The problem is that people each have their own individual dams and a huge number of them are completely bone dry while others are growing with no end in sight. Saving and investing your money is very sound fiscal practice. In theory the money flows from dam to dam but in reality we have a few dams that grow ever larger while more and more dry up. The Big dams might let out a slow trickle but most of what flows out from them is ending up in other very large dams instead of propagating out to the smaller dams. It is essentially an inherent weakness of a tax system that does not tax wealth, although of course taxing wealth comes with it's own mountain of troubles.
"This argument about government subsidies is way too fucking idiotic to have picked up this much steam."
Our country currently provides a number of benefits to people who are below specific arbitrary income levels. When companies deliberately keep their employees wages low enough that they continue to qualify for those benefits then their workforce is being subsidized by government. Hence the company is being subsidized by government.
The minimum wage was made into law decades ago when corporate abuse of employees was pretty rampant. Because their was a large surplus of labor wages could be kept very low because some other starving peasant would be willing to do your job for less because anything he got was better than the nothing he had and would stave off starvation just a little longer. Government basically stepped in and told businesses that if they wanted to continue as licensed legal businesses they would need to pay a minimum or, practically speaking, living wage.
I don't think anyone has anything against a person working extra jobs to earn more for themselves, or pooling resources with another to afford more room in the budget. A living wage doesn't affect any of that, so I'm not sure what you're going on about.
What personal liberties and choices are you talking about here? Maybe the liberty to pay a peasant as little as possible to keep them coming back while they rely on government subsidies to survive? If you want to run a business with employees then pay them a living wage so the rest of us aren't subsidizing your venture, or get out of the way so someone else can do it.
There are two problems with this that I can think of right off the bat.
A. Full employment is a fairytale dream. Today we already have an abundance of people with 4 year degrees that are flipping burgers to scrape by because there simply are not enough jobs requiring their services. Being qualified for better work does not matter if those jobs simply do not exist. As society advances technologically we are going to have more and more unemployed and under employed people as a percentage because we need less people working to provide the goods and services that we as a society need. This is not actually a problem depending on how those people are dealt with.
B. Minimum wage was established with the intent of it being a living wage. Over time that has been eroded but there is no good reason for us not to try and fix it. The minimum wage being less than a living wage is essentially subsidizing all businesses that rely on paying their employees below a living wage. I thought we wanted a free market wherein businesses rose or fell based on their own merits, not government bailouts?
Yes, raising the minimum wage will raise the cost of all products and services that rely on minimum wage workers. That means fast food burgers will go up in price, but so will those cold cuts and bread from the grocery store. Pretty much every consumable and service you purchase will be affected in some way. The pertinent question though is how much will those costs go up, and how long will it take for the rising tide of minimum wage to also raise your own salary. The more gradual the minimum wage increase is the smother this will all happen, California's five year schedule sounds pretty reasonable to me.
Of course it is being done over time to lessen the negative consequences. It should be obvious to anyone that thinks about it for a few minutes that raising the cost of labor in very large steps quickly is a bad thing to do. If it goes up gradually though it gives businesses time to adjust their finances and strategies, and the workers the same.
Will costs rise, yes, but the rise in cost for services and consumables should be smaller than the rise in pay. The only long term negative of this that I've heard is that bad businesses might be out competed by their competitors, oh wait, that isn't actually a negative if you believe in free markets and such.
If we're talking about a computer driven truck there certainly could be enough time. It depends on how powerful of a system it has and whether or not it is continuously monitoring all of its surroundings to begin with.
You ask a good question about your motivation to pay more taxes to support a more socialistic system, with no perceived benefit.
I would propose that you, and I as tax payers, would benefit. Society is constantly changing, and if you hadn't noticed in the US we seem to be incarcerating more and more people on a daily basis. The money for those prisons doesn't just fall from heaven like the mana of old. Poverty breeds crime like almost nothing else, and the future trend appears to be continued growth of poverty while the middle class dwindles. One way or another we are going to be paying more taxes to deal with the problems that poverty breeds, and prisons and crime is just part of that.
So the question really becomes, can we reduce the ill affects of poverty on society by adopting a more socialistic system for the same or cheaper cost than simply treating the symptoms? And that's strictly the money side of things, what would be the dollar value of lowering the chance of becoming the victim of crime? Or knowing that you can take a risk on starting your own business, or chasing some other dream, without exposing your family to being destitute should you fail?
A good stand mixer is multipurpose because it can be used for a variety of tasks. It can whisk, it can mix, and it can knead. Those are things it can do without fancy attachments, using attachments it can do a whole range of other things.
Not that it matters, I was just pointing out the silliness of a such a poorly worded quote. Maybe it was a mis-quote.
That does seem excessive. Mine uses half a cup more water than rice, unless it's brown rice which needs half a cup extra or something. The thing uses a thermostat I believe to determine when the rice is done so no timers are needed. It basically boils the water and as soon as it detects the temperature climbing past the boiling point, signifying the water has all boiled off, it reduces the temp to the keep warm setting. I wonder if there are types of rice for which this wouldn't be sufficient, not that it matters in the USA the stores typically only have a couple varieties for sale.
Vaccination is good on the whole, I don't argue against that. I do not see my right to life as being greater than another persons right to medical self determination. I wouldn't force someone to give me a kidney, blood transfusion, or bone marrow let alone be vaccinated to preserve my life.
The solution being used for vaccinations is unproductive for similar reasons as you cited for my example. By excluding the unvaccinated children from school you force them into homeschooling. Homeschooling, while it can be done well, frequently just leads to a deeper level of indoctrination. The parents are making decisions you don't agree with and so the solution is to punish the child and ensure they'll likely receive an even worse education? What do you think will happen when they grow up and have children of their own? After being forcibly ostracized as children they will simply be even more deeply entrenched in whatever points of view and beliefs that led their parents to not vaccinate them. I would rather foot the bill for a duplicate school system just to handle unvaccinated kids than exacerbate the problem by forcing them into homeschooling.
I wish they had studied more than just MMR. At least the Febrile Seizures are essentially just an extra expense since they don't cause any long term issues and aren't damaging on their own. But that is an important thing to know and be aware of.
Honestly it doesn't matter to me if this is being caused by use Humans or not. The real question is should we attempt to do something to slow down or stop the global warming? If the answer is yes, then we need to start working on that and a prime place to start is the factors that we can control, such as CO2 emissions. Playing the blame game at this point is a waste of time and effort.
I like Alton Brown but I'm curious how he justifies things like knives, ovens, stoves, refrigerators, freezers, can openers, tongs, oven mits, and any number of other things by that rule.
For me a better guideline has been how often you use something. The less frequently you use it compared to the portion of your space it consumes the higher priority it should have when organizing a garage sale.
I'm not sure how a rice cookers interface can be that complicated. Mine has an on/off button and keep warm. You put in rice and water in the appropriate ratio, press the on button, and then go do whatever the hell you want for the 15 minutes to an hour it takes to finish. The timer it takes depends on how much rice you put in and what type, brown rice taking the longest in my experience.
In my experience cooking rice on the stovetop sucks. It needs constant tending and is easily burned if you get distracted at the wrong time. My wife thought it was a silly thing to purchase at the time until we had used it exactly once. Perfect rice every time you use it, with the bonus that you can safely focus on other tasks while the rice cooks. And even once the rice is done cooking you can keep on doing other things until you can get to the rice because the cooker won't burn the rice.
For me this whole issue is less about religous freedom and instead about being free to make your own medical decisions. At what level of risk do we draw the line and violate another persons right to making their own medical decisions in favor of lowering our risk of catching an infectous disease?
How about if we look at a different scenario for a bit. Statistics have shown that violent crime is more often perpetrated by those of lower income, in heavily urbanized areas, and from single parent homes. What would you think of a proposal to deny social benefits to a pregnant single mother who refuses an abortion and lives below some arbitrary income level in a similarly arbitrary geographic region? I would hope that you find that proposal insane and unworkable. I feel much the same way about forcing anyone into any medical procedure or face being ostracized from important parts of society.
Do you have any links for that study. I found reference to a study done in Oregon regarding this but couldn't actually find the name of the study or anything. The article I read failed to mention any increased risk of complications. The only risks it discussed was what you would obviously expect given that the child goes longer without the vaccination, and that they might not finish the vaccination schedule.
Depending on your lifestyle I think the additional risk from taking longer to accomplish all the vaccinations can largely be negated. For kids who get farmed out to daycares and or travel extensively it is obviously more critical that they be vaccinated as quickly as possible. My own kids though have a stay at home Mom and don't have a lot of contact outside the home until Kindergarten.
I was overseas when they made a big push to take a relatively untested Anthrax vaccine. This was after it was determined that the enemies we were fighting weren't using Anthrax, and that the attacks (mailings) had all been to politicians and such. There was a lot of rah rah'ing over how important it was to take the vaccine as military members. I turned it down because they couldn't tell us anything about possible long term side affects. When talking about it with others no one seemed to have opted to take it.
Defending your child to me, is more about ensuring that they are treated fairly and justly than about protecting them at all costs from any punishment or accusation, just or not. In a hypothetical case where I agree that the accusation and punishment is entirely fair and just, I will still be there to verify all of that and that the punishment is carried out appropriately, that is still defending my child.
All that said though it is also important to teach a child that their luck in the criminal justice system, should they stray that way, is very much dependant upon having the best lawyer and or friends in high places. That is of course a different but equally important lesson. Teaching a child to ignore reality is a dangerous thing.
I would opine that given pretty much any justice system currently in existence that the accused should always have an advocate to defend them. The prosecution should always have to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt and it is the defending counsels job, as well as the judge, to see to it that the prosecution is kept honest and does their job. Even in cases where the accused has admitted guilt the punishment is nearly always a range options, and defending counsel in that case advocates for a lighter sentence to try and ensure the punishment fits the crime.
In no case should a child be left to stand alone against adults making accusations regardless of the truth of those accusations.
It would take a lot of skill to pull something like that off deliberately and repeatably without error. That said I've done some amazing driving myself in the heat of the moment. But I would never count on being able to recreate any of those situations without ending up injured or dead.
My favorite being while driving my 1969 Catalina, a car swerved onto the highway in front of me, failing to yield the right of way when they had a red light. That car's driver was oblivious to other traffic as they didn't try to get up to highway speed rapidly or even pick a lane. I braked and manuevered hard enough that my car turned 45 degrees to the left, as I slid past them on the right. It's funny how adrenaline or whatever can make time feel slower at moments like that. I even had the presence of mind to flip them the bird and scream some obsceneties
I definitely agree that such behaviour is illegal. However that doesn't actually stop it from happening on an institutional basis, as we recently discovered in Chicago.
It's open for debate how wide spread this kind of crap is. The people most likely to be put through the wringer are those least likely and able to fight back against it.
1. The quality and resolution, even for it's day and age was horrible. 2. The price of the Sony offering, and every other similiar product I've looked at was insanely high. 3. At the time even if the prices had been more reasonably they likely would have still been too pricey for me at the time, my finances are much better these days.
The occulus rift while not having spectacular resolution, when you consider it occupies more of your field of view, is still far better than the older options. The price is far more reasonable. If it's good enough and cheap enough for the general market then we will likely see more consistent improvement in the product, such that we might eventually get to something everyone can love.
I think it could take a very long time, but then again it could take far less than we would expect. The Larsen B ice shelf disintegrated in something like 3 weeks. Scientists at the time knew it was unstable and in trouble but nobody thought that much ice could breakup and melt so fast.
It would probably depend on how vigorously he thrashed about on the ground. If the officer thought he looked lively enough to get back up he would be justified in continuing to shoot. This does of course set up a situation like you mention where someone will likely die needlessly. Where do you draw the line though such that it's not easily abused? As it is now that part of the use of force sounds fine to me.
The problem that I see is officers jumping straight to deadly force when it isn't warranted in the first place. We have stun guns widely available now and they don't seem to be getting used when it's appropriate, like when a mentally disturbed individual is facing down half a dozen officers. That is the perfect situation for a couple of them to get out tasers to subdue the guy if necessary while the others back them up. In the case of Brown a stun gun would probably have been a better response since Brown wasn't apparently armed.
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The problem is that people each have their own individual dams and a huge number of them are completely bone dry while others are growing with no end in sight. Saving and investing your money is very sound fiscal practice. In theory the money flows from dam to dam but in reality we have a few dams that grow ever larger while more and more dry up. The Big dams might let out a slow trickle but most of what flows out from them is ending up in other very large dams instead of propagating out to the smaller dams. It is essentially an inherent weakness of a tax system that does not tax wealth, although of course taxing wealth comes with it's own mountain of troubles.
"This argument about government subsidies is way too fucking idiotic to have picked up this much steam."
Our country currently provides a number of benefits to people who are below specific arbitrary income levels. When companies deliberately keep their employees wages low enough that they continue to qualify for those benefits then their workforce is being subsidized by government. Hence the company is being subsidized by government.
The minimum wage was made into law decades ago when corporate abuse of employees was pretty rampant. Because their was a large surplus of labor wages could be kept very low because some other starving peasant would be willing to do your job for less because anything he got was better than the nothing he had and would stave off starvation just a little longer. Government basically stepped in and told businesses that if they wanted to continue as licensed legal businesses they would need to pay a minimum or, practically speaking, living wage.
I don't think anyone has anything against a person working extra jobs to earn more for themselves, or pooling resources with another to afford more room in the budget. A living wage doesn't affect any of that, so I'm not sure what you're going on about.
What personal liberties and choices are you talking about here? Maybe the liberty to pay a peasant as little as possible to keep them coming back while they rely on government subsidies to survive? If you want to run a business with employees then pay them a living wage so the rest of us aren't subsidizing your venture, or get out of the way so someone else can do it.
There are two problems with this that I can think of right off the bat.
A. Full employment is a fairytale dream. Today we already have an abundance of people with 4 year degrees that are flipping burgers to scrape by because there simply are not enough jobs requiring their services. Being qualified for better work does not matter if those jobs simply do not exist. As society advances technologically we are going to have more and more unemployed and under employed people as a percentage because we need less people working to provide the goods and services that we as a society need. This is not actually a problem depending on how those people are dealt with.
B. Minimum wage was established with the intent of it being a living wage. Over time that has been eroded but there is no good reason for us not to try and fix it. The minimum wage being less than a living wage is essentially subsidizing all businesses that rely on paying their employees below a living wage. I thought we wanted a free market wherein businesses rose or fell based on their own merits, not government bailouts?
Yes, raising the minimum wage will raise the cost of all products and services that rely on minimum wage workers. That means fast food burgers will go up in price, but so will those cold cuts and bread from the grocery store. Pretty much every consumable and service you purchase will be affected in some way. The pertinent question though is how much will those costs go up, and how long will it take for the rising tide of minimum wage to also raise your own salary. The more gradual the minimum wage increase is the smother this will all happen, California's five year schedule sounds pretty reasonable to me.
You forgot the option where the poor become a large and dissatisfied enough class that they force a change in the system, violently or not.
Of course it is being done over time to lessen the negative consequences. It should be obvious to anyone that thinks about it for a few minutes that raising the cost of labor in very large steps quickly is a bad thing to do. If it goes up gradually though it gives businesses time to adjust their finances and strategies, and the workers the same.
Will costs rise, yes, but the rise in cost for services and consumables should be smaller than the rise in pay. The only long term negative of this that I've heard is that bad businesses might be out competed by their competitors, oh wait, that isn't actually a negative if you believe in free markets and such.
If we're talking about a computer driven truck there certainly could be enough time. It depends on how powerful of a system it has and whether or not it is continuously monitoring all of its surroundings to begin with.
You ask a good question about your motivation to pay more taxes to support a more socialistic system, with no perceived benefit.
I would propose that you, and I as tax payers, would benefit. Society is constantly changing, and if you hadn't noticed in the US we seem to be incarcerating more and more people on a daily basis. The money for those prisons doesn't just fall from heaven like the mana of old. Poverty breeds crime like almost nothing else, and the future trend appears to be continued growth of poverty while the middle class dwindles. One way or another we are going to be paying more taxes to deal with the problems that poverty breeds, and prisons and crime is just part of that.
So the question really becomes, can we reduce the ill affects of poverty on society by adopting a more socialistic system for the same or cheaper cost than simply treating the symptoms? And that's strictly the money side of things, what would be the dollar value of lowering the chance of becoming the victim of crime? Or knowing that you can take a risk on starting your own business, or chasing some other dream, without exposing your family to being destitute should you fail?
A good stand mixer is multipurpose because it can be used for a variety of tasks. It can whisk, it can mix, and it can knead. Those are things it can do without fancy attachments, using attachments it can do a whole range of other things.
Not that it matters, I was just pointing out the silliness of a such a poorly worded quote. Maybe it was a mis-quote.
That does seem excessive. Mine uses half a cup more water than rice, unless it's brown rice which needs half a cup extra or something. The thing uses a thermostat I believe to determine when the rice is done so no timers are needed. It basically boils the water and as soon as it detects the temperature climbing past the boiling point, signifying the water has all boiled off, it reduces the temp to the keep warm setting. I wonder if there are types of rice for which this wouldn't be sufficient, not that it matters in the USA the stores typically only have a couple varieties for sale.
Vaccination is good on the whole, I don't argue against that. I do not see my right to life as being greater than another persons right to medical self determination. I wouldn't force someone to give me a kidney, blood transfusion, or bone marrow let alone be vaccinated to preserve my life.
The solution being used for vaccinations is unproductive for similar reasons as you cited for my example. By excluding the unvaccinated children from school you force them into homeschooling. Homeschooling, while it can be done well, frequently just leads to a deeper level of indoctrination. The parents are making decisions you don't agree with and so the solution is to punish the child and ensure they'll likely receive an even worse education? What do you think will happen when they grow up and have children of their own? After being forcibly ostracized as children they will simply be even more deeply entrenched in whatever points of view and beliefs that led their parents to not vaccinate them. I would rather foot the bill for a duplicate school system just to handle unvaccinated kids than exacerbate the problem by forcing them into homeschooling.
The quote was something about serving a single purpose. Each of those things really only has one purpose.
Thanks for the link.
I wish they had studied more than just MMR. At least the Febrile Seizures are essentially just an extra expense since they don't cause any long term issues and aren't damaging on their own. But that is an important thing to know and be aware of.
Honestly it doesn't matter to me if this is being caused by use Humans or not. The real question is should we attempt to do something to slow down or stop the global warming? If the answer is yes, then we need to start working on that and a prime place to start is the factors that we can control, such as CO2 emissions. Playing the blame game at this point is a waste of time and effort.
I like Alton Brown but I'm curious how he justifies things like knives, ovens, stoves, refrigerators, freezers, can openers, tongs, oven mits, and any number of other things by that rule.
For me a better guideline has been how often you use something. The less frequently you use it compared to the portion of your space it consumes the higher priority it should have when organizing a garage sale.
I'm not sure how a rice cookers interface can be that complicated. Mine has an on/off button and keep warm. You put in rice and water in the appropriate ratio, press the on button, and then go do whatever the hell you want for the 15 minutes to an hour it takes to finish. The timer it takes depends on how much rice you put in and what type, brown rice taking the longest in my experience.
In my experience cooking rice on the stovetop sucks. It needs constant tending and is easily burned if you get distracted at the wrong time. My wife thought it was a silly thing to purchase at the time until we had used it exactly once. Perfect rice every time you use it, with the bonus that you can safely focus on other tasks while the rice cooks. And even once the rice is done cooking you can keep on doing other things until you can get to the rice because the cooker won't burn the rice.
For me this whole issue is less about religous freedom and instead about being free to make your own medical decisions. At what level of risk do we draw the line and violate another persons right to making their own medical decisions in favor of lowering our risk of catching an infectous disease?
How about if we look at a different scenario for a bit. Statistics have shown that violent crime is more often perpetrated by those of lower income, in heavily urbanized areas, and from single parent homes. What would you think of a proposal to deny social benefits to a pregnant single mother who refuses an abortion and lives below some arbitrary income level in a similarly arbitrary geographic region? I would hope that you find that proposal insane and unworkable. I feel much the same way about forcing anyone into any medical procedure or face being ostracized from important parts of society.
Do you have any links for that study. I found reference to a study done in Oregon regarding this but couldn't actually find the name of the study or anything. The article I read failed to mention any increased risk of complications. The only risks it discussed was what you would obviously expect given that the child goes longer without the vaccination, and that they might not finish the vaccination schedule.
Depending on your lifestyle I think the additional risk from taking longer to accomplish all the vaccinations can largely be negated. For kids who get farmed out to daycares and or travel extensively it is obviously more critical that they be vaccinated as quickly as possible. My own kids though have a stay at home Mom and don't have a lot of contact outside the home until Kindergarten.
I was overseas when they made a big push to take a relatively untested Anthrax vaccine. This was after it was determined that the enemies we were fighting weren't using Anthrax, and that the attacks (mailings) had all been to politicians and such. There was a lot of rah rah'ing over how important it was to take the vaccine as military members. I turned it down because they couldn't tell us anything about possible long term side affects. When talking about it with others no one seemed to have opted to take it.
Defending your child to me, is more about ensuring that they are treated fairly and justly than about protecting them at all costs from any punishment or accusation, just or not. In a hypothetical case where I agree that the accusation and punishment is entirely fair and just, I will still be there to verify all of that and that the punishment is carried out appropriately, that is still defending my child.
All that said though it is also important to teach a child that their luck in the criminal justice system, should they stray that way, is very much dependant upon having the best lawyer and or friends in high places. That is of course a different but equally important lesson. Teaching a child to ignore reality is a dangerous thing.
I would opine that given pretty much any justice system currently in existence that the accused should always have an advocate to defend them. The prosecution should always have to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt and it is the defending counsels job, as well as the judge, to see to it that the prosecution is kept honest and does their job. Even in cases where the accused has admitted guilt the punishment is nearly always a range options, and defending counsel in that case advocates for a lighter sentence to try and ensure the punishment fits the crime.
In no case should a child be left to stand alone against adults making accusations regardless of the truth of those accusations.
It would take a lot of skill to pull something like that off deliberately and repeatably without error. That said I've done some amazing driving myself in the heat of the moment. But I would never count on being able to recreate any of those situations without ending up injured or dead.
My favorite being while driving my 1969 Catalina, a car swerved onto the highway in front of me, failing to yield the right of way when they had a red light. That car's driver was oblivious to other traffic as they didn't try to get up to highway speed rapidly or even pick a lane. I braked and manuevered hard enough that my car turned 45 degrees to the left, as I slid past them on the right. It's funny how adrenaline or whatever can make time feel slower at moments like that. I even had the presence of mind to flip them the bird and scream some obsceneties
I definitely agree that such behaviour is illegal. However that doesn't actually stop it from happening on an institutional basis, as we recently discovered in Chicago.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-...
It's open for debate how wide spread this kind of crap is. The people most likely to be put through the wringer are those least likely and able to fight back against it.
1. The quality and resolution, even for it's day and age was horrible.
2. The price of the Sony offering, and every other similiar product I've looked at was insanely high.
3. At the time even if the prices had been more reasonably they likely would have still been too pricey for me at the time, my finances are much better these days.
The occulus rift while not having spectacular resolution, when you consider it occupies more of your field of view, is still far better than the older options. The price is far more reasonable. If it's good enough and cheap enough for the general market then we will likely see more consistent improvement in the product, such that we might eventually get to something everyone can love.
I think it could take a very long time, but then again it could take far less than we would expect. The Larsen B ice shelf disintegrated in something like 3 weeks. Scientists at the time knew it was unstable and in trouble but nobody thought that much ice could breakup and melt so fast.
It would probably depend on how vigorously he thrashed about on the ground. If the officer thought he looked lively enough to get back up he would be justified in continuing to shoot. This does of course set up a situation like you mention where someone will likely die needlessly. Where do you draw the line though such that it's not easily abused? As it is now that part of the use of force sounds fine to me.
The problem that I see is officers jumping straight to deadly force when it isn't warranted in the first place. We have stun guns widely available now and they don't seem to be getting used when it's appropriate, like when a mentally disturbed individual is facing down half a dozen officers. That is the perfect situation for a couple of them to get out tasers to subdue the guy if necessary while the others back them up. In the case of Brown a stun gun would probably have been a better response since Brown wasn't apparently armed.