Most people have some special talent. Some people are good at math. Some people can run fast. Some people are good cooks. Some people are funny. Some people are sensitive and caring. The fact that Zuckerberg's particular set of talents happen to be financially lucrative does not automatically make him more extraordinary than anyone else with a different set of talents. In fact, our society's obsession with financial success above all else will probably be its downfall.
The contrast with Bezos or Musk goes deeper than that. Both those guys are actually doing something with their wealth. They have visions to pursue without grovelling to the average American voter. Running for office would actually be a step down for either of them. Zuckerberg doesn't have that. He doesn't have another billion dollar idea. He doesn't have a personally mission to change the world. So he falls back on the usual pastimes of the idle rich: charity and politics.
Politics isn't for rich people, its for bored rich people.
He still is an ordinary person. He has no physical aspects, intellectual accomplishments or special ability that distinguishes him from the bulk of humanity.
You are using one arbitrary threshold (double the poverty line) to define another arbitrary threshold (universal basic income) without actually answering the question of what those thresholds ought to be and why. Why should UBI be double the poverty line instead of half or triple or any other multiple of the poverty line?
What is the poverty line to begin with? The US Federal poverty line was set in 1968 based on three times the estimated cost of an economy food budget, because at the time of creating the poverty definition, the Department of Agriculture found that families of three or more persons spent about one third of their after-tax income on food. The threshold gets updated every year based on cost-of-goods and inflation, but since the cost of food as percentage of household budget has dropped, the poverty line doesn't actually reflect any practical cost of living. The federal government uses it for demographic purposes, but explicitly discourages it from being interpreted as any kind of personal budget. This whole dilemma of defining a poverty line should be a cautionary tale for those who want to set a UBI: even your basic assumptions will likely be invalidated with an generation or two.
I don't give a shit about god damn emails. I'm talking about real policy decisions. Like the complete failure to have any coordinated strategy in response to the Arab Spring.
I challenge you to identify one important decision she made as SS that a Republican or even Gary Johnson likely would NOT have made.
That the problem isn't it? The Clintons (both of them) are basically just Republicans when it comes to economic and foreign policy issues.
Being a libertarian, Gary Johnson would probably not sponsor a coup in Honduras. http://america.aljazeera.com/o...
What were her qualifications? One and a half terms as senator with no substantial legislation and one term as Secretary of State with a lot of questionable policy decisions. That's hardly the most qualified candidate in recent memory. She wasn't even the most qualified candidate in this election. That goes to Gary Johnson who served two full terms as Governor.
" Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. "
Matthew 10:28
Seems pretty clear to me.
Even in English, "destroy" does not always mean "end the existence of". For example, typically when a person says "my reputation has been destroyed", that doesn't mean they have been forgotten; rather, it means their formerly good reputation has transformed into a very bad one. Similarly, when a city is "destroyed" by an invading army, it is not removed from existence, but rather reduced to smouldering rubble.
Really grasping at straws here. All the biblical emphasis is on destruction by fire. Which is the most complete form of destruction that ancient peoples would have understood.
Sounds like Oblivion to me. The Bible never refers to Hell as being a place where souls continue to exist in endless torment. Hell is always described as a fire or a lake of fire or a blazing furnace or everlasting destruction. These all describe destruction of the soul.
There are a lot of ways to deal with a high cost of living. You can raise wages. Or you can build more housing. Or you can drive out all the poor people. The voters of Seattle have made our decision on how were going to deal with this for now. If live in Seattle and you disagree, then there is an election coming. If you don't live in Seattle and you disagree, then who cares? Why are you wasting everyone's time complaining about places that you don't live?
There are a lot of definitions of living wage. A good rule of thumb is that a living wage should be three times the cost of renting an apartment with a roommate. The cheapest neighborhood in Seattle is Mount Baker. The average two-bedroom apartment there rents for $1400/month. So if you shared with a roommate, rent would be $700/month. Most landlords ask for income verification, so you would need to earn about three times that. Which works out to be about about $15/hr. QED
It's going to cost about $160k to get my kid through college. She'll make somewhere between $2-$4 million more over the course of her lifetime as a result
Assuming her career is lasts 40 years, you're basically getting about a 7-8% annual return on your investment. And that is a pretty big assumption that she gets a six figure salary within a few years of graduating.
How could have Anonymous sabotage Trump's election campaign? What rumor could they spread or information could they dig up that would be worse than what is already publicly known.
False equivalency. In modern societies, the cost of food as a percentage of income has been dropping substantially, while the cost of housing as percentage of income has been going up. There is little reason little reason to believe that the these trends will change over the next 30 years.
You are only looking at the immediate causes, not the big picture
There have been major European wars in every generation going back to time immemorial. Before WWI, there was the Franco-Prussian war, before that there was the Napoleonic War, before that the Seven Years War, before that was the War of Spanish Succession, before that was Thirty Years War etc. etc.
But it was the technological advances that made the world wars uniquely devastating and changed that political landscape to specifically avoid future conflicts at that scale.
Starting from a peak population of 10B in 2020, a decline of about 1% of population per year means losing almost exactly 4B people over the course of 50 years.
The process I was referring to was millions of people dying, millions more migrating and societies reshaping. This has been an ongoing process since before hominids migrated out of Africa. The details might change, but that process won't stop anytime soon.
Crocodilia and Selachimorpha are large apex predators and have survived through every climate shift for the last few hundred million years. As for human beings, our ancestors had adapted to every terrestrial biome back when technology consisted of sharp rocks and fire. We are a species that uniquely evolved to the wild climate swings of the Great Rift Valley.
Climate Change is real, there's no denying that. But the apocalyptic predictions are transparently political and detract from more effective responses.
Slashdot Mirror
sho me someone extraordinary
Most people have some special talent. Some people are good at math. Some people can run fast. Some people are good cooks. Some people are funny. Some people are sensitive and caring. The fact that Zuckerberg's particular set of talents happen to be financially lucrative does not automatically make him more extraordinary than anyone else with a different set of talents. In fact, our society's obsession with financial success above all else will probably be its downfall.
Politics isn't for rich people, its for bored rich people.
Is that the only alternative?
He still is an ordinary person. He has no physical aspects, intellectual accomplishments or special ability that distinguishes him from the bulk of humanity.
Good. Prestige should not be what motivates people to pursue public office.
You are using one arbitrary threshold (double the poverty line) to define another arbitrary threshold (universal basic income) without actually answering the question of what those thresholds ought to be and why. Why should UBI be double the poverty line instead of half or triple or any other multiple of the poverty line? What is the poverty line to begin with? The US Federal poverty line was set in 1968 based on three times the estimated cost of an economy food budget, because at the time of creating the poverty definition, the Department of Agriculture found that families of three or more persons spent about one third of their after-tax income on food. The threshold gets updated every year based on cost-of-goods and inflation, but since the cost of food as percentage of household budget has dropped, the poverty line doesn't actually reflect any practical cost of living. The federal government uses it for demographic purposes, but explicitly discourages it from being interpreted as any kind of personal budget. This whole dilemma of defining a poverty line should be a cautionary tale for those who want to set a UBI: even your basic assumptions will likely be invalidated with an generation or two.
Sure it does...
Now how much income?
Double the poverty line.
I believe this is a rare opportunity to use the original meaning of the phrase "begs the question".
If you're talking about the emails
I don't give a shit about god damn emails. I'm talking about real policy decisions. Like the complete failure to have any coordinated strategy in response to the Arab Spring.
I challenge you to identify one important decision she made as SS that a Republican or even Gary Johnson likely would NOT have made.
That the problem isn't it? The Clintons (both of them) are basically just Republicans when it comes to economic and foreign policy issues. Being a libertarian, Gary Johnson would probably not sponsor a coup in Honduras. http://america.aljazeera.com/o...
What were her qualifications? One and a half terms as senator with no substantial legislation and one term as Secretary of State with a lot of questionable policy decisions. That's hardly the most qualified candidate in recent memory. She wasn't even the most qualified candidate in this election. That goes to Gary Johnson who served two full terms as Governor.
That kind of nationalist, populist B.S. is what started World War II. And if we have another World War, there won't be any winners.
Was Jill Stein a Russian plant when she ran the first time in 2012? If so, does that mean that Romney and Putin were colluding, too?
Seems pretty clear to me.
Really grasping at straws here. All the biblical emphasis is on destruction by fire. Which is the most complete form of destruction that ancient peoples would have understood.
Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire,
Sounds like Oblivion to me. The Bible never refers to Hell as being a place where souls continue to exist in endless torment. Hell is always described as a fire or a lake of fire or a blazing furnace or everlasting destruction. These all describe destruction of the soul.
There are a lot of ways to deal with a high cost of living. You can raise wages. Or you can build more housing. Or you can drive out all the poor people. The voters of Seattle have made our decision on how were going to deal with this for now. If live in Seattle and you disagree, then there is an election coming. If you don't live in Seattle and you disagree, then who cares? Why are you wasting everyone's time complaining about places that you don't live?
There are a lot of definitions of living wage. A good rule of thumb is that a living wage should be three times the cost of renting an apartment with a roommate. The cheapest neighborhood in Seattle is Mount Baker. The average two-bedroom apartment there rents for $1400/month. So if you shared with a roommate, rent would be $700/month. Most landlords ask for income verification, so you would need to earn about three times that. Which works out to be about about $15/hr. QED
[citation needed]
It's going to cost about $160k to get my kid through college. She'll make somewhere between $2-$4 million more over the course of her lifetime as a result
Assuming her career is lasts 40 years, you're basically getting about a 7-8% annual return on your investment. And that is a pretty big assumption that she gets a six figure salary within a few years of graduating.
How could have Anonymous sabotage Trump's election campaign? What rumor could they spread or information could they dig up that would be worse than what is already publicly known.
Higher incomes. Larger average house size. More cars per household. Cheaper food. Lower taxes.
False equivalency. In modern societies, the cost of food as a percentage of income has been dropping substantially, while the cost of housing as percentage of income has been going up. There is little reason little reason to believe that the these trends will change over the next 30 years.
There have been major European wars in every generation going back to time immemorial. Before WWI, there was the Franco-Prussian war, before that there was the Napoleonic War, before that the Seven Years War, before that was the War of Spanish Succession, before that was Thirty Years War etc. etc.
But it was the technological advances that made the world wars uniquely devastating and changed that political landscape to specifically avoid future conflicts at that scale.
Starting from a peak population of 10B in 2020, a decline of about 1% of population per year means losing almost exactly 4B people over the course of 50 years.
The process I was referring to was millions of people dying, millions more migrating and societies reshaping. This has been an ongoing process since before hominids migrated out of Africa. The details might change, but that process won't stop anytime soon.
million of people are going to die and millions more will migrate and it will reshape our societies
You mean that the same process that has been going on for hundreds of thousands of years is going to continue? That's not exactly a bold prediction.
Climate Change is real, there's no denying that. But the apocalyptic predictions are transparently political and detract from more effective responses.