This 'cyber-war' is just an extension of the trade war that is really going on now, which itself is the logical extension of the currency war that has been in process for decades actually.
Unfortunately for all, eventually currency wars and trade wars lead to hot wars, and nobody knows what the trigger may be. It may be some half important dude getting slaughtered in a hotel or it may be another round of 'cyber war' (and it doesn't even have to be a real one, all that matters is that news leak out that some important military installation has suffered in a serious cyber attack that 'stole' some heavy military secrets, wouldn't be the first time).
A bit over a year since having their case rejected by the Swedish Supreme Court a
- I would like to go over the personal computers of these Swedish Supreme Court members with a fine brush and reveal all of their own personal transgressions related to various copyright violations.
Oh, I don't doubt that they have a program in Ukraine for attack dolphins, attack dogs and attack bulls. In fact dolphins have been used for this purpose in WWI and WWII and probably in other wars.
How about this for a story that is similarly unbelievable?
Putin has released Khodorkovski from jail. Tentacle manga: Tokyo is under attack by a 100 meter monster. French president has revealed his plan for a balanced budget and a trade balance that does not involve more taxes.
Yeah, all of these may appear on the front page of/., would you also believe it if you saw it?
This entire thing is fabricated, anybody with 2 brain cells to rub together doesn't even need to RTFA, it's obvious from the summary but even from the headline.
So while somebody like that (walks into a crowded theatre and shoots people) may be insane. How about somebody who sends a drone to drop bombs on civilians, kills civilians, including children. That's just normal, right? But one does what he does because he is probably crazy and the other one because he is crazy on power and wants to 'stimulate economy' by buying and dropping bombs.
Nice try. That's not a/. supported model. The/. crowd model is to have you become a gov't subsidised utiluty./. hates to gave ppl pay per use and it loves gov't solutions. So if your solution involves gov't regulation and a subsidy, so that the perception is that the bill goes to somebody else, then you are foing it right. Searching for a free market solution like yiu are doing... that's not going to go well here
But ifÂSB 1437Âpasses, anyone who wants to become a music therapist will face some onerous barriers: an applicant would need a bachelorâ(TM)s degree in music therapy from a program approved by the American Music Therapy Association (AMTA), at least 1,200 hours of clinical training, and 900 hours of internship experience. Practicing or calling oneself a music therapist without a government permission slip would be criminalized, with violators facing up to aÂ$500 fine and/or 30 days imprisonment.
That's what gov't regulations are all about, that and taking ppl for their money. Providing an innovating service ppl like? Ha, we are gov't, it would really be sad if you didn't pay up and something bad happened to your business.
So you believe that I 'spew ideology' and your comments have no ideology in them? I profess principles, and you have ideology:
Your words:
Putting your ideology over the lives of actual people just proves your really do need help.
- this is ideology, ideology of taking from a minority and subsidising a majority unless you found a fountain of free wealth to pay for all of your 'help' that you want to administer.
Your type of ideology is exactly what is driving the system, it's at the helm and it's driving at an ever increasing speed towards a real economic and societal cliff. We are going to go over that cliff, and it's not the minor insignificant bump in the road that the government was just crying a couple of weeks ago, it's not the so called 'fiscal cliff', it's the real deal. The one that will destroy the value of US dollars and dollar denominated assets.
When the wagon goes over that cliff, it will take down all of the people you are supposedly interested in helping. You cannot help people by legislating that they should have more of something that they did not work for.
If your ideology takes a non-trivial number of people and puts them in the wagon and then forces those, who are pulling the wagon to pull ever harder, while saying that they are not doing their 'fair share', then you are going to have more and more people in the wagon, and the wagon will go the road of least resistance, and that will be downwards towards the edge of the cliff, and this is happening right now. Your ideology will cause massive suffering as the same type of ideology has already done in the past multiple times. That you can't recognise it and that you are expecting to achieve a different result by doing the same thing again that was done many times before shows that you are the one with a psychiatric problem.
Reduces harm. Yes, that's what we are so great at legislating: reduction of harm. What is that really, it means removing risk.
Yes, let's have government trying to remove risk.
Why, we could have a great economy and a great society "that works and reduces harm" if only government reduces our risks. If only government reduced risk to lending money to the banks with FDIC, then the potential bank customers would perceive lending money to the banks as being risk free and wouldn't care how the banks handle the accounts, what's the difference? Government will take care of the losses. And it does.
We could even have medical care for people if government removed risk from having to pay for it outselves. We don't have to bother trying to live a healthier life style, we don't have to bother thinking about our actual budget and expenses and retirement and medical care and a rainy day fund in case we lose employment for some time. It will work great in the long run for government to take care of all of these risks.
We don't have to think, the government will guarantee our student loans, house loans, car loans, any loans. We don't have to think, the government will remove harm and risk. The government will take care of us, it will give us everything risk free. Risk free food and risk free bonds.
--- You see, without actual principles, you are bound to spend time thinking how to apply some amount of government in any particular situation. The principles of free market remove all of this uncertainty and moral hazard, which is what you are truly proposing - moral hazard.
You think you are proposing something that 'works most of the time and reduces harm' and in reality you are guaranteeing to achieve the exact opposite: maximum harm.
You know what bonds are? Used to be called: risk free return. With all this inflation that the government is creating and thus killing all investment and business what you really have is: return free risk.
Return free risk is what you get in bonds now and it used to be known as 'risk free return'.
You are proposing: harm free life, what you are going to get is: life free harm.
So then what stops welfare from turning into that?
- the economy that would actually not be as burdened by the government if government stopped stealing all that money from it.
Government should not the economy, but government is becoming a larger and larger size of the economy (from POV of ratio), and of-course gov't doesn't produce anything, so it gets the money from borrowing, taxing and printing.
By the way, there was a reason that SS was turned into welfare, rather than handling people who couldn't take care of themselves with welfare, it's the stigma attached to welfare and the trick that SS supposed 'fund' provides - removes the stigma.
Do not get me wrong: I am against all forms of welfare as well, but as it goes, as the solutions go, as the actual practical solutions require, people who cannot take care of themselves in any way should be placed on welfare. I hope to see in the next 5 years all welfare schemes disappearing. I don't gov't to pretend it's a 'charity', do you understand? Read this comment - that's what I think role of government is.
But as a solution for SS, a way to get people off of it and to get them to save for retirement again, they should be means tested and those who can live without SS should stop getting SS checks.
There shouldn't be a transfer of income from young poor individuals to elderly wealthy ones. There shouldn't be government involved in any ponzi scheme that is designed to extract money from people and to get more power for the politicians by buying votes with other people's money.
As to 'average wage' being too low - that's a problem that the government created. Since 1971, since the moment that Nixon defaulted on the dollar, the businesses started moving production abroad, and this means that USA lost huge amount of productivity and that's why the average wages are falling while top level earnings are going up in the global inflationary environment.
It's the INFLATION that is destroying savings, investments, productivity, inflation is moving investments elsewhere. USA population is fed this nonsense about them being 'more productive than ever'.
How the hell are people in USA 'more productive than ever' if the real unemployment levels are going up all the time (if you take into account people who are discouraged from job searching, who are on disability, because their UI ran out, who are working as part time employees (and more are coming with ACA), you'll find that real unemployment in USA is close to 20%). What is all this 'productivity' nonsense?
The people who are still truly productive in USA live in USA but they produce elsewhere, look at Apple. They are overly productive, they built an extremely productive company. Are they the average American? Not even close. An average American has no savings or is eating through his savings just to stay ahead of the inflation that the Fed is creating.
Total hyperbole -- even so, I'll bite. Would it really be that bad?
- do you even understand why there was any voting age limit in the first place? In 18th, 19th centuries by the time somebody turned 16 they already had a few years of working experience, they already participated in the economy, probably paid some land or sales or other form of taxes (like direct apportioned, which was an actual real way for gov't to collect taxes, it would first calculate how much spending it needed to do and then apportion the amount to the States to collect).
A 19th century 16 year old probably had 4 years of work experience at least. That would put him ahead of many 30 year olds today.
As to what you are suggesting, you are not talking about people being productive in the economy and being taxed to pay for some level of government, you are talking about people who are living off of productivity of others, you are saying: lets have them vote.
So I can predict, with 100% certainty the outcome of this, because I don't even have to predict it, it is right in front of us: people vote to give themselves a bigger share of the pie and it doesn't matter to them who pays.
Those who pay are a voting minority in a system that subsidises consumption and taxes production.
You are literally designing that already exists, you are just taking it to its logical extreme. I am sure your proposal would fly really well pretty much with everybody in government, especially in the White House.
Of-course since you are actually willing to entertain the thought of a 4 year old voting in a serious manner, I have to conclude that you are mentally retarded unfortunately or have never dealt with 4 year olds. While you are at it, why don't you also legislate that 4 year old should be able to vote on what they would be eating, when they would be sleeping, how much money their parents should be spending on toys, what they should be learning (if anything), what they should be doing with all of their free time.
Hey, you know what, it's not at all different from what the 30 year olds expect from their governments when they vote, maybe you are not fully retarded, just again, in a very good lockstep with the times.
In fact, I'm leaning towards not having an absolute age restriction at all.
- perfect, that would completely keep up with your general principle: let's have 4 year old voting. Why not, what's the difference? In a world of huge number of people being subsidised by the gov't that steals from a minority to buy votes of a majority it makes perfect sense and there is really no difference between a 4 y.o. voter and a 40y.o. voter if both of them are living off of a subsidy that comes from stolen money.
So then why is welfare ok but not SS? Do you think welfare should be used for this purpose? That being the retirements of those without another option.
- because the program must stop, the ponzi scam must end.
There shouldn't be any payroll taxes (and Medicare taxes as well), but welfare should be funded out of general taxes.
It's the most sound concept, it provides a way for people to stop believing that they actually have anything real accrued for retirement, and so they will have to invest into their own retirement, and since many people will be refused an SS check in the interim, because they would no longer qualify, the overall taxes could be lowered.
Eventually more people would save for their own retirement and there would be fewer and fewer people on welfare, who expected SS as retirement. The entire problem of SS being viewed as a retirement plan was created by gov't, this concept didn't exist before, people saved on their own.
By making it look like a 'fund', people were led to believe that they are actually saving something.... But now they will be free of this delusion and so they will actually have to start thinking about their retirement in a real way.
The gov't will be denied this revenue stream as a pretence for a 'retirement fund' that never existed. This dependency problem is created by government. SS was originally introduced to help widows and orphans.
If SS STAYED THAT WAY (for widows and orphans), nobody would be actually complaining because it would be a very small thing, insignificant to the overall economy. Instead it became larger and larger and will never stop growing until the inevitable dollar collapse.
Quite the opposite is the truth, USA had mostly free market in the first 124 years of existence, that's how it built itself and became largest manufacturer, exporter and creditor nation. It doesn't do any of those things anymore with this level of government.
USA does no longer manufacture and export, instead it prints money and imports. Of-course it is the largest debtor nation in history, and all of its debts are growing only to consume, not actually to do anything productive with any of that money. This will stop and it will stop violently in a very serious inflationary crisis.
And as to Bradley Manning: as I said, he WAS doing the job that he was hired to do. He was protecting and defending the Constitution.
His handlers that hired him didn't do their job, they spat on the Constitution that they swore to protect and defend, and now he is the one rotting in jail and clearly large percentage of the public thinks this is the right thing....
If we stop SS payments right now, people will be forced onto the street. That is a fact, unless you have some alterative for paying their bills.
- let's hope so. Let's force people onto the streets right now, because otherwise the system will force everybody into a sewer.
Yes, I have an alternative: stop SS and Medicare payments this very moment. Stop taking away people's money that are supposedly designated for those purposes. Get rid of all government provided monopoly protections (including copyrights and patents) regarding health care.
Stop SS payments right now to all who get them and then if they come back for a check, means test them. If they actually cannot afford to pay their actual bills, then transfer them to welfare, where they belong. SS is a welfare check, there is no fund of any kind, there is only a record with Treasury bonds in it.
Every dollar that is paid out in SS benefits is first taken from some schmuck as payroll tax and then the money is spent as a general tax. Then to pay the benefit, a Treasury bond is sold and that money is used to send out a check.
Eventually Treasury bonds must be bought back (and interest is paid on them as well in the interim), and so every dollar given in SS checks is 2+ dollars taken out in taxes.
Of-course in reality the USA gov't can't actually ever pay back all that debt (and my sig is the link to my JE, explaining that the 'debt ceiling' is really not about paying the interest on debt, which is only a couple of hundred billion and can be easily paid by USA from revenues, it is about the pure impossibility of handling SS and Medicare and other payments without getting into more debt).
Paying federal taxes would qualify you for voting in federal elections.
Paying local taxes would qualify you for voting in local elections.
Getting a subsidy from a level of government would disqualify you from voting in elections at that government level.
Is this really difficult to grasp?
Allowing all people to vote in elections, where a large number of people are not personally feeling any pain and instead are getting a subsidy is the recipe for destruction. People vote themselves more and more subsidies to be paid for by those, who are paying taxes.
The free market does not raise all boats equally, that is a myth. Again, look at history not ideology.
- oh, and the free market does not have to raise all boats equally.
But the free market raises all boats. Everybody has the ability to access many of the products and services that the free market creates, that never exited before, and the market allows this to happen at very accessible prices. If the government was much smaller and less intrusive, as it was prior to 1913, the people would have really been much better off, with shorter work weeks and shorter work days by now. The 19th century allowed the farmers gatherers to work much fewer hours as the century progressed, because the free market created the wealth and investments and tools to make people so much more productive. This century just proves how much of our productivity is stolen by the government regulations, taxes and inflation, that we did not see any reduction in working hours and instead we know people must work more than half a century ago to afford a worse quality of life.
Well, the free market was mauled by the government, the default on the dollar in 1971 really did it in. But hey, it's not true everywhere, at least in other parts of the world they started figuring out that the freer the entrepreneurs is the better the economy is in the long term. They didn't even lose the sight of this everywhere equally in USA
But hey, USA lost a lot since 1913, it lost sight of what is important from point of view of individual liberties and it completely forgot where wealth actually comes from (and it's not from gov't borrowing, printing, stealing and subsidising anybody)
Without SS their will be old people begging in the streets.
- yeah yeah, political nonsensical propaganda. SS is only one way to retire, people have saved for their retirement during their entire existence on this planet. Somehow they managed to do it without government meddling for most of the human existence, I don't believe they need a government to tell them how to live their lives, how to save, how to raise their children, etc.
The good thing about all ponzi scams of-course is that they all eventually fail, the bad thing about the one that is going to fail fairly soon, is how much damage it will do. Of-course the us dollar and bond collapse will bring about the high inflation (possibly higher than high), since the entire USA economy now is predicated upon one single thing: the Fed printing press (figuratively speaking, they don't need to print to dilute the worth of the currency nowadays). And so the checks may still come but they won't buy anything, that will be quite a shock, not dissimilar to that of what happened during the collapse of the previous bubbles, but this one will be much worse, since it's the purchasing power of the dollar that will go down the drain and there will be no products to buy as the foreigners won't sell them for paper anymore.
But again, that's not the point of this story, in this story we are talking about a MAN who in fact is DOING HIS JOB.
Bradley Manning is doing his job, he is doing what he swore an oath to do: defend and protect the Constitution.
It is the USA government that is NOT doing its job, it's not protecting and defending the Constitution, it's shitting on the Constitution, and the people are going to let that government punish the MAN who is doing what he promised to do.
- OMG and the US government has violated its contract with the entire USA, with all the people and all the States.
USA government was supposed to protect and defend the Constitution and the principles of individual rights, instead it's killing off individuals and is taking a long, stinking dump on the Constitution. It doesn't matter that somebody who signed up TO PROTECT THE CONSTITUTION is not following the orders of the system, that is clearly is violating its own oath to do the same.
He did not sign up to protect the government, he signed up to protect the Constitution.
Manning is doing his job, the rest of the government is not.
Disenfranchising the poor is simply evil. Its only purpose is to ensure an underclass that can be continually exploited.
- using discrimination against a voting minority by setting up mobocracy, that always votes to steal from the few and give to themselves is what causes destruction of the economy that you are now observing. What is evil is to destroy the economy by doing this exact thing, because the people who will be most hurt by it will be those very 'disenfranchised' poor. The people who most benefit from the limitations placed upon government, because they are in most need of the free market economy that actually does raise all boats. The fact that they may not realise it does not negate it.
And yes, those who are no longer in the work force should not have the same bearing on the political system as those, who are actively working and paying into the system, correct. You have a major voting block of the older wealthier people, constantly voting themselves a subsidy from the young, poor people, and the government is the proxy for this discrimination and injustice and it's happy to oblige, because the politicians are the ones gaining the most. The retired would be much better served by a strong dollar and a healthy interest rate, as they are on fixed incomes and many have actual savings that they are eating into as well as the government does by inflation. Taxing the working to subsidise the retired is completely wrong of-course, and SS should have never existed in the first place, people shouldn't be paying higher and higher taxes to subsidise the currently retired and thus being denied the ability to save for their own retirement.
Anyway, you will learn in some not so distant future that there is no magic and that all subsidies and such obvious ponzi scams end, and they end badly.
As to Manning - it does not matter what secret oath to the dear leader system he might have given, the people OUTSIDE of that circle should not stand for it, they should be completely against their government destroying the very principles that their nation is founded upon.
By NOT standing against the government and for Manning, the people are signing their own jail sentence and a possible death warrant. The government that has no fear of the people but instead instills fear and hate into the people is the government that imprisons the people. As I said, USA was not founded on principles of blindly following orders.
In fact USA fought a war against a monarch that would have US people following his orders, the US people fought against that oppression and now it's time to recognise that their government is that same monarch, only with more weapons.
Slashdot Mirror
This 'cyber-war' is just an extension of the trade war that is really going on now, which itself is the logical extension of the currency war that has been in process for decades actually.
Unfortunately for all, eventually currency wars and trade wars lead to hot wars, and nobody knows what the trigger may be. It may be some half important dude getting slaughtered in a hotel or it may be another round of 'cyber war' (and it doesn't even have to be a real one, all that matters is that news leak out that some important military installation has suffered in a serious cyber attack that 'stole' some heavy military secrets, wouldn't be the first time).
A bit over a year since having their case rejected by the Swedish Supreme Court a
- I would like to go over the personal computers of these Swedish Supreme Court members with a fine brush and reveal all of their own personal transgressions related to various copyright violations.
Oh, I don't doubt that they have a program in Ukraine for attack dolphins, attack dogs and attack bulls. In fact dolphins have been used for this purpose in WWI and WWII and probably in other wars.
Irrelevant, this is a nonsense headline. There was a much funnier hoax released earlier about Krugman. It's the Internet, everybody here is either a fat guy, an FBI agent or some hoaxer.
How about this for a story that is similarly unbelievable?
Putin has released Khodorkovski from jail.
Tentacle manga: Tokyo is under attack by a 100 meter monster.
French president has revealed his plan for a balanced budget and a trade balance that does not involve more taxes.
Yeah, all of these may appear on the front page of /., would you also believe it if you saw it?
This entire thing is fabricated, anybody with 2 brain cells to rub together doesn't even need to RTFA, it's obvious from the summary but even from the headline.
So while somebody like that (walks into a crowded theatre and shoots people) may be insane. How about somebody who sends a drone to drop bombs on civilians, kills civilians, including children. That's just normal, right? But one does what he does because he is probably crazy and the other one because he is crazy on power and wants to 'stimulate economy' by buying and dropping bombs.
Even if only one is insane, aren't both criminal?
Nice try. That's not a /. supported model. The /. crowd model is to have you become a gov't subsidised utiluty. /. hates to gave ppl pay per use and it loves gov't solutions. So if your solution involves gov't regulation and a subsidy, so that the perception is that the bill goes to somebody else, then you are foing it right. Searching for a free market solution like yiu are doing... that's not going to go well here
Clearly ppl who are forced to pay the high taxes do not see value in what gov't is doing, those who get this as a subsidy think that for them it has value, but in the long run they are wrong, as their economy is tanking because of all the giv't. So ppl are leaving, even Sarkozy, the ex president.
Music therapy.
You both need it to take care of your issue and to learn about gov't regulations introduced now to stop competition and keep prices up, prevent (lower income) people from making income in that field.
But ifÂSB 1437Âpasses, anyone who wants to become a music therapist will face some onerous barriers: an applicant would need a bachelorâ(TM)s degree in music therapy from a program approved by the American Music Therapy Association (AMTA), at least 1,200 hours of clinical training, and 900 hours of internship experience. Practicing or calling oneself a music therapist without a government permission slip would be criminalized, with violators facing up to aÂ$500 fine and/or 30 days imprisonment.
That's what gov't regulations are all about, that and taking ppl for their money. Providing an innovating service ppl like? Ha, we are gov't, it would really be sad if you didn't pay up and something bad happened to your business.
Rent seeking.
To expand: France has ran out of other people's money and people with money are leaving (75% income tax for high incomes? :) , so anything goes.
So you believe that I 'spew ideology' and your comments have no ideology in them? I profess principles, and you have ideology:
Your words:
Putting your ideology over the lives of actual people just proves your really do need help.
- this is ideology, ideology of taking from a minority and subsidising a majority unless you found a fountain of free wealth to pay for all of your 'help' that you want to administer.
Your type of ideology is exactly what is driving the system, it's at the helm and it's driving at an ever increasing speed towards a real economic and societal cliff. We are going to go over that cliff, and it's not the minor insignificant bump in the road that the government was just crying a couple of weeks ago, it's not the so called 'fiscal cliff', it's the real deal. The one that will destroy the value of US dollars and dollar denominated assets.
When the wagon goes over that cliff, it will take down all of the people you are supposedly interested in helping. You cannot help people by legislating that they should have more of something that they did not work for.
If your ideology takes a non-trivial number of people and puts them in the wagon and then forces those, who are pulling the wagon to pull ever harder, while saying that they are not doing their 'fair share', then you are going to have more and more people in the wagon, and the wagon will go the road of least resistance, and that will be downwards towards the edge of the cliff, and this is happening right now. Your ideology will cause massive suffering as the same type of ideology has already done in the past multiple times. That you can't recognise it and that you are expecting to achieve a different result by doing the same thing again that was done many times before shows that you are the one with a psychiatric problem.
As always, once you have nothing else to say, you continue with ad-hominem. Good luck there with all your 'harm free life' ideas.
Reduces harm. Yes, that's what we are so great at legislating: reduction of harm. What is that really, it means removing risk.
Yes, let's have government trying to remove risk.
Why, we could have a great economy and a great society "that works and reduces harm" if only government reduces our risks. If only government reduced risk to lending money to the banks with FDIC, then the potential bank customers would perceive lending money to the banks as being risk free and wouldn't care how the banks handle the accounts, what's the difference? Government will take care of the losses. And it does.
We could even have medical care for people if government removed risk from having to pay for it outselves. We don't have to bother trying to live a healthier life style, we don't have to bother thinking about our actual budget and expenses and retirement and medical care and a rainy day fund in case we lose employment for some time. It will work great in the long run for government to take care of all of these risks.
We don't have to think, the government will guarantee our student loans, house loans, car loans, any loans. We don't have to think, the government will remove harm and risk. The government will take care of us, it will give us everything risk free. Risk free food and risk free bonds.
---
You see, without actual principles, you are bound to spend time thinking how to apply some amount of government in any particular situation. The principles of free market remove all of this uncertainty and moral hazard, which is what you are truly proposing - moral hazard.
You think you are proposing something that 'works most of the time and reduces harm' and in reality you are guaranteeing to achieve the exact opposite: maximum harm.
You know what bonds are? Used to be called: risk free return. With all this inflation that the government is creating and thus killing all investment and business what you really have is: return free risk.
Return free risk is what you get in bonds now and it used to be known as 'risk free return'.
You are proposing: harm free life, what you are going to get is: life free harm.
You know what your problem is? You can't differentiate between ideology and principles.
Principles are the real law that can make society work, ideology is just a way to get something for yourself and screw the rest of the society.
So then what stops welfare from turning into that?
- the economy that would actually not be as burdened by the government if government stopped stealing all that money from it.
Government should not the economy, but government is becoming a larger and larger size of the economy (from POV of ratio), and of-course gov't doesn't produce anything, so it gets the money from borrowing, taxing and printing.
By the way, there was a reason that SS was turned into welfare, rather than handling people who couldn't take care of themselves with welfare, it's the stigma attached to welfare and the trick that SS supposed 'fund' provides - removes the stigma.
Do not get me wrong: I am against all forms of welfare as well, but as it goes, as the solutions go, as the actual practical solutions require, people who cannot take care of themselves in any way should be placed on welfare. I hope to see in the next 5 years all welfare schemes disappearing. I don't gov't to pretend it's a 'charity', do you understand? Read this comment - that's what I think role of government is.
But as a solution for SS, a way to get people off of it and to get them to save for retirement again, they should be means tested and those who can live without SS should stop getting SS checks.
There shouldn't be a transfer of income from young poor individuals to elderly wealthy ones. There shouldn't be government involved in any ponzi scheme that is designed to extract money from people and to get more power for the politicians by buying votes with other people's money.
As to 'average wage' being too low - that's a problem that the government created. Since 1971, since the moment that Nixon defaulted on the dollar, the businesses started moving production abroad, and this means that USA lost huge amount of productivity and that's why the average wages are falling while top level earnings are going up in the global inflationary environment.
It's the INFLATION that is destroying savings, investments, productivity, inflation is moving investments elsewhere. USA population is fed this nonsense about them being 'more productive than ever'.
How the hell are people in USA 'more productive than ever' if the real unemployment levels are going up all the time (if you take into account people who are discouraged from job searching, who are on disability, because their UI ran out, who are working as part time employees (and more are coming with ACA), you'll find that real unemployment in USA is close to 20%). What is all this 'productivity' nonsense?
The people who are still truly productive in USA live in USA but they produce elsewhere, look at Apple. They are overly productive, they built an extremely productive company. Are they the average American? Not even close. An average American has no savings or is eating through his savings just to stay ahead of the inflation that the Fed is creating.
You want an ACTUAL WELFARE PLAN FOR AMERICA?
End the Fed and IRS.
Total hyperbole -- even so, I'll bite. Would it really be that bad?
- do you even understand why there was any voting age limit in the first place? In 18th, 19th centuries by the time somebody turned 16 they already had a few years of working experience, they already participated in the economy, probably paid some land or sales or other form of taxes (like direct apportioned, which was an actual real way for gov't to collect taxes, it would first calculate how much spending it needed to do and then apportion the amount to the States to collect).
A 19th century 16 year old probably had 4 years of work experience at least. That would put him ahead of many 30 year olds today.
As to what you are suggesting, you are not talking about people being productive in the economy and being taxed to pay for some level of government, you are talking about people who are living off of productivity of others, you are saying: lets have them vote.
So I can predict, with 100% certainty the outcome of this, because I don't even have to predict it, it is right in front of us: people vote to give themselves a bigger share of the pie and it doesn't matter to them who pays.
Those who pay are a voting minority in a system that subsidises consumption and taxes production.
You are literally designing that already exists, you are just taking it to its logical extreme. I am sure your proposal would fly really well pretty much with everybody in government, especially in the White House.
Of-course since you are actually willing to entertain the thought of a 4 year old voting in a serious manner, I have to conclude that you are mentally retarded unfortunately or have never dealt with 4 year olds. While you are at it, why don't you also legislate that 4 year old should be able to vote on what they would be eating, when they would be sleeping, how much money their parents should be spending on toys, what they should be learning (if anything), what they should be doing with all of their free time.
Hey, you know what, it's not at all different from what the 30 year olds expect from their governments when they vote, maybe you are not fully retarded, just again, in a very good lockstep with the times.
In fact, I'm leaning towards not having an absolute age restriction at all.
- perfect, that would completely keep up with your general principle: let's have 4 year old voting. Why not, what's the difference? In a world of huge number of people being subsidised by the gov't that steals from a minority to buy votes of a majority it makes perfect sense and there is really no difference between a 4 y.o. voter and a 40y.o. voter if both of them are living off of a subsidy that comes from stolen money.
So then why is welfare ok but not SS?
Do you think welfare should be used for this purpose? That being the retirements of those without another option.
- because the program must stop, the ponzi scam must end.
There shouldn't be any payroll taxes (and Medicare taxes as well), but welfare should be funded out of general taxes.
It's the most sound concept, it provides a way for people to stop believing that they actually have anything real accrued for retirement, and so they will have to invest into their own retirement, and since many people will be refused an SS check in the interim, because they would no longer qualify, the overall taxes could be lowered.
Eventually more people would save for their own retirement and there would be fewer and fewer people on welfare, who expected SS as retirement. The entire problem of SS being viewed as a retirement plan was created by gov't, this concept didn't exist before, people saved on their own.
By making it look like a 'fund', people were led to believe that they are actually saving something.... But now they will be free of this delusion and so they will actually have to start thinking about their retirement in a real way.
The gov't will be denied this revenue stream as a pretence for a 'retirement fund' that never existed. This dependency problem is created by government. SS was originally introduced to help widows and orphans.
If SS STAYED THAT WAY (for widows and orphans), nobody would be actually complaining because it would be a very small thing, insignificant to the overall economy. Instead it became larger and larger and will never stop growing until the inevitable dollar collapse.
Quite the opposite is the truth, USA had mostly free market in the first 124 years of existence, that's how it built itself and became largest manufacturer, exporter and creditor nation. It doesn't do any of those things anymore with this level of government.
USA does no longer manufacture and export, instead it prints money and imports. Of-course it is the largest debtor nation in history, and all of its debts are growing only to consume, not actually to do anything productive with any of that money. This will stop and it will stop violently in a very serious inflationary crisis.
And as to Bradley Manning: as I said, he WAS doing the job that he was hired to do. He was protecting and defending the Constitution.
His handlers that hired him didn't do their job, they spat on the Constitution that they swore to protect and defend, and now he is the one rotting in jail and clearly large percentage of the public thinks this is the right thing....
If we stop SS payments right now, people will be forced onto the street. That is a fact, unless you have some alterative for paying their bills.
- let's hope so. Let's force people onto the streets right now, because otherwise the system will force everybody into a sewer.
Yes, I have an alternative: stop SS and Medicare payments this very moment. Stop taking away people's money that are supposedly designated for those purposes. Get rid of all government provided monopoly protections (including copyrights and patents) regarding health care.
Stop SS payments right now to all who get them and then if they come back for a check, means test them. If they actually cannot afford to pay their actual bills, then transfer them to welfare, where they belong. SS is a welfare check, there is no fund of any kind, there is only a record with Treasury bonds in it.
Every dollar that is paid out in SS benefits is first taken from some schmuck as payroll tax and then the money is spent as a general tax. Then to pay the benefit, a Treasury bond is sold and that money is used to send out a check.
Eventually Treasury bonds must be bought back (and interest is paid on them as well in the interim), and so every dollar given in SS checks is 2+ dollars taken out in taxes.
Of-course in reality the USA gov't can't actually ever pay back all that debt (and my sig is the link to my JE, explaining that the 'debt ceiling' is really not about paying the interest on debt, which is only a couple of hundred billion and can be easily paid by USA from revenues, it is about the pure impossibility of handling SS and Medicare and other payments without getting into more debt).
Paying federal taxes would qualify you for voting in federal elections.
Paying local taxes would qualify you for voting in local elections.
Getting a subsidy from a level of government would disqualify you from voting in elections at that government level.
Is this really difficult to grasp?
Allowing all people to vote in elections, where a large number of people are not personally feeling any pain and instead are getting a subsidy is the recipe for destruction. People vote themselves more and more subsidies to be paid for by those, who are paying taxes.
The free market does not raise all boats equally, that is a myth. Again, look at history not ideology.
- oh, and the free market does not have to raise all boats equally.
But the free market raises all boats. Everybody has the ability to access many of the products and services that the free market creates, that never exited before, and the market allows this to happen at very accessible prices. If the government was much smaller and less intrusive, as it was prior to 1913, the people would have really been much better off, with shorter work weeks and shorter work days by now. The 19th century allowed the farmers gatherers to work much fewer hours as the century progressed, because the free market created the wealth and investments and tools to make people so much more productive. This century just proves how much of our productivity is stolen by the government regulations, taxes and inflation, that we did not see any reduction in working hours and instead we know people must work more than half a century ago to afford a worse quality of life.
Well, the free market was mauled by the government, the default on the dollar in 1971 really did it in. But hey, it's not true everywhere, at least in other parts of the world they started figuring out that the freer the entrepreneurs is the better the economy is in the long term. They didn't even lose the sight of this everywhere equally in USA
But hey, USA lost a lot since 1913, it lost sight of what is important from point of view of individual liberties and it completely forgot where wealth actually comes from (and it's not from gov't borrowing, printing, stealing and subsidising anybody)
Without SS their will be old people begging in the streets.
- yeah yeah, political nonsensical propaganda. SS is only one way to retire, people have saved for their retirement during their entire existence on this planet. Somehow they managed to do it without government meddling for most of the human existence, I don't believe they need a government to tell them how to live their lives, how to save, how to raise their children, etc.
The good thing about all ponzi scams of-course is that they all eventually fail, the bad thing about the one that is going to fail fairly soon, is how much damage it will do. Of-course the us dollar and bond collapse will bring about the high inflation (possibly higher than high), since the entire USA economy now is predicated upon one single thing: the Fed printing press (figuratively speaking, they don't need to print to dilute the worth of the currency nowadays). And so the checks may still come but they won't buy anything, that will be quite a shock, not dissimilar to that of what happened during the collapse of the previous bubbles, but this one will be much worse, since it's the purchasing power of the dollar that will go down the drain and there will be no products to buy as the foreigners won't sell them for paper anymore.
But again, that's not the point of this story, in this story we are talking about a MAN who in fact is DOING HIS JOB.
Bradley Manning is doing his job, he is doing what he swore an oath to do: defend and protect the Constitution.
It is the USA government that is NOT doing its job, it's not protecting and defending the Constitution, it's shitting on the Constitution, and the people are going to let that government punish the MAN who is doing what he promised to do.
Great stuff, totally in synch with the times.
He violated his contract with the US government.
- OMG and the US government has violated its contract with the entire USA, with all the people and all the States.
USA government was supposed to protect and defend the Constitution and the principles of individual rights, instead it's killing off individuals and is taking a long, stinking dump on the Constitution. It doesn't matter that somebody who signed up TO PROTECT THE CONSTITUTION is not following the orders of the system, that is clearly is violating its own oath to do the same.
He did not sign up to protect the government, he signed up to protect the Constitution.
Manning is doing his job, the rest of the government is not.
Disenfranchising the poor is simply evil. Its only purpose is to ensure an underclass that can be continually exploited.
- using discrimination against a voting minority by setting up mobocracy, that always votes to steal from the few and give to themselves is what causes destruction of the economy that you are now observing. What is evil is to destroy the economy by doing this exact thing, because the people who will be most hurt by it will be those very 'disenfranchised' poor. The people who most benefit from the limitations placed upon government, because they are in most need of the free market economy that actually does raise all boats. The fact that they may not realise it does not negate it.
And yes, those who are no longer in the work force should not have the same bearing on the political system as those, who are actively working and paying into the system, correct. You have a major voting block of the older wealthier people, constantly voting themselves a subsidy from the young, poor people, and the government is the proxy for this discrimination and injustice and it's happy to oblige, because the politicians are the ones gaining the most. The retired would be much better served by a strong dollar and a healthy interest rate, as they are on fixed incomes and many have actual savings that they are eating into as well as the government does by inflation. Taxing the working to subsidise the retired is completely wrong of-course, and SS should have never existed in the first place, people shouldn't be paying higher and higher taxes to subsidise the currently retired and thus being denied the ability to save for their own retirement.
Anyway, you will learn in some not so distant future that there is no magic and that all subsidies and such obvious ponzi scams end, and they end badly.
As to Manning - it does not matter what secret oath to the dear leader system he might have given, the people OUTSIDE of that circle should not stand for it, they should be completely against their government destroying the very principles that their nation is founded upon.
By NOT standing against the government and for Manning, the people are signing their own jail sentence and a possible death warrant. The government that has no fear of the people but instead instills fear and hate into the people is the government that imprisons the people. As I said, USA was not founded on principles of blindly following orders.
In fact USA fought a war against a monarch that would have US people following his orders, the US people fought against that oppression and now it's time to recognise that their government is that same monarch, only with more weapons.