I would agree. I'm just saying instead of spending more money and more taxes, if you take out the exploitation and use the moneys from exploitation to further those benefits we'd be much more better off than to just keep piling it on.
On the other hand, we need to make sure and provide incentives so that more and more people do not become lazy and dependent, as we seem to be doing. It ruins us to culture this.
We need to provide for the truly needy, not the capable but lazy.
I have analyzed Social Security, and know that at least in the short run there really isn't a way around it (such as more incentives for people to save for themselves).
The problem is we don't even try to curb exploitation - we encourage it. People run around bragging about their gov't cheese. People living on state lines exploit both states' welfare system.
Instead of leaning out the problem and curbing exploitation, we add more benefits. We simply cannot sustain it. We can't continue breeding lazy individuals who are told they are the best at everything they do.
If we continue to choose the lesser of two evils, we are still moving further down the spiral, just _not as fast_.
I'm not anti-government in the least, I'm anti-big-government, there's a difference.
You know what? I don't know shit about history, a lot of it comes from what I learned in school. That was all brainwashing, right? Right now I'm on market investment strategies, the next on the list is business management and American history (and founding principles).
Ultimately we're partly arguing against each other in the same direction - of sorts (I am sure we don't see eye to eye on many things). You don't seem to notice my disdain for _both_ sides of the equation. Maybe I am not relaying my point clearly enough.
I am speaking exactly about exploitation. I'm not ranting about socialists, or fascists, or isolationists or even libertarians here. I'm talking about the progression of our society (by that I mean the USA) from that of being personally responsible for ones' self into being entirely dependent (or exploiting) upon the government systems. If you spill hot coffee on yourself, it's not your fault it's the fault of the company that provided it because they didn't warn you that it was hot.
Business operating on an open market is a good thing, business operating on a fixed market - either by corruption or knee-jerk over-regulation - is a bad thing. I'm not advocating it in the least. Everyone should get a fair shake at succeeding - but that fairness also comes with their fair chance of failure. That is the key, and our society is not able to accept that failure. You can't regulate failure out of a system and expect it to succeed - either in business or social settings.
You cannot simply point the finger at "you people (Americans)" as the sole proprietor of political corruption. It is everywhere - including as you say in your country. We aren't "letting" it be corrupt any more than anywhere else.
I am not asking to tear down (in its entirety anyway - some of it should be) our system - I am saying we can't continue on our pace. Our answer to the problem isn't to eliminate the exploitation - it's to add more and more benefits, more handouts to perfectly capable individuals. In turn, this is going to add more an more unsustainable debt and increased dependence on our government to prop us up. It makes us less resiliant in the face of adversity.
As for Obama, he has received many contributions other than his little $5 online campaigns. There are plenty of articles detailing his contributions from industry and lobbyists - i.e. special interests. Which leaves me only to conclude that his politics are going to be more of the same, just topped with a sugar-coated message we can all believe in. Additionally - look at is voting record. He chooses simply not to vote on many issues.
Both sides are at fault here. We need to fix our current system before we can add more to it.
McCarthyism? This isn't a troll hunt for Communists, this is about how this country was founded.
You can't limit your statements to the last 50 years. They have been unchecked since the beginning of the country (as it mostly should be). The US was founded on personal responsibility and freedom, both of which we are losing as fast as we are able.
Just look at hurricane Katrina. Thousands flocked to the Superdome to be saved by Nanny Government, and chaos ensued when nothing was available. None of those people took stock in themselves saying "maybe I should have taken care of myself and mine". Instead, they got put up in hotels and given debit cards, months later still in those hotels demanding more instead of pulling themselves up and marching on.
If a person or company is infringing on the rights of another, it should be stopped. On the other hand, trying to control a free market with ridiculous artificial controls so everyone 'feels good' about it is only more damaging.
Politics are corrupt. The more complex the system gets, the more corruption and opacity reigns. Obama is just as corrupt as Hillary who is just as corrupt as McCain. It will be business as usual in Washington whoever takes the stand just as the Democrats took over congress and as Pelosi took the helm surrounded by children saying (and I quote) "do it for the children".
What has changed since they have taken power? Nothing. The war in Iraq is still raging, our deficit is increasing, our freedoms are being devoured.
We don't entirely disagree, you and I. Yes, a balance does need to be stricken. My point is quite simple: we are no longer responsible for ourselves. If we stand up and take responsibility for our own actions, for our own well-being, and for our future, we will be much better off than those waiting for others to hand it to them. I know, because I've been there - without a single hand out I fought tooth and nail to get where I am, and to where I am going.
I'm not a completely cold-hearted bastard, and realize people need people to survive. We can't do it by ourselves. We also can't sustain the direction we are headed. We can't punish the many for the advantage of a few.
All of the candidates, including Obama, aren't going to do the US any favors.
They are going to further our plunge into government dependence, they are going to further our national debt obscenely, and they are going to continue to take away from our personal freedoms.
All of them. No, it's not for the greater good.
The Democrats will remove your freedoms by forcing on you what they think is good for you, by taking away your means to protect you and your families, by forcing your diets and lifestyles. They will continue to push social spending (which is about 2/3 of our national budget).
The Republicans will continue the War on Terror and the War on Drugs, stepping on every other privacy an right that the Democrats forgot.
Change? Yeah, we'll have change.
Americans are NOT Europeans. Our attitudes are different, our cultures are different, our way of life is different. I guess I just have to learn to be content with the fact that I'm a drone for the greater good, and not and individual. Foreigners often talk about how lazy Americans are, people like Hillary and Obama are only going to help breed them.
FAR more of our budget is spent on social welfare than the war - PERIOD. More than half the budget is for social programs. The war isn't bankrupting us, lack of responsibility for ones' self and lack of oversight is.
I started running XP from beta and never looked back.
When I first got XP, half of my hardware wouldn't work, and many of my software applications were incompatible. I had to wait for months while waiting for new drivers and software patches to work with XP.
To get the same exact frame rates in the games I played at the time, I had to upgrade from a Duron 800 to a 1GHz machine.
Everyone said to stay away from XP. It was bloated, terrible, and didn't have any software or driver support. Performance was poor, and it required much more memory than previous Windows. Now everyone says the same thing about Vista, and will say the same thing about Windows 7 in a few years when it comes out.
That's just the way it is; unfortunately it is tiring to listen to.
As much following as Obama gets with his "change" campaign - people really don't like it.
That's why people bitch and moan about Vista. It's new, it's different, and it makes them wet themselves.
The cycle happened with the change over to XP, it will happen again when we migrate from Vista to Win 7. "Vista is such a good solid OS, Win 7 is crap I'm switching to Linux!!!!!111!!11!"
How's Joe Sixpack going to be able to sort through the 36 messenger clients, 43 text editors and 22 media players (none of which play DVD's) that are installed by default in many Linux ditros, let alone choose from the additional 384,000 identical programs in YaST?
Linux kicks ass, don't get me wrong (I use it fairly regularly). I use Windows a lot too, and it also kicks ass. To say Vista is bloated because it includes Movie Maker and instant messenger is silly. Two of those features are generally included in the default install of every mainstream Linux distro out there.
There are plenty of stripped-out versions of Linux, but there are a lot of bloated ones. We know how to sort it out, but the average Joe can't. The staggering amount of choice Linux offers is fantastic, but that very feature makes it difficult to use at the same token.
Are you also a fan of government-subsidized cable TV?
An open market dictates AT&T can run their business how they please. An open market allows you to choose a different provider. That being said, I do believe AT&T may be overstepping appropriate bounds, here - and it makes me sick.
Sure, the health care companies are greedy. Without the obscene amount of money they make, how do you imagine they would pay for all of the new advances in health care? How much of your money are you willing to spend on others' health care? How much of your income do you donate to charity each year?
Shut down paycheck advance places? If you don't like them, don't use them. There is no gun to anyone's head, the people that use those places do so by their own free will. They sign up for it, just like they signed up for their ARM and their Escalade payments (come on, a $500k house and a $60k SUV on $50k/year income?). Government does not need to hold your hand, do they?
People should be responsible for themselves; I have no interest in spending my hard earned money to help some lazy individual who refuses to help themselves. My hard work and my effort got me to where I am now, and I've been at the bottom.
You obviously haven't seen much of the military's capabilities. Ever seen a C-130 gunship? There are videos on the internet.
A C-130 gunship can repeatedly barrage targets accurately from a distance. We have missiles and laser-guided bombs that can literally find doorways. We have destroyers that *in WWII* could drop rounds into a barrel from thousands of yards away. We also have tanks like the Abrams that can fire and hit its target while on the move.
No, targeting is *certainly not* a problem - in fact I'd wager it's easier with light. Light is practically instantaneous and doesn't have any discernable trajectory or flight path. The problem is fitting a C-130 with a fricking laser beam that actually is capable of melting a target of military interest (not whether you can accurately point it at something).
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I would agree. I'm just saying instead of spending more money and more taxes, if you take out the exploitation and use the moneys from exploitation to further those benefits we'd be much more better off than to just keep piling it on. On the other hand, we need to make sure and provide incentives so that more and more people do not become lazy and dependent, as we seem to be doing. It ruins us to culture this. We need to provide for the truly needy, not the capable but lazy.
I have analyzed Social Security, and know that at least in the short run there really isn't a way around it (such as more incentives for people to save for themselves).
The problem is we don't even try to curb exploitation - we encourage it. People run around bragging about their gov't cheese. People living on state lines exploit both states' welfare system.
Instead of leaning out the problem and curbing exploitation, we add more benefits. We simply cannot sustain it. We can't continue breeding lazy individuals who are told they are the best at everything they do.
If we continue to choose the lesser of two evils, we are still moving further down the spiral, just _not as fast_.
I'm not anti-government in the least, I'm anti-big-government, there's a difference.
You know what? I don't know shit about history, a lot of it comes from what I learned in school. That was all brainwashing, right? Right now I'm on market investment strategies, the next on the list is business management and American history (and founding principles).
Ultimately we're partly arguing against each other in the same direction - of sorts (I am sure we don't see eye to eye on many things). You don't seem to notice my disdain for _both_ sides of the equation. Maybe I am not relaying my point clearly enough.
I am speaking exactly about exploitation. I'm not ranting about socialists, or fascists, or isolationists or even libertarians here. I'm talking about the progression of our society (by that I mean the USA) from that of being personally responsible for ones' self into being entirely dependent (or exploiting) upon the government systems. If you spill hot coffee on yourself, it's not your fault it's the fault of the company that provided it because they didn't warn you that it was hot.
Business operating on an open market is a good thing, business operating on a fixed market - either by corruption or knee-jerk over-regulation - is a bad thing. I'm not advocating it in the least. Everyone should get a fair shake at succeeding - but that fairness also comes with their fair chance of failure. That is the key, and our society is not able to accept that failure. You can't regulate failure out of a system and expect it to succeed - either in business or social settings.
You cannot simply point the finger at "you people (Americans)" as the sole proprietor of political corruption. It is everywhere - including as you say in your country. We aren't "letting" it be corrupt any more than anywhere else.
I am not asking to tear down (in its entirety anyway - some of it should be) our system - I am saying we can't continue on our pace. Our answer to the problem isn't to eliminate the exploitation - it's to add more and more benefits, more handouts to perfectly capable individuals. In turn, this is going to add more an more unsustainable debt and increased dependence on our government to prop us up. It makes us less resiliant in the face of adversity.
As for Obama, he has received many contributions other than his little $5 online campaigns. There are plenty of articles detailing his contributions from industry and lobbyists - i.e. special interests. Which leaves me only to conclude that his politics are going to be more of the same, just topped with a sugar-coated message we can all believe in. Additionally - look at is voting record. He chooses simply not to vote on many issues.
Both sides are at fault here. We need to fix our current system before we can add more to it.
McCarthyism? This isn't a troll hunt for Communists, this is about how this country was founded.
You can't limit your statements to the last 50 years. They have been unchecked since the beginning of the country (as it mostly should be). The US was founded on personal responsibility and freedom, both of which we are losing as fast as we are able.
Just look at hurricane Katrina. Thousands flocked to the Superdome to be saved by Nanny Government, and chaos ensued when nothing was available. None of those people took stock in themselves saying "maybe I should have taken care of myself and mine". Instead, they got put up in hotels and given debit cards, months later still in those hotels demanding more instead of pulling themselves up and marching on.
If a person or company is infringing on the rights of another, it should be stopped. On the other hand, trying to control a free market with ridiculous artificial controls so everyone 'feels good' about it is only more damaging.
Politics are corrupt. The more complex the system gets, the more corruption and opacity reigns. Obama is just as corrupt as Hillary who is just as corrupt as McCain. It will be business as usual in Washington whoever takes the stand just as the Democrats took over congress and as Pelosi took the helm surrounded by children saying (and I quote) "do it for the children".
What has changed since they have taken power? Nothing. The war in Iraq is still raging, our deficit is increasing, our freedoms are being devoured.
We don't entirely disagree, you and I. Yes, a balance does need to be stricken. My point is quite simple: we are no longer responsible for ourselves. If we stand up and take responsibility for our own actions, for our own well-being, and for our future, we will be much better off than those waiting for others to hand it to them. I know, because I've been there - without a single hand out I fought tooth and nail to get where I am, and to where I am going.
I'm not a completely cold-hearted bastard, and realize people need people to survive. We can't do it by ourselves. We also can't sustain the direction we are headed. We can't punish the many for the advantage of a few.
Congratulations, you bit hook line and sinker.
All of the candidates, including Obama, aren't going to do the US any favors.
They are going to further our plunge into government dependence, they are going to further our national debt obscenely, and they are going to continue to take away from our personal freedoms.
All of them. No, it's not for the greater good.
The Democrats will remove your freedoms by forcing on you what they think is good for you, by taking away your means to protect you and your families, by forcing your diets and lifestyles. They will continue to push social spending (which is about 2/3 of our national budget).
The Republicans will continue the War on Terror and the War on Drugs, stepping on every other privacy an right that the Democrats forgot.
Change? Yeah, we'll have change.
Americans are NOT Europeans. Our attitudes are different, our cultures are different, our way of life is different. I guess I just have to learn to be content with the fact that I'm a drone for the greater good, and not and individual. Foreigners often talk about how lazy Americans are, people like Hillary and Obama are only going to help breed them.
Your 'R' key is broken. =) I keed I keed!
FAR more of our budget is spent on social welfare than the war - PERIOD. More than half the budget is for social programs. The war isn't bankrupting us, lack of responsibility for ones' self and lack of oversight is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget%2C_2007
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget%2C_2008
I started running XP from beta and never looked back.
When I first got XP, half of my hardware wouldn't work, and many of my software applications were incompatible. I had to wait for months while waiting for new drivers and software patches to work with XP.
To get the same exact frame rates in the games I played at the time, I had to upgrade from a Duron 800 to a 1GHz machine.
Everyone said to stay away from XP. It was bloated, terrible, and didn't have any software or driver support. Performance was poor, and it required much more memory than previous Windows. Now everyone says the same thing about Vista, and will say the same thing about Windows 7 in a few years when it comes out.
That's just the way it is; unfortunately it is tiring to listen to.
As much following as Obama gets with his "change" campaign - people really don't like it. That's why people bitch and moan about Vista. It's new, it's different, and it makes them wet themselves. The cycle happened with the change over to XP, it will happen again when we migrate from Vista to Win 7. "Vista is such a good solid OS, Win 7 is crap I'm switching to Linux!!!!!111!!11!"
How's Joe Sixpack going to be able to sort through the 36 messenger clients, 43 text editors and 22 media players (none of which play DVD's) that are installed by default in many Linux ditros, let alone choose from the additional 384,000 identical programs in YaST?
Linux kicks ass, don't get me wrong (I use it fairly regularly). I use Windows a lot too, and it also kicks ass. To say Vista is bloated because it includes Movie Maker and instant messenger is silly. Two of those features are generally included in the default install of every mainstream Linux distro out there.
There are plenty of stripped-out versions of Linux, but there are a lot of bloated ones. We know how to sort it out, but the average Joe can't. The staggering amount of choice Linux offers is fantastic, but that very feature makes it difficult to use at the same token.
Kind of like welfare and socialized medicine? The money they saved went somewhere else - quite possibly somewhere even less useful. Oh well.
Are you also a fan of government-subsidized cable TV?
An open market dictates AT&T can run their business how they please. An open market allows you to choose a different provider. That being said, I do believe AT&T may be overstepping appropriate bounds, here - and it makes me sick.
Sure, the health care companies are greedy. Without the obscene amount of money they make, how do you imagine they would pay for all of the new advances in health care? How much of your money are you willing to spend on others' health care? How much of your income do you donate to charity each year?
Shut down paycheck advance places? If you don't like them, don't use them. There is no gun to anyone's head, the people that use those places do so by their own free will. They sign up for it, just like they signed up for their ARM and their Escalade payments (come on, a $500k house and a $60k SUV on $50k/year income?). Government does not need to hold your hand, do they?
People should be responsible for themselves; I have no interest in spending my hard earned money to help some lazy individual who refuses to help themselves. My hard work and my effort got me to where I am now, and I've been at the bottom.
You obviously haven't seen much of the military's capabilities. Ever seen a C-130 gunship? There are videos on the internet.
A C-130 gunship can repeatedly barrage targets accurately from a distance. We have missiles and laser-guided bombs that can literally find doorways. We have destroyers that *in WWII* could drop rounds into a barrel from thousands of yards away. We also have tanks like the Abrams that can fire and hit its target while on the move.
No, targeting is *certainly not* a problem - in fact I'd wager it's easier with light. Light is practically instantaneous and doesn't have any discernable trajectory or flight path. The problem is fitting a C-130 with a fricking laser beam that actually is capable of melting a target of military interest (not whether you can accurately point it at something).