(Just look at what has happened to less enlightened countries when they decided to penalize being wealthy if you're tempted to take continual economic growth for granted.)
You mean like when America had a 90% top income bracket?
Of course dollars are worth something. From wallpaper to toilet paper to fire starter, there's value in that paper, at least until they go plastic like here in Canada, even the loonie is now just plain steel as nickel was too expensive.
Never seen an offer of a cash discount here in Canada. I'd be happy just to have cash only checkouts. The odd time they'll be a cashier with a broken plastic reader and does that lineup move fast. Plastic under the best of times is slow, tell cashier whether its credit or debit, wait while the card is waived over the reader and the reader decides whether it's approved, often rinse and repeat as the customer tries every card they have. Meanwhile we're subsidizing the slow plastic people, between the extra cashiers and the fees that have to be spread amongst all customers. I guess the advantage is more sales to people who don't have money, the retailer doesn't give a shit if someone goes into debt to buy their product.
At least they're using Linux. The store I shop at seems to be pure Windows, probably XP embedded and while they seem to have the UPS part down pat, when the server is down... Even the little corner store I stop at occasionally recently updated to computerized registers that are dependent on the bar code reader, great until the next natural disaster... It's also the reason that I have a stash of cash, when the fire burns up the phone lines, electric lines and cell towers, which seems to be getting more common.
Cash isn't always legal tender as well. Here in Canada, coins are only legal tender up to various amounts depending on denomination but basically 20-25 coins. Refusing to take large bills is also common at many businesses as well and perfectly legal.
Last time I was in the grocery store and the power failed, the Windows server in the back room crashed and the registers hung one by one. I was lucky to get my transaction (cash) done. The time before that was so long ago that the cashiers pulled out calculators with a paper tape and manually entered the prices from the stickers that were on all products. Back then it was mostly cash or cheque. In both cases, they stopped letting new customers in
On the other hand, this is just as true, "If you run a Fortune 50 or even Fortune 500 company, legislation has the power to cripple your competitors business. Therefore paying lobbyists to help keep the political environment unstable for your competitors businesses is a necessary expense."...
I live in BC, just east of Vancouver. Generally there is little gun crime, mostly consisting of gangs of E Europeans fighting each other and other drug related stuff such as home invasions of grow-ops. The odds of being in a situation where you could defend yourself with a firearm is pretty small. The only person I've ever known to die from a firearm, it was self inflicted. At least as ownership of firearms is not a right here means I can acquire one if I wanted, unlike if I was an American where due to doing something stupid close to 40 years back, I wouldn't be allowed to own any firearm. Probably lose my right to vote down there too.
Good, you can start with the 300lb woman over there, then next is that one that looks very old but you never know, they might be hanging to the floor due to having so much milk in them.
There's a big if involved there, which I covered by the living in a war zone part of my comment. Personally, where I live, the odds of someone trying to shoot me is so low that it would be stupid to worry about it. More likely to randomly have a tree drop on my head and the real worry is some of the shitty drivers that I encounter.
Birds are. Lots of people died back in the day when high lead logging. They used a whistle for signalling (whistle punk) and ravens would have fun by adding extra touts or touting while some poor guy was setting a choker. They never even would slow down the operation when someone got killed, it was so common.
Unless you live in a war zone, need to protect your animals or such or planning on shooting something for dinner, why would someone carry? An arm is just a tool, if you don't need it, why carry it around? Fetish? Next you'll be saying that carrying a hammer is normal, and it is normal if doing some carpentry but otherwise...
Defence, not offence. America is in a great position, oceans to the east and west, a friendly mostly waste land to the north and countries that would never get it together to be overly aggressive towards the south. 3 or 4 carrier groups, some ballistic missile equipped subs and land based missiles spread around your vast country, a good space program and your defence is taken care of. Your founding fathers understood that a huge standing army leads to tyranny, that's why the navy was financed (defence) but the army had to be refinanced regularly. Also why they threw in the militia wording into the 2nd amendment, it was as much about the right to bear arms as having a population that could be mustered as a militia so no need to have a standing army. They could have worded it like the Bill of Rights of 1689, basically the right to bear arms was for self-defence. Further back, being armed was actually a requirement for freemen, to be part of the militia.
For quite a while, that got changed by EU law ten years ago, you could not change a light bulb with a screwdriver, you had to get the car into a garage.
That's crazy, changing a light bulb is generally simple, though on some newer cars with the molded lights, I could see it being a bit harder. The headlights should also be easy, even in the new complicated self leveling systems, you'd think it could be designed for ease of changing bulbs. I have seen front wheel drive vehicles where the battery is buried, which also seems crazy if they're buried that deep. Glad my vehicle is actually old enough (25 yrs) that I could get collector plates for it if I chose and didn't use it daily. Still, it is a Ford and every time I work on it, I curse the design decisions, especially after mostly owning Japanese stuff.
Of course there is an engineering reason why you can't change the front bulbs with nothing but your hands. Waterproofing. Every vehicle I've owned has had its turn signals and parking lights behind a cover with a gasket that took a simple screwdriver to remove. The old sealed beam headlights usually were held in position by a few screws too. My current vehicle needs the battery removed to get access to one of the headlight bulbs, which is easy to remove by hand, but the battery requires a simple wrench or socket to remove.
Is it really a government granted monopoly now? I understood that municipalities granting monopolies was made illegal in the USA. Where I live, in Canada but similar, I have one choice for internet, not due to a government granted monopoly, but due to only one company bothering to run wires out here. It's not worth it for another company to run wires here and so far it hasn't been worth it for a company to build a cell tower either. With mountains blocking satellite, I have exactly one choice for internet. It's a natural monopoly. Luckily here, internet is considered an essential service, so the ISP can't be unreasonable in pricing and contracts, though our prices are still high. At that when they discontinued my Internet last Nov, they had to leave it switched on until I have an alternative, namely the cell tower they're building so they can finish shutting off my dial-up internet.
In Canada, it is simply an essential service, much like the telephone and electricity. This does not mean free, it just means it should be available to most everyone for basically the same price for the same service and ISP's can't arbitrarily cut people off, they need a good reason such as non-payment of bills, perhaps for more then one billing cycle. My ISP (the only one here) officially discontinued my only internet access (dial-up) last Nov. but it is still working. I expect once they get the cell tower operating that they're building, they'll pull the plug.
Don't you mean, the US self reports as being very generous as shown by LynnwoodRooster, who considers destabilizing, and killing 100's of thousands in the middle east to advance its interests as an act of generosity. Generosity at the best of times is hard to measure, but relying on phoning people up and asking them if they're generous seems like one of the worst ways to do it. Both the person who volunteers at a soup kitchen and the person who volunteers to join the KKK and lynch someone and the person who feels they have to contribute to their church, which is working to remove basic human rights, report the same. The millionaire who donates a dollar and the homeless person who splits his last dollar with his friends report donating and we have you who considers America killing people to prop up the petrol dollar as generous.
Good point, and the same applies to the Provinces north of you. I guess in those cases, they were given sovereign powers. Strictly speaking, the only independent sovereign powers in N. America (not counting Central America) were Hawaii and Newfoundland, with Newfoundland being an interesting case as they went bankrupt and reverted to being a colony during the depression. Still the States and Provinces do have some sovereign powers though in the case of the States, the fact that they can't leave the relationship with the other States, at least without the agreement of enough States to amend the Constitution makes their sovereignty sort of moot.
Sovereignty is actually more complex then that, especially given a federation of sovereign states. I'm Canadian so more familiar with our federation, a federation of 11 sovereign units, 10 Provinces and the Federal government. The Provinces have given up much of their sovereignty to the federal government, including your list, but have retained other parts such as property rights. Right now, the Sovereign of the Province of British Columbia (actually her representative, the Lieutenant-Governor) is sitting in her office making an executive decision, something that is very rare but shows our Sovereignty. The Federal government can't interfere, the Queen, in her Right as the Sovereign of BC could interfere, but tradition says not. To have a Sovereign means being sovereign. The decision is whether to invite the leader of the Loyal Opposition to form government or dissolve the legislature, which would force an election (the Legislature lost confidence in the government forcing them to resign but is basically tied, which is unstable). America I'm sure is similar with the States having given up some of their Sovereignty to the Federal government but kept other parts. Though America has evolved opposite to Canada, with your Federal government taking more and more Sovereignty for itself, even using arms on her States. You're real problem is that your Constitution needs updating. Reading the Federalist papers shows why the Electoral Collage was formed, mostly to prevent a Donald Trump funny enough. The President is supposed to be a Statesman (or woman now), there were no parties when the Constitution was written. Shit the runner-up was supposed to be Vice-President. An semi-independent non-political body that decided who the President would be.
Shoving the guns up the arses of idiots who don't understand that they're not a toy is another solution. Do you have any suggestions what to do with people that fire off firearms in a reckless manner?
Are you the jerk who was besides me texting at a red light and when the left turn green came on and he saw the car besides him moving he drove into the middle of the intersection and disrupted all the left turning drivers. You're right that the speeds are usually low enough that actual accidents are usually prevented but it is still an arsehole move. Bad enough when the traffic doesn't start moving until the light is yellow due to some entitled bastard having to finish texting.
Actually there was a period of about 70 years, 3 generations, at the start of the industrial revolution where there was drastic unemployment before there was enough factory jobs to take up the slack. This was made worse as it was also the era of enclosing the commons, eg rich people getting laws passed giving them ownership of the former common lands, therefore pushing farmers of the land. Society responded by executing people for almost any crime and later sending them, first to America and then once the Americans revolted, to Australia. There was also lots of voluntary emigration to the new world where lots of land was made available by stealing it from the natives. Gin was also very cheap and there were lots of low end jobs being servants. If things repeat, eventually new jobs will pop up, but it may take generations.
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(Just look at what has happened to less enlightened countries when they decided to penalize being wealthy if you're tempted to take continual economic growth for granted.)
You mean like when America had a 90% top income bracket?
Pennies are gone and have always been limited to 25 cents as legal tender here and people use coupons with plastic as well.
Of course dollars are worth something. From wallpaper to toilet paper to fire starter, there's value in that paper, at least until they go plastic like here in Canada, even the loonie is now just plain steel as nickel was too expensive.
Never seen an offer of a cash discount here in Canada. I'd be happy just to have cash only checkouts. The odd time they'll be a cashier with a broken plastic reader and does that lineup move fast. Plastic under the best of times is slow, tell cashier whether its credit or debit, wait while the card is waived over the reader and the reader decides whether it's approved, often rinse and repeat as the customer tries every card they have. Meanwhile we're subsidizing the slow plastic people, between the extra cashiers and the fees that have to be spread amongst all customers. I guess the advantage is more sales to people who don't have money, the retailer doesn't give a shit if someone goes into debt to buy their product.
At least they're using Linux. The store I shop at seems to be pure Windows, probably XP embedded and while they seem to have the UPS part down pat, when the server is down...
Even the little corner store I stop at occasionally recently updated to computerized registers that are dependent on the bar code reader, great until the next natural disaster...
It's also the reason that I have a stash of cash, when the fire burns up the phone lines, electric lines and cell towers, which seems to be getting more common.
Cash isn't always legal tender as well. Here in Canada, coins are only legal tender up to various amounts depending on denomination but basically 20-25 coins. Refusing to take large bills is also common at many businesses as well and perfectly legal.
Last time I was in the grocery store and the power failed, the Windows server in the back room crashed and the registers hung one by one. I was lucky to get my transaction (cash) done.
The time before that was so long ago that the cashiers pulled out calculators with a paper tape and manually entered the prices from the stickers that were on all products. Back then it was mostly cash or cheque.
In both cases, they stopped letting new customers in
On the other hand, this is just as true, ...
"If you run a Fortune 50 or even Fortune 500 company, legislation has the power to cripple your competitors business. Therefore paying lobbyists to help keep the political environment unstable for your competitors businesses is a necessary expense."
I live in BC, just east of Vancouver. Generally there is little gun crime, mostly consisting of gangs of E Europeans fighting each other and other drug related stuff such as home invasions of grow-ops. The odds of being in a situation where you could defend yourself with a firearm is pretty small. The only person I've ever known to die from a firearm, it was self inflicted.
At least as ownership of firearms is not a right here means I can acquire one if I wanted, unlike if I was an American where due to doing something stupid close to 40 years back, I wouldn't be allowed to own any firearm. Probably lose my right to vote down there too.
Good, you can start with the 300lb woman over there, then next is that one that looks very old but you never know, they might be hanging to the floor due to having so much milk in them.
There's a big if involved there, which I covered by the living in a war zone part of my comment. Personally, where I live, the odds of someone trying to shoot me is so low that it would be stupid to worry about it. More likely to randomly have a tree drop on my head and the real worry is some of the shitty drivers that I encounter.
Birds are. Lots of people died back in the day when high lead logging. They used a whistle for signalling (whistle punk) and ravens would have fun by adding extra touts or touting while some poor guy was setting a choker. They never even would slow down the operation when someone got killed, it was so common.
Unless you live in a war zone, need to protect your animals or such or planning on shooting something for dinner, why would someone carry? An arm is just a tool, if you don't need it, why carry it around? Fetish? Next you'll be saying that carrying a hammer is normal, and it is normal if doing some carpentry but otherwise...
Defence, not offence. America is in a great position, oceans to the east and west, a friendly mostly waste land to the north and countries that would never get it together to be overly aggressive towards the south.
3 or 4 carrier groups, some ballistic missile equipped subs and land based missiles spread around your vast country, a good space program and your defence is taken care of.
Your founding fathers understood that a huge standing army leads to tyranny, that's why the navy was financed (defence) but the army had to be refinanced regularly. Also why they threw in the militia wording into the 2nd amendment, it was as much about the right to bear arms as having a population that could be mustered as a militia so no need to have a standing army. They could have worded it like the Bill of Rights of 1689, basically the right to bear arms was for self-defence. Further back, being armed was actually a requirement for freemen, to be part of the militia.
For quite a while, that got changed by EU law ten years ago, you could not change a light bulb with a screwdriver, you had to get the car into a garage.
That's crazy, changing a light bulb is generally simple, though on some newer cars with the molded lights, I could see it being a bit harder. The headlights should also be easy, even in the new complicated self leveling systems, you'd think it could be designed for ease of changing bulbs.
I have seen front wheel drive vehicles where the battery is buried, which also seems crazy if they're buried that deep. Glad my vehicle is actually old enough (25 yrs) that I could get collector plates for it if I chose and didn't use it daily. Still, it is a Ford and every time I work on it, I curse the design decisions, especially after mostly owning Japanese stuff.
Of course there is an engineering reason why you can't change the front bulbs with nothing but your hands. Waterproofing. Every vehicle I've owned has had its turn signals and parking lights behind a cover with a gasket that took a simple screwdriver to remove. The old sealed beam headlights usually were held in position by a few screws too. My current vehicle needs the battery removed to get access to one of the headlight bulbs, which is easy to remove by hand, but the battery requires a simple wrench or socket to remove.
Is it really a government granted monopoly now? I understood that municipalities granting monopolies was made illegal in the USA. Where I live, in Canada but similar, I have one choice for internet, not due to a government granted monopoly, but due to only one company bothering to run wires out here. It's not worth it for another company to run wires here and so far it hasn't been worth it for a company to build a cell tower either. With mountains blocking satellite, I have exactly one choice for internet. It's a natural monopoly.
Luckily here, internet is considered an essential service, so the ISP can't be unreasonable in pricing and contracts, though our prices are still high. At that when they discontinued my Internet last Nov, they had to leave it switched on until I have an alternative, namely the cell tower they're building so they can finish shutting off my dial-up internet.
In Canada, it is simply an essential service, much like the telephone and electricity. This does not mean free, it just means it should be available to most everyone for basically the same price for the same service and ISP's can't arbitrarily cut people off, they need a good reason such as non-payment of bills, perhaps for more then one billing cycle.
My ISP (the only one here) officially discontinued my only internet access (dial-up) last Nov. but it is still working. I expect once they get the cell tower operating that they're building, they'll pull the plug.
Don't you mean, the US self reports as being very generous as shown by LynnwoodRooster, who considers destabilizing, and killing 100's of thousands in the middle east to advance its interests as an act of generosity.
Generosity at the best of times is hard to measure, but relying on phoning people up and asking them if they're generous seems like one of the worst ways to do it. Both the person who volunteers at a soup kitchen and the person who volunteers to join the KKK and lynch someone and the person who feels they have to contribute to their church, which is working to remove basic human rights, report the same. The millionaire who donates a dollar and the homeless person who splits his last dollar with his friends report donating and we have you who considers America killing people to prop up the petrol dollar as generous.
Good point, and the same applies to the Provinces north of you. I guess in those cases, they were given sovereign powers. Strictly speaking, the only independent sovereign powers in N. America (not counting Central America) were Hawaii and Newfoundland, with Newfoundland being an interesting case as they went bankrupt and reverted to being a colony during the depression.
Still the States and Provinces do have some sovereign powers though in the case of the States, the fact that they can't leave the relationship with the other States, at least without the agreement of enough States to amend the Constitution makes their sovereignty sort of moot.
Sovereignty is actually more complex then that, especially given a federation of sovereign states. I'm Canadian so more familiar with our federation, a federation of 11 sovereign units, 10 Provinces and the Federal government. The Provinces have given up much of their sovereignty to the federal government, including your list, but have retained other parts such as property rights. Right now, the Sovereign of the Province of British Columbia (actually her representative, the Lieutenant-Governor) is sitting in her office making an executive decision, something that is very rare but shows our Sovereignty. The Federal government can't interfere, the Queen, in her Right as the Sovereign of BC could interfere, but tradition says not. To have a Sovereign means being sovereign. The decision is whether to invite the leader of the Loyal Opposition to form government or dissolve the legislature, which would force an election (the Legislature lost confidence in the government forcing them to resign but is basically tied, which is unstable).
America I'm sure is similar with the States having given up some of their Sovereignty to the Federal government but kept other parts. Though America has evolved opposite to Canada, with your Federal government taking more and more Sovereignty for itself, even using arms on her States.
You're real problem is that your Constitution needs updating. Reading the Federalist papers shows why the Electoral Collage was formed, mostly to prevent a Donald Trump funny enough. The President is supposed to be a Statesman (or woman now), there were no parties when the Constitution was written. Shit the runner-up was supposed to be Vice-President. An semi-independent non-political body that decided who the President would be.
Shoving the guns up the arses of idiots who don't understand that they're not a toy is another solution. Do you have any suggestions what to do with people that fire off firearms in a reckless manner?
Are you the jerk who was besides me texting at a red light and when the left turn green came on and he saw the car besides him moving he drove into the middle of the intersection and disrupted all the left turning drivers. You're right that the speeds are usually low enough that actual accidents are usually prevented but it is still an arsehole move.
Bad enough when the traffic doesn't start moving until the light is yellow due to some entitled bastard having to finish texting.
Socialism is the peoples ownership of the means of production. It can be through government, it can be other ways such as worker owned co-ops.
Actually there was a period of about 70 years, 3 generations, at the start of the industrial revolution where there was drastic unemployment before there was enough factory jobs to take up the slack. This was made worse as it was also the era of enclosing the commons, eg rich people getting laws passed giving them ownership of the former common lands, therefore pushing farmers of the land.
Society responded by executing people for almost any crime and later sending them, first to America and then once the Americans revolted, to Australia. There was also lots of voluntary emigration to the new world where lots of land was made available by stealing it from the natives. Gin was also very cheap and there were lots of low end jobs being servants.
If things repeat, eventually new jobs will pop up, but it may take generations.