How about down with self-serving bureaucracy? you know, the kind that insulates its ideology from reality so much that everyone else is left holding the resulting inevitable calamity.
GOVERNMENT R BAD, CORPORATIONS R GOOD However: BP screwed up bad BP is a corporation Therefore, the initial statement must be false, even if governments R BAD also.
Proof by Reductio ad absurdum. No fallacy. Thanks for playing, and here's a copy of our home game, 'Logic for Dummies.'
Look, it's a huge oil slick. In middle of hurricane alley. Hurricanes produce lightning. Lightning ignites fires. That oil slick is one giant pool of flame bait. That's all the mods were trying to say.
The demographic-economic paradox shows that, as GDP increases, fertility rates decrease. This does not necessarily mean that the rich are having fewer children than the poor. In America, we are supposed to have social mobility, with equitable opportunities for even the children of the poor to become rich. If we do not have that, then that in itself is a problem.
Note that that Bush reduced to tax on the wealthiest households to 35 percent, and that during the 50s it was 90 percent.
The idea that CEOs are struggling with long hours is ridiculous. They are not stressed, their jobs are rewarding and meaningful to them, and because they are not stressed they tend to be healthier and live longer. I don't really think the CEOs of the bailed-out financial firms make any kind of tremendous sacrifices, what with the constant vacations, multiple homes, numerous golf games and business lunches, and other perks.
Without workers, a CEO is nothing. They do not 'produce' anything on their own, they simply manage others' production. Often times, the average shop floor worker knows more about the actual day-to-day running of things than the managers and CEOs do.
You simply assume that the wealthy earned their wealth through being productive, and of course this is sometimes the case, but more often than not, the wealthy got their wealth by being more ruthless and selfish than anyone else. Sociopaths make up 2-5% of the general population, but a much larger percentage of people in positions of power. Being a sociopath and having no remorse or empathy certainly helps one be a cut-throat businessman.
The wealthy may pay more in taxes, but then, they also take a disproportionate percentage of the wealth. The system obviously benefits them. Most are conservative, meaning, they do not want to change the status quo, because it works for them. With the political power that wealth brings, they have bought laws and policies that benefit them, at our expense, transferring wealth from the workers who produce it to the owners who 'risk' their capital funding businesses.
The rich openly engage in class warfare. You can plainly see the intended effect of all their policies: creating a pool of cheap, desperate workers who will take any job, at any pay, and put up with all sorts of horrific abuses. I call them 'cheap labor conservatives.' Even the recent economic downturn, which they created, benefits them by making workers desperate. Desperate workers do not organize and demand fair compensation, and they don't complain about workplace abuse and safety issues.
The rich have not worked harder, they have worked less, with more leisure time and less actual risk. You see, we have socialism for the rich now. As the rich have been engaged in constant class warfare against the rest of us, I say turnabout is fair play. If you don't believe me, side with the rich and see if they will let you play any reindeer games. I don't think they let people like us into their club, though.
He did, but he realized that the effort of 'chasing' enlightenment lead to a hierarchy of those who had 'achieved' certain mental states. He rejected the idea that it took a special kind of person, or special effort, to achieve a non-dualistic mental state.
Yes, finding proper controls for religious experiments can be tough. "Okay, now you. Stop believing in God. How do you feel?"
If they don't enact the policies that will benefit us, we have the power to change that. You claim 'they' play class warfare games to distract us, then say they actually engage in class warfare against us. Well, if they do, it's our fault, and seeing as how this is a democracy, we can do something about it.
I can prove it, the increase in GDP over the last thirty years has gone almost entirely to the top quintile, and they did not create that great increase in wealth, we all did.
You presume that the bottom fifty percent are the same sorts of leaches that, in general, the top 1% are. But look at socialist democracies in Europe, they are happy to pay the taxes they do because they feel they get a good value.
But they are quite culturally homogeneous, compared to us. We certainly never seem to mind when our social safety nets help us, or people like us. We just don't want the wrong sort of people taking advantage of us, You know. Them. So the elite here have taken advantage of our cultural divisions here to keep the working class fighting amongst itself. Racism works to the advantaged of the elite, and now that Europe has liberalized immigration you are starting to see more of it over there.
But it is really the elite taking advantage of us and our system, the owning class. You know, some founding fathers didn't even want to give non property holders a vote, and I don't think that strain of thought has ever died out. It's not the immigrants or the blacks who are lazy leaches taking advantage of our hard work. It is the people who think that having large sums of money to invest entitles them to being aristocracy and making all the rules. And of course the extreme hardship of having the responsibility for making all the rules entitles them to live a life of pampered luxury which they can pass on to their children, who will also naturally make all the rules because they have all the money.
What slander? Have you seen the racist signs up all over every single Tea Party rally? The picture of Obama the African Witch Doctor? The Tea Party condones obvious racism, it's not just a few whackos, it's at every single tea party rally. Are you just blind?
It's telling that you equate your selfish advantage with the health of the country.
Executives do that now. Do you think Carly Fiorina is an aberration? It's all a huge game, and she just got unlucky. You can't yet be a woman and unlucky, and still win, just ask Martha Stewert. But you can be a man and unlucky and still win, you know, if you're the right class of man. Just ask George W. Bush. Now, if Carly turns her 'unlucky' personal fortune into a political win, we'll know another glass ceiling has been shattered. Hoorah.
And don't even try me with the "it's wikipedia and boo hoo it says something I don't like therefore it must be made up" line of crap, check out the references and the discussion pages.
I'm not defending politicians. I'm defending the idea of collective action. If politicians aren't helping us create the society we want, then we need to change things. The reason we have corrupt politicians and a dysfunctional political system is that we have allowed money to dominate politics. This allows the rich to buy laws and policies that benefit them, which gives them more money to buy even better laws for themselves in a vicious circle that leads to, well, the mess we're in now. But it starts with money, and that means class: are you a worker or an owner? Do you make money from your labor or your investments?
I;m saying, if you are currently a worker, your chances of becoming an owner are next to nil, because they have bought laws that disempower you, and they don't like competition and fair markets. When you act collectively, in arguing for civic policies and voting for agents you hope will carry them out, act in the interests of the group you are in now. The rich already are, so they don't need my advice, but if you are a worker, please don't vote for people who promise tax cuts for the rich and spending cuts for the poor, it is not in your best interests.
Looking back on your argument, I just have to point out what I see as a fundamental hypocrisy in your position. Please correct me if I am wrong. You defend the power the strong individual might exercise over a group, but attack the power that a group of weaker individuals might exercise collectively over the strong. The strong individual's power is justified by his strength. The weak should not act against him, as their collective power is unjustified and it is unnatural that the weak should prevail over the strong. Is that essentially your position?
You DO realize that the NBPP is all of three guys, don't you? Of course it is nothing like the Tea Party and I never said it was. Where do you see me comparing the two?
Thinking on this further, I agree that last one is the most accurate. The apples that don't get picked are still as salable as they ever were, no one is getting something for free. To beat this analogy into a greasy horse shaped patch on the ground, apples were previously only sold in apple boutiques where you bought apples from elite growers and if you wanted different apples, you had to drive to a different boutique. Now the apples are sold in a farmers' market where anyone can set up a stall, even crabapples. You can peruse many different kinds of apples and everyone is putting in a real effort shining themselves up and barking at you about how tasty they are. Naturally, the apples liked being sold in boutiques because it made them feel special, not like some basket weaver selling his wares on the corner.
In my opinion if the apples want a better deal, the apples should form an apple cooperative of their own, enforce some reasonable standards of quality and service, perform some training, marketing and networking services and basically add value and (importantly) distribute that value equitably among the apples, cutting out the middle man apple sellers entirely.
The story I'm referring to is the 'Sherrod and the NAACP are racists who want to punish white people' story that the lying scum Breitbart pushed without fact checking his sources. It's a complete lie, but of course, the dominant culture sees all the privileges they have as being nothing more than their right, and any attempt to level the playing field as 'revenge.' So, these uppity blacks are getting their revenge, because society is now marginally more equitable and marginally less racist.
Uh, the debt is repaid when the leaches have given back all the money they took. Then they can have their bonuses back. But why should bailout money be going directly into the pockets of failed CEOs?
The rich have been taking from the poor for decades now, real income for the bottom 80% of America has been stagnant since the sixties. In the same period, the top 1% has gone from earning 8-9% of the GDP to earning 20% or more. I am advocating that the poor look after their own interests and stop letting the rich take from them.
That is why we have government, to protect the weak from the tyranny of the strong.
No, we were doing that already. If apples are designers, then a better analogy would be that 99designs lets us take a bite out of each apple and buy the one that tastes the best. Pretty sweet for the apple buyers, not so nice for the apples.
AS the 'pay czar' only regulates the pay of leaches who fed from the public trough and bought themselves some socialism for the rich, I don't see the problem. Don't want your pay regulated? Then take your lumps like the free market demands. What you don't get to do is socialize the risks while privatizing the rewards.
I'm being honest about where rights come from: agreements between individuals. I'm not advocating using violence, I'm saying, we don't have to agree to do things the way we do. That 'private transaction?' Is it really private? Says who? Two parties arguing over the price of a slave would tell an abolitionist that the transaction is none of their business, and society used to agree with the slavers. Now, thanks to people expressing their opinion, we do not consider that transaction a private matter anymore. I imagine that some transactions we presently see as private will, in the future, be seen as impacting others outside the transaction, and thus not private. CEO pay may well become one of those things that, like slavery, we don't consider a private matter.
You may not believe me, but freedom is my goal. You see, money is power, and someone with money can limit the freedom of someone without. I don't want to end the wealth disparity do much as I want to end the power disparity, which I see as limiting freedom. You probably see the power disparity as a natural consequence of freedom, but 'freedom' is a slippery word that way. Do I have the freedom to swing my fist wherever I like, or do you have the freedom not to get hit in the face? How about pollution? Do I have the right to buy garbage and bury it on my land, or do the externalities involved make that your business, too?
More like democracy. I'm talking about publicly traded companies creating more value for the owners (stockholders) by crowdsourcing business decisions. Crowdsourcing the CEO function is a decision that would have to be made by the board of directors.
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't realize Bush W. was a Democrat.
How about down with self-serving bureaucracy? you know, the kind that insulates its ideology from reality so much that everyone else is left holding the resulting inevitable calamity.
This is exactly why I don't vote Republican.
GOVERNMENT R BAD, CORPORATIONS R GOOD
However:
BP screwed up bad
BP is a corporation
Therefore, the initial statement must be false, even if governments R BAD also.
Proof by Reductio ad absurdum. No fallacy. Thanks for playing, and here's a copy of our home game, 'Logic for Dummies.'
What about threat level Blackwatch Plaid or Moving Pictures?
Look, it's a huge oil slick. In middle of hurricane alley. Hurricanes produce lightning. Lightning ignites fires. That oil slick is one giant pool of flame bait. That's all the mods were trying to say.
The demographic-economic paradox shows that, as GDP increases, fertility rates decrease. This does not necessarily mean that the rich are having fewer children than the poor. In America, we are supposed to have social mobility, with equitable opportunities for even the children of the poor to become rich. If we do not have that, then that in itself is a problem.
Note that that Bush reduced to tax on the wealthiest households to 35 percent, and that during the 50s it was 90 percent.
The idea that CEOs are struggling with long hours is ridiculous. They are not stressed, their jobs are rewarding and meaningful to them, and because they are not stressed they tend to be healthier and live longer. I don't really think the CEOs of the bailed-out financial firms make any kind of tremendous sacrifices, what with the constant vacations, multiple homes, numerous golf games and business lunches, and other perks.
Without workers, a CEO is nothing. They do not 'produce' anything on their own, they simply manage others' production. Often times, the average shop floor worker knows more about the actual day-to-day running of things than the managers and CEOs do.
You simply assume that the wealthy earned their wealth through being productive, and of course this is sometimes the case, but more often than not, the wealthy got their wealth by being more ruthless and selfish than anyone else. Sociopaths make up 2-5% of the general population, but a much larger percentage of people in positions of power. Being a sociopath and having no remorse or empathy certainly helps one be a cut-throat businessman.
The wealthy may pay more in taxes, but then, they also take a disproportionate percentage of the wealth. The system obviously benefits them. Most are conservative, meaning, they do not want to change the status quo, because it works for them. With the political power that wealth brings, they have bought laws and policies that benefit them, at our expense, transferring wealth from the workers who produce it to the owners who 'risk' their capital funding businesses.
The rich openly engage in class warfare. You can plainly see the intended effect of all their policies: creating a pool of cheap, desperate workers who will take any job, at any pay, and put up with all sorts of horrific abuses. I call them 'cheap labor conservatives.' Even the recent economic downturn, which they created, benefits them by making workers desperate. Desperate workers do not organize and demand fair compensation, and they don't complain about workplace abuse and safety issues.
The rich have not worked harder, they have worked less, with more leisure time and less actual risk. You see, we have socialism for the rich now. As the rich have been engaged in constant class warfare against the rest of us, I say turnabout is fair play. If you don't believe me, side with the rich and see if they will let you play any reindeer games. I don't think they let people like us into their club, though.
He did, but he realized that the effort of 'chasing' enlightenment lead to a hierarchy of those who had 'achieved' certain mental states. He rejected the idea that it took a special kind of person, or special effort, to achieve a non-dualistic mental state.
Yes, finding proper controls for religious experiments can be tough. "Okay, now you. Stop believing in God. How do you feel?"
If they don't enact the policies that will benefit us, we have the power to change that. You claim 'they' play class warfare games to distract us, then say they actually engage in class warfare against us. Well, if they do, it's our fault, and seeing as how this is a democracy, we can do something about it.
I can prove it, the increase in GDP over the last thirty years has gone almost entirely to the top quintile, and they did not create that great increase in wealth, we all did.
You presume that the bottom fifty percent are the same sorts of leaches that, in general, the top 1% are. But look at socialist democracies in Europe, they are happy to pay the taxes they do because they feel they get a good value.
But they are quite culturally homogeneous, compared to us. We certainly never seem to mind when our social safety nets help us, or people like us. We just don't want the wrong sort of people taking advantage of us, You know. Them. So the elite here have taken advantage of our cultural divisions here to keep the working class fighting amongst itself. Racism works to the advantaged of the elite, and now that Europe has liberalized immigration you are starting to see more of it over there.
But it is really the elite taking advantage of us and our system, the owning class. You know, some founding fathers didn't even want to give non property holders a vote, and I don't think that strain of thought has ever died out. It's not the immigrants or the blacks who are lazy leaches taking advantage of our hard work. It is the people who think that having large sums of money to invest entitles them to being aristocracy and making all the rules. And of course the extreme hardship of having the responsibility for making all the rules entitles them to live a life of pampered luxury which they can pass on to their children, who will also naturally make all the rules because they have all the money.
What slander? Have you seen the racist signs up all over every single Tea Party rally? The picture of Obama the African Witch Doctor? The Tea Party condones obvious racism, it's not just a few whackos, it's at every single tea party rally. Are you just blind?
It's telling that you equate your selfish advantage with the health of the country.
Executives do that now. Do you think Carly Fiorina is an aberration? It's all a huge game, and she just got unlucky. You can't yet be a woman and unlucky, and still win, just ask Martha Stewert. But you can be a man and unlucky and still win, you know, if you're the right class of man. Just ask George W. Bush. Now, if Carly turns her 'unlucky' personal fortune into a political win, we'll know another glass ceiling has been shattered. Hoorah.
I suggest you start your research at wikipedia, they have a lot of good references in the article on income inequality. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States
And don't even try me with the "it's wikipedia and boo hoo it says something I don't like therefore it must be made up" line of crap, check out the references and the discussion pages.
I'm not defending politicians. I'm defending the idea of collective action. If politicians aren't helping us create the society we want, then we need to change things. The reason we have corrupt politicians and a dysfunctional political system is that we have allowed money to dominate politics. This allows the rich to buy laws and policies that benefit them, which gives them more money to buy even better laws for themselves in a vicious circle that leads to, well, the mess we're in now. But it starts with money, and that means class: are you a worker or an owner? Do you make money from your labor or your investments?
I;m saying, if you are currently a worker, your chances of becoming an owner are next to nil, because they have bought laws that disempower you, and they don't like competition and fair markets. When you act collectively, in arguing for civic policies and voting for agents you hope will carry them out, act in the interests of the group you are in now. The rich already are, so they don't need my advice, but if you are a worker, please don't vote for people who promise tax cuts for the rich and spending cuts for the poor, it is not in your best interests.
Looking back on your argument, I just have to point out what I see as a fundamental hypocrisy in your position. Please correct me if I am wrong. You defend the power the strong individual might exercise over a group, but attack the power that a group of weaker individuals might exercise collectively over the strong. The strong individual's power is justified by his strength. The weak should not act against him, as their collective power is unjustified and it is unnatural that the weak should prevail over the strong. Is that essentially your position?
You DO realize that the NBPP is all of three guys, don't you? Of course it is nothing like the Tea Party and I never said it was. Where do you see me comparing the two?
Yeah, I realize this now. Bad analogy. Commercial artists have always created tons of work that is never used.
Thinking on this further, I agree that last one is the most accurate. The apples that don't get picked are still as salable as they ever were, no one is getting something for free. To beat this analogy into a greasy horse shaped patch on the ground, apples were previously only sold in apple boutiques where you bought apples from elite growers and if you wanted different apples, you had to drive to a different boutique. Now the apples are sold in a farmers' market where anyone can set up a stall, even crabapples. You can peruse many different kinds of apples and everyone is putting in a real effort shining themselves up and barking at you about how tasty they are. Naturally, the apples liked being sold in boutiques because it made them feel special, not like some basket weaver selling his wares on the corner.
In my opinion if the apples want a better deal, the apples should form an apple cooperative of their own, enforce some reasonable standards of quality and service, perform some training, marketing and networking services and basically add value and (importantly) distribute that value equitably among the apples, cutting out the middle man apple sellers entirely.
The story I'm referring to is the 'Sherrod and the NAACP are racists who want to punish white people' story that the lying scum Breitbart pushed without fact checking his sources. It's a complete lie, but of course, the dominant culture sees all the privileges they have as being nothing more than their right, and any attempt to level the playing field as 'revenge.' So, these uppity blacks are getting their revenge, because society is now marginally more equitable and marginally less racist.
Uh, the debt is repaid when the leaches have given back all the money they took. Then they can have their bonuses back. But why should bailout money be going directly into the pockets of failed CEOs?
The rich have been taking from the poor for decades now, real income for the bottom 80% of America has been stagnant since the sixties. In the same period, the top 1% has gone from earning 8-9% of the GDP to earning 20% or more. I am advocating that the poor look after their own interests and stop letting the rich take from them.
That is why we have government, to protect the weak from the tyranny of the strong.
No, we were doing that already. If apples are designers, then a better analogy would be that 99designs lets us take a bite out of each apple and buy the one that tastes the best. Pretty sweet for the apple buyers, not so nice for the apples.
AS the 'pay czar' only regulates the pay of leaches who fed from the public trough and bought themselves some socialism for the rich, I don't see the problem. Don't want your pay regulated? Then take your lumps like the free market demands. What you don't get to do is socialize the risks while privatizing the rewards.
I'm being honest about where rights come from: agreements between individuals. I'm not advocating using violence, I'm saying, we don't have to agree to do things the way we do. That 'private transaction?' Is it really private? Says who? Two parties arguing over the price of a slave would tell an abolitionist that the transaction is none of their business, and society used to agree with the slavers. Now, thanks to people expressing their opinion, we do not consider that transaction a private matter anymore. I imagine that some transactions we presently see as private will, in the future, be seen as impacting others outside the transaction, and thus not private. CEO pay may well become one of those things that, like slavery, we don't consider a private matter.
You may not believe me, but freedom is my goal. You see, money is power, and someone with money can limit the freedom of someone without. I don't want to end the wealth disparity do much as I want to end the power disparity, which I see as limiting freedom. You probably see the power disparity as a natural consequence of freedom, but 'freedom' is a slippery word that way. Do I have the freedom to swing my fist wherever I like, or do you have the freedom not to get hit in the face? How about pollution? Do I have the right to buy garbage and bury it on my land, or do the externalities involved make that your business, too?
More like democracy. I'm talking about publicly traded companies creating more value for the owners (stockholders) by crowdsourcing business decisions. Crowdsourcing the CEO function is a decision that would have to be made by the board of directors.