You obviously rarely buy fresh produce or anything too big to place on the bag scale. I really do not foresee a time when it will be cost effective to put RFID in each piece of fruit (as one example of where you projected future is impractical).
That reminds me of something it took my wife the longest thing to figure out. When the grocery store near us introduced self-checkout, I refused to use them even when I only had one or two items. My wife could not understand why. I explained to her it was a matter of principle. When they introduced them, they started to run these announcements over the in store intercom about every five minutes that said something along the line of, "For your convenience, we now have self-checkout lanes." I knew full well that they did not put the self-checkout lanes in for my convenience. They put the self-checkout lanes in to save money on cashiers. Of course, it has turned out not to have worked out that way for them, as a recent article on slashdot mentioned (I wonder how much that has to do with their attempt to mislead their customers as to why they were doing it).
Meth is highly addictive and I am not in favor of legalizing it (although I am troubled by the laws making it illegal). That being said, you are overstating the addictivity of meth. In my younger years I abused various drugs including to some degree meth. I never came close to developing an addiction to meth. Of course, that was largely because I was aware of its high potential for addiction and I limited my use of it to forestall that possibility.
They couldn't even agree that black people were a whole person for the purposes of population counting for christ's sake.
Perhaps you were not aware that it was the slave owners who wanted to count slaves as whole persons, so that they (the slave owners) could get to vote for additional representatives in Congress and the Electoral College on the basis of those slaves (who would not be allowed to vote). It was not black people who were not counted as whole people, only slaves (a subset of black people, who were not being given the right to vote). If slaves had not been counted as people at all, the Civil War would probably not have been necessary. Those who opposed slavery would have preferred that slaves not count as people in the census because counting them (even as 3/5ths of a person) increased the political power of the slave owners.
Right, because spending more than you make is a great idea if you are dealing with large finance. I understand that large deficits are inevitably a problem, we can either address them now or later. If we address them now, it will hurt, but if we wait until later it will be disasterous. The Democrats want to wait until later, you appear to agree with them. The Democrats have repeatedly in the past agreed to cut spending in the future in exchange for raising taxes now. The problem is that they when it comes time to cut the spending, they don't do it.
The other problem is that historically, tax revenues have never exceeded 20% of GDP. Current spending is approaching 25% of GDP. You cannot raise taxes to cover that deficit.
What you are arguing is semantics it seems you don't have a clear idea of what inflation is.
What you don't seem to have clear idea of what deficit spending is. Deficit spending is spending money you don't have. The Democrats want to not only spend money we don't have now, they want to spend money we won't have tomorrow (or next year, or next decade), and they want to spend it now.
Congress has played this game before. They have agreed to cut spending in the future in exchange for tax increases now. The thing is, when it comes time for those spending cuts, they don't happen. How about this time we cut spending now in exchange for the promise to raise taxes in the future?
In the 8 years that Republicans controlled our government from 2000-2008 government spending increased by over 55%.
I hate to tell you this but from 2006-2008, the Democrats controlled the branch of government that decides how much to spend. In addition, from 2008-2010, the Democrats controlled all parts of the government and spending continued to increase at an unacceptably high rate. Finally, just because the Republicans increased spending by too much when they controlled all aspects of government is no reason to accept that spending continue to increase at unacceptable rates.
Once again, the Democrats are proposing to pass a tax increase now in exchange for future Congresses (which have yet to be elected and have no actual part in these negotiations) not spending as much as the current Congress projects that they will. We have seen this before, it never works out that way. How about this time, we reduce spending now and agree to pass a tax increase some time in the future?
The Democrats did not offer cuts. They offered to say that they would plan to not increase spending by as much as they currently say that they plan to increase spending over the next ten years (even though how much they actually increase spending will not be determined until the actual year--this from a group that hasn't passed a budget in three years because it would be "foolish" to do so) in exchange for actually increasing taxes now.
Over ten years, that means it works out to about 1 month's worth of the current federal deficit (deficit, not debt) each year and it was not actual spending cuts, but cuts in the amount that spending was projected to increase. Is there any reason to believe that when it came time to actually pass those spending bills that they would actually stick to these "cuts"? They were not talking about spending cuts in next year's budget (the only cuts that are real), they were talking about "cuts" over the next ten years. The Democrats in the Senate have failed to actually pass a budget in 3 years (actually "refused to pass" would be more accurate).
The fact that Democrats are offering any cuts at all to social programs is a true act of compromise.
They were NOT offering any cuts in spending, they were offering to reduce the amount they projected spending to increase for those social programs. In addition, most of those "cuts" were down the road far enough that no one would be held accountable when a future Congress failed to actually implement them. In my lifetime, despite Congress on several occasions agreeing to "spending cuts", the amount the Federal Government has spent has increased every year.
Democrats have not offered spending cuts. They have offered to reduce the amount that they project spending to increase (and most of that happens towards the end of the 10 year window). The Republicans did offer a tax increase. It was based on eliminating some tax deductions while lowering marginal tax rates (thus increasing effective tax rates).
Until Congress demonstrates a willingness to actually cut spending, there should be no tax increases (although I am willing to accept the elimination of tax deductions as part of simplifying the tax code).
Maybe the Democrats were not signing any pledges that they would not reduce spending, but they have refused every effort to reduce spending that has been proposed in my lifetime. In my life time, the amount of money that the Federal Government spends has increased every year.
The Republicans on the committee proposed a plan that would have increased taxes by eliminating deductions and lowering the marginal tax rate, yet the Democrats refused to discuss it. The Democrats want to increase the marginal tax rates on high incomes (which they can then right special deductions so that it does not actually cause any of their supporters to have to actually pay any more) and agree to reduce the amount that federal spending is projected to increase in the future (which means nothing because most of those "reductions" are far enough in the future that no one will remember the agreement when it comes time to actually decide how much to spend).
Right, because the Democrats were not already campaigning on the "refusal" of the Republicans to work with them when they set this committee up...oh wait, yes they were.
Congress has repeatedly agreed to "cut spending" and passed bills to do so. Yet, in my lifetime, the Federal Government has spent more money each year than the year before. So, despite passing bills to "cut spending", Congress has never done so. Once again, they were proposing to do the same thing. The only disagreement was by how much they were going to pretend to reduce the rate at which government spending increased. The U.S. Federal Government spends too much money.
The Democrats were willing to cut spending a little and raise taxes a lot.
Actually, the Democrats were not willing to cut spending. They were willing to cut the amount that spending would be projected to increase. Note, they were not actually going to cut the amount that spending increased, just the amount it was projected to increase. They would have "relied" in future Congresses to actually abide by those reduced projections.
This is the problem with these discussions. One side says, "We will cut spending over the next ten years, but we need to raise taxes now." What they mean when they say that is that they will reduce the amount they project spending to increase, with most of the reduction coming toward the end of those ten years (far enough out that no one will be held accountable to actually abide by the agreement). Congress cannot be trusted with tax increases until they actually cut spending. In my lifetime, Congress has passed bills saying they would "cut spending" multiple times, yet every year of my life Congress has spent more money than the previous year.
In my lifetime, Congress has NEVER cut spending.
The Republicans proposed a plan that would have raised taxes by eliminating deductions while lowering marginal rates (thus raising effective rates). The Democrats completely refused to even negotiate such a proposal. The only thing the Democrats were willing to accept was an increase in marginal rates on the highest earners with some mythical spending cuts down the road. I call the spending cuts mythical for two reasons. First, they would have relied on future Congresses to actually implement them when they passed spending bills in the future. Second, they were not actual spending cuts, they were cuts in the amount that spending is currently projected to increase.
There is a significant difference here. In the browser battle, the battle was not over what browser the consumer used, but over what tools the web developer used. If the majority of the users you were developing a web page for used IE, than you were better off using the web development tools from MS than those put out by Netscape. Unless the companies that make anti-virus software want to come out and admit that they are selling development tools to malware developers, it is not the same situation at all. Unlike IE where MS made money off of the browser by selling development tools made to work with their variations from the web standard, I am unaware of MS (or any of the anti-virus vendors) making money by selling to malware developers.
Except that genetic engineering doesn't make you better, genetic engineering just makes you specialized. Part of what makes the human race successful is the fact that it is fairly generalized and can adapt to just about any environment that life can exist in.
Actually, I would settle for news sources being honest about their bias. Especially since it is not possible to report a story without it being colored by the reporter's bias. Of course, I also wish that news sources would not leave out key facts in an attempt to make a story support a political position that it neither supports nor refutes (I remember one news story that was reported on network nightly news--don't remember which network--with one key fact left out so that it appeared to be a classic example of why some policy favored by Democrats should be enacted. It was also reported by a conservative news source that included that fact, but left out another one so that the story appeared to support opposition to that same policy. When you knew the facts that were left out by one side or the other, the story had no bearing on that particular policy debate whatsoever.).
The worst part is that this patent is for something that is obvious even to someone not skilled in the art. The point of that clause is that for something to be unpatentable is that even if it is not obvious to the average person, it is obvious to "a person skilled in the art". This is a patent on something that is obvious to just about anyone.
So, even though it is true, those selling bottled water are not allowed to say so. I'm sorry, that is a stupid restriction that indicates that EU bureaucrats are meddling fools who think that the average person is too stupid to think for themselves (which while true, interferes with the freedom of those of us who can to "protect" those who should be left to their own devices).
Are you saying that the EU did not rule that the statement, "regular consumption of significant amounts of water can reduce the risk of development of dehydration" is false? Because if they made that ruling, it does not matter who reported it, it is a stupid ruling. Additionally, if they made such a ruling, people are not thinking less of the EU because of a lie, but because of the truth. It does not matter to me whether the stupidity of this ruling is a result of the stupidity of the people who made the ruling, or the stupidity of the people who made the law that these people based the decision on.
Slashdot Mirror
You obviously rarely buy fresh produce or anything too big to place on the bag scale. I really do not foresee a time when it will be cost effective to put RFID in each piece of fruit (as one example of where you projected future is impractical).
That reminds me of something it took my wife the longest thing to figure out. When the grocery store near us introduced self-checkout, I refused to use them even when I only had one or two items. My wife could not understand why. I explained to her it was a matter of principle. When they introduced them, they started to run these announcements over the in store intercom about every five minutes that said something along the line of, "For your convenience, we now have self-checkout lanes." I knew full well that they did not put the self-checkout lanes in for my convenience. They put the self-checkout lanes in to save money on cashiers. Of course, it has turned out not to have worked out that way for them, as a recent article on slashdot mentioned (I wonder how much that has to do with their attempt to mislead their customers as to why they were doing it).
Meth is highly addictive and I am not in favor of legalizing it (although I am troubled by the laws making it illegal). That being said, you are overstating the addictivity of meth. In my younger years I abused various drugs including to some degree meth. I never came close to developing an addiction to meth. Of course, that was largely because I was aware of its high potential for addiction and I limited my use of it to forestall that possibility.
They couldn't even agree that black people were a whole person for the purposes of population counting for christ's sake.
Perhaps you were not aware that it was the slave owners who wanted to count slaves as whole persons, so that they (the slave owners) could get to vote for additional representatives in Congress and the Electoral College on the basis of those slaves (who would not be allowed to vote). It was not black people who were not counted as whole people, only slaves (a subset of black people, who were not being given the right to vote). If slaves had not been counted as people at all, the Civil War would probably not have been necessary. Those who opposed slavery would have preferred that slaves not count as people in the census because counting them (even as 3/5ths of a person) increased the political power of the slave owners.
And people wonder why this recession won't go away.
Right, because spending more than you make is a great idea if you are dealing with large finance. I understand that large deficits are inevitably a problem, we can either address them now or later. If we address them now, it will hurt, but if we wait until later it will be disasterous. The Democrats want to wait until later, you appear to agree with them. The Democrats have repeatedly in the past agreed to cut spending in the future in exchange for raising taxes now. The problem is that they when it comes time to cut the spending, they don't do it.
The other problem is that historically, tax revenues have never exceeded 20% of GDP. Current spending is approaching 25% of GDP. You cannot raise taxes to cover that deficit.
What you are arguing is semantics it seems you don't have a clear idea of what inflation is.
What you don't seem to have clear idea of what deficit spending is. Deficit spending is spending money you don't have. The Democrats want to not only spend money we don't have now, they want to spend money we won't have tomorrow (or next year, or next decade), and they want to spend it now.
Congress has played this game before. They have agreed to cut spending in the future in exchange for tax increases now. The thing is, when it comes time for those spending cuts, they don't happen. How about this time we cut spending now in exchange for the promise to raise taxes in the future?
In the 8 years that Republicans controlled our government from 2000-2008 government spending increased by over 55%.
I hate to tell you this but from 2006-2008, the Democrats controlled the branch of government that decides how much to spend. In addition, from 2008-2010, the Democrats controlled all parts of the government and spending continued to increase at an unacceptably high rate. Finally, just because the Republicans increased spending by too much when they controlled all aspects of government is no reason to accept that spending continue to increase at unacceptable rates.
Once again, the Democrats are proposing to pass a tax increase now in exchange for future Congresses (which have yet to be elected and have no actual part in these negotiations) not spending as much as the current Congress projects that they will. We have seen this before, it never works out that way. How about this time, we reduce spending now and agree to pass a tax increase some time in the future?
The Democrats did not offer cuts. They offered to say that they would plan to not increase spending by as much as they currently say that they plan to increase spending over the next ten years (even though how much they actually increase spending will not be determined until the actual year--this from a group that hasn't passed a budget in three years because it would be "foolish" to do so) in exchange for actually increasing taxes now.
Over ten years, that means it works out to about 1 month's worth of the current federal deficit (deficit, not debt) each year and it was not actual spending cuts, but cuts in the amount that spending was projected to increase. Is there any reason to believe that when it came time to actually pass those spending bills that they would actually stick to these "cuts"? They were not talking about spending cuts in next year's budget (the only cuts that are real), they were talking about "cuts" over the next ten years. The Democrats in the Senate have failed to actually pass a budget in 3 years (actually "refused to pass" would be more accurate).
The fact that Democrats are offering any cuts at all to social programs is a true act of compromise.
They were NOT offering any cuts in spending, they were offering to reduce the amount they projected spending to increase for those social programs. In addition, most of those "cuts" were down the road far enough that no one would be held accountable when a future Congress failed to actually implement them. In my lifetime, despite Congress on several occasions agreeing to "spending cuts", the amount the Federal Government has spent has increased every year.
Democrats have not offered spending cuts. They have offered to reduce the amount that they project spending to increase (and most of that happens towards the end of the 10 year window). The Republicans did offer a tax increase. It was based on eliminating some tax deductions while lowering marginal tax rates (thus increasing effective tax rates).
Until Congress demonstrates a willingness to actually cut spending, there should be no tax increases (although I am willing to accept the elimination of tax deductions as part of simplifying the tax code).
Maybe the Democrats were not signing any pledges that they would not reduce spending, but they have refused every effort to reduce spending that has been proposed in my lifetime. In my life time, the amount of money that the Federal Government spends has increased every year.
The Republicans on the committee proposed a plan that would have increased taxes by eliminating deductions and lowering the marginal tax rate, yet the Democrats refused to discuss it. The Democrats want to increase the marginal tax rates on high incomes (which they can then right special deductions so that it does not actually cause any of their supporters to have to actually pay any more) and agree to reduce the amount that federal spending is projected to increase in the future (which means nothing because most of those "reductions" are far enough in the future that no one will remember the agreement when it comes time to actually decide how much to spend).
Right, because the Democrats were not already campaigning on the "refusal" of the Republicans to work with them when they set this committee up...oh wait, yes they were.
Congress has repeatedly agreed to "cut spending" and passed bills to do so. Yet, in my lifetime, the Federal Government has spent more money each year than the year before. So, despite passing bills to "cut spending", Congress has never done so. Once again, they were proposing to do the same thing. The only disagreement was by how much they were going to pretend to reduce the rate at which government spending increased. The U.S. Federal Government spends too much money.
The Democrats were willing to cut spending a little and raise taxes a lot.
Actually, the Democrats were not willing to cut spending. They were willing to cut the amount that spending would be projected to increase. Note, they were not actually going to cut the amount that spending increased, just the amount it was projected to increase. They would have "relied" in future Congresses to actually abide by those reduced projections.
This is the problem with these discussions. One side says, "We will cut spending over the next ten years, but we need to raise taxes now." What they mean when they say that is that they will reduce the amount they project spending to increase, with most of the reduction coming toward the end of those ten years (far enough out that no one will be held accountable to actually abide by the agreement). Congress cannot be trusted with tax increases until they actually cut spending. In my lifetime, Congress has passed bills saying they would "cut spending" multiple times, yet every year of my life Congress has spent more money than the previous year.
In my lifetime, Congress has NEVER cut spending.
The Republicans proposed a plan that would have raised taxes by eliminating deductions while lowering marginal rates (thus raising effective rates). The Democrats completely refused to even negotiate such a proposal. The only thing the Democrats were willing to accept was an increase in marginal rates on the highest earners with some mythical spending cuts down the road. I call the spending cuts mythical for two reasons. First, they would have relied on future Congresses to actually implement them when they passed spending bills in the future. Second, they were not actual spending cuts, they were cuts in the amount that spending is currently projected to increase.
There is a significant difference here. In the browser battle, the battle was not over what browser the consumer used, but over what tools the web developer used. If the majority of the users you were developing a web page for used IE, than you were better off using the web development tools from MS than those put out by Netscape. Unless the companies that make anti-virus software want to come out and admit that they are selling development tools to malware developers, it is not the same situation at all. Unlike IE where MS made money off of the browser by selling development tools made to work with their variations from the web standard, I am unaware of MS (or any of the anti-virus vendors) making money by selling to malware developers.
Except that genetic engineering doesn't make you better, genetic engineering just makes you specialized. Part of what makes the human race successful is the fact that it is fairly generalized and can adapt to just about any environment that life can exist in.
Actually, I would settle for news sources being honest about their bias. Especially since it is not possible to report a story without it being colored by the reporter's bias. Of course, I also wish that news sources would not leave out key facts in an attempt to make a story support a political position that it neither supports nor refutes (I remember one news story that was reported on network nightly news--don't remember which network--with one key fact left out so that it appeared to be a classic example of why some policy favored by Democrats should be enacted. It was also reported by a conservative news source that included that fact, but left out another one so that the story appeared to support opposition to that same policy. When you knew the facts that were left out by one side or the other, the story had no bearing on that particular policy debate whatsoever.).
The worst part is that this patent is for something that is obvious even to someone not skilled in the art. The point of that clause is that for something to be unpatentable is that even if it is not obvious to the average person, it is obvious to "a person skilled in the art". This is a patent on something that is obvious to just about anyone.
I don't think water hydrates either.
Saying that water does not hydrate is like saying that oxygen does not oxygenate.
So, even though it is true, those selling bottled water are not allowed to say so. I'm sorry, that is a stupid restriction that indicates that EU bureaucrats are meddling fools who think that the average person is too stupid to think for themselves (which while true, interferes with the freedom of those of us who can to "protect" those who should be left to their own devices).
Are you saying that the EU did not rule that the statement, "regular consumption of significant amounts of water can reduce the risk of development of dehydration" is false? Because if they made that ruling, it does not matter who reported it, it is a stupid ruling. Additionally, if they made such a ruling, people are not thinking less of the EU because of a lie, but because of the truth. It does not matter to me whether the stupidity of this ruling is a result of the stupidity of the people who made the ruling, or the stupidity of the people who made the law that these people based the decision on.
No, the edict is not sane, even using your logic. The "problem" you discussed is none of the government's business.