have dinner and how much you should pay and how much tip the server should get. It is impossible and everyone restaurant, server, and customer would all be unhappy in such a situation.
I realize that having people be free to chose and pay for their own school isn't going to happen in my life. But at least if people understand the problem they can make a rational decision. One can argue that having inefficient schools that cannot do a good job is preferable to having parents choose where and how to educate their children with the means they have. At least that's being honest. But pretending there is some way to centrally plan schools to make everyone happy is illogical.

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I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by nbauman · 2012-09-04 14:56 · Score: 3, Insightful

Sometimes central planning works, sometimes it doesn't.
In medicine, doctors use a lot of drugs, but don't know whether they work, or whether they're actually harmful. The best way to find out is with a randomized, controlled trial. For the most part, these trials are funded by government agencies. They collect the best experts in the country (or the world), figure out how to design and run the trial, and do it. In other words, they create a central authority to collect all the evidence and report their recommendations. They found out that a lot of drugs were actually killing more people than they were helping. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epoetin_alfa
Then after they find out that the drug is killing people, there are still a lot of doctors who just want to continue using it, either out of habit, or because they make a lot of money out of it, or because they really believe in it. If you want to stop doctors from prescribing drugs that kill people, the first thing to do is to have a central authority, like a medical association or government agency, recommend against it. When you leave it to doctors to decide by themselves, you're more likely to die. When you leave it to patients to choose for themselves, they really don't know what they're doing. There have been good studies of this. Most patients can't make good medical decisions. Those who do know how to make decisions follow the recommendations of the central authority.
I'm using medicine as an example because I know more about medicine than education, and because in medicine, where peoples' lives are at stake and they have lots of money, they do very rigorous studies.
There are good central authorities and bad central authorities. If you have a central authority that makes their decisions on the basis of the scientific evidence, they can do a good job. If you have a central authority that ignores the scientific evidence and follows the politics, as the Obama and GWB administration did with Race to the Top, No Child Left Behind, and firing teachers on the basis of test results, they're going to do a bad job (as they did).
There's no simple way to make policy. You can't just say, "Central authorities are good" or "Central authorities are bad." It depends on whether the central authority is independent enough from politics to collect the best-informed experts and follow their advice.
A lot of big science came from central authorities and probably wouldn't have been possible without a central authority. The Manhattan Project and NASA were highly centralized.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by ndykman · 2012-09-04 15:09 · Score: 1

But, there is a flip side to this coin. Too many teachers' unions are focused on protecting those with seniority who have been burned out and have no business being in a classroom, much less drawing a salary to do so. Thanks to union protections, teachers that have ceased to function can draw a salary for months and months while an insane process moves slowly forward. Also, too many unions create and promote barriers to entry into the profession for those without education degrees, even though there is some evidence that a short period of training combined with on the job evaluation may be just as effective in creating good teachers.
Teachers with advanced degrees in education recieve additional salary, but there is no evidence that degrees make teachers more effective in the classroom. However, there is evidence that advanced degree in a specific field (especially in STEM fields) does positively impact classroom performance.
I agree that there is no evidence that the current test-based metrics are actually effective. But, there has to be some way to evaluate teachers that doesn't boil down to taking their word for it. 360 evaluations involving students, peers and parents seems like a good start.
Too many teachers' unions were interested in protecting the status quo and ensuring lifetime employement of their members and reinforcing the absolute value of an education degree, even as it diminished in real value and usefulness and became entangled in abstract theories unrelated to the core goal of any teacher which is to transmit knowledge to others.
It is truly laughable to me that a teacher certification is needed for a MS or PhD to teach a subject in high school. At some point, we need teachers that actually know the subjects they are teaching. For all the criticism of testing, it shocks me that to become a teacher, one has to pass a test that may have nothing to do with actually being able to teach and certianly nothing to do with the subject they are teaching.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by DNS-and-BIND · 2012-09-04 15:13 · Score: 1

You know, I never knew that having good parents was racist, but recently I have been informed that this is so. Why? Because black kids don't have interested parents and therefore do badly on tests. Proof positive of racism, right there. How does one even begin to argue with such a viewpoint?

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Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by trout007 · 2012-09-04 15:19 · Score: 1

Let's take your drug idea. Here are a list of questions no central authority can answer:
Is the rigor that is applied today is too strict or not strict enough?
What is the optimal amount of rigor to benefit the most people?
What conditions can be permitted to try riskier drugs with possible benefits?
Is it more beneficial to have a long life or shorter more active one?
The problem is all of the answer to these questions depend on the individual. All things in life have risks and rewards and costs and benefits associated with them. Each individual makes a decision based on their own subjective value of these. To youit may not seem informed but it's not your life. No central plans can satisfy all individuals. You may see some positives like keeping harmful drugs off the market but there are some people who would prefer to try those drugs because they evaluate the risk diffent than you.

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I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by wisty · 2012-09-04 16:12 · Score: 1

The problem with standardized tests is when they start being the tail that wags the dog. The same is true for any assessment. They are a good way to test education systems, provided the system does not focus on standardized tests. "Teaching the test" is a real danger. Teachers shouldn't care how their students perform on standardized tests, nor should students. It's bad science to care how your results turn out.
A second-order criticism is that they tend to encourage a narrow focus. It's "unfair" to test a wide curricula, because it's unfair to ask offbeat questions which some students will ace simply because they happened to study an offbeat thing. But it shouldn't matter if standardized tests are "unfair" to individual students, as they are only good for testing the system.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by nbauman · 2012-09-04 16:27 · Score: 2

I once researched some of the literature on science teaching. Science teachers have to know both the subject and the methods of teaching. (There are a lot of articles in Science magazine about this.)
You may know a lot about the subject, but if you don't know how to teach it to students at different levels, you'll fail. For example, I was surprised to see in the science teaching guidelines that middle-school students can't usually understand the concept of molecules. You can teach them to memorize facts and answers, but they don't understand what they're answering. I saw that when I took my niece to a museum, and they had an exhibit for young children about DNA. My niece saw the exhibit. She played DNA games. I asked her what DNA was. She didn't know. It makes sense when you think about it. Science is about learning things through the experimental method, not from books or videos. It's difficult or impossible to show middle school students an experiment that demonstrates the existence of molecules.
In contrast, there was an article in Science about a teaching module in which kids had to figure out whether vision was something that comes into your eyes or something that comes out of your eyes. That may seem obvious today, but until the 17th century, some of the world's greatest scientists got it wrong.
Science teaching is a science itself, based on the experimental method and published studies, and many things that seem obvious turn out to be wrong. If you don't realize that obvious things turn out to be wrong when you test them experimentally, then you're not too familiar with the scientific method.
If you have a PhD, but don't know how to teach, you'll fail. You won't teach the kids science, and at best you'll teach them to memorize a lot of facts they don't understand. You'll be boring and teach them to hate science.
I think unions do a lot of things that are wrong, but I don't accept this theory that there is a problem with unions protecting incompetent teachers, and the solution is to fire them. Unions make it more difficult to fire teachers who have been employed for years -- and it should be difficult to fire people who have been there for years. (Your first recourse should be to train them. If you're a principal, and you can't teach a teacher how to improve, you're not a very good teacher.) Before we had unions, we had the spoils system, and the Democrats would win and fire all the Republican civil servants, then the Republicans would win and fire all the Democratic civil servants. Try to fire an incompetent teacher whose brother-in-law is a city councilman. That's what we'll get without unions.
But the final word about unions is to look around the world, especially at the school systems that are doing much better in STEM than we are, like Finland, Germany, etc. In all the European countries, the teachers are unionized and well-paid. They study their subject and also teaching methods. They do have lifetime employment. "Weeding out the incompetents" is a problem that doesn't come up much.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by nbauman · 2012-09-04 16:31 · Score: 1

If you compare black families and white families who have the same good jobs, in organizations that make an effort to eliminate discrimination (like IBM or the military), they have equally successful kids.
The main difference between black families and white families is that more black families are poor.
Do you think slavery had anything to do with that?
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by Rockoon · 2012-09-04 16:39 · Score: 1

For the most part, these trials are funded by government agencies.

Just because the government throws around the most money, that does not justify it doing so. Your argument is circular.

Since you have decided that the amount of money the government throws around is the important measure, how about the United States take over the education systems of the entire world? After all it spends more per student than any other country.

Do you think that other countries would go for that?

--
"His name was James Damore."
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by nbauman · 2012-09-04 16:51 · Score: 3, Insightful

Let's take your drug idea. Here are a list of questions no central authority can answer:
Is the rigor that is applied today is too strict or not strict enough?
What is the optimal amount of rigor to benefit the most people?
What conditions can be permitted to try riskier drugs with possible benefits?
Is it more beneficial to have a long life or shorter more active one?
The problem is all of the answer to these questions depend on the individual.
If you read the New England Journal of Medicine (which you could call a central authority), you'd see lots of articles answering those very questions. Some of the authors that you can find with a Google search are Marcia Angell and Jeffrey Avorn. For many years, the FDA was under a lot of pressure to approve medical devices. Then they wound up with a few well-publicized disasters, like heart pacemakers where the electric leads got damaged and patients died. Now they're making specific changes in the standards they use for premarket testing. They approved drugs that produced improvements in secondary outcomes (like raising hemoglobin levels), but didn't improve primary outcomes (like death). They found out that more people died with the drug than without it, so the FDA went back to approving drugs based on primary outcomes like death.
Science can only find out how a treatment works on a population level, not on an individual level. If they randomize 100 people to a drug, and 30 of them die, and 100 people to a placebo, and 10 of them die, I wouldn't want to take that drug under those circumstances.
You may have a doctor who thinks he's smarter than everybody else in the world, and he believes that he can tell that the drug will work for you. You may have a gypsy fortune teller who believes that the drug will work for you. Go ahead and use it if you insist. The FDA won't stop you.
Most people would play by the numbers. And the only place to get those numbers is from a central authority.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by nbauman · 2012-09-04 17:02 · Score: 1

No. You don't necessarily have to spend a lot of money. The important thing is following the scientific evidence.
Given the results of our education system, I don't think too many other countries would be interested. We're already a laughingstock for creationism.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by tbird81 · 2012-09-04 18:53 · Score: 1

Gates is a good guy when it comes to charity. What the hell have you done? Posted nasty comments on Slashdot?
Gates deserves much more credit than that greedy turtle-necked scumbag Steve Jobs.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by sFurbo · 2012-09-04 19:21 · Score: 1

He made the point that every teacher knows that beginning teachers improve a lot from their first to second year (conversely, most teachers agree that they had a lot of trouble in their first year).
How do we know that teachers become better teachers? We know that they feel that, but do we know that the children learn more? One of Mazurs points about peer instruction* is that most of what we think matters in learning simply doesn't. If you design a test of understanding**, it turns out the the gain is remarkably constant over a wide range of teachers and schools, regardless of teacher experience and teacher evaluation by the students, even if the teachers think differently.

Not that I necessarily disagree with you main points, it is very hard to make good tests, and it seems easy, so most tests will probably be really bad. The video also strengthens your point about poverty, the understanding after teaching is partly determined by the understanding before teaching, so simply testing after teaching is not a good way to asses the Teachers ability.

*I hope that is the correct video, this computer can't play them.

** Assuming that this example is well designed, which is, of course, hard to verify. It does, at least, try to test understanding, and not just knowledge.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by sFurbo · 2012-09-04 19:29 · Score: 1

Teachers shouldn't care how their students perform on standardized tests, nor should students. It's bad science to care how your results turn out.
Teaching aren't doing science. They are not trying to find the best way to teach, they are trying to educate the children*. They should care about the result, about how well educated the children become. If we had some way to perfectly asses how well the children were educated, it would be fine for the teachers to care about that. The problem is that the tests we have don't do that.

*Part of any job is to figure out how best to do it, but it is not the job itself. If I am paid to build houses, it is smart of me to figure out how to do that faster, cheaper, and with higher quality, but the end result is the house, not the method.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by olau · 2012-09-04 20:44 · Score: 1

The effect of student poverty is far greater than the effect of teachers' ability.
Maybe that's a good argument as any for raising taxes and redistributing wealth to some degree. It's better for society overall?
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by Vekseid · 2012-09-04 20:46 · Score: 2

The evaluation, however, is science. It's being used to, presumably, measure something. If it's being done faultily, then it needs to be corrected.

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Adult Role Playing Forum
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by trout007 · 2012-09-04 21:12 · Score: 1

Actually I would not consider any medical journal a central planner. Your use of authority is confusing matters because it has several meanings. One is that of government which is coercion and the other is a powerful influence which is voluntary.
I think medical journals are an excellent example of how free people can work together. They peer review studies and keep attempting to refine knowledge. The FDA is the central planner in the US. It decides what drugs you are and are not allowed to sell. This is where the problem comes in.
You may say that most people will play a numbers game. But in that statement you acknowledge some people won't. And by having a central planner make those decisions you are making those people's lives worse by THEIR definition.

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I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by trout007 · 2012-09-04 21:16 · Score: 1

You are wrong again. The important thing to YOU (and me as well) is to follow the scientific evidence. But there are people to whom this isn't important at all. Take herbal and eastern medicines. Some people value what they see as thousands of years of tradition more than scientific evidence. It's not your life. And if you attempt to force them to live by your standards don't expect them to be happy.

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I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by risom · 2012-09-04 22:05 · Score: 1

The second is that you have proposed no measurable way to determine if the students have learned anything. Standardized tests are bad, in the same way democracies are bad. There just hasn't been any better way demonstrated. I'd love to ditch the stress of standardized testing. However, I've got nothing else to measure, in any objective way, student learning. Essays? Standardized tests that measure vocabulary (parental income) and attention span. Orals? Not at all objective. Give me something to use.
Please be aware that this is mostly a US-only problem and has been solved better in other education systems. The solution is pretty simple: Measure individual learning progress, not knowledge relative to other classmates.
Example:
Suppose we have two kids entering school, the class has a really passionate and able teacher. Their performance (let's say their reading ability) gets measured. The average in the class is 100%. Now, the low income kid really only starts with a performance level of say 50%, while the high income kid already has 150%.
Now a year later the class gets grades on their reading performance. 100% is rated F, because relative to the average on day one it means zero progress. 150% means grade A, a big improvement compared to day one.

The low income kid really learned hard, the passionate teacher gave special training to the kid etc. The kid managed a phenomenal progress up to 100%, 50% increase!. The teacher in the current US system: "Awesome! But still Grade F, sorry.". The high income kid gets a A without needing to do anything.

The end result: _Both_ loose their motivation to do anything in school.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by flimflammer · 2012-09-04 22:47 · Score: 1

You sound like you've got a stick the size of a flag pole up your ass.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by hairyfeet · 2012-09-04 23:17 · Score: 1

The problem is the thing is NOT based on science, its how likely the drug company is to be sued if something goes wrong.
I was on a drug in the 80s that was frankly like a miracle, no side effects, low cost, worked like a charm...one catch, you can never have kids because you'll end up with flipper babies. We all had to watch a video AND get a lecture AND sign a contract, simple enough right? Wrong, two bambi bimbettes took the drug and promptly got knocked up and had flipper babies and then sued the drug company. Jury took one look at the fucked up kids and gave them a ton of money so now the drug is gone and the drug I'm on now costs about 3000% more and doesn't work as well.
So frankly I'd be all for it if it was simply the doctors deciding but its not, its the lawyers.
Now as for TFA, is it just me or is the word "charity" almost like a magic shield? I mean Gates only has to say he's "giving most of his money to charity" and it seems like a large section of the populace instantly quits questioning what EXACTLY he is calling charity. Just looking under criticisms on the Wiki page already makes me think he's doing more harm than good with that money, a combo of pop science and helping out his billionaire buddies get new markets in the third world, but I just find it interesting that you can just throw the word charity out there and people just stop questioning where the money goes or if its doing any good.

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ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by trout007 · 2012-09-05 01:11 · Score: 1

IMHO here is the way it should work.
The pharmaceutical company should have the following responsibility. They should list the masses of the compounds that are in a drug with a certain percent error. If they sell a drug that falls out of that specification they should be held liable.
The effects of drugs and chemicals on people varies way too much to hold them responsible for effects. Heck some people can't tolerate sugar or peanuts.
The FDA would still have an important role testing drugs and drug combinations. But instead of approving or prohibiting drugs they would just publish the information and let people and doctors make their own call.

--
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by nbauman · 2012-09-05 03:33 · Score: 1

Many black parents are interested in their kids, but can't spend the time with them they would like, because they're overwhelmed with making a living, or just surviving.
That's because they started out in slavery, and even for 100 years after slavery ended, they had discrimination that was almost as bad as slavery. Not being allowed to vote is pretty serious discrimination. The Republicans are still trying to stop blacks from voting.
The reason you're a racist is that you don't understand that.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by nbauman · 2012-09-05 03:41 · Score: 1

Just as long as they don't blow it on scotch, cocaine, escorts and ranches the way George W. Bush did.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by nbauman · 2012-09-05 03:45 · Score: 1

There are studies that show that even the rich are better off in egalitarian societies than in unequal societies.
For example, their health is better.
That's why, in rational countries, even the rich support progressive taxes.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by nbauman · 2012-09-05 04:27 · Score: 1

The Greeks had an idea of a golden age in which everybody followed the law voluntarily.
Then you find some doctors or drug company promoting a drug that does a lot of damage, like phen-fen, the diet drug. Patients are desperate to lose weight, doctors assure them it's safe. The drug companies hear about patients getting heart failure, but they convince themselves that their drug wasn't responsible.
Then the patients wind up with heart failure and 3 to 5 years to live. Those patients don't say, "I'm glad the government let me make my own decision and didn't coerce me." They don't say, "Well, by my values and decisions, heart failure isn't too bad." They say, "The government should have stopped them from selling this dangerous drug." They even say, "The government should have stopped me from buying this dangerous drug."
The reason the FDA started regulating drugs is that drug companies used to sell dangerous, ineffective drugs, without even identifying the ingredients, and people used to die as a result. Most people don't want to make individual decisions with those kinds of risks.
And you can't say that times have changed and we don't need the FDA any more. Whenever the Republicans or the moderate Democrats loosen up the FDA regulations, people start dying from unsafe drugs and devices again. So they tighten the regulations up again.
A free market assumes that consumers have adequate information and the ability to make decisions. When they don't, the free market doesn't work. When people see the free market not working, and harming them, they demand that the government regulate it.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by nbauman · 2012-09-05 05:56 · Score: 1

Sounds like Accutane, which was used to treat acne. It is not correct to say that it had no side effects. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accutane http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0000532/
It's still around but it's harder to get than Oxycontin -- and for good reason.
Accutane was a godsend to editorial writers at the Wall Street Journal, who made a good living arguing that personal responsibility and the free market should prevail over an incompetent, bureaucratic government agency.
They earned their living because (1) acne is a cosmetic problem (although the social consequences of severe acne can significantly affect peoples' lives) and (2) the people who suffered the worst side effects were not the irresponsible bimbos who got pregnant, but their children who had to go through life with flippers (and worse).
The issue here is personal responsibility. Should an individual bimbo be able to make any decision about medical treatment she wants, or are there some decisions that are just so dangerous that the government should step in and decide for people?
Should the drug company be able to say, "Don't sue me. I warned her of the dangers. If she ignores me and makes a foolish decision, that's her personal responsibility"?
The answer is no. Even for libertarians, you shouldn't be free to harm somebody else. A woman has an unconditional right to abortion, but doing things that will result in severe birth defects of a child that she decides to have is something else again. In our society, you can't punish a woman for doing things that harm her fetus (except in some Republicans states).
Then come the lawyers. If a drug company sells a drug that causes birth defects, and a woman takes it and becomes pregnant, it's going to cost another $3 million to bring that child up with the accommodations it needs to live a reasonably normal life. Where does that $3 million come from? Does the child go on welfare, and have the government pay for it?
When somebody gets injured in an accident, like a car accident, you usually have a combination of circumstances. The first driver was tired. The second driver had a beer. It was raining. The tires were bald. The seat belt had a manufacturing defect. The brake in this car had a record of failures. It's called an "accident chain." So who's responsible?
The answer is, a lot of people are responsible.
Same with Accutane. The bimbo who got pregnant was responsible. Her doctor was responsible. The manufacturer of Accutane was responsible.
The FDA and a lot of doctors said that Accutane was too dangerous, and acne was too frivolous. Roche swore on their mothers' graves that they could set up a system in which women who were of childbearing age wouldn't get Accutane and get pregnant. They would have counseling, personal responsibility contracts, toll-free numbers, 2 kinds of contraception, belts and suspenders.
It didn't work. So who pays?
When you ask the juries, they decided that Roche pays.
One of the problems with these drugs is that they start out being used for the most severe cases of acne or whatever. Maybe there are 1,000 cases in the U.S. like that. But if the drug company can convince doctors to use it for less severe cases, they can make 10 times as much money. So maybe that's what happened with Accutane.
This goes back to the idea of central planning, which is what we started out talking about. If you have individual patients and doctors making their own decisions about taking Accutane, then Roche can market the hell out of it, to patients and doctors, and make 10 times as much money. But if you have a central authority, like the FDA, or the big insurance companies, or the national health service in other countries, they can restrict the sales just to people who really need it. They save money, which is part of their motivation, but they also avoid flipper babies.
Some things are so dangerous that you just need central authority.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by DNS-and-BIND · 2012-09-05 07:10 · Score: 1

Hold on buddy - Democrats were the party of the KKK, or how soon do we forget that? Calling others racist - is there any problem it can't solve?

--
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by trout007 · 2012-09-05 07:41 · Score: 1

Let's go back to my original post about central planning. You cannot have central planners determine a one size fits all risk/reward level. So whatever they pick is going to be wrong.
In your case you prefer the FDA be ultra conservative and not allow any drugs with any harmful effects. That is an emotional and not a logical answer. You fail to acknowledge that by being so risk adverse you are sentencing many people to die because they cannot try potentially life saving drugs because you seem it too risky. If you were honest you would say that you would rather many people die untreated than allow them to try drugs that have not been proved safe or effective.
I, on the other hand, acknowledge that if you let people own their own body and put in it what they want that people could be harmed or killed based on their own actions. I think letting people do their own risk analysis is more humane.

--
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by trout007 · 2012-09-05 07:50 · Score: 1

I think you are intentionally missing the point. Specialization is very important. The question is who gets to determine if a risk is acceptable? You think that people are so dumb that other people get to use force to prevent them from doing things that can harm them. Even if that means sentencing them to a painful death. It's for their own good after all.

--
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by hairyfeet · 2012-09-05 08:31 · Score: 1

Nope, similar drug called tegison that was used to treat psoriatic arthritis. The drug was a miracle, no side effects (other than flipper babies) and for those of us in the 80s frankly there weren't really any other drugs that worked even a tenth as good. When my pharmacist heard they were gonna take it off the market, bless his old heart, he called every damned distributor and bought every damned box he could get his hands on because he knew how many years I'd suffered and that it worked beautifully on me. he even called contacts across the border and bought every box they had as well.
Now the drug I'm on wastes my immune system, leaves me with permanent sinus infections, and costs about 3000% more than tegison did. Yay progress. I would have been happy to sign an ironclad contract to get the drug, still would today, but thanks to blood sucking leech lawyers and bambi bimbettes I can't get it.

--
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by nbauman · 2012-09-05 08:50 · Score: 1

In 1964, the racists who were trying to stop blacks from voting were Democrats.
In 2012, the racists who are trying to stop blacks from voting are Republicans.
That was the Republican "Southern strategy." As soon as the Democrats started distancing themselves from the southern racists, the Republicans were happy to move in.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by nbauman · 2012-09-05 09:21 · Score: 1

The FDA isn't ultra-conservative. For some life-threatening diseases, all the drugs have harmful effects. For some cancers, you have a choice between a drug with a 20% chance of killing you, and a cancer with an 80% chance of killing you. The FDA knows that.
The FDA is required by law to weigh the risks against the benefits. They can accept a cancer drug with a 20% chance of killing you, but they won't accept a headache drug with a 20% chance of killing you.
I've read transcripts of FDA hearings where their expert panels weigh the risks and benefits of a new drug. You can go to the FDA web site and read them yourself. The panels are made up of doctors who treat patients. They want to give their patients the best chance of surviving. They often have desperate cases where their patients are likely to die. They want to have every effective drug available. They're trying unproven drugs -- in clinical trials. They're constantly debating about how much proof is enough. When they get a groundbreaking drug, they approve it right away. Most of the debates come when it's not clear whether it's killing more people than it saves. And that happens quite a bit. The line is, "The oversight committee terminated the study early."
I don't think you realize how complicated and (mathematically) difficult these decisions are. When there's a controversy it's because the studies aren't clear. They usually have a dozen studies, of different quality, and depending on what statistical methods you use, you can get different answers. I've read thousands of these studies, and I can't always figure them out.
It's simply not possible for a patient with a disease like cancer to do their own risk analysis and get it right. Even doctors who get life-threatening diseases usually let their own doctors make their decisions. Most of them don't want to. They want to go to the best experts, and let the experts decide.
You don't sound like you've read many of these studies where doctors actually weigh these decisions. If you want to understand it, that's what you have to do. I'd recommend going to NEJM.org and trying to find some studies that don't require a subscription.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by nbauman · 2012-09-05 09:26 · Score: 1

Yes, most people are too dumb to look at a drug and understand what the risk is. How many people could pass the finals for an introductory college statistics course? That's what it would take, for starters.
The FDA doesn't use force. They just tell the manufacturers that they can't sell a drug for a purpose that has no evidence behind it. The manufacturers won' t sell it if the FDA doesn't approve it. Doctors won't prescribe it if they might be sued for malpractice. If you really want it, you can get around those barriers. Buy it from India or China.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by Uberbah · 2012-09-05 14:55 · Score: 1

And you have?
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by Uberbah · 2012-09-05 15:15 · Score: 1

The truth is that they've finally got an excuse to finally fire misdemeanor level bad teachers. Felonies were, until this, the only way to get rid of a teacher, short of the completely unfair harass until they quit approach.
Bullshit. There is nothing about unions, teachers or otherwise, that prevent workers from being fired with cause.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by Uberbah · 2012-09-05 15:46 · Score: 1

First, the verdict is still out on if Charter Schools actually work.

No, the verdict is in.

Some appear to be doing extremely well. Some appear to be failing.
For every charter school that outperforms the average public school, two charter schools are outperformed by the average public school.

Some Charter Schools are
....free to pick and choose the best students while leaving special-ed students to the public schools, who aren't free to "fire" an "underperforming" third grader. And what they didn't tell you in Waiting for Superman is that the high-performing charter school in NYC had a massive endowment from donations from the parents of Ritchie Rich.
Charter schools are about two things: breaking teachers unions, and diverting public money into private investor hands. Period. That some charters manage to perform well does not change either of those two facts.
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by Uberbah · 2012-09-05 16:15 · Score: 1

Democrats were the party of the KKK, or how soon do we forget that?
And after the Civil Rights Act they all promptly became Republicans. Or did you think we'd forget that, jackass?
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by DNS-and-BIND · 2012-09-05 16:59 · Score: 1

That excuses them from their historical crimes how, exactly? Don't change the subject.

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Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by randyleepublic · 2012-09-07 09:28 · Score: 1

Optimum: A really, really talented gypsy fortune teller! Saves a lot of mis-steps.

--
Social Credit would solve everything...
Re:As Steve Jobs might conclude by Uberbah · 2012-09-10 07:36 · Score: 1

Who's excusing Strom Thurmond? Don't think your continued asininity isn't obvious.

Re:Isn't Gates a big lib? by __aaltlg1547 · 2012-09-04 11:54 · Score: 5, Insightful

Did I read that wrong or did you just day that you became a conservative because you were tired of liberals telling you you were smart? If so, you're still not doing any of your own thinking.

Re:charity by sjames · 2012-09-04 12:00 · Score: 4, Insightful

Economics scientifically proven!?! HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA that's a knee slapper!

Re:charity by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-04 12:05 · Score: 5, Insightful

Not say, a proven scientific theory with decades of incredibly complex research to back it up as a model of how wealth flows and is generated.

A theory on how wealth flows - interesting. It's an interesting theory - wealth flows up - the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The rich fuck the poor and middle class to get richer. The rich got rich by lieing and cheating. Hard work? Everyone works hard! To get rich you have to fuck thy neighbor - up the ass.

Is Capitalism evil? Yes. Is it the worst system on Earth? No.

It's the best economic system we bald apes have. Which is fucking pathetic. After all these centuries, Capitalism is the best we can come up with?

We humans are stupid.

Index of Posts and Responses by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-04 12:10 · Score: 5, Informative

Yeesh, what an IA mess. Duplicate blog posts and comment threads across multiple blogs, duplicate author names on blog posts... and if there's an index to the entire discussion, I couldn't find it. So I made my own.

Here are all the posts and responses thus far:

1:
Anthony Cody: How Do We Build the Teaching Profession?
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2012/07/dialogue_with_the_gates_founda.html
July 23, 2012

Ivrin Scott responds for the Gates Foundation: How Do We Build the Teaching Profession?
http://www.impatientoptimists.org/Posts/2012/07/A-Response-to--How-Do-We-Build-the-Teaching-Profession
July 30, 2012

2:
Vicki Phillips writes for the Gates Foundation: How Do We Consider Evidence of Student Learning in Teacher Evaluation?
http://www.impatientoptimists.org/Posts/2012/08/How-Do-We-Consider-Evidence-of-Student-Learning-in-Teacher-Evaluation
August 7, 2012

Anthony Cody responds: How do we Consider Evidence of Learning in Teacher Evaluations?
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2012/08/responding_to_the_gates_founda.html
August 8, 2012

3:
Anthony Cody posts: Can Schools Defeat Poverty by Ignoring It?
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2012/08/can_schools_defeat.html
August 13, 2012

Chris Williams responds for the Gates Foundation: Poverty Does Matter--But It Is Not Destiny
http://www.impatientoptimists.org/Posts/2012/08/Poverty-Does-MatterBut-It-Is-Not-Destiny
August 20, 2012

4
Irvin Scott for the Gates Foundation: K-12 Education: An Opportunity Catalyst
http://www.impatientoptimists.org/Posts/2012/08/K12-Education-An-Opportunity-Catalyst
August 28, 2012

Anthony Cody responds: What is the Purpose of K-12 Education?
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2012/08/Gates_Foundation_Dialogue.html
August 29, 2012

5:
Anthony Cody asks: What Happens When Profits Drive Reform?
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2012/09/the_dialogue_with_the_gates_fo.html
September 03, 2012

Gates response to come.

Re:charity by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-04 12:11 · Score: 1

Gates Foundation where most of the aid goes to 3rd world countries?

Yeah but only if they agree to buy Microsoft licenses and Bill Gates gets aggrandized. It's just another racket to Billy boy.

Gates link to No Child Left Behind by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-04 12:13 · Score: 1

From the article:

"In the name of reform, the Gates Foundation has wielded its political influence to effectively shift public funds, earmarked for the service of poor children, away from investment in those children's direct education experience. Through the Race to the Top and NCLB waiver conditions, the US Department of Education has instead dedicated public resources to creating state and federal mandates for the Gates Foundation's costly project"

Wow. I'd read the Gates Foundation had links to some shady corporations and projects, but I had no idea they were in league with Bush's discredited attempt to gut public education through the "No Child Left Behind" program.

The fact that Obama pretty much continued and endorsed Bush's program with his own so-called "Race to the Top" program only puts another nail in the coffin of the argument that Obama is some kind of "extreme Leftist" instead of a Bush-lite (in some ways he's even more conservative than Bush).

And the Gates Foundation has links to "Race to the Top" too.

Outrageous!

Re:Isn't Gates a big lib? by Black+Parrot · 2012-09-04 12:22 · Score: 5, Interesting

The debt has increased approximately $5.4 trillion since President Obama took office on January 20, 2009.

And none of it was because of the wars, tax cuts, etc., starting before that date.

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/06/07/238653/animation-tax-cuts-deficit-debt/ (watch animation)

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/cbppdebtchart.jpg (static display of same plot)

http://crooksandliars.com/files/vfs/2011/06/cbpp_deficit_factors_2011.jpg

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/govt-spending-per-capita.jpg

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/jamesfallows/assets_c/2011/07/24editorial_graph2-popup-thumb-560x622-58477.gif

http://crooksandliars.com/files/vfs/2012/02/wsj_deficit_obama_2013.png

So, before you talk about how shockingly the debt has risen in the past four years, tell us about the prior four years, and the policies from 2001-2008 that are still costing us out the wazoo.

--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade

Re:Isn't Gates a big lib? by Black+Parrot · 2012-09-04 12:23 · Score: 3, Funny

Did I read that wrong or did you just day that you became a conservative because you were tired of liberals telling you you were smart? If so, you're still not doing any of your own thinking.

Think what might have happened if they had told him he was dumb.

--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade

Re:charity by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-04 13:19 · Score: 1

Nope - private school scholar, mathematics to postgrad, previously worked on producing accounting systems and played with larger numbers on a day-to-day basis than you will probably see in a lifetime. Founded and sold a fairly successful business during the first dot-com boom. Thought about being an actuary once, but was well-advised against it by an ex-actuary who had gone into university lecturing - did do some preliminary qualification and achieve top mark in the country that year, though.

You forgot immodest.

Re:Isn't Gates a big lib? by trout007 · 2012-09-04 13:26 · Score: 1

Welcome to the exponential function. Debt doubles roughly every 8 years or so.

--
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.

Re:charity by fsck1nhippies · 2012-09-04 13:38 · Score: 1

anyway, excluding the AC. I have one Question and I beg a simple, one line response. Who are the payees in the healthcare systems you describe?

Re:charity by dkleinsc · 2012-09-04 13:56 · Score: 1

What do you define as rich? 150k? what about the guy that makes 149k?

My definition would focus not on a specific number: I'd consider somebody rich if: (1) They pay for a full-time household staff-person, such as a housekeeper or nanny, (2) They can buy everything they want to comfortably stock at least 2 homes without the slightest bit of difficulty, or (3) They could choose to not work at all and have enough from their investments to live comfortably and end up with more than they started with.

Give me one bad thing about capitalism without going into some political rant. Pick a point, lets discuss.

Consider a really smart kid who was born into a dirt poor family, call her Jane. Under pure capitalism as witnessed in US cities around the year 1900, and many poor countries today:
* Jane would have received no pre-natal care whatsoever and probably doesn't get all that much health care after she's born, so there's a significant chance she dies before she reaches age 5.
* She might be taught to read at some point in her early childhood, but mostly would be taught whatever her mother knew about home skills like laundry.
* When she turned about 13, she would likely be sent to work in a factory of some kind, where her bright mind hurts her because she's perceived as a potential threat by management.
* By the time she's 18, if she's lucky she might have the chance to marry some guy who's not going to abuse her, where she then proceeds to have kids of her own and lives an adult life that's not significantly different from her mothers'.

That situation is not only bad for Jane, it is bad for the world as a whole, because we've just wasted a bright mind that might have been able to, say, cure a disease, and instead used her to make coats for J.C. Penny.

--
I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/

Re:Isn't Gates a big lib? by nbauman · 2012-09-04 13:59 · Score: 3, Interesting

This is Obama's economy, his policies, his executive orders, his parties control of the senate and house - for two years a supermajority.

You mean his supermajority for four months?

http://washingtonindependent.com/74033/the-four-month-supermajority
The Four-Month Supermajority
By David Weigel
Friday, January 15, 2010 at 9:03 am
In the final stretch of the Massachusetts special election for Senate, Republican candidate Scott Brown has focused on “restoring balance” to Washington. He’ll be the “41st vote” to filibuster legislation; the Democrats’ hold on 60 votes has let liberals run the country into the ground. “That’s not what the founders intended,” he said Monday during the final debate.
The irony is that if Democrats lose the seat, they will have had a working 60-seat majority for all of four months — much of which was spent with the Senate in recess. They opened the Congress in January with 58 votes, counting the ailing Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), not counting Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), whose razor-thin victory was held up by lawsuits from former Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.). On April 28, 2009, Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) switched to the Democratic Party, bringing the Democrats to 59 votes without Franken. When Franken was finally sworn in on into the Senate on July 7, 2009, the badly ailing Kennedy was unable to vote and break filibusters

Re:charity by nbauman · 2012-09-04 14:06 · Score: 2

Under capitalism, people who can afford it pay about $10,000 per capita per year to insurance companies for health care (depending on the year you measure).

Under socialism, people pay about $5,000 per capita in taxes for health care of the same (and sometimes better) quality. http://www.openmedicine.ca/article/view/8/1

Re:charity by nbauman · 2012-09-04 14:08 · Score: 1

So where is the magic land that actually has a capitalistic system?

Or is capitalism just impossible?

Re:Isn't Gates a big lib? by Black+Parrot · 2012-09-04 14:16 · Score: 4, Funny

You mean his supermajority for four months?

Shouldn't four months be long enough to fix eight years of fucking things up?

--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade

Re:charity by agm · 2012-09-04 14:21 · Score: 2

The foundation of civilised society is voluntary action and compassion. Capitalism and charity are two sides of that coin. One cannot succeed without the other.

Re:charity by symbolset · 2012-09-04 14:26 · Score: 1

I would not hold out the US health care system as representative of "capitalism".

--
Help stamp out iliturcy.

Cody claims teacher performance doesn't correlate by EMB+Numbers · 2012-09-04 14:29 · Score: 3, Interesting

Cody claims teacher performance doesn't correlate with student achievement. I believe him. I don't agree with his assertions that schools are underfunded and couldn't educate poor students even with more funding.

There is even less correlation between cost per student and student performance than between teacher and student performance.http://www.npri.org/blog/does-more-spending-increase-student-performance http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/05/24/us-usa-education-spending-idUSN2438214220070524 http://www.delcotimes.com/articles/2012/03/02/opinion/doc4f51a55f28207547363660.txt http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Little-correlation-found-between-per-pupil-823833.php

It is common for urban poor school districts to cost much more per student than the surrounding suburbs. Look at Kansas City or Washington DC for stark examples.

Seriously, spending more than $10,000 per year per student is a travesty. A class with 30 students should not cost $300,000 and the money is not going to the teacher!

I agree, end the war on drugs and greatly reduce parent incarceration rates.
I agree, find employment for everybody that raises them above poverty.
I agree, support family planning, pre-natal care, nutrition, and free pre-school or head start.

But, it isn't poverty exactly or school financial resources that predict student performance. It's culture. There is an urban poor culture that doesn't exist among poor rural students, and the outcomes differ. How can we change the culture that devalues education? How can we change the violence and street power culture? How can we convince people not to have children that are later neglected and abused?

Re:Isn't Gates a big lib? by nbauman · 2012-09-04 14:35 · Score: 1

You have to subtract the blue dog Democrats, who are just as bad as Republicans.

Re:charity by blackpaw · 2012-09-04 15:21 · Score: 4, Insightful

Like Communism, its an ideology that isn't practiced in reality anywhere. Mainly because the pure forms of both are unworkable and inhumane.

Re:charity by WCguru42 · 2012-09-04 15:38 · Score: 1

Uh oh, 19% of $40,000 is not $2,200, it's $7,600. That gives you $22,400 as the final take away, only $700 more than the first example you gave.

--
"Educate the mind but never at the expense of the soul."~Blessed Basil Moreau

Re:charity by zer0sig · 2012-09-04 15:40 · Score: 1

Math fail. 40000*.31=12400 40000*.19=7600 Plugging the other factors in, you get 22600 for the socialist example, and 22400 for the capitalist example. Even if your math were correct, these tax figures are not. In any case, please check your work next time. There are advantages and disadvantages to both systems, and if the USA system were less poorly/greedily administered the numbers could be notably better for its citizens, at almost any income level.

Where is this? by overshoot · 2012-09-04 15:46 · Score: 2

You can't buy what you want without government permission, corporations can't sell what they want without government permission, and they can't even *speak* about their products without government permission.

Yessir, that's one "free" market.

The ones I'm familiar with are Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, and France. Perhaps you could enlighten me on the one you're describing.

--
Lacking <sarcasm> tags, /. substitutes moderation as "Troll."

Re:Where is this? by greg1104 · 2012-09-04 18:09 · Score: 1

The "free" market where nothing can happen without government approval being described here is the US. Our Federal Trade Commission regulates what can and can't be sold, and heavily regulates advertising too. We also have money exchanges being monitored by the Internal Revenue Service to make sure it's being taxed fully, which helps prevent transactions that aren't regulated by the FTC from happening. Also, the minute you want to pay people to work for you, compliance with a giant list of Social Security and unemployment rules becomes mandatory, among others.
Start a company here and do any amount of business, and more government agencies will come looking for you every day, each with their own giant set of rules for what you can and can't do. There's a whole additional class of regulations for companies that can easily kill a small one, around obtaining financing for expansion, privacy rules, intellectual property, and the impact of your company on the environment. The Small Business Administration gives a good short picture of just how regulated even the smallest company is here in the US.
Describing the US using words like "capitalism" or "free market" is good for a big laugh from anyone who has started a business here.
Re:Where is this? by cusco · 2012-09-04 18:46 · Score: 1

money exchanges being monitored

That must be why we live in the biggest money laundry in the world. Over a trillion dollars gets laundered through the US financial system every year, half of it from drugs the rest from tax cheats, frauds, gun running, etc. They're not doing their monitoring very well.

--
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Re:Where is this? by greg1104 · 2012-09-04 19:09 · Score: 1

As the simplest example, deposit over $10,000 into a business bank account in the US and the IRS will come looking for that company one day. Just went through that recently.
The monitoring works fine. If you're money laundering, you trigger the monitors but then generate a convincing pile of accounting paperwork that make the transactions look legitimate and free of taxation. The same complexity that makes a small company overwhelmed with regulation turns into a giant set of places to hide things for a creative laundering accountant.
Re:Where is this? by bgat · 2012-09-05 03:12 · Score: 1

The "free" market where nothing can happen without government approval being described here is the US.
All of your examples are far from supportive of your position, and indeed are not even anti-capitalistic. You seem to be confusing the notion of "capitalism" with "anarchy", and you seem to be seeking the latter. (Look to Somalia if you need a quick anarchy hit, their system is fully up and running).
All the rules that you cite are ones that every business in the USA must follow, except for some common-sense exceptions. So those rules cannot be anti-capitalistic, because EVERY business must follow them uniformly. Thus, the rules are simply the implementation of reality.
The citizens of the USA have decided that we want generally safe products, generally truthful advertising, and general conformance to our tax obligations. The organizations you are maligning exist simply to implement those mandates. Are they perfect? No. But they are far from the evil, winged monkeys of doom that you seem to think they are.
Speaking as an actual businessman who owns and runs my own, incorporated (C) entity, I can confirm that there are a lot of rules to follow. But once you understand them, they all make sense and are pretty predictable. And since everyone else must follow them too, their cost of compliance isn't material because it's the same cost for everyone.
Pretty boring, actually, but reality tends to be like that.

Start a company here and do any amount of business, and more government agencies will come looking for you every day, each with their own giant set of rules for what you can and can't do.
Ok now I call bullshit. I don't think you have any experience with what you are talking about.
In over a decade of doing business, I have never had any government agencies "come looking" for me.
It's true that your Small Business Administration reference shows that corporate activities are regulated here in the USA. As they are everywhere--- and the overwhelming majority of those regulations are well-reasoned. Taking the length of the list of regulations out of context, as you have done, is a nonsense attempt to make a point that is genuinely unsupportable.
Would I like less paperwork? Sure. But my impression, after reading many of the regulations themselves, is that removing them would create opportunities for abuse that would ultimately destroy markets and opportunities as businesses, looking out for their own self-interests, took advantage. The individual rules as they exist today might not let YOU gain significant, unstable advantage--- but they prevent your competition from doing likewise. Which they would then use to stomp, starve, or litigate you out of existence even if your products were objectively better than theirs.
I'll let you in on a little secret: just having the objectively best product isn't enough to run a successful business. By far. A lot of those other necessary things are coded in the SBA regulations and elsewhere---they create a setting where businesses that truly do everything right can thrive.
Maybe you thought you had an objectively best product, yet failed at it as a business? That's hardly the market's fault.

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b.g.
Re:Where is this? by locopuyo · 2012-09-05 07:26 · Score: 1

It's corruption. The small businesses get killed by the excessive regulations and the big businesses make deals and get exceptions.
People think they are sticking it to the man when they get all these big regulations passed but all they are doing is the bidding of the evil corporations they claim to be against.

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The Official Site of 1337 Pwnage

Re:charity by Smauler · 2012-09-04 15:59 · Score: 1

I'd consider somebody rich if: (1) They pay for a full-time household staff-person, such as a housekeeper or nanny

There are plenty of examples of families living about 1900 who lived in absolute squalor, yet employed someone full time, who lived with them. By absolute squalor, I mean 1 room for the entire family, no running water, etc. I learnt about this through a radio programme which concerned crime - one of these maids was accused (and convicted) of theft. Originally sentenced to death, her sentence was commuted (some would say ;)) to expatriation to Australia.

Anyway, the point I was making was that there have been plenty of situations in the past in which employing a person full time most definitely did not qualify you as rich. There are not as extreme examples now, but there are still countries in the world now in which a large proportion of families employ someone full time, and these families are not considered rich.

Re:Isn't Gates a big lib? by Black+Parrot · 2012-09-04 16:04 · Score: 1

You have to subtract the blue dog Democrats, who are just as bad as Republicans.

They *are* Republicans, for all practical purposes.

And Democrats helped with a lot of the 2001-2008 that's got us in such a jam.

--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade

Re:charity by Rockoon · 2012-09-04 16:06 · Score: 2

These dipshits actually think that what they did to America is capitalism.. and then blame capitalism for what they did to America.

--
"His name was James Damore."

Re:Excuse my french, but by cavreader · 2012-09-04 16:18 · Score: 1

True Socialism is people standing around with their hands out demanding products and services made possible by the minority of people who actually contribute to society. True socialism rests on the belief that everyone is equal and that is not true. If you were a microchip design engineer would you be happy making the same amount of money as the person bagging your groceries? Communism is not even worth talking about since it has never been truly tried outside of a few communes in the 60's. Economic systems like those in the small scandinavian countries do not scale up to large and more populous countries. If you want a better life you should get an education, either formal or from experience. And try to major in something other than English Lit, Political Science, or Art History. Start taking responsibility for your own well being instead of expecting the "state" to do it for you.
You could take all the wealth in the world and divide it equally among everyone and the only thing you would have is everyone would be equally poor. You start taking away the monetary incentives that drive some people to excel in their chosen field and pretty soon no one will bother and you will end up with a society where everyone is on the dole until the war starts. The current economic systems all fail to take into consideration the one thing that will without a doubt lead to the next free for all war and that consideration is population control. There are just to many fucking people on the planet for any economic system to handle. The poorest countries and segments of society on earth have the highest birthrates. If they spent more time trying to improve their situations instead of fucking 24x7 or spending a good part of the day on their knees praying to their chosen diety they could probably have time to work on making a better life.

As it stands people seem to have put their faith on technology being able to solve our natural resource problems without realizing that our technology advancements depend on ever increasing amounts of natural resources. Petroleum products, metals, and rare earth elements are all being depleted at record pace trying to feed our technology advancements.
Gates made his money within the system and if he wants to give some of it back in whatever form why denigrate it. The system was in place long before he came onto the scene. When MS first started IBM was the goliath in computer market but they were top heavy, overly buracratic, unbending, and royally fucked up when they decided the desktop PC was a deadend and decided to focus on the mid-range server market. By the time they realized their mistake MS and Apple had bought the rights to technology held by IBM and Xerox who considered the technology worthless. MS secured the rights to DOS for 50K and Apple snagged the UI tech from Xerox for almost nothing. No one with the kind of wealth Gates has amassed is required to give 1 single penny back but a lot of them do it anyway.

We need more trades based teaching with non degree by Joe_Dragon · 2012-09-04 16:25 · Score: 1

We need more trades based teaching with non degree based classes and non degree teachers who have skills in the area they are teaching.

Re:Isn't Gates a big lib? by __aaltlg1547 · 2012-09-04 16:41 · Score: 1

Think what might have happened if they had told him he was dumb.

I would be honored for a liberal to call me dumb.

Consider yourself honored then.

Re:Excuse my french, but by __aaltlg1547 · 2012-09-04 16:44 · Score: 1

True socialism is publicly owned and worker-operated workplaces.

Re:Cody claims teacher performance doesn't correla by maz2331 · 2012-09-04 16:47 · Score: 2

The real issue is that poverty reflects the values of those subcultures that reject education and work.

Re:Isn't Gates a big lib? by nbauman · 2012-09-04 16:54 · Score: 1

Well, most of the Democrats are Republicans, for all practical purposes.

Except for Joe Lieberman, he's an independent.

Re:Cody claims teacher performance doesn't correla by Rockoon · 2012-09-04 17:05 · Score: 3, Interesting

Its hard to talk about this issue without talking about race, because quite frankly American urban poor are mostly minorities, and from that reduced group they are mostly African American.

With that in mind, my own feelings about this follow fairly closely with Bill Cosby. It is certainly a cultural problem more than an economic problem, and it wasn't always this way. There is a stark difference between black culture at the turn of the 20th century and the turn of the 21st century, and the difference has proven to be a great disadvantage. Some of it has institutional roots, but as both I and Bill Cosby believe, that is no excuse for what blacks are doing to themselves.

We cannot legislate this problem away, and there is good reason to believe that every time we try we just prolong the condition. The inner cities need strong inspirational leaders that accept no excuses. Things can't get better until people start being better.

--
"His name was James Damore."

Re:Cody claims teacher performance doesn't correla by fermion · 2012-09-04 17:36 · Score: 1

Not all students cost the same to educate. This is proven in the fact that charter schools, schools like KIPP, who are not comprehensive, require parents to be proactive in gaining admission, and can more easily expel kids, all are based on that kids can be educated more cheaply. This is true if one filters out the expensive kids. In particular many schools do not provide special education programs, GT Programs, career programs, language programs because they cry to the government that they do not have money.

Much in "Educational Research" is nor valid research. Many terms are undefined, measuring student growth is nearly impossible, and controlling for SES is often not done in a statistically valid manner. Teacher performance can be as simple as an administrator seeing completed worksheets every day. Improved student performance may simply be a school that cheats on tests. It has been known to happen. The research too often is funded by interested parties looking for an outcome. Right now what the interested parties want is validation that generic recent college graduates are the best teachers, so hiring them for a few years, knowing they will leave before vesting, is the best thing to do. Teacher performance not correlating to student performance is key to this finding. OTOH, a teacher that is only going to stay in a couple years, is paid bonuses bassed on student performance, is not going to worry about losing a teaching license if she is caught letting her student cheat in the way that a career teacher who needs her job is.

We have to be brutally honest about poverty. Our society is based on the idea that some people are going to basically be consumers. There is not meaningful work for them. If they can raise a family to consumer product that manufacturers need to have consumed, that is enough. Have you been to Walmart when the government checks come in? That is what I mean. There is nothing wrong with this. OTOH we don't have to have every generation be simply a consumer. We can teach kids to be innovators. This is where a public education can help. This is where Gates Foundation can help, but I think they are trying to be cut rate about it.

This is especially a problem in the city. In a given suburbs or rural area everyone is basically at the same level of dispair. The houses are generally the same, the people are the same. You don't know that you are culturally retarded if there are no example of better cultures. But in the city the kids see the inequity, they see that life can be better, they just don't know how to get there. So if the school is not well funded, if the teachers are not creative, then the children are not going to be prepared to take advantage of the opportunities around them. We will have lost the productivity that we could have gained from moving a child from a consumer to an innovator. This is what one must believe in if one is going to value education and create a culture where it is valued. That any child is a potential contributing member of society, no matter if that child is benignly neglected in a mansion, or actively loved in a shack, or neglected and living on who ever has a spare couch. We must believe that funding a child's basic needs is not charity, not something that we can fight about for political gain, but the right thing to do from moral and practical standpoints. This is what the US stands for. We are not an aristocratic society where the son of a rich man automatically is entitled to all he wants. We are a place where given the basic opportunity of food, shelter, education, anyone can grow up to add to the GDP, which is really all that should matter.

--
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black

Re:charity by lennier · 2012-09-04 17:38 · Score: 5, Insightful

So where is the magic land that actually has a capitalistic system?

Or is capitalism just impossible?

Capitalism isn't strictly impossible, any more than jumping off a building is impossible. However, like jumping, it is inherently self-contradictory; it can't be sustained infinitely, and the results when the system crashes aren't pretty.

Unfettered capitalism appears indistinguishable from feudalism: every initially free market rapidly devolves into one or two winners who become the equivalent of landlords. They own the land/property, everyone else becomes a serf who works and pays rent to the property-holder. This feudal situation with "late stage capitalism" of course ends up looking nothing like the early-stage "free market", but therein lies the self-contradiction. Then eventually the landlords overreach and you get a revolution or a disruptive technology, philosophy or outside invader, and this temporarily resets the game pieces. We see this happening in rapid acceleration in the intellectual property landscape in computing, but it looks much like the same forces that have been at work for thousands of years. Marx spotted this pattern but I think he was a bit off in his prescriptions on how to fix it; replacing capital with compulsion by force seems to do bad things for everyone involved.

It would be nice if there were more intellectual alternatives to the Austrian School than Marxism. I tend towards E F Schumacher, who isn't easy to pigeonhole as "left" or "right".

--
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC

Re:college has to much Profits and lacking real le by greg1104 · 2012-09-04 17:39 · Score: 1

Subject line has no Enough college.

Re:charity by dryeo · 2012-09-04 17:50 · Score: 4, Insightful

Yes, it is what the "free market" leads to. The free market says the most efficient players will do the best and it is always more efficient to pay the government for regulations then to innovate and create a better product.
You just have to look at the amount of money being spent by "free enterprise" on the current American election with the most successful players spending money on both sides as whoever wins is a win for the capitalist.

--
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism

Re:charity by dryeo · 2012-09-04 18:02 · Score: 1

Not to take away your point but I think You're talking about aprox. 1800. This was the peak of capitalism, when owning a one room home was enough to make you one of the 1% (actually higher then that) and relatively rich. As you pointed out, the average person could be executed for the smallest infraction and the well off actually used to go on about how hanging was too lenient. That is capitalism at its unregulated finest.

--
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism

Re:charity by Artifakt · 2012-09-04 18:18 · Score: 4, Insightful

If you look at what Adam Smith wrote about a Free Market, his theoretical perfect form of "Free" included everybody having full knowledge of the situation when buying or selling. That's a condition that can only be met if someone (like a government) compels full disclosure. Trade Secrets are anti-free market by that definition, as are all sorts of other things like ultra high speed stock trading. As it stands today, most people who claim to be Capitalists think Smith meant 'Free' as in Government keeps out of their way and lets them take advantage of any disparity in knowledge as much as they possibly can, even though that's the exact opposite of what Smith described. So of course, Capitalism is impossible, in the same way as Democracy is impossible if most of the people claiming to want it think it means noble families rule by inherited right, or Anarchy is impossible if most of the people calling themselves Anarchists think it means the police have the right to detain people indefinitely without charges, or similar distortions of what people meant when they coined the words.

Beyond that, people very soon after Smith published 'The Wealth of nations' were pointing out that, if you can't get a quite perfect free market, but only get pretty close, Smith hadn't proved that that meant you got petty close to the 'Greatest Good for the Greatest Number' or any sort of 'best economic system' in any particular way. Smith's theories left the possibility that 'close to perfectly free' would make a really lousy society and make the vast majority of people miserable. (Sort of like 99% of a perfect vacation flight to Hawaii could mean in the end you had to jump out of the plane 12 miles out to sea and swim for shore with no life vest). So capitalism may be just impossible in another sense unless you can prove that the particular areas where the market is less than perfectly free, even if they seem trivial, don't have a vast negative impact.

--
Who is John Cabal?

Re:charity by symbolset · 2012-09-04 18:24 · Score: 1

I'm just going to let your comment go, and thank you for giving me an opportunity to expand on my comment without a self-reply, you ignorant twit.

It's easier to get treatment for an impacted molar or abdominal abscess in Tijuana than it is 12 miles north in San Diego, if you don't have coverage.

The AMA rate-limits the acceptance of doctors to preserve their premium position in society, regardless of merit. Implied in this is that some must suffer a lack of care to keep the price up. This is not capitalism, since the means of production are limited by some method not relating to demand. If 10 million people presented themselves tomorrow to be tested, all well qualified physicians well schooled in the art and with experience, the AMA would turn almost all of them back to preserve their position as the gatekeeper of medicine and preserve the scarcity of care to preserve the quality of life of their members.

The insurance industry has become a block to the provision of care so successful that a man with ready cash can't get treatment or medicine. This is not capitalism, this is extortion since the benefits of production are blocked by a group with a monopolistic goal that benefits from some large fraction of the people being denied care and suffering great harm or death thereby. The consequences of denial of care, not the benefits of provision of care is the profit engine here. This is not capitalism as the market is not free to respond to changes in demand, and "choose this or die" isn't really part of the capitalism ethos.

We cannot be rid of the suffering without being rid of this system. The system needs to preserve the negative consequences of lack of care to maintain the benefits of quality of life for its maintainers. And that means that some of us must needlessly die to make the lack of insurance or care sufficiently dire to make us pay for the insurance. Or we need to break the system entirely.

I'm for breaking the system entirely and providing a federal "medic corps" of well-educated physicians deeply in student debt to the federal government and rate-limited by the AMA who can work off their debt by providing basic care to all who come with need at a fair wage and some debt forgiveness. Once the debt is paid, these physicians can proceed to the other game having had the benefit of this experience. Perhaps paying the premium rate for a few senior diagnosticians to supervise them. Also by eliminating the AMA privilege of certifying physicians since they've obviously abused the position in a way that is a threat to public health.

There is precedent, as the US Army did create many surgeons during WWII and the Korean War who became some of the great surgeons of the modern era through sheer experience - and these surgeons were mostly college kids at first with little training and no experience.

The alternative is to let our "capitalist" medical system deprive many of us of care entirely. And that's not OK - and it's not capitalism either.

--
Help stamp out iliturcy.

Re:Isn't Gates a big lib? by Barlo_Mung_42 · 2012-09-04 18:41 · Score: 1

Sometimes it's best to just stay on the meds.

Re:charity by dryeo · 2012-09-04 18:46 · Score: 1

In a pure capitalist society without government regulations you can trade a starving man a bowl of soup for their kidney and in the process of harvesting their kidney you're going to leave a wound.

--
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism

Re:Cody claims teacher performance doesn't correla by greg1104 · 2012-09-04 18:46 · Score: 1

We are not an aristocratic society where the son of a rich man automatically is entitled to all he wants.

We are now. Our rich aristocrats set up family trusts and similar mechanisms to protect their children that the rest of the country has no access to to ensure exactly that. For example, only poor and middle-class people pay estate taxes and circulate their money back toward the public upon death if they've accumulated a moderate amount of it. Get a lot of money together and you can afford to start avoiding that with a trust, start moving assets off-shore to avoid paying taxes, and shift income away from regular income and toward things treated as capital gains.

Bill Gates is the founder of a company convicted of monopoly power abuse (US), competition abuse (EU), and that's just major cases they were obviously guilty of. The fact that he's now distributing his wealth is not reason to ask "is the Gates Foundation spending its money wisely?". The real questions should be around who all that money was stolen from to get so rich, because it's usually someone. All of his assets should have been seized as a criminal, and then we'd really have some cash to fund education with.

The reality of our country is that the poor kids who become innovators will still be poor adults as long as they're being ripped off by rich guys who are the songs of earlier rich guys. Gates is at least 3rd generation money, one who started with piles of banking and law related income to protect him and make him feel (rightly) above the law. The way the rich consider it acceptable to flaunt the rules that limit everyone else is at least as big of a problem as the education gap.

You're measuring wealth from the wrong end... by denzacar · 2012-09-04 19:10 · Score: 1

It's not about if someone making $149k, $150k or $151k can be considered rich.

Try instead to figure out who's standard of living is poor and how much are they making. Keep in mind that there are many levels below simply "poor".
Then you look above that until you get to an acceptable standard of living.
Then above that you'll find the "Doing OK" crowd.
Then the "Well off" ones.
Then the rich.
Then the very rich.
Then the super rich.

Or... you can take a shortcut and just look at the minimum wage.
I'm guessing that we can agree that it is a decent enough economic indicator for an online discussion between laymen.

You're making one minimum wage? You can barely afford the cost of living for one person. Yourself.
1-2 MinWage? You could support another person and still live poorly, or live at some more acceptable level alone.
5 times minimum wage allows you alone to support an entire family of four and then some.
Incidentally, that is apparently also the point where one earns enough to be happy.

It's pretty easy to see where those $150k guys, making 10+ minimum wages, fall on such a scale.

As for a "why a specific number"...
Well, try it like this.
If you are making enough money to provide a family of 4.1 (Mom, dad and the statistical number of children needed to continue the growth of population.) with their own 2*MinWage - you are the golden standard of upper middle class.
Each member of a such family can afford a middle class life on their own, and together they are a happy, economically functional, upper middle class family.
The fucking ***American DreamTM***. America The Beautiful starts playing in the background, a bald eagle flies through the frame.

Add those numbers up for the highest US MinWage (Washington) and you get:
$9.04 * 8 hours * 5 day * 50 weeks * 4.1 people * 2 = $148256

That is the PEAK of upper middle class in the USA. Above that starts the upper class - the rich.

--
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens

Re:You're measuring wealth from the wrong end... by denzacar · 2012-09-09 07:48 · Score: 1

Sorry about that. Haven't seen your reply. Possibly due to its 0-score.

You go to *4.1 without placing responsibility on the people who caused it to bump from *1 (or *2).
I am placing no responsibility whatsoever on ANY of those 4.1 people.
I am simply comparing living standard numbers to show why one may be considered "rich" (in the USA) if one makes 150k a year, and simply "middle class well off" if he/she makes couple of thousands less.
Rationalizing the numbers if you will.

--
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens

Re:Cody claims teacher performance doesn't correla by rtb61 · 2012-09-04 20:21 · Score: 1

Just a heads up. The cost of school infrastructure is built into the cost of teaching. That land, those building and the recreation facilities. In urban areas, that land could be a high rise apartment structure, often several high rise apartment structures and is priced into the cost of teaching at that location. Next due to local government school administrations, the cost of school administration is repeated again and again and again, easy fix go from local government school administration to state government school administration, one state education body, doing all the administration, hiring and firing and setting curricula.

The was no great problem until knee jerk right wing reactionaries got involved and started fixing things. The more they fixed the worse it got, with them complaining all the way they if only they could fix things more suddenly somehow by some miracle instead of their fixes making things worse it would suddenly make things better.

You have got ignorant uneducated (speciality knowledge) people making 'from the gut' decisions. Measuring student education costs in one year can be affected by postponed building maintenance cost suddenly blowing out with repair it now at double the cost of keeping it maintained or it will fall down. Text book replacement put off for years finally being updated. Local government with a minimal number of schools to off set administration costs. Accounting fudges inflating capital infrastructure right downs for more federal funding. Inflated administration wages due to political appointees. Regional security and vandalism repair costs. Of course often forgotten stuff like heating and cooling bills, some locations get away with spending very little on that, whilst others pay a fortune.

--
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen

Re:Cody claims teacher performance doesn't correla by olau · 2012-09-04 21:05 · Score: 1

But, it isn't poverty exactly or school financial resources that predict student performance. It's culture.

I heard someone who was trying to change organizational culture and values talk about this. As he explained, you can't really change this kind of thing directly. For instance you can't tell people, "you should value education" - you can't force them directly to do that. It doesn't work well if you try.

What he argued was that you have to change the structures. In this case, I'd say it's that you need to find them a job so the they don't have time to hang out on the street, don't start drinking and fighting to prove that they're at least something in this world where everyone considers them loser scum. Then they'll change their culture themselves.

Yesterday I read about a project in Copenhagen where they found some small jobs, some of the slightly silly, like cleaning up the streets or something like that, but basically an excuse to have kids from poor areas who get out of primary school (around 14-16 years) show up, do some real hard work and get paid. According to this page, the difference in employment rates when they turn 19 is 65% for no small jobs vs. 92% for those who had.

Re:Isn't Gates a big lib? by thesandtiger · 2012-09-04 21:57 · Score: 2

He comes off as more mentally ill/paranoid than dumb, which is a shame. Most people in good mental health don't spout off paranoid fantasies vilifying people who simply have different politics, and that goes for people at any point of the spectrum.

And just to preempt the obvious, no, saying someone is likely mentally ill is in no way villifying them, it just means they should get some help.

--
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.

Re:charity by TheRaven64 · 2012-09-04 22:48 · Score: 1

What do you define as rich? 150k? what about the guy that makes 149k?

If you're talking about how much someone earns, they're almost certainly not rich. The problem with capitalism is in the name: it's all about the amount of capital that you control. In a capitalist society, you can gain income from two sources: from performing valuable work and from simply controlling capital. Worse, the income that you can gain from performing work is largely capped (there's only a finite amount of work you can do), whereas the income from controlling capital can grow as fast as you accumulate capital and after a certain point becomes self-sustaining (i.e. your income from capital exceeds your expenditure, so you continue to accumulate wealth without doing any work).

I have no problem with rewarding people for doing useful things, or even not-so-useful popular things. The problem is rewarding people simply because they are already wealthy.

--
I am TheRaven on Soylent News

Re:Excuse my french, but by TheRaven64 · 2012-09-04 23:00 · Score: 2

True Socialism is people standing around with their hands out demanding products and services made possible by the minority of people who actually contribute to society

Yup, that's certainly the message I took away from 'the workers should control the means of production'. Wait, what?

--
I am TheRaven on Soylent News

Re:Excuse my french, but by RazorSharp · 2012-09-04 23:53 · Score: 1

Actually, true socialism is the economy of every first world nation on earth. Laissez-faire is a myth and just as impractical as communism. If you want a true free market go to Somalia or some other third world shit hole. You damn well won't find any Howard Roarks or Henry Reardens.

No one with the kind of wealth Gates has amassed is required to give 1 single penny back but a lot of them do it anyway.

Actually, everyone with the amount of wealth Gates has amassed is required to give massive amounts back in the form of taxes. Unless they hide their money in a 'charitable' organization that allows it to be used for investments that personally enrich the owner rather than enrich the country through tax revenue.

--
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."

Re:Cody claims teacher performance doesn't correla by furytrader · 2012-09-05 00:07 · Score: 1

"The real questions should be around who all that money was stolen from to get so rich, because it's usually someone." Really? So Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods stole money from people to become rich? ... and before you start backpedaling and explaining that that's not what you meant, let me correct you and say it is - you're saying that if someone earned a lot of money, they probably didn't deserve it and that they took it from someone else. In Michael Jordan's case, that becomes a little harder to prove, since he just happened to be the best professional basketball player of all time AND people in this country and around the world find value in that - so they're willing to watch him play on TV, buy products he endorses, etc. No one puts a gun to someone's head and said, "You have to watch the Bulls play tonight!" People chose to do that. A lot of people. Now, from your worldview, Jordan should have given some of his pay to his fellow basketball players - let me correct that - to everyone who ever wanted to play basketball professionally (whether they succeeded or not) - because some of the outsized earnings he accumulated SHOULD've gone to them. You think that there's some fixed amount of dollars that is somehow magically allocated to the game basketball, and Jordan unfairly took most of that for himself. The fact is, Jordan expanded the amount of time and money people spend on enjoying the game of basketball, and he rightly deserves a significant portion of that. He practiced hard, he showed up for games, he made the difficult shots when it mattered most and deserves the rewards. Why does he owe anything to players that didn't make that commitment? The reason that most people, even those with a preference for state-driven wealth distribution, don't level these allegations at Michael Jordan or Tom Cruise or Taylor Swift is that they probably, at one time or another, played basketball in junior high, or did some stage acting or performed at an open mic and realize that Jordan and Cruise and Swift are REALLY GOOD at what they do. They deserve their wealth. However, most people have NOT tried to run a company with 100,000 employees, develop new products and services to bring to market, placate fickle customers and deal with mountains of regulators, lawyers and shareholders. They think that being the CEO of Target or Wal-Mart or Microsoft is easy - anyone can do it (how would they know otherwise?) - and so they clearly don't deserve their wealth. I would submit, though, that being the CEO of a large corporation demands as much dedication, focus and drive for excellence as being a top NBA ball player or chart-topping musician. The US economy is littered with the remains of once-large companies that couldn't hack it (Circuit City, Palm, Commodore, etc.), and the fact that Microsoft or Wal-Mart or Coca-Cola or GEICO are still going strong decades after their launch is something more than simply "luck". They deserve their success.

Re:charity by Bengie · 2012-09-05 00:15 · Score: 1

The issue isn't the rich getting richer because they're good at supply and demand, it's the minority powerful rich that get richer because of manipulation and deception.

Just like anything in real life, a destructive minority can cause damage faster than the creative majority can fix things.

I just spent 5 years making this awesome painting... then someone comes by and sets it on fire. The amount of effort to ruin is much less than to build.

Re:Excuse my french, but by cavreader · 2012-09-05 01:44 · Score: 1

The problem with workers owning the means of of production requires that the "workers" to all contribute equally to the success of the enterprise. Some work harder and contribute much more than some so how do you reconcile this discrepancy. Like I said before it is a fallacy that all people are equal when it comes to contributing to society and all the political correctness in the world will not change that fact.

It's just true of humans in general by Sycraft-fu · 2012-09-05 01:52 · Score: 1

You cannot help someone until they decide to help themselves. You can't "make" an addict stop being an addict. They have to make the decision they want to fight their addiction, only then can you help them. We can't "make" Iraq a Democracy, the people have to decide for themselves they want to do it and only then can they be helped.

Same deal with kids in school. Teachers can't force them to achieve. They can help them achieve, but only if the kid is willing to work towards it. If there's a culture of stupidity, if kids actively fight against it, there's little teachers can do.

Basically I can open any number of doors for you in life, but you have to be the one to walk through.

Re:Excuse my french, but by cavreader · 2012-09-05 02:00 · Score: 1

There are more tax shelters capable of reducing someones tax liabilities that are just as good or even better than using philanthropic donations. And if you are hung up on rich people or corporations avoiding taxes you should save your ire for the tax code instead of those who use it legally. Also keep in mind that the US corporate tax rate is the second highest in the world after Japan. Countries like China use this to offer lower tax rates to entice foreign corporations to do business with them. Just as they manipulate their currency to optimize their export prices while other countries let their currencies float. And China is certainly not alone there are many countries who use lower corporate tax rates in an effort to attract companies to their countries.

Re:Excuse my french, but by chilvence · 2012-09-05 02:05 · Score: 1

Hay, at least the BBC makes a token effort to hide the fact that it is insulting your intelligence.

Re:charity by dargaud · 2012-09-05 03:12 · Score: 1

they can't even *speak* about their products without government permission

And it is a VERY good thing that advertisement of medical products is illegal in my countries (yes, more than one): this way no money is wasted on advertisement, that needs to be repaid in the sale price of the product.

--
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Re:charity by bgat · 2012-09-05 03:13 · Score: 1

Like Communism, its an ideology that isn't practiced in reality anywhere. Mainly because the pure forms of both are unworkable and inhumane.

This. Precisely.

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b.g.

Re:Cody claims teacher performance doesn't correla by greg1104 · 2012-09-05 03:58 · Score: 2

Michael Jordan is not rich on the scale Bill Gates is. He's also not the CEO of a company that's been convicted of illegal tactics all around the world. Athletes, musicians, and people like your other examples are a bit rich and earned it. To become massively rich on the sort of world's richest man scale takes shady tactics. The appropriate rich people pile to sort Gates with is next to people like the trading firm CEOs who paid themselves massively while defrauding their customers.

You should learn how to separate legitimate business success from very profitable business activity due to illegal tactics. I was talking about the tactics of rich family dynasties in that regard, not rags to (some) riches stories like NBA players.

Re:charity by Captain.Abrecan · 2012-09-05 05:32 · Score: 1

"The foundation of civilised society is voluntary action and compassion. Capitalism and charity are two sides of that coin. One cannot succeed without the other." - agm

That is my understanding. 'Capitalism' is not some model that we deliberately switched to one day. As if there was some press conference and a politician announced "Yeah, so this fiscal year we are changing our economic model from the bartering system to this new thing we are calling 'Capitalism'. We made some pamphlets here, if you want. It's all very simple, and effective immediately.' The so-called capitalist system is merely where we have ended up after all this time. No one designed it or controls it. Many attempt to regulate it, and there is much discussion to be had there. Surely, too, attempts to play opportunities in regulating such an important pinion in our society are evil, indeed. But the reality is that currency and goods move around, and some folks choose to play an opportunity there. Unlike the regulation, playing the system itself is not evil. Also a minority of those folks are hugely successful at this endeavor and are lauded for it. I think this is poor reasoning. By system I mean our financial system, economic system and freight system in tandem.

What a person does, their actions, is what makes their manner in a viewer's moral standard. If a citizen uses the system, the money never actually leaves the system. All things flow through it, and this is hardly evil. If a rich person brings suffering upon others then that is evil. Wine hurts no one, also marble or bentleys. If a rich citizen bought a troop of mercenaries and gunned down a village that would be evil. But using the system that improves by being used, is not evil. Shaming those with wealth shows ignorance of reality, and the cowardice of a character lacking personal responsibility. The wealthy don't take to the streets, greedily taking the fruits of workers with their bare hands. They don't strike them down with brutality to meet the cold gutter. There is no evil where no action has been taken. When the rich take to the streets, armed with feudal purpose, then there is evil.

The things that a person owns or how many notes she has that represent the ability to buy future goods and services are abstract things. A rich person makes money by putting his money in the market and playing opportunities in the system for growth. Money that is in the system is moving, in loans to less wealthy citizens, loans to small businesses, in market growth portfolios et cetera. It does not occur to some people that the investments which make their 401k or other growth strategy possible is the actions of large pools of wealth in the system. I don't intend to mean that all growth precipitates from large pools of currency, I intend that this is a finite pattern. I am using it as an example of how the system all works together. All the money in the system is liquid at such scale. It is not being held up in a vault as rocks in a tree's roots. The system is to be used to grow; how the tree uses the air and light which caresses its tenderest of branches that quiver in the sun, the earth its roots clutch, to grow.

There is also the weird topic of what 'makes' poor people poor. Maybe they have a personal philosophy or ideology that is not good at getting them opportunities and options; narrow worldview. Maybe they are not intelligent enough to navigate the rigors of wealth creation. Maybe they are not dedicated enough. Maybe they are not educated enough. Maybe they just don't want to. Who can say such things? All I know is, that the system is available in it's current state to all citizens. If some people choose not to take advantage of that for any purpose (not just wealth, it is only the most vibrant example I can use to paint these truths with), that is their business.

In the US we have all the power, all the food, all the electricity, all the resources, all the books, all the teachers, all the mentors, all the universities, a

Re:charity by buybuydandavis · 2012-09-05 06:39 · Score: 1

The free market leads to that when enough people support making it an unfree market.

Re:charity by buybuydandavis · 2012-09-05 06:42 · Score: 1

Because what's more wasteful than communication?

Re:charity by raedeon · 2012-09-05 07:10 · Score: 1

I see your a college freshman

I see your

see your

your

You lost all credibility on the 3rd word of your post.

Re:Isn't Gates a big lib? by careysub · 2012-09-05 09:02 · Score: 1

I'd say the filibuster-proof supermajority lasted only 5 weeks in effect. From the time Franken was sworn in until the death of Sen. Kennedy was 7 weeks, but the Senate was only in session for five of those weeks. Oh - and that "supermajority" exists ONLY if you count two Independents as being Democrats, which they weren't.

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Re:charity by dargaud · 2012-09-05 09:38 · Score: 1

Advertisement is not communication. It it blatant attempt at manipulation. And it is expensive. A drug should be chosen for its ability to cure said medical problem. Not because of the pretty lady in the video.

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Re:charity by buybuydandavis · 2012-09-05 10:11 · Score: 1

Advertisement is not communication.

Those who advocate censor never have trouble finding a rationalization for it.

Re:Isn't Gates a big lib? by Uberbah · 2012-09-05 14:37 · Score: 1

And when Congressional Republicans wanted to do something about it? He called them "extreme" and "unAmerican."

Because "doing something about it" meant making it worse with more tax cuts for the rich. Any more winger questions?

Re:Isn't Gates a big lib? by Uberbah · 2012-09-05 14:44 · Score: 1

You mean his supermajority for four months?

They didn't need a supermajority. The entire 2008 Democratic Platform could have been passed via reconciliation if necessary. They chose not to, most tellingly with the extension of the Bush Tax Cuts.

And Obama could have gotten the votes if he was willing to make them be there. Sure, politicians sometimes vote against their own party - but not on cloture votes. Filibustering your own party's president was unheard of since the time of the Dixiecrats.

Obama chose not to pressure the Blue Dogs. Probably because Obama is himself a Blue Dog in fact, if not in name.

Re:charity by dargaud · 2012-09-05 17:50 · Score: 1

What are you, a shill for pharma corps ? How do you want the average Joe to know if he should take drug X or drug Y for his problem ? It's a medical choice, not something that gets decided by whom has the best PR team. Not every limit to capitalism is censorship. And there are many countries where advertisement of medical drugs is illegal.

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Re:charity by buybuydandavis · 2012-09-05 20:17 · Score: 1

Not every limit to capitalism is censorship. And there are many countries where advertisement of medical drugs is illegal.

Not every limit to capitalism is censorship - just the ones that are censorship.

Censorship is not just a limit to the right of a speaker to speaker, but a limit to the right of a listener to *hear*.

Re:Isn't Gates a big lib? by nbauman · 2012-09-06 04:33 · Score: 1

I think they refer to themselves as "centerist" Democrats.

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