On the other hand, it is still a good idea to spend some time walking. We've evolved to walk, not sit and generally people who spend some time walking are healthier and live longer. One nice thing now is that we can drive to interesting places to walk.
Canada for one, as near as I can find, about 80 million for agriculture, perhaps a bit more including the Provinces. Multiply by 10 for comparison as the US has about 10x the population. There's also still some supply side management in dairy along with tariffs to prevent subsidized American farmers dumping their products.
As for the amendment forcing a balanced budget always, there's times when borrowing may be needed. Might be better to be balanced over a 4 year length or such. Unluckily America is so used to the borrow and spend ways that it might break your country to go so severely over to austerity.
It's interesting how numbers come up. According to the EU's 2010 budget, PDF downloadable from https://publications.europa.eu... subsidies are 43.8 billion Euros, your Wiki article claims 57 billion. Perhaps Reuters is counting how much individual countries spend as well. Does the US numbers include State spending? Anyways, your country is applying tariffs on Canada and Mexico due to their high agriculture tariffs that don't seem to exist excepting Canada having some on dairy to prevent the subsidized Americans from dumping. Mexico seems to have about 1.3 Billion in subsides that due to corruption goes to drug lords and large businesses and Canada has about $80 million. Mexico is a sad story as NAFTA allowed massive dumping of corn and such, putting many Mexican farmers out of business and leaving them little choice but to try to sneak into the States for survival. Mixture of a shitty trade deal and shitty government there.
Maybe if America didn't subsidize so much, they could have fairer trade, but instead it is borrow and borrow and give money to their various business friends. Then there becomes the need to dump your products on other countries. Socialism for the rich. Look at your sig, you want no taxes yet are willing to elect governments that spend like shit and borrow how many trillions?
On the other hand are the subsidies that America has. How much government money is given to farmers? Now they are overproducing and want to dump their products on other markets. How much government money is given to companies like Walmart in the form of help for their employees like food stamps so they can pay wages below the cost of living? How much pork is given out? How much money does the USA borrow every year to subsidize businesses with low taxes? Then there the weird tariffs that America imposes on their trading partners, chickens that include imported trucks, softwood lumber that are repeatedly shot down in the international courts as being unfair, but they raise prefits for American companies on the back of home buyers. There's also all the profitable services that America sells and then doesn't count in the trade balance. With America it's like the playing field is never tilted enough in their favour. Its economy could be doing excellent but as all the profits are sucked up by the upper class, the average person is left out and open to blaming whomever the rich point at.
But then you'd have a growing public domain competing with copyrighted works, which is not in the interests of the publishers, who feel that they have a right to collect rent on works forever without competition.
Well here in Canada, my wife got disenfranchised by simply the government changing the name she was registered under, from her maiden name that she has always voted and is what her ID has on it to my name, on the eve of the election, as in the day before the voters web site showed she was registered correctly. My son got disenfranchised due to it being too onerous to get the proper ID, $75 and a 60 mile round trip during business hours with no transit. Other ways to disenfranchise include things like a typo in the voters list so your ID doesn't agree with the name you're registered under, onerous address requirements so people like university students don't have the right address to vote. We've had ID requirements for voting in Canada for a long time and it worked fine until the Conservatives got enough power to unilaterally change things and took advice from the American Republican party on how to prevent those demographics that aren't likely to vote for them disenfranchised. It is always going to be a problem that changes in government can mean a well working system can be sabotaged.
It's also amazing that in the 21st century that groups of people aren't allowed to vote down there. Feudal ideas like removing civil rights from people permanently so they can't reintegrate into society and if arrested for a political crime like having the wrong plant, their vote can be taken away so they can't vote to change the unjust law. Then there's the founding principal of America, no taxation without representation, that so many Americans no longer believe in.
How do you validate the citizenship part? Lots of government ID such as drivers licenses just takes residency I believe. Then there's the people who may have valid ID under different names such as the newly married woman with some ID in her maiden name and some in her married name.
Well, they seem to be quiet about the ever increasing deficits. I guess I'm old fashioned and don't like negative spending though it sure jacks up the economy for a while.
Also it was killed because there was an election, a different party got in, and said different party has been killing every program the previous government instituted on principal.
This is always going to be the problem with UBI programs, especially today where a change in government seems to mean making a 180 degree change in direction.
OTOH, there was the Mincome experiment back in the '70's, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... which was pretty successful. Basically the only ones who stopped working were mothers of young children and teenagers who stayed in school. It also ended when the government changed to the right, which is always going to be a problem.
Well, Wyoming's district has 570.000 while Montana's has over a million as one example, though it is not as bad as I first thought. The other thing is that the number of people in the average district has gone from under 35,000 to close to 710, 000 which makes it hard to represent the people. One fix would be to pass Article the First, just like Article the Second finally passed as the 27th Amendment after close to 200 years. There's also the argument whether electors representing their districts or the whole State is better. Me, I'd think districts, but that is mostly opinion based on the idea that a Representative Republic should represent the people.
Last Federal election, my wives registered name mysteriously changed from her maiden name, which her ID is in, to my name. Government web site said she was registered in the name she has always used to vote, voters list at the polling station had her under my name. ID laws are good until a government comes in that wants to use them to screw certain people, such as my wife who is native.
Not really. To get a job, you just need good enough ID to prove that you're legally employable. To vote, that ID has to exactly match the voters role. For example, here under the last government, which was advised by the Republicans, they made the voting ID requirements very strict. My wife, whose ID is in her maiden name and has always voted under her maiden name, checked online that she was correctly registered (the government also got rid of the local registration lists so the only way to check was online) and as of the day before the election, she was correctly registered. On voting day, she was suddenly registered under my last name, and since she didn't have ID under that name. My son was dis-enfranchised even easier. It was just too hard to update his ID, what with the 50 mile trip during working hours and the $75 fee. Both have plenty of ID to get a job. It's really easy to dis-enfranchise people if that is the aim of ID laws. Besides the above examples, there's just the simple typo on the voters registration. John A. Smith is actually registered as Johnn A. Smith.
One weird thing about America is how the House of of Representatives is not representative. With what, the number of Representatives frozen for close to a hundred years at 535. These are supposed to go up as the population increases along with the number of electors.
It's not like we've moved any off them a whole micron. Sure you could use Ceres and such and maybe move an inch a year. Shouldn't take long to move a few 10's of million miles while hoping not to make an error.
Slashdot Mirror
To quote the summary,
Which sounds to me that Facebook hopes to compete with Google and Amazon in being a market.
I wouldn't any of the three.
On the other hand, it is still a good idea to spend some time walking. We've evolved to walk, not sit and generally people who spend some time walking are healthier and live longer.
One nice thing now is that we can drive to interesting places to walk.
I've known women who have driven logging trucks (off road and on) as well as dump trucks, no hard lifting there.
Well America did pretty well out of it, especially before Mexico joined. Of course then your businesses went to China, which fucked the common worker.
So which countries subsidize less than the US?
Canada for one, as near as I can find, about 80 million for agriculture, perhaps a bit more including the Provinces. Multiply by 10 for comparison as the US has about 10x the population.
There's also still some supply side management in dairy along with tariffs to prevent subsidized American farmers dumping their products.
As for the amendment forcing a balanced budget always, there's times when borrowing may be needed. Might be better to be balanced over a 4 year length or such. Unluckily America is so used to the borrow and spend ways that it might break your country to go so severely over to austerity.
It's interesting how numbers come up. According to the EU's 2010 budget, PDF downloadable from https://publications.europa.eu... subsidies are 43.8 billion Euros, your Wiki article claims 57 billion. Perhaps Reuters is counting how much individual countries spend as well. Does the US numbers include State spending?
Anyways, your country is applying tariffs on Canada and Mexico due to their high agriculture tariffs that don't seem to exist excepting Canada having some on dairy to prevent the subsidized Americans from dumping. Mexico seems to have about 1.3 Billion in subsides that due to corruption goes to drug lords and large businesses and Canada has about $80 million.
Mexico is a sad story as NAFTA allowed massive dumping of corn and such, putting many Mexican farmers out of business and leaving them little choice but to try to sneak into the States for survival. Mixture of a shitty trade deal and shitty government there.
Maybe if America didn't subsidize so much, they could have fairer trade, but instead it is borrow and borrow and give money to their various business friends. Then there becomes the need to dump your products on other countries. Socialism for the rich.
Look at your sig, you want no taxes yet are willing to elect governments that spend like shit and borrow how many trillions?
On the other hand are the subsidies that America has. How much government money is given to farmers? Now they are overproducing and want to dump their products on other markets. How much government money is given to companies like Walmart in the form of help for their employees like food stamps so they can pay wages below the cost of living? How much pork is given out? How much money does the USA borrow every year to subsidize businesses with low taxes?
Then there the weird tariffs that America imposes on their trading partners, chickens that include imported trucks, softwood lumber that are repeatedly shot down in the international courts as being unfair, but they raise prefits for American companies on the back of home buyers.
There's also all the profitable services that America sells and then doesn't count in the trade balance.
With America it's like the playing field is never tilted enough in their favour. Its economy could be doing excellent but as all the profits are sucked up by the upper class, the average person is left out and open to blaming whomever the rich point at.
But then you'd have a growing public domain competing with copyrighted works, which is not in the interests of the publishers, who feel that they have a right to collect rent on works forever without competition.
Well here in Canada, my wife got disenfranchised by simply the government changing the name she was registered under, from her maiden name that she has always voted and is what her ID has on it to my name, on the eve of the election, as in the day before the voters web site showed she was registered correctly. My son got disenfranchised due to it being too onerous to get the proper ID, $75 and a 60 mile round trip during business hours with no transit.
Other ways to disenfranchise include things like a typo in the voters list so your ID doesn't agree with the name you're registered under, onerous address requirements so people like university students don't have the right address to vote.
We've had ID requirements for voting in Canada for a long time and it worked fine until the Conservatives got enough power to unilaterally change things and took advice from the American Republican party on how to prevent those demographics that aren't likely to vote for them disenfranchised. It is always going to be a problem that changes in government can mean a well working system can be sabotaged.
It's also amazing that in the 21st century that groups of people aren't allowed to vote down there. Feudal ideas like removing civil rights from people permanently so they can't reintegrate into society and if arrested for a political crime like having the wrong plant, their vote can be taken away so they can't vote to change the unjust law.
Then there's the founding principal of America, no taxation without representation, that so many Americans no longer believe in.
How do you validate the citizenship part? Lots of government ID such as drivers licenses just takes residency I believe.
Then there's the people who may have valid ID under different names such as the newly married woman with some ID in her maiden name and some in her married name.
Well, they seem to be quiet about the ever increasing deficits. I guess I'm old fashioned and don't like negative spending though it sure jacks up the economy for a while.
Also it was killed because there was an election, a different party got in, and said different party has been killing every program the previous government instituted on principal.
This is always going to be the problem with UBI programs, especially today where a change in government seems to mean making a 180 degree change in direction.
OTOH, there was the Mincome experiment back in the '70's, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... which was pretty successful. Basically the only ones who stopped working were mothers of young children and teenagers who stayed in school.
It also ended when the government changed to the right, which is always going to be a problem.
I note that the tea party seems to have gone away now that the right team of criminals and traitors is racking up even larger deficits.
Well, Wyoming's district has 570.000 while Montana's has over a million as one example, though it is not as bad as I first thought.
The other thing is that the number of people in the average district has gone from under 35,000 to close to 710, 000 which makes it hard to represent the people. One fix would be to pass Article the First, just like Article the Second finally passed as the 27th Amendment after close to 200 years.
There's also the argument whether electors representing their districts or the whole State is better. Me, I'd think districts, but that is mostly opinion based on the idea that a Representative Republic should represent the people.
You still have the problem of intentional typos on the voters list, along with the requirement that the ID exactly match.
Last Federal election, my wives registered name mysteriously changed from her maiden name, which her ID is in, to my name. Government web site said she was registered in the name she has always used to vote, voters list at the polling station had her under my name.
ID laws are good until a government comes in that wants to use them to screw certain people, such as my wife who is native.
Yet it is so easy to make a typo on the voters list so the ID doesn't quite match.
Not really. To get a job, you just need good enough ID to prove that you're legally employable. To vote, that ID has to exactly match the voters role.
For example, here under the last government, which was advised by the Republicans, they made the voting ID requirements very strict. My wife, whose ID is in her maiden name and has always voted under her maiden name, checked online that she was correctly registered (the government also got rid of the local registration lists so the only way to check was online) and as of the day before the election, she was correctly registered. On voting day, she was suddenly registered under my last name, and since she didn't have ID under that name.
My son was dis-enfranchised even easier. It was just too hard to update his ID, what with the 50 mile trip during working hours and the $75 fee.
Both have plenty of ID to get a job.
It's really easy to dis-enfranchise people if that is the aim of ID laws. Besides the above examples, there's just the simple typo on the voters registration. John A. Smith is actually registered as Johnn A. Smith.
One weird thing about America is how the House of of Representatives is not representative. With what, the number of Representatives frozen for close to a hundred years at 535. These are supposed to go up as the population increases along with the number of electors.
All the anti-tampering methods in the world can be for naught if the voter ID requirements are designed to disenfranchise certain groups of voters.
Perhaps they can learn patience.
You're sig references something that is usually considered American.
It's not like we've moved any off them a whole micron. Sure you could use Ceres and such and maybe move an inch a year. Shouldn't take long to move a few 10's of million miles while hoping not to make an error.