Wrong. Secret ballots are a right AND a duty, for exactly the same reason guns are in the Second Amendment.
You have the right to bear arms. You have that right because it is "necessary to the security of a free State". What you do NOT have is the right to leave your loaded gun laying around out in public where anyone can use it or record your ownership of it on a list.
Which regional superpower is going to invade us if we don't vote the way they want us to?
Organised crime.
And before you go "that's not a regional superpower", you might want to google the effective GDP of organised crime; globally, if organised crime was a country, it'd slot in around 12th place somewhere around India, Russia or Mexico (based on 2009 figures, mind you).
Which still mightn't be a problem if organised crime was actually a nation and its soldiers actually wore uniforms. But it's not and they don't, so good luck with that.
It certainly wasn't the researchers who jumped to any SJW conclusions. The researchers found self-described rich people took less attention to random strangers. That's all. Attention is not the same as empathy.
Or maybe it's neither. A third possibility is that as rich people generally enjoy more insulation from physical hazards and risks in social situations, their biological instinct to assess random strangers for threat potential is duller than in poor people.
In my opinion; Canadian police forces are far less deserving of anti-cop, paranoid rhetoric than US or Latin American forces. In this case, the police obtained a court ordered warrant before asking the telecoms for the tower dump info. This is exactly how the law is supposed to work
While I agree with your emphasis, it's important to understand the US/LA "anti-cop" sentiment you've encountered covers far more than just the constabulary. The fact that a court approved a warrant makes little difference to those who consider the entire system corrupt: the police who enforce the laws, the judges and attorneys who interpret them, the politicians who sign them, and the vested interests that write them.
And it shouldn't come as a surprise to find that such a sentiment will colour opinions even across borders; people worry that what happens 'there' might (be) happen(ing) 'here'.
It's no different than if you buy a house and discover after the fact that there are toxic chemicals buried in the back yard that require costly cleanup. It is the responsibility of the current house's owner, not the previous owners of the property, to clean up the mess.
That actually varies by country. In mine, the previous owners would still be held responsible for their own actions, face fines and/or imprisonment under various health and safety laws concerning the unsafe disposal, and I could bring suit to have them pay compensation for the cleanup.
I tried out Crucial and OCZ too. They sucked. So once the prices got reasonable I stuck with Intel, and also later Samsung, and I've actually had less problems with SSDs than with HDDs. Heck, I can get 5 and even 10 year mfr wty SSDs for a reasonable price these days. Sounds like you got bit big by a bad experience and are now twice shy.
You're still right that HDDs have better recovery options than SSD - but that's why you should really consider using _both_. I build almost all my machines these days using SSD for the OS and apps/data that are IOPS hungry and using HDD for handling big storage requirements and backups. SSD actually dies? Pop in a replacement, restore from last night's backup, done.
If the summer months keep breaking records but the winter months keep canceling them out, that still indicates there is an ongoing change even if the "average" isn't moving. For example, what's worse, an increase of 1 degree to the mean or an increase of 10 degrees to the range? (answer is I don't actually know, it's just an "engage the reader's brain" thing). I think people should be less fixated on a single measuring stick; climate is more nuanced than that. But "global warming" was a great phrase to grab people's attention (or if you're more cynical, to sell ads); suddenly everyone was an armchair climatologist. Have to admit it was fun picking a side and debating it for a while. The energy companies picking a side took the fun out of it. Nowadays I mostly just read and lurk. Mostly.
Hurricanes (cyclones here in the antipodes) fascinate me too, but I'm moving inland next month - seeing them only on TV will be a fine fringe benefit! I wouldn't wish a Cat 5 on anyone. A Cat 1 is bad enough (been through two of those, friends lost their roof, have no desire to be able to personally compare a 5).
Huh. So what you're saying is, five years ago we had a year in which some months broke all previous records for heat, and this year that's happening again, but... what, exactly? I can't tell whether you're just using this topic to vent about your coworkers, or whether you actually have an opinion on global warming (or the lack thereof), or if you're just very disappointed that we haven't had a bunch of Category 5 hurricanes.;p
Hmm. Two questions. How much of the animal agricultural industry's emissions are from short-cycle (biological) sources as opposed to long-cycle (geological) sources? How much impact has the animal agricultural industry had on Earth's overall biologically-sourced greenhouse gas emissions as a net change since the beginning of humanity's industrial age?
Thankyou for making your opinion clear, Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council*.
I mean, you're wrong, because independent invention is in fact not a defense unless you can demonstrate you invented it first (since copyright law is functionally legalised extortion - and I say that as a good friend of several published authors), but your declaration of assholedom is duly noted.
*if that reference is unclear, I suggest you read The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams.
I love this topic because I always get to mention the Autobahn. No speed limit and half the traffic fatalities per mile as US interstates, all because the slower people keep right, and allow the faster people to just pass.
I'm from neither the US nor Germany. Is the lack of a speed limit the only (significant) reason at all? Not road quality or driver education or anything else?
A 3rd party candidate is statistically more likely to be closer in ideology to one of the two major parties.
Are you sure this starting premise isn't flawed? It assumes the two major parties have sufficiently different ideologies (in practice, not in claim) to begin with.
You have yet to explain why it can be supported, and I've been pretty clear in saying that taxes cannot do so. That's why it won't work. Why will it work? Where will the free money come from?
There is no free money. None. Nada. Questions like that are what piss me off most, because they imply nothing good about the person asking the question. Furthermore, the money that goes into the current, horribly inefficient, welfare system we have NOW isn't free either. So answer me this question: do you believe there is ANY welfare system that can prevent systemic poverty? Because the current one ensures the opposite happens.
Others have already admitted that "the vast majority" will see their taxes go up at least as much as their UBI payments would be.
If it goes up as much, then are they worse off? If it goes up more than as much, will the excess amount place them under actual financial duress?
To make that statement true, that means that people who pay zero income tax today will be handling ALL of their UBI back to the government as taxes.
Where are you getting this from? If you're making so little income that you don't even pay income tax, why would you be handing back all of your UBI back as taxes? That doesn't even make sense.
Congratulations on failing to notice - or deliberately ignoring - that my first sentence answered your facetious response to my second. The "collection method" is called taxes. Yes, we may have to alter taxation structures. Yes, this may possibly reduce the median income after tax. However, do feel free to propose an alternative that _unlike the existing system_ does not perpetuate (or worse exacerbate) poverty to further ease the lives of the rich.
Because I see a lot of selfish and/or ignorant assholes in this thread who are all too happy to bash UBI and claim society can't support it without even explaining why, but what I'm not seeing is anyone with a better idea - and no, "screw 'em, got mine" is not a better idea. I'll presume that you're positively contributing to society in at least some manner, but your own self-entitlement, confirmation bias and tunnel vision are neither appreciated nor desired.
GDP contains _everything_. It is not just salaries, it is also everything else in the economy. It is money that goes to roads, to education, to discovering new medicine, to maintenance, to production - everything. It isn't money lying on the table (and presumably grabbed by those evil, evil capitalists), it is the total sum of all economic activity in the country. And since it isn't an actual bank account you can plunder, you cannot simply 'divide it up' and give it to the poor.
Except for the bit where you claim capitalists are evil, that's entirely true. Completely misrepresents the argument, of course.
Here's something else that's true: GDP contains the taxes we pay. UBI is a distribution method for those taxes, not a collection method. The rest of your rant is about income before taxes, when the debate is about how to distribute those taxes.
Protip: a good rant about apples can be both cathartic and impress even a discerning listener, but achieving that is unlikely when the topic is oranges.
The claim that BI works is wrong, and it really should not take a whole lot of thought to make you realize it. Start by studying the current Government Welfare and see how it works. It does not move anyone out of poverty, and quite frankly it is abused by a massive amount of people.
Unsupported claim: "Current system X doesn't work, therefore different system Y will not work."
That is why all communist countries must be tyrannical.
Implies that UBI is communist. However, UBI is a method for distributing taxes to the populace. Ergo, for the implication to be true, all countries that distribute taxes to the populace must be communist. Are you claiming that the United States is communist?
If you want to see the experiment in action, go live in China and become a Chinese citizen.
_Bullshit_. GDP per capita in 2015 was $51486. Federal poverty level threshold in 2015 was $11770 for a single person household. UBI is affordable, QED.
The lack of a UBI has nothing to do with math and everything to do with the mentality of the established power structures. And the dominant mentality is this: screw you, got mine. Until that changes, the nation's rich will continue to live on the destitution of its poor. So much for the Pledge Of Allegiance.
Oh, and in before any asshole shouts "Communism!" Again, bullshit. A well-implemented UBI actually ensures _more_ people have non-negligible disposable income, not less. We already have taxes; deciding on the level of UBI is just haggling over the price.
14 years? I didn't think it'd been quite that long? Some googling suggests that the first Australian bank to introduce contactless/tap payment was the CBA with a NSW trial in 2006. Still, wow, the years are flying by.
You hear that whooshing sound? That's the sound of those myriad regulations keeping all those commercial aircraft flying safely over your head instead of into it, with literally orders of magnitude more reliability per passenger-mile than private aircraft.
Also, your attempt at parroting Franklin was awful.
Slashdot Mirror
Wrong. Secret ballots are a right AND a duty, for exactly the same reason guns are in the Second Amendment.
You have the right to bear arms. You have that right because it is "necessary to the security of a free State". What you do NOT have is the right to leave your loaded gun laying around out in public where anyone can use it or record your ownership of it on a list.
Organised crime.
And before you go "that's not a regional superpower", you might want to google the effective GDP of organised crime; globally, if organised crime was a country, it'd slot in around 12th place somewhere around India, Russia or Mexico (based on 2009 figures, mind you).
Which still mightn't be a problem if organised crime was actually a nation and its soldiers actually wore uniforms. But it's not and they don't, so good luck with that.
It certainly wasn't the researchers who jumped to any SJW conclusions. The researchers found self-described rich people took less attention to random strangers. That's all. Attention is not the same as empathy.
Or maybe it's neither. A third possibility is that as rich people generally enjoy more insulation from physical hazards and risks in social situations, their biological instinct to assess random strangers for threat potential is duller than in poor people.
Anyone want to guess a fourth?
While I agree with your emphasis, it's important to understand the US/LA "anti-cop" sentiment you've encountered covers far more than just the constabulary. The fact that a court approved a warrant makes little difference to those who consider the entire system corrupt: the police who enforce the laws, the judges and attorneys who interpret them, the politicians who sign them, and the vested interests that write them.
And it shouldn't come as a surprise to find that such a sentiment will colour opinions even across borders; people worry that what happens 'there' might (be) happen(ing) 'here'.
And since they were actually thinking, they stopped the surveillance when they realised it was useless for its purported goal.
Now if only the feds would do the same.
That actually varies by country. In mine, the previous owners would still be held responsible for their own actions, face fines and/or imprisonment under various health and safety laws concerning the unsafe disposal, and I could bring suit to have them pay compensation for the cleanup.
I tried out Crucial and OCZ too. They sucked. So once the prices got reasonable I stuck with Intel, and also later Samsung, and I've actually had less problems with SSDs than with HDDs. Heck, I can get 5 and even 10 year mfr wty SSDs for a reasonable price these days. Sounds like you got bit big by a bad experience and are now twice shy.
You're still right that HDDs have better recovery options than SSD - but that's why you should really consider using _both_. I build almost all my machines these days using SSD for the OS and apps/data that are IOPS hungry and using HDD for handling big storage requirements and backups. SSD actually dies? Pop in a replacement, restore from last night's backup, done.
If the summer months keep breaking records but the winter months keep canceling them out, that still indicates there is an ongoing change even if the "average" isn't moving. For example, what's worse, an increase of 1 degree to the mean or an increase of 10 degrees to the range? (answer is I don't actually know, it's just an "engage the reader's brain" thing). I think people should be less fixated on a single measuring stick; climate is more nuanced than that. But "global warming" was a great phrase to grab people's attention (or if you're more cynical, to sell ads); suddenly everyone was an armchair climatologist. Have to admit it was fun picking a side and debating it for a while. The energy companies picking a side took the fun out of it. Nowadays I mostly just read and lurk. Mostly.
Hurricanes (cyclones here in the antipodes) fascinate me too, but I'm moving inland next month - seeing them only on TV will be a fine fringe benefit! I wouldn't wish a Cat 5 on anyone. A Cat 1 is bad enough (been through two of those, friends lost their roof, have no desire to be able to personally compare a 5).
Huh. So what you're saying is, five years ago we had a year in which some months broke all previous records for heat, and this year that's happening again, but... what, exactly? I can't tell whether you're just using this topic to vent about your coworkers, or whether you actually have an opinion on global warming (or the lack thereof), or if you're just very disappointed that we haven't had a bunch of Category 5 hurricanes. ;p
... Unless of course a small but influential group should decide that they can profit by making someone else pay for the war.
Hmm. Two questions. How much of the animal agricultural industry's emissions are from short-cycle (biological) sources as opposed to long-cycle (geological) sources? How much impact has the animal agricultural industry had on Earth's overall biologically-sourced greenhouse gas emissions as a net change since the beginning of humanity's industrial age?
Thankyou for making your opinion clear, Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council*.
I mean, you're wrong, because independent invention is in fact not a defense unless you can demonstrate you invented it first (since copyright law is functionally legalised extortion - and I say that as a good friend of several published authors), but your declaration of assholedom is duly noted.
*if that reference is unclear, I suggest you read The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams.
I'm from neither the US nor Germany. Is the lack of a speed limit the only (significant) reason at all? Not road quality or driver education or anything else?
Are you sure this starting premise isn't flawed? It assumes the two major parties have sufficiently different ideologies (in practice, not in claim) to begin with.
There is no free money. None. Nada. Questions like that are what piss me off most, because they imply nothing good about the person asking the question. Furthermore, the money that goes into the current, horribly inefficient, welfare system we have NOW isn't free either. So answer me this question: do you believe there is ANY welfare system that can prevent systemic poverty? Because the current one ensures the opposite happens.
If it goes up as much, then are they worse off? If it goes up more than as much, will the excess amount place them under actual financial duress?
Where are you getting this from? If you're making so little income that you don't even pay income tax, why would you be handing back all of your UBI back as taxes? That doesn't even make sense.
Congratulations on failing to notice - or deliberately ignoring - that my first sentence answered your facetious response to my second. The "collection method" is called taxes. Yes, we may have to alter taxation structures. Yes, this may possibly reduce the median income after tax. However, do feel free to propose an alternative that _unlike the existing system_ does not perpetuate (or worse exacerbate) poverty to further ease the lives of the rich.
Because I see a lot of selfish and/or ignorant assholes in this thread who are all too happy to bash UBI and claim society can't support it without even explaining why, but what I'm not seeing is anyone with a better idea - and no, "screw 'em, got mine" is not a better idea. I'll presume that you're positively contributing to society in at least some manner, but your own self-entitlement, confirmation bias and tunnel vision are neither appreciated nor desired.
I'm going to be nice and imagine that they saw your phrase "not motivated to earn more" and misinterpreted it as "not willing to work hard".
Except for the bit where you claim capitalists are evil, that's entirely true. Completely misrepresents the argument, of course.
Here's something else that's true: GDP contains the taxes we pay. UBI is a distribution method for those taxes, not a collection method. The rest of your rant is about income before taxes, when the debate is about how to distribute those taxes.
Protip: a good rant about apples can be both cathartic and impress even a discerning listener, but achieving that is unlikely when the topic is oranges.
I already have: it's called taxes, and a portion of our taxes (presuming you pay any, sir) goes towards public welfare.
Do at least try to pay attention; UBI is a distribution method, not a collection method.
Unsupported claim: "Current system X doesn't work, therefore different system Y will not work."
Implies that UBI is communist. However, UBI is a method for distributing taxes to the populace. Ergo, for the implication to be true, all countries that distribute taxes to the populace must be communist. Are you claiming that the United States is communist?
False. China does not have a UBI.
_Bullshit_. GDP per capita in 2015 was $51486. Federal poverty level threshold in 2015 was $11770 for a single person household. UBI is affordable, QED.
The lack of a UBI has nothing to do with math and everything to do with the mentality of the established power structures. And the dominant mentality is this: screw you, got mine. Until that changes, the nation's rich will continue to live on the destitution of its poor. So much for the Pledge Of Allegiance.
Oh, and in before any asshole shouts "Communism!" Again, bullshit. A well-implemented UBI actually ensures _more_ people have non-negligible disposable income, not less. We already have taxes; deciding on the level of UBI is just haggling over the price.
14 years? I didn't think it'd been quite that long? Some googling suggests that the first Australian bank to introduce contactless/tap payment was the CBA with a NSW trial in 2006. Still, wow, the years are flying by.
You hear that whooshing sound? That's the sound of those myriad regulations keeping all those commercial aircraft flying safely over your head instead of into it, with literally orders of magnitude more reliability per passenger-mile than private aircraft.
Also, your attempt at parroting Franklin was awful.