What about the guy trying to buy a car? Who has only about $5000 to spend? What about when the airbag deploys in an accident where the passengers would not have been injured?
All cars in the U.S. come with airbags now...because the government mandates them. They have increased the total cost of ownership of automobiles more than most people realize and are going to shorten the useful life an an automobile by a significant amount. We are just starting to come into the time period where the typical "old, but not antique" car on the road was manufactured after the government mandated airbags. There is some question as to how long an undeployed airbag remains functional. However, in an older car, if the airbag deploys, the cost of replacing the airbag probably means that the car is totaled as the cost of replacing the airbags will exceed the value of the car.
Based on my experience, if the system you postulate comes into existence the cost of it will exceed the cost of owning a car over the current lifespan of a car. It will be a very profitable business for some and like many such businesses the government will impose barriers to entry to protect the profits of the early entrants to the field (unless they are competing against someone with better political connections).
we're already seeing strong social pressure to forgo some of those conveniences for the sake of reducing emissions and fuel usage.
Except that the real reason we are seeing that pressure is control. This is about who gets to control where you go and when you go. Just as the push for reducing emissions and fuel usage is driven more by a desire to control people's behavior than it is by a concern for the environment.
While driver-less cars would allow some people who currently cannot drive to have their own car, it will raise the price of cars so that some people who now can afford to own a car would not be able to afford one. It would also mean that someone other than you would ultimately determine where you could go. For example, only the cars of those authorized to go to certain places would even have the roads to those places in the maps in their cars. Since driver less cars will need to receive roadmap updates, you might discover that a place you went to yesterday was no longer accessible.
In the case of Yusuf Islam, he has worked with organizations which use their charitable activities as a cover for terrorist activities. In his defense, at the point where anyone can prove that he is aware of it, he has broken all ties with such organizations. While it is possible that he has only done so to avoid the appearance of supporting terrorism when in fact he does support it, the evidence of his statements and his actions combined suggest that such is not the case.
So to sum up, Yusuf Islam has worked with organizations which were little more than front groups for terrorist organizations. However, whenever he has become aware of this connection between these organizations (at least as far as anyone can prove) and terrorist activity, he has broken his association with said organizations.
The evidence suggests that he ended up on the no-fly list in a manner that makes perfectly good sense and that when it was brought to the appropriate people's attention, he was removed. This does not mean that there are not problems with these lists (there are). It just means that Yusuf Islam is not an example of the problems.
The U.S. refused entry to Yusuf Islam (the name that Cat Stevens has gone by since 1977) on one occasion for reasons that are unclear (he has since been admitted to the U.S.). The Department of Homeland Security said that he was denied entry because "concerns of ties he may have to potential terrorist-related activities." This could be a result of two things (and is likely the result of these two things coming together). The first, and the one that he subscribes to, is that his name in Arabic is the same as another man with ties to terrorist organizations. The second is that a number of the charitable organizations he has worked with have been found to have ties to terrorist organizations.*
*Yusuf Islam denies working with any organization that he knows has ties with terrorist organizations and has ceased working with organizations when their ties to terrorist organizations become public knowledge (he may, also, do so if he becomes aware of such ties before it becomes public knowledge, but we have no way to know if such is actually the case),
The article you quote is from 1999, the one I saw was around 2005. In addition, the article you quote does not take into account compound interest on money placed into a 401k (or other similar retirement account), nor does it take into account the amount spent paying for that college education, which the article I read deducted from the amount the individual was able to save for retirement. The article did not say that the high school only grad earned more over a lifetime, it said that they had more saved at retirement.
If you talk to anyone who is actually knowledgeable about BMI, you will learn that BMI is a terrible way to determine if a particular individual is a healthy weight or not. BMI is designed to determine whether or not a population is a healthy weight and as a shortcut for that it works reasonably well. BMI is a measure that was not designed to evaluate an individuals health. For example, when I graduated college I had a BMI of just over 30, which is considered obese, yet I had a body fat percentage of 4%, which is generally considered unhealthily low.
So, what you want to do is impose price controls, the one thing that has been proven time and again to restrict the supply of something to the point of creating shortages? So, while the truly poor would be able to afford a college education, only the ones with connections would be able to get one.
The reason that the poster you replied to pointed to supply and demand is that since the cost of a college education has risen significantly faster than the rate of inflation it is clear that marginal costs are not a driving factor in the cost of a college education. Unless you can point to a major source of marginal costs for a college education that does not apply to other things in the economy, the only explanation for the rising cost is a supply and demand explanation.
You, perhaps, are unaware that since the advent of massive government aid to students, the cost of a college education has risen much faster than the rate of inflation, while the value of a college education has fallen.
Except that every time the federal government makes a college education "more affordable", the cost of a college education goes up more than inflation and thus becomes less affordable. The federal government has been making a college "more affordable" since the 1960s, yet a college education today is less affordable than it was in the 1960s and it has a much poorer return on investment. To the point that someone calculated (about 5 years ago) that if you earn an average salary for your education level and experience your entire life, you will be about $1 million better off at retirement with just a high school diploma than with a bachelor's degree.
I no longer have the link, but about 5 years ago someone ran the numbers for someone who made an average salary for only a high school diploma vs someone who made an average salary for someone with a bachelor's degree. When they calculated the extra amount of money that the high school only guy was able to save (including interest on savings that started before the college grad started earning) over a lifetime, the high school only guy reached retirement about $1 million better off than the college guy.
That is a real pithy saying and I bet it makes you feel real good about yourself, but it is not true. A freedom fighter targets the ability of the controlling power to exert control over the freedom fighter's territory. A terrorist targets civilian populations that do not support his cause. Some freedom fighters are also terrorists (although any freedom fighter who is using terror tactics will not implement anything we would recognize as freedom if they win).
You ask, what does the predictions about mass starvation from population growth in the 70s have to do with AGW? The fact that the people who were saying we would have mass starvation if we didn't implement their preferred policies were suggesting the same solutions to the problems as the people who are today saying that AGW will cause mass deaths if we don't implement their preferred policies.
You are correct that the Patriot Act was drafted before 9/11, but you are incorrect that it lawmakers were only allowed to "read it under a declaration of secrecy". The Clinton Administration tried to get the provisions of the Patriot Act passed, but public opposition to the law killed it.
The reason that people are offended by the term "denier" is that they are aware that term gained currency among AGW proponents as an attempt to lump those that disagreed with them in with Holocaust deniers. The term started being used right after there was a major news story about a group of Holocaust deniers and the first people to use it were explicit in the comparison.
There were links between Saddam Hussein and terrorism. Among other things, Saddam Hussein gave a large sum of money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. There was a terrorist training camp in Iraq that agents of Saddam's government worked with (there were claims that it was used by Al Quaida, but I do not know how well documented that was). Saddam Hussein was never an ally of the U.S., the closest he came to that status was when he went to war with Iran and that was more of a "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" sort of thing.
Except that these guys I have seen quotes from all of those guys touting the AGW proponents lines. Notice, they did not use Hitler. They used Fidel Castro, who has said that AGW is a problem that requires international cooperation to solve. They used the Unabomber, who has expressed support for AGW. Charles Manson has also expressed a belief in AGW.
Of course the fact that the oil industry spends more money on grants to AGW proponents than they do on groups like Heartland Institute doesn't bother you at all.
Which explains why, after a group of AGW proponents were caught conspiring with each other to conceal evidence which did not support their theory, another AGW proponent fabricated documents that purported to show an organization that opposed governments taking action on the basis of AGW was guilty of doing the same thing.
You know, I go onto several forums that are primarily conservative and very few of the people on those sites reflect the position that you claim is what conservatives believe. For the most part, the people on those forums want the U.S. government to adhere to the Constitutional model of a limited federal government. Even the social conservatives on those sites want the government to be smaller.
As to what fascists are, fascists think the government should control the means of production under the guidance of an elite group of superior intellects who will guide the national economy on the basis of scientific principles for the purpose of making the nation great. As opposed to communists. who think that the government should control the means of production under an elite group of superior intellects who will guide the economy on the basis of scientific principles for the purpose of creating a workers' paradise. The only difference I can see between the two is the reason they want to take away my freedom to make decisions for myself.
Because liberals can be manipulated by appealing to the authority of science, even when there is no actual evidence supporting it. Actually, you have misunderstood what happened. In the late 60s, some liberals realized that science was well respected by most people and if you cloaked your argument as "science", people would accept it without looking any further. Conservatives started to realize that "science" was being used to promote agendas rather than agendas being derived from science. For example, the policies that the AGW proponents say that we need to implement to fight AGW are the same policies that they said we needed to avoid mass starvation/prevent the hole in the ozone layer from getting too big/prevent some other cataclysmic disaster. This makes one suspect that the "problem" is an excuse to implement the policies rather than the policies being developed because of the problem.
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What about the guy trying to buy a car? Who has only about $5000 to spend? What about when the airbag deploys in an accident where the passengers would not have been injured?
All cars in the U.S. come with airbags now...because the government mandates them. They have increased the total cost of ownership of automobiles more than most people realize and are going to shorten the useful life an an automobile by a significant amount. We are just starting to come into the time period where the typical "old, but not antique" car on the road was manufactured after the government mandated airbags. There is some question as to how long an undeployed airbag remains functional. However, in an older car, if the airbag deploys, the cost of replacing the airbag probably means that the car is totaled as the cost of replacing the airbags will exceed the value of the car.
Based on my experience, if the system you postulate comes into existence the cost of it will exceed the cost of owning a car over the current lifespan of a car. It will be a very profitable business for some and like many such businesses the government will impose barriers to entry to protect the profits of the early entrants to the field (unless they are competing against someone with better political connections).
we're already seeing strong social pressure to forgo some of those conveniences for the sake of reducing emissions and fuel usage.
Except that the real reason we are seeing that pressure is control. This is about who gets to control where you go and when you go. Just as the push for reducing emissions and fuel usage is driven more by a desire to control people's behavior than it is by a concern for the environment.
While driver-less cars would allow some people who currently cannot drive to have their own car, it will raise the price of cars so that some people who now can afford to own a car would not be able to afford one. It would also mean that someone other than you would ultimately determine where you could go. For example, only the cars of those authorized to go to certain places would even have the roads to those places in the maps in their cars. Since driver less cars will need to receive roadmap updates, you might discover that a place you went to yesterday was no longer accessible.
In the case of Yusuf Islam, he has worked with organizations which use their charitable activities as a cover for terrorist activities. In his defense, at the point where anyone can prove that he is aware of it, he has broken all ties with such organizations. While it is possible that he has only done so to avoid the appearance of supporting terrorism when in fact he does support it, the evidence of his statements and his actions combined suggest that such is not the case.
So to sum up, Yusuf Islam has worked with organizations which were little more than front groups for terrorist organizations. However, whenever he has become aware of this connection between these organizations (at least as far as anyone can prove) and terrorist activity, he has broken his association with said organizations.
The evidence suggests that he ended up on the no-fly list in a manner that makes perfectly good sense and that when it was brought to the appropriate people's attention, he was removed. This does not mean that there are not problems with these lists (there are). It just means that Yusuf Islam is not an example of the problems.
The U.S. refused entry to Yusuf Islam (the name that Cat Stevens has gone by since 1977) on one occasion for reasons that are unclear (he has since been admitted to the U.S.). The Department of Homeland Security said that he was denied entry because "concerns of ties he may have to potential terrorist-related activities." This could be a result of two things (and is likely the result of these two things coming together). The first, and the one that he subscribes to, is that his name in Arabic is the same as another man with ties to terrorist organizations. The second is that a number of the charitable organizations he has worked with have been found to have ties to terrorist organizations.*
*Yusuf Islam denies working with any organization that he knows has ties with terrorist organizations and has ceased working with organizations when their ties to terrorist organizations become public knowledge (he may, also, do so if he becomes aware of such ties before it becomes public knowledge, but we have no way to know if such is actually the case),
The article you quote is from 1999, the one I saw was around 2005. In addition, the article you quote does not take into account compound interest on money placed into a 401k (or other similar retirement account), nor does it take into account the amount spent paying for that college education, which the article I read deducted from the amount the individual was able to save for retirement. The article did not say that the high school only grad earned more over a lifetime, it said that they had more saved at retirement.
If you talk to anyone who is actually knowledgeable about BMI, you will learn that BMI is a terrible way to determine if a particular individual is a healthy weight or not. BMI is designed to determine whether or not a population is a healthy weight and as a shortcut for that it works reasonably well. BMI is a measure that was not designed to evaluate an individuals health. For example, when I graduated college I had a BMI of just over 30, which is considered obese, yet I had a body fat percentage of 4%, which is generally considered unhealthily low.
So, what you want to do is impose price controls, the one thing that has been proven time and again to restrict the supply of something to the point of creating shortages? So, while the truly poor would be able to afford a college education, only the ones with connections would be able to get one.
The reason that the poster you replied to pointed to supply and demand is that since the cost of a college education has risen significantly faster than the rate of inflation it is clear that marginal costs are not a driving factor in the cost of a college education. Unless you can point to a major source of marginal costs for a college education that does not apply to other things in the economy, the only explanation for the rising cost is a supply and demand explanation.
You, perhaps, are unaware that since the advent of massive government aid to students, the cost of a college education has risen much faster than the rate of inflation, while the value of a college education has fallen.
Photo ID to get on a plane. The END.
Except that every time the federal government makes a college education "more affordable", the cost of a college education goes up more than inflation and thus becomes less affordable. The federal government has been making a college "more affordable" since the 1960s, yet a college education today is less affordable than it was in the 1960s and it has a much poorer return on investment. To the point that someone calculated (about 5 years ago) that if you earn an average salary for your education level and experience your entire life, you will be about $1 million better off at retirement with just a high school diploma than with a bachelor's degree.
I no longer have the link, but about 5 years ago someone ran the numbers for someone who made an average salary for only a high school diploma vs someone who made an average salary for someone with a bachelor's degree. When they calculated the extra amount of money that the high school only guy was able to save (including interest on savings that started before the college grad started earning) over a lifetime, the high school only guy reached retirement about $1 million better off than the college guy.
Except that they don't say "the government should do something about".
That is a real pithy saying and I bet it makes you feel real good about yourself, but it is not true. A freedom fighter targets the ability of the controlling power to exert control over the freedom fighter's territory. A terrorist targets civilian populations that do not support his cause. Some freedom fighters are also terrorists (although any freedom fighter who is using terror tactics will not implement anything we would recognize as freedom if they win).
You ask, what does the predictions about mass starvation from population growth in the 70s have to do with AGW? The fact that the people who were saying we would have mass starvation if we didn't implement their preferred policies were suggesting the same solutions to the problems as the people who are today saying that AGW will cause mass deaths if we don't implement their preferred policies.
You are correct that the Patriot Act was drafted before 9/11, but you are incorrect that it lawmakers were only allowed to "read it under a declaration of secrecy". The Clinton Administration tried to get the provisions of the Patriot Act passed, but public opposition to the law killed it.
The reason that people are offended by the term "denier" is that they are aware that term gained currency among AGW proponents as an attempt to lump those that disagreed with them in with Holocaust deniers. The term started being used right after there was a major news story about a group of Holocaust deniers and the first people to use it were explicit in the comparison.
There were links between Saddam Hussein and terrorism. Among other things, Saddam Hussein gave a large sum of money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. There was a terrorist training camp in Iraq that agents of Saddam's government worked with (there were claims that it was used by Al Quaida, but I do not know how well documented that was). Saddam Hussein was never an ally of the U.S., the closest he came to that status was when he went to war with Iran and that was more of a "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" sort of thing.
Except that these guys I have seen quotes from all of those guys touting the AGW proponents lines. Notice, they did not use Hitler. They used Fidel Castro, who has said that AGW is a problem that requires international cooperation to solve. They used the Unabomber, who has expressed support for AGW. Charles Manson has also expressed a belief in AGW.
Of course the fact that the oil industry spends more money on grants to AGW proponents than they do on groups like Heartland Institute doesn't bother you at all.
Which explains why, after a group of AGW proponents were caught conspiring with each other to conceal evidence which did not support their theory, another AGW proponent fabricated documents that purported to show an organization that opposed governments taking action on the basis of AGW was guilty of doing the same thing.
You know, I go onto several forums that are primarily conservative and very few of the people on those sites reflect the position that you claim is what conservatives believe. For the most part, the people on those forums want the U.S. government to adhere to the Constitutional model of a limited federal government. Even the social conservatives on those sites want the government to be smaller.
As to what fascists are, fascists think the government should control the means of production under the guidance of an elite group of superior intellects who will guide the national economy on the basis of scientific principles for the purpose of making the nation great. As opposed to communists. who think that the government should control the means of production under an elite group of superior intellects who will guide the economy on the basis of scientific principles for the purpose of creating a workers' paradise. The only difference I can see between the two is the reason they want to take away my freedom to make decisions for myself.
Because liberals can be manipulated by appealing to the authority of science, even when there is no actual evidence supporting it. Actually, you have misunderstood what happened. In the late 60s, some liberals realized that science was well respected by most people and if you cloaked your argument as "science", people would accept it without looking any further. Conservatives started to realize that "science" was being used to promote agendas rather than agendas being derived from science. For example, the policies that the AGW proponents say that we need to implement to fight AGW are the same policies that they said we needed to avoid mass starvation/prevent the hole in the ozone layer from getting too big/prevent some other cataclysmic disaster. This makes one suspect that the "problem" is an excuse to implement the policies rather than the policies being developed because of the problem.