By the way, even if you do want to engage in this infantile (and as I demonstrated above, wrong) brainwashed idiocy about how your beloved liberal states subsidize the evil red states, you should take into account that it's not liberals in the blue states who pay all those excess taxes. If you do a little research -- you could start here, at a liberal place -- you'll see that by a wide margin upper class and upper-middle class Americans vote Republican, not Dem., that the middle class is divided, and that only poor people have majority support for the Dems. In other words, those wealthy New Yorkers and Californians and so on who pay taxes to subsidize Kansas farmers, they're overwhelmingly conservative.
Now, as I say, I think the whole thing is somewhat silly, and I myself am neither Rep. nor Dem., but if you'd done even the tiniest bit of research you'd see that you're totally off-base on any number of levels, and basically just being a complete ass.
Once again, thanks for the pitiful display of repartee. (Is it better if I say it like that without too much sarcasm?)
Funny that you think yourself so superior when you're incapable of grasping even a simple point, and return continually to your silly simplified understanding of America.
And, unlike you, I don't put on some childish show of stupid sarcasm, hiding how hurt I might be that they really are better than me, which happens all the time, so I just attack the entire idea of someone being better than me, rather than trying to better myself.
When I explain to you the reason why the blue states pay more in taxes than they receive, which has nothing to do with your love of government, and you come back with "the blue states pay more in taxes than they receive," I'm sure even you can understand why I'm not overcome with awe.
One of the great things Canada has done is to play it cool, so childish twits like you flee to the fakeouts in great supply to the South. You've obviously missed out on much in your 25 years. Why should I fight that now, when you're going to the anti-intellectual clusterfuck of Red America, where you'll find lots of other people sucking on the public tit, hating those who feed you, all while pretending that since you're all inadequate, that "adequacy" is some "elitist" idea forced on you by the "liberals" in the "media"? We would cut you off in a second, if you wouldn't just show up at our borders with pitchforks, torches and "hunting" machine guns, instead of at least occasionally buying something with the welfare money we send you.
That's enough spanking for now. My hand hurts, and your ass is as clueless and Red as when you first showed up in this thread.
Sorry, this reads like some pathetic high school fantasy of gleeful revenge and great powers. Anyway, you seem to have some strongly-held views about parts of America ("anti-intellectual clusterfuck of Red America"), Canada ("play it cool, so childish twits like you flee to the fakeouts"), and other dime-store opinions that reflect real life with very little accuracy, if any. You're more than welcome to hold those views, but I don't see what purpose is served by getting foul-mouthed at me for having a more nuanced view.
Right, you're way better than us and can't deign to stoop down to our pitiful level and help us by explaining the basics of economy. Off to another important business meeting, er, government waste-fest!
Sorry, but it's hard to "school me in basic economics" when you don't seem to have a grasp of it yourself. And if you can tell me about some of the wonderful things the truly great nation of Canada has done, which I seem to have missed out on in my two and a half decades living here, please do enlighten me.
Your utility bills include profits and the waste from a monopoly.
Great, so if you actually do abhor monopolies, then why do you want to support the biggest monopoly of all? Unlike your government, the utility monopolies can't pass laws, defend them with well-armed police, etc. etc.
Also, I don't see what you have against profit. Without profit I don't think a lot of people would work, innovate, etc., and I don't think a lot of people could afford to eat. Or is profit only acceptable for the government monopoly, welfare recipients, and low-wage employees? (Plus, as usual, the special exception for you, whoever the "you" may happen to be who's claiming that corporations are evil or whatever nonsense).
I've got Canada in my UID, but do indeed intend to move to the U.S., and plan on avoiding living in a Macro-Canada state, like NY. However, it's good you brought Canada up, as it serves as a useful point of comparison.
Basically your notion of "blue states as providers, red states as free riders" is wrong. It's pretty obvious that the biggest cause of income difference is population density: in Canada it's the reverse of there, here we've got a leftist country, the only two provider-states (er, provinces) are center-right and conservative, and all the receiver-provinces are very liberal (remember, this is liberal by already-liberal Canadian standards). Of course, much of the population density and economic activity density is in Ontario; the other two population-dense provinces, Quebec and British Columbia, are leftist and both receive billions of dollars in transfer money (we directly reroute our money, instead of subtly transferring it around like you do). Alberta is the only other province that pays transfer money, and despite being far less dense than Ontario they've recently surpassed Ontario in transfer dollars. They're conservative, and they recently paid off their debt (not deficit). So, other than in the opposite sense of what you describe (sparse conservative provinces out-do dense liberal provinces), wealth generation has to do with something other than your red state/blue state mentality.
If you believe that New York generates far more money (gross and per capita) than, say, Utah, simply because NY is run by liberals and UT is not, then you're either spouting dumb partisan rhetoric (why?!), or you lack an understanding of some fairly obvious facets of how the world works. As some wise person has said, no one has ever been taxed into prosperity.
"Invest it in public projects"? Sorry, putting money into massive sinkholes does not count as an investment. If you did, your returns are so pitiful that only an ass would admit to having made that investment.
"Because you just want some kind of free ride, while looking like some kind of 'libertarian'." I explicitly do not want a free ride, I want a place where I keep most of what I earn rather than throw it away on ridiculous pork-barrel projects (that someone like you decided we should have, and therefore pay for), or for my tax money to be used to regulate my private behavior, or any of the other god-awful results of tax-heavy "liberalism," with which I'm already familiar from my stay in Canada. I don't care if I "look like some kind of 'libertarian'" or anything else, I do care what happens with the proceeds of my hard work.
Yes -- as I said, "That has more to do with intelligence than education, although of course there's also a correlation between intelligence and education."
You think public education is the way to produce excellent results? Egads.
and suddenly all those smart Chinese students think why should they bother coming to xenophobic and dopey America when they can get the good science education and jobs back home.
Yeah, back to good ol' open-minded, non-xenophobic, socially advanced and freedom-loving China!
Slashdot Mirror
Yahoo Akhbar, Yahoo Akhbar...
By the way, even if you do want to engage in this infantile (and as I demonstrated above, wrong) brainwashed idiocy about how your beloved liberal states subsidize the evil red states, you should take into account that it's not liberals in the blue states who pay all those excess taxes. If you do a little research -- you could start here, at a liberal place -- you'll see that by a wide margin upper class and upper-middle class Americans vote Republican, not Dem., that the middle class is divided, and that only poor people have majority support for the Dems. In other words, those wealthy New Yorkers and Californians and so on who pay taxes to subsidize Kansas farmers, they're overwhelmingly conservative.
Now, as I say, I think the whole thing is somewhat silly, and I myself am neither Rep. nor Dem., but if you'd done even the tiniest bit of research you'd see that you're totally off-base on any number of levels, and basically just being a complete ass.
Once again, thanks for the pitiful display of repartee. (Is it better if I say it like that without too much sarcasm?)
Funny that you think yourself so superior when you're incapable of grasping even a simple point, and return continually to your silly simplified understanding of America.
And, unlike you, I don't put on some childish show of stupid sarcasm, hiding how hurt I might be that they really are better than me, which happens all the time, so I just attack the entire idea of someone being better than me, rather than trying to better myself.
When I explain to you the reason why the blue states pay more in taxes than they receive, which has nothing to do with your love of government, and you come back with "the blue states pay more in taxes than they receive," I'm sure even you can understand why I'm not overcome with awe.
One of the great things Canada has done is to play it cool, so childish twits like you flee to the fakeouts in great supply to the South. You've obviously missed out on much in your 25 years. Why should I fight that now, when you're going to the anti-intellectual clusterfuck of Red America, where you'll find lots of other people sucking on the public tit, hating those who feed you, all while pretending that since you're all inadequate, that "adequacy" is some "elitist" idea forced on you by the "liberals" in the "media"? We would cut you off in a second, if you wouldn't just show up at our borders with pitchforks, torches and "hunting" machine guns, instead of at least occasionally buying something with the welfare money we send you.
That's enough spanking for now. My hand hurts, and your ass is as clueless and Red as when you first showed up in this thread.
Sorry, this reads like some pathetic high school fantasy of gleeful revenge and great powers. Anyway, you seem to have some strongly-held views about parts of America ("anti-intellectual clusterfuck of Red America"), Canada ("play it cool, so childish twits like you flee to the fakeouts"), and other dime-store opinions that reflect real life with very little accuracy, if any. You're more than welcome to hold those views, but I don't see what purpose is served by getting foul-mouthed at me for having a more nuanced view.
Right, you're way better than us and can't deign to stoop down to our pitiful level and help us by explaining the basics of economy. Off to another important business meeting, er, government waste-fest!
Sorry, but it's hard to "school me in basic economics" when you don't seem to have a grasp of it yourself. And if you can tell me about some of the wonderful things the truly great nation of Canada has done, which I seem to have missed out on in my two and a half decades living here, please do enlighten me.
Wow, that was just insanely brilliant, man. You should like totally get a nobel prize and stuff, dude!
Your utility bills include profits and the waste from a monopoly.
Great, so if you actually do abhor monopolies, then why do you want to support the biggest monopoly of all? Unlike your government, the utility monopolies can't pass laws, defend them with well-armed police, etc. etc.
Also, I don't see what you have against profit. Without profit I don't think a lot of people would work, innovate, etc., and I don't think a lot of people could afford to eat. Or is profit only acceptable for the government monopoly, welfare recipients, and low-wage employees? (Plus, as usual, the special exception for you, whoever the "you" may happen to be who's claiming that corporations are evil or whatever nonsense).
Wow.. totally off-base.
I've got Canada in my UID, but do indeed intend to move to the U.S., and plan on avoiding living in a Macro-Canada state, like NY. However, it's good you brought Canada up, as it serves as a useful point of comparison.
Basically your notion of "blue states as providers, red states as free riders" is wrong. It's pretty obvious that the biggest cause of income difference is population density: in Canada it's the reverse of there, here we've got a leftist country, the only two provider-states (er, provinces) are center-right and conservative, and all the receiver-provinces are very liberal (remember, this is liberal by already-liberal Canadian standards). Of course, much of the population density and economic activity density is in Ontario; the other two population-dense provinces, Quebec and British Columbia, are leftist and both receive billions of dollars in transfer money (we directly reroute our money, instead of subtly transferring it around like you do). Alberta is the only other province that pays transfer money, and despite being far less dense than Ontario they've recently surpassed Ontario in transfer dollars. They're conservative, and they recently paid off their debt (not deficit). So, other than in the opposite sense of what you describe (sparse conservative provinces out-do dense liberal provinces), wealth generation has to do with something other than your red state/blue state mentality.
If you believe that New York generates far more money (gross and per capita) than, say, Utah, simply because NY is run by liberals and UT is not, then you're either spouting dumb partisan rhetoric (why?!), or you lack an understanding of some fairly obvious facets of how the world works. As some wise person has said, no one has ever been taxed into prosperity.
"Invest it in public projects"? Sorry, putting money into massive sinkholes does not count as an investment. If you did, your returns are so pitiful that only an ass would admit to having made that investment.
"Because you just want some kind of free ride, while looking like some kind of 'libertarian'." I explicitly do not want a free ride, I want a place where I keep most of what I earn rather than throw it away on ridiculous pork-barrel projects (that someone like you decided we should have, and therefore pay for), or for my tax money to be used to regulate my private behavior, or any of the other god-awful results of tax-heavy "liberalism," with which I'm already familiar from my stay in Canada. I don't care if I "look like some kind of 'libertarian'" or anything else, I do care what happens with the proceeds of my hard work.
All right, we get it, you love soaking in government pork.
Just let me know what state you're in so I can move to a different one.
A Ron Popeil hat? A fish-hat?
it is not merely a "fire transfer system" anymore.
Is that what you use for uproading?
Can someone fire Zonk?
Thanks.
Thomas More, Utopia -- written almost five hundred years ago.
(It's wrong, btw).
Heh, funniest sig I've ever seen on Slashdot.
Yes -- as I said, "That has more to do with intelligence than education, although of course there's also a correlation between intelligence and education."
And knowledge is easier to gain and use with intelligence.
Maybe you could also start typing with your keyboard instead of your mouse? (Or alternately, buy a mouse with a built-in spellchecker.)
He didn't say his life goal is money, he said his work goal is money.
(Not that I necessarily share that view, but you're misrepresenting what he said.)
That has more to do with intelligence than education, although of course there's also a correlation between intelligence and education.
Can they both lose?
The usual tripe from BBC, I guess.
You think public education is the way to produce excellent results? Egads.
and suddenly all those smart Chinese students think why should they bother coming to xenophobic and dopey America when they can get the good science education and jobs back home.
Yeah, back to good ol' open-minded, non-xenophobic, socially advanced and freedom-loving China!
Don't you mean gLager, gAle, etc.?
Right.. but it's Zonk. Sort of like the BSD troll, but with editing privileges.
(And, of course, "Apple rulez1!!!" posts instead of BSD is dead posts.)
Right.. because anyone ever needs to recompile a kernel or use a script on other OS's. Gimme a break.
Um... because it costs a few hundred dollars more, and all you get for that is a handful of pretty icons?