It's $250,000 for the 'base' deposit account type, and much more for certain kinds of accounts. If you're the kind of bozo who keeps more than a quarter million dollars in cash at the bank (i.e., not invested, in a 'regular' account) and your bank failed, I suppose it's possible that you didn't get a full settlement from the FDIC. So far, I am not aware of that happening, not even once.
The burden of proof is on -you- to show that people's FDIC-backed accounts at failed banks were not 'made whole'. Find one instance, I dare you.
Connect willing and curious users to the software they want via this website.
Lobby the distributions and computer companies to point at the site. Front page would have an intro and an 'I want to...' menu. Use user-agent strings to automatically guide people from the front page to getting OpenOffice installed depending on their OS. On a Mac, if I type 'Program', I want it to show me options for getting XCode, getting DarwinPorts, or downloading Eclipse. If I'm on Linux and I type 'mspaint' I want it to show me options for open source image editors.
Also, rate stuff that's open source, rate GPL'd and BSD'd apps 'green', give a 'yellow' to some of the more restrictive licenses, and keep a 'shitlist' of companies and products that malevolently infringe on open source software.
I was in Brooklyn last weekend, and spent a fair amount of time and money at 'Barcade', a bar near Metropolitan Avenue and the BQE. The place is walled with functioning arcade games. Apparently I still rock at Rampage.
Also, if we start folding their toilet paper ends up into cute shapes and leaving mints on their pillows while they're out in the yard, we could significantly cut down on injuries to corrections workers due to disgruntled inmates.
This is prison, not time-out at daycare. You can't let these people have phones for use whenever they want.
I was basing that on my current (small) home's boiler capacity, which is 210,000 BTU/hr. That's for two units, but on a night like we had on Monday, they're running a fair amount of the time. A BTU/hr -> watts converter shows that I'd need the ability to push 60KWh.
And again, this is a small house (2100sqft) in the northeast. Doesn't help that it's a balloon frame and it's 112 years old.
Does advertising actually matter? Does it matter because companies -think- it matters, or does it really drive sales?
Maybe I'm in the minority, but I don't think I've -ever- purchased something via an online ad. I generally buy stuff that I feel I need, not stuff I want.
Then again, I still don't have a microwave and the only reason I have a TV is because someone misunderstood me when I said 'I don't have a TV' and gave me one.
My prediction is that this is Goldman getting in before the bubble inflates too much. They'll get in, there will be an IPO, the price will skyrocket. Goldman will sell their shares quietly right before the advertisers realize that 'intuition' is 'good enough' (and a lot cheaper) to drive online sales. The overhead of thousands of servers and terabytes of daily bandwidth to support 't-shirt sales' just doesn't seem sustainable to me.
The issue is that taking a sample of breath or blood for tests constitutes 'search and seizure', for which, police should need 'reasonable suspicion' or 'probable cause'. Exercising your fourth amendment rights in the face of an unsubstantiated accusation shouldn't trigger automatic penalties, especially ones that require you to give up said rights.
Our laws aren't -designed- to catch every lawbreaker, they're designed to facilitate peaceful existence. If you get out-of-line enough to break a law and cause a ruckus, by all means you should be held accountable. Don't stop me and force a search or knock on my door until there's a problem, thankyouverymuch.
"I look at what I do in my spare time, I am damn sure not getting paid to do it, and I do it anyway"
Well me too, but that's because the actual paid work I do in 40 hours takes care of my basic needs, which gives me the free time and money to do other things that I enjoy, many of which benefit society.
We have a problem in this country (the USA), where HUGE numbers of people are putting in 40-60 hours and not able to get by. I have friends who work that much and still need assistance with their heating bills and food. That's a problem.
I don't advocate for the guaranteed minimum income, because I know that a -lot- of people will decide to just -not work-, as many already have. I do think we need to do something so that people working a solid 40 hours are able to live a working-class lifestyle.
Personally, I like the 'flat tax' idea, but with a graduated income tax for the top 25% of people, so 75% of people don't even have to file paperwork. Basically, tax the top quarter to help lower the national sales tax on the rest of us.
Really? I must have missed the agenda item on the City Council docket for "allow Muslim laws to supersede the rest of this stuff".
Sure, some of the more strict Muslims in the local community near me might pull their daughter from public school and disallow her from wearing what she wants, but so do the Hassidic Jews a few blocks down, and the fundamentalist Christians a few blocks in the other direction. I don't see the difference. The only time it becomes a problem is when the law is broken. This is America, you can raise your kids however you want to, as long as you keep them fed, clothed, watered, schooled, and unharmed.
I think that if you're a grown person, you should recognize when you're violated pretty quickly, and hightail it to a medical center to offer up the proof you'll need in court. Anything less isn't doing your Due Diligence, even as a victim.
I have a big issue with (non-children) looking back into time and deciding that what happened to them was rape. If you make no effort to stop the activity, how can it be rape? If you don't immediately seek justice, how was it rape?
As soon as you implement a progressive taxation scheme you are philosophically on that path
There's a big difference. A lot of the hardcore socialists I know don't believe that a person can 'earn' more than X number of dollars. I don't believe there should be limits on what a person can earn. If I invent a toy that costs a penny to make, I pay my workers well, and I sell a billion of them for $2 each, why shouldn't I be a billionaire?
I do think it's time to subtly tilt the tax scales in favor of corporations who give voting stock, profit-sharing, and co-ownership. Right now billion-dollar companies are basically calling themselves 'small businesses' because they're filing Schedule S, or calling themselves 'foreign' even though they're doing 99% of their payroll here.
It's time to say: "If you give a good benefit package to your employees that includes 80% of healthcare, 6% match on the 401k, and compliance with the Family Leave Act, we'll cut 50% of your corporate income tax! So much so that it will be -cheaper- to treat employees well, and you can still keep your billions". The trick is to shift the taxes to corporate profits instead of personal income first.
People who have ambition should be given tax breaks, tax credits, etc.
I agree, we should invest in the best and brightest, while ensuring the rest are properly cared-for.
People who are poor should be encouraged to start businesses. There wont be any "jobs" coming from the "man" any time soon.
I'm actually starting to think that the ruling class of successful business-owning legislators see decriminalization as their biggest threat. Allowing 'drug dealers' and 'pimps' to transition to legal, regulated industries that supersede the 'bars' and 'legal partnerships' that they currently own is a hard sell, for obvious reasons.
Teachers should be rewarded on student performance
Word. Unfortunately, saying that in America puts you at direct odds with the Democratic party. That statement alone would have you thrown into the 'far-right wing' in the state I live in. Our sick political party on the left believes that by making government worker pay better, businesses will follow. Our sick right believes that if taxes disappear, demand will increase exponentially. Despite both of them having been proven wrong by decades of reality, you still have to choose between them at the polls.
Prisons should be reformed completely. The prison industrial complex is a new form of slavery. It's the new south. It should be abolished. Private prisons should be illegal for the same reason private law enforcement should be.
Prisons need to reformed completely, but they're certainly not close to slavery where I live. People convicted of crimes should be made accountable morally for their crimes, and rehabilitated as much as possible in order to get them back into society as productive members. I'm actually -very- leftist on what 'morally' should mean, to the point of excluding all non-physical damage to other people and property. I think pedophiles need psychiatry and oversight more than long sentences, that's not a very popular view. Prisons should be uncomfortably cool, serve unappealing food, and teach literacy, marketable skills, and personal finance. Two years on the outside without a felony, and you can get your record expunged.
Drug criminals wouldn't exist in my world, any more than 'cigarette criminals' exist in ours. Sure, there's an isolated case here-and-there, but the vast majority of it would be decriminalized, regulated, and taxed. I've already seen it work with prostitution in my state, and it was enough of a positive example to encourage me to see it in other areas. This would also take a HUGE proportion of 'drug criminals' off the streets and turn them into regular people. It would virtually end street violence, which almost always occurs between dealers and distributors.
replace the prisons with rehab and mental hospitals. People who have drug addiction or depression can go there for a free place to live to repair themselves and their life.
Agreed. With the mentally ill and drug-involved out of the prison system, we'd only need a small fraction of what we currently do. Unfortunately, BOTH SIDES of the American political spectrum are gung-ho on criminalization, higher sentences, and reducing the the beneficial programs we both want in order to satisfy entrenched constituencies. I'm inclined to thing that this isn't a problem of how 'left' or 'right' a legislator is as much as how 'anti-authoritarian' they are. I've seen far-right and far-left come to agree on this point several times. I've also seen 'centrist' legislators proclaim that 'social programs have to be paid for, but prison costs are considered part of the core budget, so we can raise the prison costs, even though they end up costing an order of magnitude more'.
welfare and government benefits should increase for people who work. One problem is when people do work a BS job at McDonalds or whatever then they lose their healthcare and all their benefits so that they end up working harder and obtaining less money than if they never worked at all
What I'm saying is that the government needs to be funded, and we tax in order to do that. Even a 'small' government that tried to meet all the needs I'm laying out will cost the average taxpayer several thousand dollars a year, probably around $10,000-ish. I'd like for the majority of citizens to be -taxpayers-, so that we don't have a diametrically-opposed 'givers vs. takers' society (which we're getting pretty close to now), and you can't squeeze everyone for the $10K, so it's only fair to have brackets where the rich pay a higher rate. Not because it's -good- to take money away from them, but because it's -not good- to have to tax the middle class into living conditions that approach those who are on social assistance.
The biggest and most important thing to do, in my opinion, is to make a whole new tax code that's easy to follow and eliminates the myriad loopholes that currently let bazillionaires get away without paying their share. Also, the tax rate on corporate profits should be higher than those on incomes, as an incentive for companies and the government to treat that money as a 'hot potato'.
I suppose that's 'using taxation to close the gap', but not in the typical socialist 'maximum wage!!!' way. I prefer the carrot to the stick.
Average pay is actually just over $80K if you include longevity, union steward bonuses, sports, and 'masters+' credits on top of base pay. Also, you get top-of-the-line health care ($14,000) and a 66% pension after 27 years or so, so you can 'retire' at 52 making $52K/year with free health care for life. Over seven percent (!) of the teachers are out on 'long-term leave' (that number at my work is about 1%), and another 14% of the teachers have been classified as unfit to teach.
It's a pretty good gig, if you ask me.
You're kind of agreeing with me -and- making my point at the same time. We need to reform the system so that people who work do better in life than those who don't, otherwise nobody is going to work! At the same time, I want to make sure that people who don't work aren't in bad enough situations where they're unhealthy, cold, or hungry. I think we can both agree that it would be in everyone's interest to rebalance the scales in favor of the middle class.
Welfare recipients still live in poverty and live cheaper than prisoners.
Totally agreed. I get yelled at in Republican blogs for defending public education and welfare for these precise reasons. There are plenty of folks who actually want to -get rid of- public schools, welfare, public health care, and social security. I just think they need major reforms. I don't want to live in a world where I get to keep $6,000 more a year, but come home to find vagrants sleeping on my couch to avoid frostbite.
Do you want to pay $30,000 a year to keep them housed in prison
Them's some cheap prisons! Ours cost $45K-ish per-prisoner per-year. Actually, our womens' prison is the most expensive in the nation, at $70K a head per year. Guess what the conditions are like? It's one of the worst womens' prisons in the country. Again, all the money is diverted from the core mission right into corrections workers' pockets. They enjoy similar deals as the teachers I pointed out:
The mean average pay, including overtime, for the 866 rank-and-file correctional officers last year was $59,668.19. With benefits, federal taxes and retirement thrown in, the average cost to the state was $82,444.98.
--projo.com
If you don't believe ADHD is a disability shouldn't you complain about the doctors who said it was for the last 20 or 30 years?
If you don't believe depression is a disability once again it's the doctors you should be mad at.
Sure, there are a few people with ADHD, depression, and neck pain that are so bad that they can't work. I know people who are legitimately disabled by depression. But there are also plenty of people who shop around for a diagnosis and never work a day in their life again, or work under the table on top of their disability.
It would be fun to have coffee (or beer) with you some time.:-)
So, in real terms, "entitled middle and working classes" today with their big flat screen TVs are actually being more frugal than your family were in 1980, even if they have a couple of consoles plugged into it.
Only if their wages have inflated with the cost of the goods. In reality, that's not what has happened. If you only made $25K in 1980 and could only afford a $500 TV, and you only make $25K in 2010, you can still only afford a $500 TV. Probably less, since inflation has driven-up costs of lots of your other needs.
I agree that the income gap is a problem, but I don't think the existence of the gap alone is bad. I couldn't care less that billionaires are swimming in pools of money, it's no concern of mine. It's bad that average people aren't seeing the benefits of their increased productivity, and the 'welfare class' is rapidly approaching the same standard of living that the 'lower middle class' works hard for. While I do agree with a mildly progressive taxation, I don't think that it's ethical to use (personal) taxation as a tool to close the gap. I'd much rather offer incentives for companies to operate with profit sharing plans or cooperative ownership. Right now we seem to incentivize S-Corp 'man behind the curtain' type companies instead of profit-sharing ones.
I've never met anyone who is content to stay at the bottom. Thats why most people at the bottom who aren't working are miserable and addicted to drugs.
I've met plenty. People 'doctor shop' for a diagnosis on a mildly annoying condition, then petition the government until they get on disability, and two years later they're on Medicare. A free ride for life for 'neck pain', 'depression', or ADHD.
if there is no way out of that situation (if they aren't able to educate themselves or have a criminal record), what else can they do that is any better? You can only expect them to take their best option which is not to wok if working at McDonalds for their whole life is all they can have.
Have you been reading the whole thread? I'm all for a living wage that would provide enough for a nice life for folks who put in a 40-hour week, and benefits to provide for survival for everyone else. I'm for decriminalizing and faster criminal record expungement. I'm all for government-subsidized education and training, too. The problem is that in the communities I'm talking about, we're already spending in the top national quintile for education, but all the money gets soaked-up by teacher compensation (average HS teacher makes over $80K here, not including benefits) while buildings crumble and kids go without books. All in the name of 'fair income for teachers', who have now placed themselves into the 'top 5%' income bracket of the communities they work for (in this example).
I think part of the gap between our political spectrums is because if you have a high government-enforced standard of living where you are, people still work and go to school.
Here in the 'States, we have massive swaths of people who would rather not work, and are perfectly content subsisting at the bottom,so long as it involves no effort.
My girlfriend works in a supportive housing shelter... Her clients get free food, healthcare, housing, social work, and transportation. Most 'graduated' from our schools (some of the most expensive public schools in the country) unable to formulate coherent sentences or do simple math (even -with- a calculator). Rumor has it that as soon as she leaves for the weekend, the place turns into a free-for-all den of prostitution and drug use.
I think the image of the 'downtrodden honest worker' vs the 'welfare queen' is more true in other places. It certainly exists here, but we also have a tremendous number of people who aren't interested in 'bettering themselves' as much as they are into 'how many channels does the cable at the other shelter get?'
Thanks for the info. School is absurdly expensive these days. I actually went to a vocational high school, which helped me place into jobs that 'require a college education' even though I don't have one.
Slashdot Mirror
It's $250,000 for the 'base' deposit account type, and much more for certain kinds of accounts. If you're the kind of bozo who keeps more than a quarter million dollars in cash at the bank (i.e., not invested, in a 'regular' account) and your bank failed, I suppose it's possible that you didn't get a full settlement from the FDIC. So far, I am not aware of that happening, not even once.
The burden of proof is on -you- to show that people's FDIC-backed accounts at failed banks were not 'made whole'. Find one instance, I dare you.
That's what I was thinking:
Connect willing and curious users to the software they want via this website.
Lobby the distributions and computer companies to point at the site. Front page would have an intro and an 'I want to...' menu. Use user-agent strings to automatically guide people from the front page to getting OpenOffice installed depending on their OS. On a Mac, if I type 'Program', I want it to show me options for getting XCode, getting DarwinPorts, or downloading Eclipse. If I'm on Linux and I type 'mspaint' I want it to show me options for open source image editors.
Also, rate stuff that's open source, rate GPL'd and BSD'd apps 'green', give a 'yellow' to some of the more restrictive licenses, and keep a 'shitlist' of companies and products that malevolently infringe on open source software.
Hmm, when I was there on a holiday Sunday night, people were queued up for games.
I was in Brooklyn last weekend, and spent a fair amount of time and money at 'Barcade', a bar near Metropolitan Avenue and the BQE. The place is walled with functioning arcade games. Apparently I still rock at Rampage.
Also, if we start folding their toilet paper ends up into cute shapes and leaving mints on their pillows while they're out in the yard, we could significantly cut down on injuries to corrections workers due to disgruntled inmates.
This is prison, not time-out at daycare. You can't let these people have phones for use whenever they want.
I was basing that on my current (small) home's boiler capacity, which is 210,000 BTU/hr. That's for two units, but on a night like we had on Monday, they're running a fair amount of the time. A BTU/hr -> watts converter shows that I'd need the ability to push 60KWh.
And again, this is a small house (2100sqft) in the northeast. Doesn't help that it's a balloon frame and it's 112 years old.
Call me when they scale it up by a factor of five, so it can actually warm my house, and we find an infinite supply of Nickel.
Call me crazy, but consuming metals for energy seems just a little foolish in the long run.
But if politicians can't grab bits of the funding for their own districts, won't the entire economy collapse?
Houston, I am sick of these MOTHERFUCKING PROBLEMS on this MOTHERFUCKING SPACESHIP!
In other news...
Samsung has announced official sponsorship of the popular video-blog 'Will It Blend?'
That's my question:
Does advertising actually matter? Does it matter because companies -think- it matters, or does it really drive sales?
Maybe I'm in the minority, but I don't think I've -ever- purchased something via an online ad. I generally buy stuff that I feel I need, not stuff I want.
Then again, I still don't have a microwave and the only reason I have a TV is because someone misunderstood me when I said 'I don't have a TV' and gave me one.
My prediction is that this is Goldman getting in before the bubble inflates too much. They'll get in, there will be an IPO, the price will skyrocket. Goldman will sell their shares quietly right before the advertisers realize that 'intuition' is 'good enough' (and a lot cheaper) to drive online sales. The overhead of thousands of servers and terabytes of daily bandwidth to support 't-shirt sales' just doesn't seem sustainable to me.
The issue is that taking a sample of breath or blood for tests constitutes 'search and seizure', for which, police should need 'reasonable suspicion' or 'probable cause'. Exercising your fourth amendment rights in the face of an unsubstantiated accusation shouldn't trigger automatic penalties, especially ones that require you to give up said rights.
Our laws aren't -designed- to catch every lawbreaker, they're designed to facilitate peaceful existence. If you get out-of-line enough to break a law and cause a ruckus, by all means you should be held accountable. Don't stop me and force a search or knock on my door until there's a problem, thankyouverymuch.
"I look at what I do in my spare time, I am damn sure not getting paid to do it, and I do it anyway"
Well me too, but that's because the actual paid work I do in 40 hours takes care of my basic needs, which gives me the free time and money to do other things that I enjoy, many of which benefit society.
We have a problem in this country (the USA), where HUGE numbers of people are putting in 40-60 hours and not able to get by. I have friends who work that much and still need assistance with their heating bills and food. That's a problem.
I don't advocate for the guaranteed minimum income, because I know that a -lot- of people will decide to just -not work-, as many already have. I do think we need to do something so that people working a solid 40 hours are able to live a working-class lifestyle.
Personally, I like the 'flat tax' idea, but with a graduated income tax for the top 25% of people, so 75% of people don't even have to file paperwork. Basically, tax the top quarter to help lower the national sales tax on the rest of us.
Really? I must have missed the agenda item on the City Council docket for "allow Muslim laws to supersede the rest of this stuff".
Sure, some of the more strict Muslims in the local community near me might pull their daughter from public school and disallow her from wearing what she wants, but so do the Hassidic Jews a few blocks down, and the fundamentalist Christians a few blocks in the other direction. I don't see the difference. The only time it becomes a problem is when the law is broken. This is America, you can raise your kids however you want to, as long as you keep them fed, clothed, watered, schooled, and unharmed.
I think that if you're a grown person, you should recognize when you're violated pretty quickly, and hightail it to a medical center to offer up the proof you'll need in court. Anything less isn't doing your Due Diligence, even as a victim.
I have a big issue with (non-children) looking back into time and deciding that what happened to them was rape. If you make no effort to stop the activity, how can it be rape? If you don't immediately seek justice, how was it rape?
Didn't you hear? They beat him up while he was sleeping.
As soon as you implement a progressive taxation scheme you are philosophically on that path
There's a big difference. A lot of the hardcore socialists I know don't believe that a person can 'earn' more than X number of dollars. I don't believe there should be limits on what a person can earn. If I invent a toy that costs a penny to make, I pay my workers well, and I sell a billion of them for $2 each, why shouldn't I be a billionaire?
I do think it's time to subtly tilt the tax scales in favor of corporations who give voting stock, profit-sharing, and co-ownership. Right now billion-dollar companies are basically calling themselves 'small businesses' because they're filing Schedule S, or calling themselves 'foreign' even though they're doing 99% of their payroll here.
It's time to say: "If you give a good benefit package to your employees that includes 80% of healthcare, 6% match on the 401k, and compliance with the Family Leave Act, we'll cut 50% of your corporate income tax! So much so that it will be -cheaper- to treat employees well, and you can still keep your billions". The trick is to shift the taxes to corporate profits instead of personal income first.
People who have ambition should be given tax breaks, tax credits, etc.
I agree, we should invest in the best and brightest, while ensuring the rest are properly cared-for.
People who are poor should be encouraged to start businesses. There wont be any "jobs" coming from the "man" any time soon.
I'm actually starting to think that the ruling class of successful business-owning legislators see decriminalization as their biggest threat. Allowing 'drug dealers' and 'pimps' to transition to legal, regulated industries that supersede the 'bars' and 'legal partnerships' that they currently own is a hard sell, for obvious reasons.
Teachers should be rewarded on student performance
Word. Unfortunately, saying that in America puts you at direct odds with the Democratic party. That statement alone would have you thrown into the 'far-right wing' in the state I live in. Our sick political party on the left believes that by making government worker pay better, businesses will follow. Our sick right believes that if taxes disappear, demand will increase exponentially. Despite both of them having been proven wrong by decades of reality, you still have to choose between them at the polls.
Prisons should be reformed completely. The prison industrial complex is a new form of slavery. It's the new south. It should be abolished. Private prisons should be illegal for the same reason private law enforcement should be.
Prisons need to reformed completely, but they're certainly not close to slavery where I live. People convicted of crimes should be made accountable morally for their crimes, and rehabilitated as much as possible in order to get them back into society as productive members. I'm actually -very- leftist on what 'morally' should mean, to the point of excluding all non-physical damage to other people and property. I think pedophiles need psychiatry and oversight more than long sentences, that's not a very popular view. Prisons should be uncomfortably cool, serve unappealing food, and teach literacy, marketable skills, and personal finance. Two years on the outside without a felony, and you can get your record expunged.
Drug criminals wouldn't exist in my world, any more than 'cigarette criminals' exist in ours. Sure, there's an isolated case here-and-there, but the vast majority of it would be decriminalized, regulated, and taxed. I've already seen it work with prostitution in my state, and it was enough of a positive example to encourage me to see it in other areas. This would also take a HUGE proportion of 'drug criminals' off the streets and turn them into regular people. It would virtually end street violence, which almost always occurs between dealers and distributors.
replace the prisons with rehab and mental hospitals. People who have drug addiction or depression can go there for a free place to live to repair themselves and their life.
Agreed. With the mentally ill and drug-involved out of the prison system, we'd only need a small fraction of what we currently do. Unfortunately, BOTH SIDES of the American political spectrum are gung-ho on criminalization, higher sentences, and reducing the the beneficial programs we both want in order to satisfy entrenched constituencies. I'm inclined to thing that this isn't a problem of how 'left' or 'right' a legislator is as much as how 'anti-authoritarian' they are. I've seen far-right and far-left come to agree on this point several times. I've also seen 'centrist' legislators proclaim that 'social programs have to be paid for, but prison costs are considered part of the core budget, so we can raise the prison costs, even though they end up costing an order of magnitude more'.
welfare and government benefits should increase for people who work. One problem is when people do work a BS job at McDonalds or whatever then they lose their healthcare and all their benefits so that they end up working harder and obtaining less money than if they never worked at all
Or, working 40
What I'm saying is that the government needs to be funded, and we tax in order to do that. Even a 'small' government that tried to meet all the needs I'm laying out will cost the average taxpayer several thousand dollars a year, probably around $10,000-ish. I'd like for the majority of citizens to be -taxpayers-, so that we don't have a diametrically-opposed 'givers vs. takers' society (which we're getting pretty close to now), and you can't squeeze everyone for the $10K, so it's only fair to have brackets where the rich pay a higher rate. Not because it's -good- to take money away from them, but because it's -not good- to have to tax the middle class into living conditions that approach those who are on social assistance.
The biggest and most important thing to do, in my opinion, is to make a whole new tax code that's easy to follow and eliminates the myriad loopholes that currently let bazillionaires get away without paying their share. Also, the tax rate on corporate profits should be higher than those on incomes, as an incentive for companies and the government to treat that money as a 'hot potato'.
I suppose that's 'using taxation to close the gap', but not in the typical socialist 'maximum wage!!!' way. I prefer the carrot to the stick.
I don't know what school pays teachers 80k but for that kind of money I'd become a teacher my damn self. I don't believe you.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7830541
Average pay is actually just over $80K if you include longevity, union steward bonuses, sports, and 'masters+' credits on top of base pay. Also, you get top-of-the-line health care ($14,000) and a 66% pension after 27 years or so, so you can 'retire' at 52 making $52K/year with free health care for life. Over seven percent (!) of the teachers are out on 'long-term leave' (that number at my work is about 1%), and another 14% of the teachers have been classified as unfit to teach.
It's a pretty good gig, if you ask me.
You're kind of agreeing with me -and- making my point at the same time. We need to reform the system so that people who work do better in life than those who don't, otherwise nobody is going to work! At the same time, I want to make sure that people who don't work aren't in bad enough situations where they're unhealthy, cold, or hungry. I think we can both agree that it would be in everyone's interest to rebalance the scales in favor of the middle class.
Welfare recipients still live in poverty and live cheaper than prisoners.
Totally agreed. I get yelled at in Republican blogs for defending public education and welfare for these precise reasons. There are plenty of folks who actually want to -get rid of- public schools, welfare, public health care, and social security. I just think they need major reforms. I don't want to live in a world where I get to keep $6,000 more a year, but come home to find vagrants sleeping on my couch to avoid frostbite.
Do you want to pay $30,000 a year to keep them housed in prison
Them's some cheap prisons! Ours cost $45K-ish per-prisoner per-year. Actually, our womens' prison is the most expensive in the nation, at $70K a head per year. Guess what the conditions are like? It's one of the worst womens' prisons in the country. Again, all the money is diverted from the core mission right into corrections workers' pockets. They enjoy similar deals as the teachers I pointed out:
The mean average pay, including overtime, for the 866 rank-and-file correctional officers last year was $59,668.19. With benefits, federal taxes and retirement thrown in, the average cost to the state was $82,444.98.
--projo.com
If you don't believe ADHD is a disability shouldn't you complain about the doctors who said it was for the last 20 or 30 years?
If you don't believe depression is a disability once again it's the doctors you should be mad at.
Sure, there are a few people with ADHD, depression, and neck pain that are so bad that they can't work. I know people who are legitimately disabled by depression. But there are also plenty of people who shop around for a diagnosis and never work a day in their life again, or work under the table on top of their disability.
It would be fun to have coffee (or beer) with you some time. :-)
So, in real terms, "entitled middle and working classes" today with their big flat screen TVs are actually being more frugal than your family were in 1980, even if they have a couple of consoles plugged into it.
Only if their wages have inflated with the cost of the goods. In reality, that's not what has happened. If you only made $25K in 1980 and could only afford a $500 TV, and you only make $25K in 2010, you can still only afford a $500 TV. Probably less, since inflation has driven-up costs of lots of your other needs.
I agree that the income gap is a problem, but I don't think the existence of the gap alone is bad. I couldn't care less that billionaires are swimming in pools of money, it's no concern of mine. It's bad that average people aren't seeing the benefits of their increased productivity, and the 'welfare class' is rapidly approaching the same standard of living that the 'lower middle class' works hard for. While I do agree with a mildly progressive taxation, I don't think that it's ethical to use (personal) taxation as a tool to close the gap. I'd much rather offer incentives for companies to operate with profit sharing plans or cooperative ownership. Right now we seem to incentivize S-Corp 'man behind the curtain' type companies instead of profit-sharing ones.
I've never met anyone who is content to stay at the bottom. Thats why most people at the bottom who aren't working are miserable and addicted to drugs.
I've met plenty. People 'doctor shop' for a diagnosis on a mildly annoying condition, then petition the government until they get on disability, and two years later they're on Medicare. A free ride for life for 'neck pain', 'depression', or ADHD.
if there is no way out of that situation (if they aren't able to educate themselves or have a criminal record), what else can they do that is any better? You can only expect them to take their best option which is not to wok if working at McDonalds for their whole life is all they can have.
Have you been reading the whole thread? I'm all for a living wage that would provide enough for a nice life for folks who put in a 40-hour week, and benefits to provide for survival for everyone else. I'm for decriminalizing and faster criminal record expungement. I'm all for government-subsidized education and training, too. The problem is that in the communities I'm talking about, we're already spending in the top national quintile for education, but all the money gets soaked-up by teacher compensation (average HS teacher makes over $80K here, not including benefits) while buildings crumble and kids go without books. All in the name of 'fair income for teachers', who have now placed themselves into the 'top 5%' income bracket of the communities they work for (in this example).
I think part of the gap between our political spectrums is because if you have a high government-enforced standard of living where you are, people still work and go to school.
Here in the 'States, we have massive swaths of people who would rather not work, and are perfectly content subsisting at the bottom,so long as it involves no effort.
My girlfriend works in a supportive housing shelter... Her clients get free food, healthcare, housing, social work, and transportation. Most 'graduated' from our schools (some of the most expensive public schools in the country) unable to formulate coherent sentences or do simple math (even -with- a calculator). Rumor has it that as soon as she leaves for the weekend, the place turns into a free-for-all den of prostitution and drug use.
I think the image of the 'downtrodden honest worker' vs the 'welfare queen' is more true in other places. It certainly exists here, but we also have a tremendous number of people who aren't interested in 'bettering themselves' as much as they are into 'how many channels does the cable at the other shelter get?'
Thanks for the info. School is absurdly expensive these days. I actually went to a vocational high school, which helped me place into jobs that 'require a college education' even though I don't have one.
Hope you get approved, and keep your head up!
But between those previous generations America was a rising star, relatively. For the past twenty or so years, not so much.