Your 1990 budget is spending 1990 dollars. Your 2012 budget and income tax figures are in 2012 dollars. Adjust for inflation, and federal spending in 1990 was closer to $2 trillion.
See, the Social Security measure was supposed to be like the Welfare program; it was a catchall for the people who got old, who were unlucky in life, and meant primarily as a feel good measure about society.... it was supposed to be something only a handful would even consider using; the vast majority of future retirees were supposed to still use a Savings account.
The first half of that is true, the second half is false. I suspect that's a talking point you heard somewhere, cleverly designed to mislead with a grain of truth.
Yes, it is true that Social Security was designed as a sort of welfare program to protect the poor, and that it wasn't supposed to support those who could get by without it. But what you're missing is the fact that at the time of its passage, the vast majority of seniors were living in poverty. And remember... this is the 1930s definition of poverty! (Technically, it also was designed to exclude vast swaths of the population, primarily women and black people. Hopefully no one advocates a return to that.)
Now, if you want to talk about going back to the idea of not giving Social Security to those who don't need it (roughly the top 20-30%), then that's something I might be able to get on board with. But "returning" to a past that never was, in which only a relative handful collect benefits, would leave huge numbers of elderly out in the streets.
We were still in building-a-superpower mode long after the institution of the income tax and the New Deal, and probably even after the Great Society. The downfall didn't start until the 80s, with its massive tax cuts, deregulation, explosion of Wall Street gambling, and culture of greed. Yes, all that stuff probably made us a bit richer in the short term, and it made some people a lot richer. But in the long run, it's destabilized the markets and encouraged businesses to focus on quarterly profits at the expense of long term planning.
Implement a 90% exit tax. Problem solved. If you really hate the country, you're free to leave. But if you're only leaving because you've received the benefits of living here and now want to skip out on the check, well fuck you.
Your argument would carry more weight if the people bailing out weren't the EXACT same people who bankrolled all the abuses you name.
These people could use their limitless wealth to support politicians with good intentions. Instead, they support whichever politicians seem most pliable to their demands, and who cares how much damage it causes to the nation? When we start circling the drain, they jump ship.
They're thieves and worse. They'll bring down the country, and live out their days like gods in some tropical paradise.
Of course, back then, you worked till the day you died, since there was no Social Security. And that would be quite soon if you got sick and didn't happen to be wealthy, since there was no Medicare or Medicaid. And let's not forget that there were no food stamps or WIC checks, so if you were poor, you were liable to starve. That is, if you didn't rob or kill to get your food.
And there were no battered women shelters, or protections of any sort for abuse victims. And there were no regulations to stop companies from dumping all sorts of nasty shit into your air or water, or outright putting it into your food as filler. And of course your employer could force you to work 12 hours a day, with no weekends, and no overtime -- not that it mattered, since they could also pay you in scrip which was only good in the company store.
I don't see why you glorify that time period. The workers of the time hated it so much that they fought like hell to get us unions and social safety nets. Why are you so eager to throw away everything they worked for?
I'll tell you what. If you don't like paying to live in a civilized society, then you are welcome to get the fuck out. We'll be better off without you.
I hope the same, in an entirely different manner. The man is a thief. He lived and prospered off the public dime, and then ran out on the bill when it was his turn to give back. I hope he has a heart attack waiting to board the plane out, and no one lifts a finger to aid him.
While Carr isn't making a case for Lamarckian evolution, the argument here seems weak to me; the same kind of brain change could be attributed to books, or television, or the automobile, couldn't it?
What I say:
Yes, the same kinds of changes could be attributed to the things you named
So, clearly, I was referring to the same changes as timothy was referring to. And what changes were those? Let's look at the summary to find out!
According to Carr, while the genetic nature of our brains isn't being changed by the Internet at all, our brains are adapting 'at a cellular level' and are weakening modes of thinking we no longer exercise.
So the original submitter says "the genetic nature of our brains isn't being changed at all". Timothy says "Carr isn't making a case for Lamarckian evolution". I don't mention evolution at all. Literally no one mentioned evolution, except to say that this isn't evolution. And then you come charging in to tell everyone, "Wow, you guys are stupid! This isn't evolution!"
Where did I use the word evolution? People, and for that matter all living things, adapt to their surroundings, completely independent of the process of evolution. I'm pretty sure you're just trying to troll (how cute!), but really, you're just making a fool of yourself.
I don't think former presidents tend to run for office in foreign countries.
Yeah, I know, I'm dreaming.... but seriously, every time I see Franken's name in the news, it's attached to something refreshingly principled. I could probably count the congressmen that's true for on one hand.
Midterm congressional elections, nationwide, get around 80-85 million votes. There are 435 representatives. That's around 190k votes per representative. The results turn on a few percentage points. The 2010 midterms, by all accounts a blow-out, had only a 6.5% difference between the major parties. That's around six thousand voters per district, making the difference between a huge Democratic majority and a huge Republican one. And that's before you get into primaries, where turnout is even lower.
Representatives do pay attention to letters and phone calls. They hold town meetings where you can ask them questions. You can make a difference. Not a big one, by yourself, but if people in this country would stop being so defeatist, they could make a big difference in aggregate.
While Carr isn't making a case for Lamarckian evolution, the argument here seems weak to me; the same kind of brain change could be attributed to books, or television, or the automobile, couldn't it?
Yes, the same kinds of changes could be attributed to the things you named. Which is likely why people who grew up with black and white television dreamed in black and white. Our brains are absolutely affected at a deep level by the things we spend our time on. It seems almost trivially obvious to say so. The real question is whether or not this is a bad thing. Yes, our modes of thinking may become dependent on "browsing" -- on having a ready cache of facts and trivia that don't need to be stored in gray matter. But if it is the case that browsing is indeed always available, might that not be a good thing? Couldn't that free up resources, currently devoted to memorizing state capitals, that could be better spent on higher level reasoning? Math classes can certainly teach more interesting topics now that calculators have obviated the need to memorize logarithm tables.
That's nothing like the original Wolfenstein 3D. The graphics are crap compared to the real thing (no animations -- bad guys go from living to dead in one frame), and the level layout doesn't even match. It's cool that they got it in 4 KB and all, but I can't imagine anyone preferring that version to Bethesda's.
I remember having a friend describe Wolfenstein 3D to me before I actually saw it. I couldn't wrap my mind around it. I kept thinking it would have to be static images, like those old RPGs in which you looked in the four cardinal directions simultaneously (e.g. Moraff's World), and couldn't imagine how you could have a shooter like that. Realtime 3D really was amazing to see for the first time. Moreso even than seeing actual 3D with active shutter glasses many years later.
You complain to the authorities, who will no doubt notice when hundreds of your coworkers register the same complaint. Your employer spends a very, very, very long time in a small concrete room.
Honestly, if you really think this would be a problem, why hasn't it been?
Anyone who wants to vote registers ahead of time with their address. Ballot gets mailed to each person weeks ahead of election day. They fill it out at their leisure, sign it, and mail it back in. Even better, people get pamphlets with their ballots explaining each issue (with explanations written by both the "for" and "against" sides, for fairness), so people actually understand what they're doing when voting on Referendum 1234.
Forget to mail it in early enough? No problem, just bring it to one of many public drop-offs on election day.
Don't have a permanent address, or forgot to register? Fill out the ballot in person at one of the drop-off spots. Lines are short because most people have already voted.
No need to worry about fraud, as each ballot contains unique markings to identify forgeries, and stealing ballots from enough mailboxes to make a difference is impossible without people catching on. Miscounts are reduced as well because the votes come in over a longer period, giving more time to get it right.
It's a great system, and I can see no reason not to make it nationwide. Scrap these electronic voting machines, scrap the mile-long lines at the polling places, and watch voter turnout skyrocket.
That sort of navel-gazing is the reason why no one takes philosophers seriously anymore. Too many people half-assing it and coming up with absurdities. We start from the basic assumption: humans have a right to free speech. The GP claims, rightly, that this does not necessarily mean that containers of humans have a right to free speech.
You then come in, throw out the premise (that humans have a right to free speech), substitute your own (that neurons have a right to free speech), and then complain that the GP's logic does not allow him to reach his goal (that humans have a right to free speech) from your newly created premise.
It's absurd, and needlessly argumentative. You could use such reasoning to argue that humans should have no rights at all, or else all rights should be applied to the whole universe and everything in it. After all, a human's right to life must extend down to his individual atoms, so nuclear fission is murder!!
Unfortunately, the is a very large, powerful, well-funded, and clever group of people who devote their careers towards making people think they need XBoxes and iPhones and Air Jordans. You see their messages every hour of every day of your waking life. Advertising works. If you think it doesn't work on you, that just means it's working really well.
So no, poor people might not need video games the way they need food, but they think they do, and it's not their fault.
I use DVDFab to rip DVDs using my GPU, and it positively flies. Most 2 hr movies take around 10 minutes to convert to H.264. It doesn't support VBR, but outside of that I've never had trouble with it. The resulting video quality is quite good as well (except with files that need deinterlacing, but that's always a problem). I think the person who wrote the articles just didn't try the right programs.
1. & 2. are settled science. There's always some "doubt" in science, but not in the way you use the term. People like you, or more accurately the people who tell you what to think, profit from muddying the waters. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt... it's not just for software anymore!
3. & 4. are irrelevant. Who cares whose fault it is? If it's going to disrupt our lifestyles, we should try to stop it. This is just some religious fundie bullshit. "Oh, there's no way humans could affect God's plan!"
5. That's what we're trying to do, but deniers are fighting tooth and nail to keep us from even trying.
6. Yes, if you believe the science, the consequences would be severe. Not the end of the world, but a drastic reduction in quality of life for billions of people. But instead you've chosen to believe that all the scientists are in a big globe spanning conspiracy.
7. Taxing breath Strawman! Crippling the world economy FUD! Billions poorer, governments richer Bullshit! Do you think the governments are going to make a massive money pit filled with gold coins or something? They're not going to be richer, they're going to immediately turn around and spend that money. So your statement should have been "oil execs poorer, working class richer". And yeah, I'd be fine with that as a pleasant little side effect.
8. "Wind turbines causing warming." That story was revealed to be bullshit in the comments of Slashdot. It was only warming the area immediately around the windmill, not contributing to global warming. But of course, you wouldn't pay attention, because you want to believe all those stupid leftie ideas are back firing. You'll just gleefully go on spreading that lie 'til the end of time.
Are you sure about that? All the parts I've worked on treat the top temperature as ambient, and die heating takes you ever higher above that. I suppose my company might just be doing it that way for the extra margin, but that seems like it would be an inconsistent approach, given variations in junction temp.
Think of it from the Chinese end: "We're loaning these guys money which they're using to buy weapons that can defeat our defenses. Something is very wrong here...."
U.S. loves to kill things. Why else would they build this thing to fight an enemy that doesn't even exist.
Because it lets them spend money on what are essentially make-work jobs. Nothing gets a congressman reelected quite like opening up a new factory in his district.
Slashdot Mirror
Inflation's a bitch.
Your 1990 budget is spending 1990 dollars. Your 2012 budget and income tax figures are in 2012 dollars. Adjust for inflation, and federal spending in 1990 was closer to $2 trillion.
From that point on, your math all falls apart.
See, the Social Security measure was supposed to be like the Welfare program; it was a catchall for the people who got old, who were unlucky in life, and meant primarily as a feel good measure about society. ... it was supposed to be something only a handful would even consider using; the vast majority of future retirees were supposed to still use a Savings account.
The first half of that is true, the second half is false. I suspect that's a talking point you heard somewhere, cleverly designed to mislead with a grain of truth.
Yes, it is true that Social Security was designed as a sort of welfare program to protect the poor, and that it wasn't supposed to support those who could get by without it. But what you're missing is the fact that at the time of its passage, the vast majority of seniors were living in poverty. And remember... this is the 1930s definition of poverty! (Technically, it also was designed to exclude vast swaths of the population, primarily women and black people. Hopefully no one advocates a return to that.)
Now, if you want to talk about going back to the idea of not giving Social Security to those who don't need it (roughly the top 20-30%), then that's something I might be able to get on board with. But "returning" to a past that never was, in which only a relative handful collect benefits, would leave huge numbers of elderly out in the streets.
We were still in building-a-superpower mode long after the institution of the income tax and the New Deal, and probably even after the Great Society. The downfall didn't start until the 80s, with its massive tax cuts, deregulation, explosion of Wall Street gambling, and culture of greed. Yes, all that stuff probably made us a bit richer in the short term, and it made some people a lot richer. But in the long run, it's destabilized the markets and encouraged businesses to focus on quarterly profits at the expense of long term planning.
Implement a 90% exit tax. Problem solved. If you really hate the country, you're free to leave. But if you're only leaving because you've received the benefits of living here and now want to skip out on the check, well fuck you.
Your argument would carry more weight if the people bailing out weren't the EXACT same people who bankrolled all the abuses you name.
These people could use their limitless wealth to support politicians with good intentions. Instead, they support whichever politicians seem most pliable to their demands, and who cares how much damage it causes to the nation? When we start circling the drain, they jump ship.
They're thieves and worse. They'll bring down the country, and live out their days like gods in some tropical paradise.
Of course, back then, you worked till the day you died, since there was no Social Security. And that would be quite soon if you got sick and didn't happen to be wealthy, since there was no Medicare or Medicaid. And let's not forget that there were no food stamps or WIC checks, so if you were poor, you were liable to starve. That is, if you didn't rob or kill to get your food.
And there were no battered women shelters, or protections of any sort for abuse victims. And there were no regulations to stop companies from dumping all sorts of nasty shit into your air or water, or outright putting it into your food as filler. And of course your employer could force you to work 12 hours a day, with no weekends, and no overtime -- not that it mattered, since they could also pay you in scrip which was only good in the company store.
I don't see why you glorify that time period. The workers of the time hated it so much that they fought like hell to get us unions and social safety nets. Why are you so eager to throw away everything they worked for?
I'll tell you what. If you don't like paying to live in a civilized society, then you are welcome to get the fuck out. We'll be better off without you.
I hope the same, in an entirely different manner. The man is a thief. He lived and prospered off the public dime, and then ran out on the bill when it was his turn to give back. I hope he has a heart attack waiting to board the plane out, and no one lifts a finger to aid him.
Wow, fail at reading comprehension much?
From timothy's editorializing of the summary:
While Carr isn't making a case for Lamarckian evolution, the argument here seems weak to me; the same kind of brain change could be attributed to books, or television, or the automobile, couldn't it?
What I say:
Yes, the same kinds of changes could be attributed to the things you named
So, clearly, I was referring to the same changes as timothy was referring to. And what changes were those? Let's look at the summary to find out!
According to Carr, while the genetic nature of our brains isn't being changed by the Internet at all, our brains are adapting 'at a cellular level' and are weakening modes of thinking we no longer exercise.
So the original submitter says "the genetic nature of our brains isn't being changed at all". Timothy says "Carr isn't making a case for Lamarckian evolution". I don't mention evolution at all. Literally no one mentioned evolution, except to say that this isn't evolution. And then you come charging in to tell everyone, "Wow, you guys are stupid! This isn't evolution!"
Well, gee. Thanks for the tip, Captain Obvious.
Where did I use the word evolution? People, and for that matter all living things, adapt to their surroundings, completely independent of the process of evolution. I'm pretty sure you're just trying to troll (how cute!), but really, you're just making a fool of yourself.
I don't think former presidents tend to run for office in foreign countries.
Yeah, I know, I'm dreaming.... but seriously, every time I see Franken's name in the news, it's attached to something refreshingly principled. I could probably count the congressmen that's true for on one hand.
Midterm congressional elections, nationwide, get around 80-85 million votes. There are 435 representatives. That's around 190k votes per representative. The results turn on a few percentage points. The 2010 midterms, by all accounts a blow-out, had only a 6.5% difference between the major parties. That's around six thousand voters per district, making the difference between a huge Democratic majority and a huge Republican one. And that's before you get into primaries, where turnout is even lower.
Representatives do pay attention to letters and phone calls. They hold town meetings where you can ask them questions. You can make a difference. Not a big one, by yourself, but if people in this country would stop being so defeatist, they could make a big difference in aggregate.
While Carr isn't making a case for Lamarckian evolution, the argument here seems weak to me; the same kind of brain change could be attributed to books, or television, or the automobile, couldn't it?
Yes, the same kinds of changes could be attributed to the things you named. Which is likely why people who grew up with black and white television dreamed in black and white. Our brains are absolutely affected at a deep level by the things we spend our time on. It seems almost trivially obvious to say so. The real question is whether or not this is a bad thing. Yes, our modes of thinking may become dependent on "browsing" -- on having a ready cache of facts and trivia that don't need to be stored in gray matter. But if it is the case that browsing is indeed always available, might that not be a good thing? Couldn't that free up resources, currently devoted to memorizing state capitals, that could be better spent on higher level reasoning? Math classes can certainly teach more interesting topics now that calculators have obviated the need to memorize logarithm tables.
Christ, will you two just get a room already...
You twits named it soccer, you've just forgotten.
That's nothing like the original Wolfenstein 3D. The graphics are crap compared to the real thing (no animations -- bad guys go from living to dead in one frame), and the level layout doesn't even match. It's cool that they got it in 4 KB and all, but I can't imagine anyone preferring that version to Bethesda's.
I remember having a friend describe Wolfenstein 3D to me before I actually saw it. I couldn't wrap my mind around it. I kept thinking it would have to be static images, like those old RPGs in which you looked in the four cardinal directions simultaneously (e.g. Moraff's World), and couldn't imagine how you could have a shooter like that. Realtime 3D really was amazing to see for the first time. Moreso even than seeing actual 3D with active shutter glasses many years later.
You complain to the authorities, who will no doubt notice when hundreds of your coworkers register the same complaint. Your employer spends a very, very, very long time in a small concrete room.
Honestly, if you really think this would be a problem, why hasn't it been?
Vote by mail. It's that simple.
Anyone who wants to vote registers ahead of time with their address. Ballot gets mailed to each person weeks ahead of election day. They fill it out at their leisure, sign it, and mail it back in. Even better, people get pamphlets with their ballots explaining each issue (with explanations written by both the "for" and "against" sides, for fairness), so people actually understand what they're doing when voting on Referendum 1234.
Forget to mail it in early enough? No problem, just bring it to one of many public drop-offs on election day.
Don't have a permanent address, or forgot to register? Fill out the ballot in person at one of the drop-off spots. Lines are short because most people have already voted.
No need to worry about fraud, as each ballot contains unique markings to identify forgeries, and stealing ballots from enough mailboxes to make a difference is impossible without people catching on. Miscounts are reduced as well because the votes come in over a longer period, giving more time to get it right.
It's a great system, and I can see no reason not to make it nationwide. Scrap these electronic voting machines, scrap the mile-long lines at the polling places, and watch voter turnout skyrocket.
That sort of navel-gazing is the reason why no one takes philosophers seriously anymore. Too many people half-assing it and coming up with absurdities. We start from the basic assumption: humans have a right to free speech. The GP claims, rightly, that this does not necessarily mean that containers of humans have a right to free speech.
You then come in, throw out the premise (that humans have a right to free speech), substitute your own (that neurons have a right to free speech), and then complain that the GP's logic does not allow him to reach his goal (that humans have a right to free speech) from your newly created premise.
It's absurd, and needlessly argumentative. You could use such reasoning to argue that humans should have no rights at all, or else all rights should be applied to the whole universe and everything in it. After all, a human's right to life must extend down to his individual atoms, so nuclear fission is murder!!
Like what, reading?
Unfortunately, the is a very large, powerful, well-funded, and clever group of people who devote their careers towards making people think they need XBoxes and iPhones and Air Jordans. You see their messages every hour of every day of your waking life. Advertising works. If you think it doesn't work on you, that just means it's working really well.
So no, poor people might not need video games the way they need food, but they think they do, and it's not their fault.
I use DVDFab to rip DVDs using my GPU, and it positively flies. Most 2 hr movies take around 10 minutes to convert to H.264. It doesn't support VBR, but outside of that I've never had trouble with it. The resulting video quality is quite good as well (except with files that need deinterlacing, but that's always a problem). I think the person who wrote the articles just didn't try the right programs.
1. & 2. are settled science. There's always some "doubt" in science, but not in the way you use the term. People like you, or more accurately the people who tell you what to think, profit from muddying the waters. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt... it's not just for software anymore!
3. & 4. are irrelevant. Who cares whose fault it is? If it's going to disrupt our lifestyles, we should try to stop it. This is just some religious fundie bullshit. "Oh, there's no way humans could affect God's plan!"
5. That's what we're trying to do, but deniers are fighting tooth and nail to keep us from even trying.
6. Yes, if you believe the science, the consequences would be severe. Not the end of the world, but a drastic reduction in quality of life for billions of people. But instead you've chosen to believe that all the scientists are in a big globe spanning conspiracy.
7. Taxing breath Strawman! Crippling the world economy FUD! Billions poorer, governments richer Bullshit! Do you think the governments are going to make a massive money pit filled with gold coins or something? They're not going to be richer, they're going to immediately turn around and spend that money. So your statement should have been "oil execs poorer, working class richer". And yeah, I'd be fine with that as a pleasant little side effect.
8. "Wind turbines causing warming." That story was revealed to be bullshit in the comments of Slashdot. It was only warming the area immediately around the windmill, not contributing to global warming. But of course, you wouldn't pay attention, because you want to believe all those stupid leftie ideas are back firing. You'll just gleefully go on spreading that lie 'til the end of time.
Are you sure about that? All the parts I've worked on treat the top temperature as ambient, and die heating takes you ever higher above that. I suppose my company might just be doing it that way for the extra margin, but that seems like it would be an inconsistent approach, given variations in junction temp.
Think of it from the Chinese end: "We're loaning these guys money which they're using to buy weapons that can defeat our defenses. Something is very wrong here...."
U.S. loves to kill things. Why else would they build this thing to fight an enemy that doesn't even exist.
Because it lets them spend money on what are essentially make-work jobs. Nothing gets a congressman reelected quite like opening up a new factory in his district.