Minimum wage for "tipped employees" in California is $2.71 per hour
Without considering whether tipping is good or bad this is demonstrably false. From the department of labor, California requires tipped workers to be paid the state minimum wage of $10.00/hour.
I suppose it depends on exactly what you mean, but I don't think so. At least not in an analogous way to the Oracle case.
It is allowed to use kernel header files in user space, in order for user-space programs to interact with the kernel via ordinary system calls. This is allowed without the result that the user-space program becomes a derivative work of the kernel and therefore subject to GPL.
In general, use of header files do not create derivative works, although there can be exceptions. There used to be a lot of attention paid to the amount of code (e.g. number of lines) included from a header file, but no one seems to care about that these days, and this is almost never a problem. Richard Stallman has stated that use of header files for data structures, constant definitions, and enumerations (and even small inlines) does not create a derivative work.
As a former smoker, while some of what you say may be true, your post seems to be just about as equally dangerous and misinformed. There are basically no long term studies that demonstrate the safety of e-cigarettes and there have been several recent reports highlighting the danger of them. For example, here, here and here. Two wrongs by the FDA (e.g., fully endorsing vaping) wouldn't make a right.
Basically, it's not factually incorrect, but very misleading. Sure, they are separate components but they are so tightly coupled you can't really have one without theother so they operate in the same way as a monolithic system despite being split up into multiple components. Facllacy #1 explains it much better than I could here.
I thought it should be obvious that since the UCs used to be basically "free" (the government was subsidizing the whole thing) and now they are not, then by definition they are less subsidized. If you want to try to argue that there's just more money going in and so in absolute dollars they are not less subsidized, you'd be wrong too. The state/government's contribution has fallen by over 60% since 1990.
All other speed limits are flexible, depending on driving conditions.
This is not true and based on a misinterpretation of the law. From the California DMV website:
Driving faster than the posted speed limit or driving faster than safe for current conditions on any road is dangerous and illegal.
I happen to agree that certain speed limits or laws are in sync with practical driving considerations, your argument about irrational laws "actively making the roads less safe" is completely off base.
Blaming the TSA employee for the abusive system is like blaming a hospital orderly for the high costs of health care.
This is not an appropriate analogy at all. Regardless of the cost and efficiency of healthcare, the hospital orderly is still trying to help you. The same is not true for the TSA employee. They, as individuals, have made a choice to take a job that they know in advance will be violating your rights. While I agree that we should also be blaming, writing and harassing the politicians who implemented these programs in the first place, but the TSA employees should not be immune from any criticism and grief that comes their way..
And that profit fee is on top of the U.S. corporate tax rate being the 1st or 2nd highest in the developed world. Does anyone think they eat those rates or don't try to offshore jobs and manufacturing?
Of the 30 companies in the Dow Jones industrial average, 19 told shareholders their effective rate for their 2011 fiscal years, mostly ending Dec. 31, was below Obama's proposed new tax rate, according to a Reuters analysis of securities filings.
It is not mentioned in the article but the proposed new tax rate is 28%. Other industrialized nations have an effective tax rate between 22.6% and 27.7%. This is hardly a crippling difference. Not to mention may of the largest companies in the U.S. pay nothing! For example in 2010:
The most egregious example is General Electric ( GE - news - people ). Last year the conglomerate generated $10.3 billion in pretax income, but ended up owing nothing to Uncle Sam. In fact, it recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion.
It seems pretty disingenuous to claim high corporate taxes as a major problem without looking at what companies actually pay.
regular consumption of significant amounts of water can reduce the risk of development of dehydration
that other liquids WOULD also hydrate?
There is nothing explicit in this statement that implies other liquids hydrate or not. You are filling in the gaps and assuming some context that isn't stated in the text one way or another. You are making the assumption that by definition all liquids hydrate and so the statement must necessarily imply other liquids hydrate as well. This is not the case, however, as alcohol is a liquid and will dehydrate you. So will drinking lots of caffeinated beverages.
You might as well cite prison guard salaries in Indochina, it'd be as relevant.
You might want to cite anything let alone California. In California the average correctional officer's salary is $66,720. This may be more than the national average but hardly the fat cat 6 figure salaries that keep being espoused.
Public sector workers make MORE, on average, in California than Private sector workers when benefits are included on both sides.
Pretty sure GGP is NOT talking about librarians in referencing 6 figure salaries, but rather prison guards and other unions who have powerful lobbies, which plainly libraries do not.
Right, we all forgot about those powerful prison guard unions who were able to secure those fabulous $30-60k salaries.
Get over it, there are basically no large groups of labor in the public sector that make 6 figures. There may be individuals within these groups making those types of salaries, but they are high level managers and few and far between.
The public doesn't want to pay taxes to fund 6-figure public sector salaries and pensions, and the people making that pay decide to cut libraries and schools instead of their own pay
That maybe true, but the public is grossly misinformed if they think there are many public sector workers making those kinds of salaries. The average salary of a local public library librarian was $47,940 in 2008, for example.
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos068.htm
(shocking, I know - but to give some excuse, at the state level the constitution requires pensions be funded first), and the public is outraged.
And why shouldn't pensions be funded first? They are nothing more than deferred payment of a worker's salary. Not paying a paying the pension is basically saying "We'll give you $100, $80 now and $20 later, to do x amount of work." Then after the work is done only paying them $80. I can't imagine any other scenario where that would be fair or legal.
Cali is doomed anyhow - we may be the pioneer of state bankruptcy before much longer here, and many local governments are in crisis already (as the state's ability to bail out local governments is quite limited), and things like keeping the streeghlights on, the roads patches, and the trees clear of the power lines are fading before the all-consuming pension costs.
Employee salaries and benefits only make up about 10% of the state budget ($7B salaries + $3.4B benefits) (p.177). This can hardly be blamed for the budget woes of California. Much more serious are Prop 13 and 2/3 majority needed for the state senate to pass any tax increases.
There are three reasons. One, money does not equal speech so there is no constitutional freedom being lost by regulating how much an individuals can spend in an election. The two things are fundamentally different. Any individual in society has the ability to produce as much or as little speech as they would like to infinity. However, money is always limited and distributed unevenly throughout society. Two, Corporations are not people and should not be afforded the same rights as people. Three, a democracy is supposed to be one person one vote, however, pretending like money equals speech completely changes this equation. When one person or a small group of people contain the vast majority of the resources then they can use those resources to completely drown out every other voice. You get a situation where 10% of society gets all the say and the other 90% get to contribute nothing to the discussion. Where is the freedom in that?
And then there is the real world where that just isn't possible.
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." --Cardinal Richelieu
So you're saying you don't have an understanding of basic economics? Or that you refuse to understand it because it violates your simplistic world view? Both are sad.
No because what you said makes no sense.
Incorrect. The cost of doing business in the developed world is more expensive than in the undeveloped world.
Not in any meaningful way. The labor may be more expensive, but if people don't have money to buy the products or services the companies are offering then it doesn't matter how cheap they can make the stuff.
The western factories are steadily losing ground to the Daewoos and Tatas of the world. Their profits (adjusted for inflation) are shrinking.
Yes, manufacturing in the states has been on the decline for a long time.
They have a few choices: compete from a position that is inferior in the long term
What exactly does this mean?
level the playing field by getting rid of wealth destroying laws like western income taxes
Again what are you trying to say. That's such a loaded statement it's going to explode in my face if I even try to decipher it. You do realize that income taxes are nearly the lowest they've been since the introduction of income taxes nearly 100 years ago. Manufacturing in the US boomed in a period when income taxes for the wealthy were above 60% and even near 90%. You also realize that before there was an income tax we received virtually all of our national income through tariffs.
and minimum wages (which the economically ignorant would never let happen)
Enlighten us about what's so bad about minimum wages since Nobel laureates Paul Krugman and Joseph Stieglitz are too ignorant for you.
or use the fear of the scientifically ignorant to pressure the developing nations to level the playing field the other way.
Exactly, like telling you that going green will wreck the global economy and we'll all be out of jobs.
With all this talk of ignorance you sound very insecure in your positions.
These are the same mega-corps that promote ideas like mandatory worker health benefits, minimum wage, and complicated tax accounting rules. Sure it costs them money, but it costs their small scale competitors a greater amount (in relative terms), so they win.
40 years ago there were far fewer mega corporations than there are today. The amount of wealth and control these companies have on our economy is practically unprecedented in a generation. Yet 40 years ago wages were higher, families could live on a single income (many provided by a small business) and these pesky things like minimum wages did not cause all the problems you espouse. I agree large companies love the idea about mandatory health coverage, but it's because it enslaves the workers. Once you have health care you can basically never leave your job without fear you won't be able to enroll again, or that it will be so expensive it will bankrupt you.
If the American corporations didn't want greater regulation and global environmental treaties, why did they give record amounts of money to the Obama campaign? It certainly wasn't because he wanted to make the US a capitalist country again.
We live in one of the most laisse-faire capitalist periods in nearly 80 years. There is virtually unfettered free trade. Taxes are practicall
So this company is going to go from a net worth of 130 million dollars to 13 billion dollars if cap and trade becomes law? That's quite a few dots you are connecting isn't it?
CRU and who knows how many others have been lying, cheating and making the models fit what they want them to show.
Says who? I have yet to see wide spread lying, cheating, and fudging models from what's been released. Considering what's been release was illegally stolen and then selectively released to insinuate many things that are shown to be false in their original context, which is conveniently left out, it is pretty unbelievable that you would take that to be more credible than thousands of peer reviewed journal and conference articles. No doubt some of the papers are bad and have fudged numbers or data. This will be true in any field you examine in a microscope. In fact I seem to remember a study that came out showing that some large percentage of all scientific papers had some kind of mistake. This does not lead to the conclusion that all scientific papers are untrustworthy.
No one knows how climate change on a global scale works. No one.
Just because you say "No one" twice does not make it true. You do not know how global climate change works, that does not mean other people don't have a clue. Do they have it 100% figure out? Of course not. Maybe they don't even have it 50% figured out, but that doesn't mean they don't have a pretty good idea of many of the principles at work.
Right now a bunch of people are saying that because the climate is changing right now and there is more CO2 in the air, then that is what is changing it
No that's what you think they are saying and maybe that's what they are saying on slashdot, but that is not the only thing the scientific community in this area of research is saying.
I'm sorry I didn't cite it, but the fact is, the planet warmed up and got cold faster and more dramatically before man burned fossil fuels
If that's true then cite it. I'm not going to take your word for it. I've looked for myself and didn't find any evidence that supports your claim. And even if it is true what's your point?
We'd be better off coming up with technology to lessen the impact of climate change than to fight something we don't know the mechanism of.
But if one of the things we are doing now is increasing the rate at which this happens (i.e. emissions of green house gasses and other environmental factors) we might not have the time to develop those technologies. What we can do now is lessen our impact on the world. We know that before us the climate change and we know the magnitude of the time scale that those things happened. So to preserve the status quo the only thing we can do with current technology is minimize the effect we have compared to what it was before us.
It's quite clear how he would become a multibillionaire. He started a company that does nothing but buy and sell carbon credits.
No it is not. Here is an article from someone who shares your own view also responding to my post.
http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssEnergyNews/idUSL0490971420080604
He has a 9.6% stake (~$12M) in a company whose total worth is estimated at ~$120M. The value of the company would have to increase its value by more than 100 for him to reach billionaire status. Not impossible, but hardly a slam dunk.
I also never said he was more influential than multi-billion dollar industries.
No you just implied it.
However he is one of the most influential people in the world in terms of environmental policy.
So what?
Incorrect. The cost of doing business in the developed world is more expensive than in the undeveloped world. The western factories are steadily losing ground to the Daewoos and Tatas of the world. Their profits (adjusted for inflation) are shrinking. They have a few choices: compete from a position that is inferior in the long term, level the playing field by getting rid of wealth destroying laws like western income taxes and minimum wages (which the economically ignorant would never let happen), or use the fear of the scientifically ignorant to pressure the developing nations to level the playing field the other way. These are the same mega-corps that promote ideas like mandatory worker health benefits, minimum wage, and complicated tax accounting rules. Sure it costs them money, but it costs their small scale competitors a greater amount (in relative terms), so they win. If the American corporations didn't want greater regulation and global environmental treaties, why did they give record amounts of money to the Obama campaign? It certainly wasn't because he wanted to make the US a capitalist country again.
What??? I can barely even parse what you are saying, but what ever it is it doesn't make any sense.
make the US a capitalist country again.
. Huh? What do you mean again? Are those your true colors shining through?
Astrophysicist Dr. Sallie Baliunas
Statistician Stephen McIntyre
Professor Habibullo Abdussamatov
Geologist Astrid Lyså
Prof. Roy Spencer, NASA scientist
Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT
a few dozen here...including an IPCC member.
these 32 000 guys.
So I'm basically right. A few dozen respected scientists and a several thousand pulled off the internet.
and these 32 000 guys.
That should be enough people to show there is no "consensus" on global warming.
Lol "31,486 American scientists have signed this petition,
including 9,029 with PhDs "
Wow a ringing endorsement there. I'm glad that's all it takes to convince you.
The "trend", as you call it, is a decade long...so far,
No it's not. Look at the graph.
and it's projected to last another few decades
By who?
Wow, so the IPCC, known for ignoring science and falsifying data says it was only warm in Europe. Shocking!
And what evidence do you have that proves their claims are false. A couple of news articles, which are of course well know for their ability to accurately report on science. So you/they claim GISS falsified data once so that invalidates all data ever produced by the institution? Do you have better data that shows what you claim, if so why haven't you posted it.
The problem most of us "deniers" (i.e. adherents to the scientific method)
Right, so convincing a statement right after this one:
If AGW can be considered a scientific theory, and Al Gore can get a Nobel Prize f
And here in lies my major problem with you. Your hole post is a bunch of hand-waving and innuendo, but you don't actually back up anything you say.
The planet's climate has changed before, drastically and at very high rates of change, much much quicker and more dramatically than what is going to happen in the next 91 years (according to models).
Here are some questions you need to consider (and answer) if you want to have a convincing post:
And what were the consequences of those changes and were there people around when those changes occurred?
Care to give a citation for those models? You act as if all the models concur with your beliefs, but you don't even cite one that does.
What is so magical about 91 years. What about 100, 200, 300 years.
Those dramatic changes happened without man burning fossil fuels. Younger Dryas and the defrosting after happened without AGW. Ice ages came and went without it being man's fault. Are we going to have a glacial lake Missoula ravaging Oregon/Washington/Idaho every 50 years from AGW.
It's hard to figure out exactly what your point is, but the best I can tell it's, "climate has changed dramatically without people, why bother caring about it". I strongly suspect most people who believe in AGW understand full well that climate changes with or without humans. The difference is we care if the next major shift in climate happens on the order of hundreds of years versus thousands of years. The longer we have I can only hope the more technology we will have to adapt to the situation no matter what causes the outcome. Not even considering that humans ALSO contribute to an instability and increase in global warming is irresponsible and simply sticking your head in the sand as your first sentence illustrates perfectly.
no, in the grand scheme of climate change during the history of man, this is minor.
Wow, I'm glad we have you here to tell us what is and what isn't minor. The point you seem to be missing in your statements is that modern civilization was not around during the last major climate changes. We currently don't know how to cope with any major changes in weather patterns, sea level and other effects that could severely alter the shape and availability of resources around the world. We don't know when or how dramatic these changes will be, but the best your attitude can accomplish is "we'll deal with it when it comes". For many of us this attitude just doesn't cut it. The lives of millions or even billions of people are at stake. Simply saying
the US would gain vast amounts of land, good farmland
is totally meaningless. Sure that's one possibility, although I have a hard time actually believing it is the most likely. Even so you totally ignore the vast amount of time it takes for a culture to adapt to new resources and economic systems. For example, the US has been trying to transition to a services based economy (away from agriculture and manufacturing) for decades now and it has left a large percent of the population totally behind. It is at least in part one of the reasons for the recession since a virtually unprecedented amount of our economy and wealth is wrapped up in the financial sector. So, yeah I fail to see how your argument that the US might get more farmland would be a good thing.
Because thats what we are talking about with stopping climate change, terraforming the world to a "perfect" point in time.
You may be talking about that but that's not what I hope most of us are talking about. What we are talking about is being responsible and understanding that what we do has consequences. Sometimes those actions are necessary and we have to live by those consequences, but at the very least we want to know before hand what those consequences are. Because we don't know for certain what those consequences are, and there is at least some evidence of negative consequences, some people are basically saying, "maybe we should scale back our actions until we know more".
It's hard to follow your rant and what I do follow is backed up by dubious evidence at best.
Al Gore isn't poised to become a multibillionaire if Cap-And-Trade becomes law.
First, it isn't clear how Al Gore would instantly become a billionaire if cap and trade becomes law. Second, you really think one man is more influential than several, already, multi-billion dollar industries?
Western mega-corps won't have complete dominance in commerce if the developing world has to retool its entire production and delivery system to comply with international CO2 limits.
While this may be true, they already are the completely dominant force in commerce and so they'll make even more money if they don't have to retool anything.
So while you "deniers" stick your fingers in your ears, screaming "lalalalala...", so you don't have to acknowledge the thousands of respected scientists who disagree with the Anthropomorphic Global Warming theory
What? Are you counting yourself and all the other posters on slashdot?
the obvious evidence that all the models failed to predict the past decade of cooling
What cooling? The temperatures may be slightly cooler than the absolute peak, but to say there is a cooling trend is simply not true.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/
There have also been two periods in western history where global temperatures were significantly higher than today: the Roman Warming Period, and Medieval Warming Period. Rome and London didn't flood under the melted icecap water.
The Medieval Warm Period was a time of warm weather between about AD 800-1300, during the European Medieval period. Initial research on the MWP and the following Little Ice Age (LIA) was largely done in Europe, where the phenomenon was most obvious and clearly documented. It was initially believed that the temperature changes were global.[2] However, this view has been questioned; the 2001 IPCC report summarises this research, saying "...current evidence does not support globally synchronous periods of anomalous cold or warmth over this time frame, and the conventional terms of 'Little Ice Age' and 'Medieval Warm Period' appear to have limited utility in describing trends in hemispheric or global mean temperature changes in past centuries".[3] Global temperature records taken from ice cores, tree rings, and lake deposits, have shown that, taken globally, the Earth may have been slightly cooler (by 0.03 degrees Celsius) during the 'Medieval Warm Period' than in the early- and mid-20th century.[4] Crowley and Lowery (2000) [5] note that "there is insufficient documentation as to its existence in the Southern hemisphere."
I'm surprised a bunch of claims like yours can get modded up at all. Oh, wait... nevermind.
The way the state and feds are increasingly taxing the hell out of the citizens of the US,
This sounds great and all, but in the real world taxes in the US are nearly at an 80 year low. It's not because of excessively high taxes that you feel a pinch in your wallet, even if it's popular to say so.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/151.html
Slashdot Mirror
Minimum wage for "tipped employees" in California is $2.71 per hour
Without considering whether tipping is good or bad this is demonstrably false. From the department of labor, California requires tipped workers to be paid the state minimum wage of $10.00/hour.
It is allowed to use kernel header files in user space, in order for user-space programs to interact with the kernel via ordinary system calls. This is allowed without the result that the user-space program becomes a derivative work of the kernel and therefore subject to GPL.
In general, use of header files do not create derivative works, although there can be exceptions. There used to be a lot of attention paid to the amount of code (e.g. number of lines) included from a header file, but no one seems to care about that these days, and this is almost never a problem. Richard Stallman has stated that use of header files for data structures, constant definitions, and enumerations (and even small inlines) does not create a derivative work.
http://elinux.org/Legal_Issues...
As a former smoker, while some of what you say may be true, your post seems to be just about as equally dangerous and misinformed. There are basically no long term studies that demonstrate the safety of e-cigarettes and there have been several recent reports highlighting the danger of them. For example, here, here and here. Two wrongs by the FDA (e.g., fully endorsing vaping) wouldn't make a right.
Basically, it's not factually incorrect, but very misleading. Sure, they are separate components but they are so tightly coupled you can't really have one without theother so they operate in the same way as a monolithic system despite being split up into multiple components. Facllacy #1 explains it much better than I could here.
I thought it should be obvious that since the UCs used to be basically "free" (the government was subsidizing the whole thing) and now they are not, then by definition they are less subsidized. If you want to try to argue that there's just more money going in and so in absolute dollars they are not less subsidized, you'd be wrong too. The state/government's contribution has fallen by over 60% since 1990.
What do you mean by "further subsidized education". At least in California we've seen a massive de-subsidization of public education.
Maybe she had just watched Starman?
The traffic in Mordor isn't quite as bad?
All other speed limits are flexible, depending on driving conditions.
This is not true and based on a misinterpretation of the law. From the California DMV website:
Driving faster than the posted speed limit or driving faster than safe for current conditions on any road is dangerous and illegal.
I happen to agree that certain speed limits or laws are in sync with practical driving considerations, your argument about irrational laws "actively making the roads less safe" is completely off base.
1) Bullshit. The actual number is 8,000-10,000 per year, which is of course too much, but less than 1/3 your claim.
Actually your numbers are complete bullshit (and of course you don't provide a link or evidence to back it up). From Wikipedia:
In 2010, there were 19,392 firearm-related suicide deaths, and 11,078 firearm-related homicide deaths in the United States.
That is a total of over 30,000 deaths per year and exactly the number the grandparent alluded to.
Blaming the TSA employee for the abusive system is like blaming a hospital orderly for the high costs of health care.
This is not an appropriate analogy at all. Regardless of the cost and efficiency of healthcare, the hospital orderly is still trying to help you. The same is not true for the TSA employee. They, as individuals, have made a choice to take a job that they know in advance will be violating your rights. While I agree that we should also be blaming, writing and harassing the politicians who implemented these programs in the first place, but the TSA employees should not be immune from any criticism and grief that comes their way..
And that profit fee is on top of the U.S. corporate tax rate being the 1st or 2nd highest in the developed world. Does anyone think they eat those rates or don't try to offshore jobs and manufacturing?
But the effective tax rate is no where near as high. From the same article you linked to!
Of the 30 companies in the Dow Jones industrial average, 19 told shareholders their effective rate for their 2011 fiscal years, mostly ending Dec. 31, was below Obama's proposed new tax rate, according to a Reuters analysis of securities filings.
It is not mentioned in the article but the proposed new tax rate is 28%. Other industrialized nations have an effective tax rate between 22.6% and 27.7%. This is hardly a crippling difference. Not to mention may of the largest companies in the U.S. pay nothing! For example in 2010:
The most egregious example is General Electric ( GE - news - people ). Last year the conglomerate generated $10.3 billion in pretax income, but ended up owing nothing to Uncle Sam. In fact, it recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion.
It seems pretty disingenuous to claim high corporate taxes as a major problem without looking at what companies actually pay.
How can you POSSIBLY imply from this statement:
regular consumption of significant amounts of water can reduce the risk of development of dehydration
that other liquids WOULD also hydrate?
There is nothing explicit in this statement that implies other liquids hydrate or not. You are filling in the gaps and assuming some context that isn't stated in the text one way or another. You are making the assumption that by definition all liquids hydrate and so the statement must necessarily imply other liquids hydrate as well. This is not the case, however, as alcohol is a liquid and will dehydrate you. So will drinking lots of caffeinated beverages.
You might as well cite prison guard salaries in Indochina, it'd be as relevant.
You might want to cite anything let alone California. In California the average correctional officer's salary is $66,720. This may be more than the national average but hardly the fat cat 6 figure salaries that keep being espoused.
Public sector workers make MORE, on average, in California than Private sector workers when benefits are included on both sides.
And they are also MORE EDUCATED on average.
Pretty sure GGP is NOT talking about librarians in referencing 6 figure salaries, but rather prison guards and other unions who have powerful lobbies, which plainly libraries do not.
Right, we all forgot about those powerful prison guard unions who were able to secure those fabulous $30-60k salaries. Get over it, there are basically no large groups of labor in the public sector that make 6 figures. There may be individuals within these groups making those types of salaries, but they are high level managers and few and far between.
The public doesn't want to pay taxes to fund 6-figure public sector salaries and pensions, and the people making that pay decide to cut libraries and schools instead of their own pay
That maybe true, but the public is grossly misinformed if they think there are many public sector workers making those kinds of salaries. The average salary of a local public library librarian was $47,940 in 2008, for example. http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos068.htm
(shocking, I know - but to give some excuse, at the state level the constitution requires pensions be funded first), and the public is outraged.
And why shouldn't pensions be funded first? They are nothing more than deferred payment of a worker's salary. Not paying a paying the pension is basically saying "We'll give you $100, $80 now and $20 later, to do x amount of work." Then after the work is done only paying them $80. I can't imagine any other scenario where that would be fair or legal.
Cali is doomed anyhow - we may be the pioneer of state bankruptcy before much longer here, and many local governments are in crisis already (as the state's ability to bail out local governments is quite limited), and things like keeping the streeghlights on, the roads patches, and the trees clear of the power lines are fading before the all-consuming pension costs.
Employee salaries and benefits only make up about 10% of the state budget ($7B salaries + $3.4B benefits) (p.177). This can hardly be blamed for the budget woes of California. Much more serious are Prop 13 and 2/3 majority needed for the state senate to pass any tax increases.
There are three reasons. One, money does not equal speech so there is no constitutional freedom being lost by regulating how much an individuals can spend in an election. The two things are fundamentally different. Any individual in society has the ability to produce as much or as little speech as they would like to infinity. However, money is always limited and distributed unevenly throughout society. Two, Corporations are not people and should not be afforded the same rights as people. Three, a democracy is supposed to be one person one vote, however, pretending like money equals speech completely changes this equation. When one person or a small group of people contain the vast majority of the resources then they can use those resources to completely drown out every other voice. You get a situation where 10% of society gets all the say and the other 90% get to contribute nothing to the discussion. Where is the freedom in that?
And then there is the real world where that just isn't possible. "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." --Cardinal Richelieu
But quite likely if cap and trade becomes law. He also has stakes in several "green" energy companies.
Depends on your definition of quite likely. Not a single stock in the decade has posted that kind of return. http://www.investorplace.com/experts/louis_navellier/articles/top-stocks-of-decade-clh-swn-gmcr-byi-hans.html
So you're saying you don't have an understanding of basic economics? Or that you refuse to understand it because it violates your simplistic world view? Both are sad.
No because what you said makes no sense.
Incorrect. The cost of doing business in the developed world is more expensive than in the undeveloped world.
Not in any meaningful way. The labor may be more expensive, but if people don't have money to buy the products or services the companies are offering then it doesn't matter how cheap they can make the stuff.
The western factories are steadily losing ground to the Daewoos and Tatas of the world. Their profits (adjusted for inflation) are shrinking.
Yes, manufacturing in the states has been on the decline for a long time.
They have a few choices: compete from a position that is inferior in the long term
What exactly does this mean?
level the playing field by getting rid of wealth destroying laws like western income taxes
Again what are you trying to say. That's such a loaded statement it's going to explode in my face if I even try to decipher it. You do realize that income taxes are nearly the lowest they've been since the introduction of income taxes nearly 100 years ago. Manufacturing in the US boomed in a period when income taxes for the wealthy were above 60% and even near 90%. You also realize that before there was an income tax we received virtually all of our national income through tariffs.
and minimum wages (which the economically ignorant would never let happen)
Enlighten us about what's so bad about minimum wages since Nobel laureates Paul Krugman and Joseph Stieglitz are too ignorant for you.
or use the fear of the scientifically ignorant to pressure the developing nations to level the playing field the other way.
Exactly, like telling you that going green will wreck the global economy and we'll all be out of jobs. With all this talk of ignorance you sound very insecure in your positions.
These are the same mega-corps that promote ideas like mandatory worker health benefits, minimum wage, and complicated tax accounting rules. Sure it costs them money, but it costs their small scale competitors a greater amount (in relative terms), so they win.
40 years ago there were far fewer mega corporations than there are today. The amount of wealth and control these companies have on our economy is practically unprecedented in a generation. Yet 40 years ago wages were higher, families could live on a single income (many provided by a small business) and these pesky things like minimum wages did not cause all the problems you espouse. I agree large companies love the idea about mandatory health coverage, but it's because it enslaves the workers. Once you have health care you can basically never leave your job without fear you won't be able to enroll again, or that it will be so expensive it will bankrupt you.
If the American corporations didn't want greater regulation and global environmental treaties, why did they give record amounts of money to the Obama campaign? It certainly wasn't because he wanted to make the US a capitalist country again.
We live in one of the most laisse-faire capitalist periods in nearly 80 years. There is virtually unfettered free trade. Taxes are practicall
So this company is going to go from a net worth of 130 million dollars to 13 billion dollars if cap and trade becomes law? That's quite a few dots you are connecting isn't it?
CRU and who knows how many others have been lying, cheating and making the models fit what they want them to show.
Says who? I have yet to see wide spread lying, cheating, and fudging models from what's been released. Considering what's been release was illegally stolen and then selectively released to insinuate many things that are shown to be false in their original context, which is conveniently left out, it is pretty unbelievable that you would take that to be more credible than thousands of peer reviewed journal and conference articles. No doubt some of the papers are bad and have fudged numbers or data. This will be true in any field you examine in a microscope. In fact I seem to remember a study that came out showing that some large percentage of all scientific papers had some kind of mistake. This does not lead to the conclusion that all scientific papers are untrustworthy.
No one knows how climate change on a global scale works. No one.
Just because you say "No one" twice does not make it true. You do not know how global climate change works, that does not mean other people don't have a clue. Do they have it 100% figure out? Of course not. Maybe they don't even have it 50% figured out, but that doesn't mean they don't have a pretty good idea of many of the principles at work.
Right now a bunch of people are saying that because the climate is changing right now and there is more CO2 in the air, then that is what is changing it
No that's what you think they are saying and maybe that's what they are saying on slashdot, but that is not the only thing the scientific community in this area of research is saying.
I'm sorry I didn't cite it, but the fact is, the planet warmed up and got cold faster and more dramatically before man burned fossil fuels
If that's true then cite it. I'm not going to take your word for it. I've looked for myself and didn't find any evidence that supports your claim. And even if it is true what's your point?
We'd be better off coming up with technology to lessen the impact of climate change than to fight something we don't know the mechanism of.
But if one of the things we are doing now is increasing the rate at which this happens (i.e. emissions of green house gasses and other environmental factors) we might not have the time to develop those technologies. What we can do now is lessen our impact on the world. We know that before us the climate change and we know the magnitude of the time scale that those things happened. So to preserve the status quo the only thing we can do with current technology is minimize the effect we have compared to what it was before us.
It's quite clear how he would become a multibillionaire. He started a company that does nothing but buy and sell carbon credits.
No it is not. Here is an article from someone who shares your own view also responding to my post. http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssEnergyNews/idUSL0490971420080604 He has a 9.6% stake (~$12M) in a company whose total worth is estimated at ~$120M. The value of the company would have to increase its value by more than 100 for him to reach billionaire status. Not impossible, but hardly a slam dunk.
I also never said he was more influential than multi-billion dollar industries.
No you just implied it.
However he is one of the most influential people in the world in terms of environmental policy.
So what?
Incorrect. The cost of doing business in the developed world is more expensive than in the undeveloped world. The western factories are steadily losing ground to the Daewoos and Tatas of the world. Their profits (adjusted for inflation) are shrinking. They have a few choices: compete from a position that is inferior in the long term, level the playing field by getting rid of wealth destroying laws like western income taxes and minimum wages (which the economically ignorant would never let happen), or use the fear of the scientifically ignorant to pressure the developing nations to level the playing field the other way. These are the same mega-corps that promote ideas like mandatory worker health benefits, minimum wage, and complicated tax accounting rules. Sure it costs them money, but it costs their small scale competitors a greater amount (in relative terms), so they win. If the American corporations didn't want greater regulation and global environmental treaties, why did they give record amounts of money to the Obama campaign? It certainly wasn't because he wanted to make the US a capitalist country again.
What??? I can barely even parse what you are saying, but what ever it is it doesn't make any sense.
make the US a capitalist country again.
. Huh? What do you mean again? Are those your true colors shining through?
Astrophysicist Dr. Sallie Baliunas Statistician Stephen McIntyre Professor Habibullo Abdussamatov Geologist Astrid Lyså Prof. Roy Spencer, NASA scientist Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT a few dozen here...including an IPCC member. these 32 000 guys.
So I'm basically right. A few dozen respected scientists and a several thousand pulled off the internet.
and these 32 000 guys. That should be enough people to show there is no "consensus" on global warming.
Lol "31,486 American scientists have signed this petition, including 9,029 with PhDs " Wow a ringing endorsement there. I'm glad that's all it takes to convince you.
The "trend", as you call it, is a decade long...so far,
No it's not. Look at the graph.
and it's projected to last another few decades
By who?
Wow, so the IPCC, known for ignoring science and falsifying data says it was only warm in Europe. Shocking!
And what evidence do you have that proves their claims are false. A couple of news articles, which are of course well know for their ability to accurately report on science. So you/they claim GISS falsified data once so that invalidates all data ever produced by the institution? Do you have better data that shows what you claim, if so why haven't you posted it.
The problem most of us "deniers" (i.e. adherents to the scientific method)
Right, so convincing a statement right after this one:
If AGW can be considered a scientific theory, and Al Gore can get a Nobel Prize f
not going to change my mind.
And here in lies my major problem with you. Your hole post is a bunch of hand-waving and innuendo, but you don't actually back up anything you say.
Here are some questions you need to consider (and answer) if you want to have a convincing post:
It's hard to figure out exactly what your point is, but the best I can tell it's, "climate has changed dramatically without people, why bother caring about it". I strongly suspect most people who believe in AGW understand full well that climate changes with or without humans. The difference is we care if the next major shift in climate happens on the order of hundreds of years versus thousands of years. The longer we have I can only hope the more technology we will have to adapt to the situation no matter what causes the outcome. Not even considering that humans ALSO contribute to an instability and increase in global warming is irresponsible and simply sticking your head in the sand as your first sentence illustrates perfectly.
Wow, I'm glad we have you here to tell us what is and what isn't minor. The point you seem to be missing in your statements is that modern civilization was not around during the last major climate changes. We currently don't know how to cope with any major changes in weather patterns, sea level and other effects that could severely alter the shape and availability of resources around the world. We don't know when or how dramatic these changes will be, but the best your attitude can accomplish is "we'll deal with it when it comes". For many of us this attitude just doesn't cut it. The lives of millions or even billions of people are at stake. Simply saying
the US would gain vast amounts of land, good farmland
is totally meaningless. Sure that's one possibility, although I have a hard time actually believing it is the most likely. Even so you totally ignore the vast amount of time it takes for a culture to adapt to new resources and economic systems. For example, the US has been trying to transition to a services based economy (away from agriculture and manufacturing) for decades now and it has left a large percent of the population totally behind. It is at least in part one of the reasons for the recession since a virtually unprecedented amount of our economy and wealth is wrapped up in the financial sector. So, yeah I fail to see how your argument that the US might get more farmland would be a good thing.
You may be talking about that but that's not what I hope most of us are talking about. What we are talking about is being responsible and understanding that what we do has consequences. Sometimes those actions are necessary and we have to live by those consequences, but at the very least we want to know before hand what those consequences are. Because we don't know for certain what those consequences are, and there is at least some evidence of negative consequences, some people are basically saying, "maybe we should scale back our actions until we know more".
First, it isn't clear how Al Gore would instantly become a billionaire if cap and trade becomes law. Second, you really think one man is more influential than several, already, multi-billion dollar industries?
While this may be true, they already are the completely dominant force in commerce and so they'll make even more money if they don't have to retool anything.
What? Are you counting yourself and all the other posters on slashdot?
What cooling? The temperatures may be slightly cooler than the absolute peak, but to say there is a cooling trend is simply not true. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/
Maybe because those periods weren't as warm globally as you think they were. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warming
The Medieval Warm Period was a time of warm weather between about AD 800-1300, during the European Medieval period. Initial research on the MWP and the following Little Ice Age (LIA) was largely done in Europe, where the phenomenon was most obvious and clearly documented. It was initially believed that the temperature changes were global.[2] However, this view has been questioned; the 2001 IPCC report summarises this research, saying "...current evidence does not support globally synchronous periods of anomalous cold or warmth over this time frame, and the conventional terms of 'Little Ice Age' and 'Medieval Warm Period' appear to have limited utility in describing trends in hemispheric or global mean temperature changes in past centuries".[3] Global temperature records taken from ice cores, tree rings, and lake deposits, have shown that, taken globally, the Earth may have been slightly cooler (by 0.03 degrees Celsius) during the 'Medieval Warm Period' than in the early- and mid-20th century.[4] Crowley and Lowery (2000) [5] note that "there is insufficient documentation as to its existence in the Southern hemisphere."
I'm surprised a bunch of claims like yours can get modded up at all. Oh, wait... nevermind.
This sounds great and all, but in the real world taxes in the US are nearly at an 80 year low. It's not because of excessively high taxes that you feel a pinch in your wallet, even if it's popular to say so. http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/151.html