Your result: We are overrun by the (non-existent, but that's by the by) superpower Muslim bogeyman.
Your conclusion: Existing military strategies are necessary.
Possible alternative: Limited military for the purposes of national defence combined with strong diplomacy and multilateral arms limitation treaties. Abandonment of defence research and production with the purpose of supporting oppression and endless war.
No. I don't want to put words in people's mouths, but there are many possible arguments, such as Darwinian "it's animal nature to want to dominate" - with individual, regional or racist bases; or "white man's burden" style reasoning which dominated British Empire. But these are just scantily outlined first thoughts. I'm looking for a sound thread of reasoning adequate for someone who has actually decided to spend his life working somewhere like that.
There has been some "it's either me or them", but it wasn't really upheld by any evidence: most countries don't have access to Raytheon-style tech yet their borders aren't endlessly invaded and their people slaughtered. Indeed, some nations seem to prefer to keep a smaller military and are happy to push instead for diplomacy managed with limited centralisation of power. The EU was borne of this philosophy, as indeed was the US - though the US combined this with a degree of isolationism which it has monumentally abandoned over the last century.
It's not causing me sleepless nights that I have decided to work at Raytheon (or similar) because I don't work at Raytheon (or similar).
You and a few ACs have come out with the "it's fun and I just don't care if a bunch of strangers are horribly oppressed and/or killed" answer and it's the most credible so far. But I'd appreciate an attempt to explain what's brought you to thinking like this. You weren't just born with that attitude. It developed somehow. Can you ask yourself how it developed? I am interested.
Are you just going by the Slashdot article summary, or are you actually aware of what Raytheon builds? No-one who applied to work at Raytheon assuming that they build peacemaking equipment to reduce the suffering of war would be given a job - it'd be a classic case of showing a lack of interest in your employer at interview.
Are you aware of who Raytheon contracts to and for what purposes their clients buy those tools, or are you assuming that all its clients fight wars for defensive purposes and with the aim to create a minimum of suffering?
Raytheon isn't staffed by idiots, and, "well, they don't really know what's going on," isn't an answer. Because they know what's going on, I want to understand how they justify their employment. Everyone so far has come out with one of the extremes:
"because I don't care and just want a fun job/money" (credible, if somewhat pathetic); or
"because without firms like Raytheon my daughter would be raped in the streets by the enemy" (nonsense).
This answer is inadequate, and can be used to justify the production of weaponry for any regime from Ancient Greek Democracy to Hitler's Nazism. "Well, look at what has happened in the past - we must be strong or we'll be crushed!" is the mantra of every abusive government.
You can pretend that what your government actually does with the weaponry is not my department, but you're bright enough to see your link in the causal chain of events. So unless you're exercising wilful intellectual dishonesty your brain has at some point justified the ends. What I want to understand is: what is the moral framework which has enabled you to justify the ends? And what was the argument leading to your conclusion?
FWIW, my personal experience working with specific ex-Raython people is that they were simply racist, believing in the supreme importance of their culture (not even a white man's burden) and domination by the Anglo-Saxon "indigenous" of their nation. But it surely doesn't come down to that for all weapons contractor employees.
You sound like one of those parents that have to beg children to behave.
Why get personal? Did it hit a raw nerve because I advocate reasoning rather than authoritarianism?:-)
Children don't have developed reasoning
Oh, children are very receptive to reasoning, and it can be formalised quite early if you're willing. Modern state education won't give you that, but the brain is there for training.
and thus can't always be convinced.
Unlike the average 40 year old, the perfect model of reason.
Telling your child "No" to McDonald's with an explanation that too much can make you fat should be enough.
You're insulting your child.
Most children can continuosly reply with "but why?" regardless of what you say. You can't convince that.
Most adults have given up on asking "but why?" to everything, instead developing a series of unquestioned assumptions and prejudices. It's a shame.
All you need to avoid is getting involved in a loop. You don't need to skip your responsibility to reason.
1. The brain is a biological organ like any other, able to be manipulated and programmed - "personal responsibility" is a philosophical fiction with a certain limited degree of practical application (e.g. to legal principles) but which cannot be applied to a scientific analysis of animal behaviour;
2. Few/.ers may be in kids' advertising, but it works and it works and then it works some more - if you think there is no problem with encouraging bad behaviour "because no-one's forcing you to do it" then you ought to question your premises;
3. In particular, if you think anyone should be able to make a buck as long as they're not putting a gun to your head, your position is one of self-interest and your opinion is motivated by creating a world full of people fucking each other over;
4. "Parents need to acquiesce less to kids' demands" and "McDonalds should stop pounding kids with advertising to help them get fat" are not mutually exclusive. If you wonder why everyone's eating out and getting fat, perhaps you should cut through the screen of political correctness and check out how families were generally arranged 30 years ago - who isn't at home now to make the meals?
You are completely wrong. The sooner a child learnts to accept "no" for an answer without whining, the sooner he becomes a malleable, passive tool and occasional useful idiot. A child's job is to whine - to learn and to question - and it's your job to provide a convincing argument to him. He can't force you to do anything, so it's not the end of the world. And if you didn't expect your child to keep you up all night while he questioned everything, you may wish to reconsider your parenting!
Meanwhile, it's the adults who whine and don't accept "no" for an answer who actually go on to achieve interesting things, both for themselves and for the world around them. Channel his dissatisfaction.
I'm not quite sure why the distance people hold printed reading material should equal the distance at which people use their iPhones. For example, it's clear that I (and others around me) hold a 'phone closer than a newspaper, probably because:
(1) I'm interacting with it; (2) Light's reflecting off it in a different way; (3) Everything's squeezed up together, so we want the screen to take up more of our field of vision.
1. We had 310dpi mobile screens 2 years ago, so I'm not sure what's groundbreaking here. Hell, even some of the cheaper stuff went to 280dpi.
2. The argument was that you have to hold the 'phone pretty fucking far from your face for it to be impossible for your eyes to perceive pixelisation. This hasn't been disproven.
3. What's your point with the pixel shapes? If you're saying that we have better resolution left/right than up/down, then you do realise the phone is designed to rotate, yes?
4. Pixel size isn't everything. It needs to not bleed and not distort. And even Macrumors is posting bitches about the yellowing (what is it with Apple and yellowing?). Until then, it's not "retina" quality (if it even were) in anything but single issue marketing sense.
Oh, yes, a leader should aim to be loved as well as feared, but it is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with. As long as he avoids hatred.
Joining a union is not, in practice, voluntary. That's the problem with many of your arguments.
You're equivocating. You may not be able to get a particular job without joining a union because other employees refuse to work with you unless you join. That's "not voluntary" in the sense that you can't have everything you want in the world on your terms, and that joining a union is a precondition of having that job; it's not "not voluntary" in the sense that you're forced to take that job and/or join a union.
and have the shop become union against your personal wishes, and be forced to either leave or join.
No-one's forcing you to work there and you don't own the other employees. If you refuse to cooperate with other workers on matters of improving worker conditions, why would those workers support you, and why would the employer risk falling out with all other employees just to accommodate you? Thanks for the memories - the door's that way.
That doesn't fly for providers of essential services.
Yes, it does. No man can sell himself into slavery, and no need you have is so "essential" that he should have to forfeit his freedom for your enjoyment.
Well, it's often the benefits of retired workers as much as the active workers
Retired or active, it's their money. The state already agreed to release it to them on an arranged schedule.
Cali was paying all of its other bills with IOUs, so its only cost was employee compensation
If I pay for something for my business on credit, it's still a cost.
If the Cali government bought somehting from you, you'd be paid with an IOU,
If you're not happy to accept an IOU as payment, don't sell to the government. If you're still giving stuff to a government which has no money to pay you, you will probably receive precisely the amount of compensation you deserve.
Cali is being forced into these measures because of its inability to cut compensation costs
So let me get this right: some union thugs put guns to the CA legislators' heads and demanded more money for existing employees and a host of pointless new government departments to be filled with new unnecessary employees? So the legislators were forced to declare non-existent budget allocation lest they be killed?
Or did the voters elect representatives to promote government programmes and purchasing which the government could not afford? And now unions are being blamed because they're the only ones with the balls to stand up and make sure their members receive what they are owed?
We have this unreasonable situation in many states where the people aren't willing to pay any more taxes, implicitly voting for reduce services, but the government can't cut costs because the only costs left to cut are union wages.
You're not in a Democracy. You're in a Democratic Republic. You can't vote for money which is owed to some man to be arbitrarily stolen from that man. You also can't vote people into slavery. Because of these two things, if you decide not to pay any more taxes then what you describe will inevitably happen. You've got exactly what you asked for.
Nope, you can't do that, those "management" employees and "unnecessary" departments? Fully unionized.
You appear to be painting the picture that every CA government employee will stop working if one employee is laid off. If this comprises the agreement your representatives made with their workers, your voters are uncommonly dumb and it is right and proper that CA should suffer bankruptcy. Got any evidence?
And I don't know where you get the "envy" thing: if I wanted a government job, I'd get one. Not my style.
Because you've clearly identified by now that the problem is incompetent voters selectin
Yeah, it's called diplomacy. Kissinger wrote a good book on it. Your aim is not to make the world fair for everyone but to make it best for yourself. Learn to politic.
Admittedly, it's a little OCD, but when you add it up, you get to about $1200 per year. I do consider that to be real money, and I find it to be worth a bit of neurotic behavior.
No, no, it's cool. I'd certainly not advocate a credit card for cases when a calculated assessment allows you to conclude that another payment method's going to be cheaper without significant risk.
For example, many recurring bills here are cheapest by Direct Debit (authorisation to company to take out varying amounts at well-defined intervals from your bank account with notice, cancellable at any time without involvement from that company). Providing you're aware of how the scheme works and your rights under it, and the company is at least moderately reputable, I'd forego the benefits of CC for the 5%+ discounts this typically provides.
But CCs aren't a road to perdition providing they're chosen wisely and employed where appropriate. People tend to get in debt with them then blame the CC provider. Now the CC provider is invariably a(n) usurious bastard to be trusted as far as you can kick it, but if you play the game and acknowledge some responsibility, you will be no less fine than with any other typical small financial risk. Then you will gain all the benefits, particularly in Europe.
(As an aside, this includes protection when buying from America with a UK card. For example, some firm charged a not insignificant amount to deploy a dedicated server for me a few years ago. Among other things, it promised a certain availability of support staff. When this availability turned out to be less than advertising and small print specified, they offered to cancel the service but wouldn't entirely refund the money I'd paid in return for agreeing to the small print. A few e-mails to my CC provider over a couple of conversations documenting all my contacts with the firm and providing copies of terms as provided, and I was within a week refunded the full amount. The CC provider is as liable as the retailer for service provision, and had it not refunded, I would have taken it to Court - but it wouldn't have refused any way, since it clearly saw an admission that service was not provided, simply clawing the money back from the merchant.)
Non-union auto workers are better paid than union auto workers, and yet union auto workers cost their employers a lot more
Let's take the logic of your argument:
(1) There is an exception to the trend which somehow invalidates the trend;
(2) With this exception, there exists a union which results in worse conditions for workers and worse conditions for employers. Yet workers still collectively choose to be part of the union. Why is that?
Do you really think employee-owned businesses need unions?
Is this a general question, or a question about the government? Because the majority of the government isn't owned by government employees. If the former, well, it depends - it's a matter for the employees to decide.
As long as we dont have a draft, or other corvee, the goernment can't compel you to work for them.
Glad we're agreed on that. Are we also agreed that draft is slavery and completely immoral?
If the government provides low pay and poor working conditions, quality of government services will suffer, and the same voters that are affected by that can decid they want more taxes and better service
The government as an employer can't be compelled by potential employees to pay any particular wage, in particular not a wage in excess of allocated budget. But government employees can collectively tell the government as employer to enjoy no work being done.
We're facing a crises in many states where the state government is bankrupt and simply cannot cut costs, because they can't pay their employees less
So the state's only cost is apparently necessary worker salaries?
- even when that is the will of the voters. That's a bad thing.
If the will of the voters were to hold a gun to Gates' head and demand enough money to fix the deficit, this wouldn't make the will of the voters reasonable or legal in a Democratic Republic. Neither is it acceptable to renege on contracts with individual workers.
You the voter initially accepted a representative who would allow a certain allocation of budget for state workers, and that allocation now belongs to those workers. You're essentially putting the same gun to these workers' heads and telling the same thing you just told Gates.
As for future contracts between government and government employees, that's a matter for negotiation between voters, government, existing employees (who might speak via their union) and future employees.
But, personally, I'd spend time cutting management fat and eliminating unnecessary departments, kick-backed outsourcing and bureaucracy, not campaigning to reduce workers' wages out of envy. That's not going to fix any problem with the mismanagement which caused the problem in the first place, is it, now?
You've shown a great deal of prescience, however, as Scotland is my favorite part of the UK.
Good man. Lovely place. Spoilt by some of its inhabitants, but only some:-).
Aren't ISAs like our (US) Individual Retirement Accounts where you can contribute a little each year and then you get your savings tax-free when you retire? Not sure why you're recommending this.
No. You can deposit up to some maximum each tax year and receive tax-free interest. Terms for withdrawal depend on provider, with "whenever you want" being one option.
I do not miss this. I get 2% cash back for most purchases. 3% cash back in restaurants, and 5% cash back at gas stations and grocery stores.
If you charge $1000, you could maybe earn a whole dollar - taxes! WOOT W00T!!!!111
Even if your simplifications were accurate, I'm not sure what your problem is with getting $12/year for doing something which also makes life easier. Now:
If your family's outgoings are only around $1000/month, you're atypically Scottish. This likely contradicts the implied assumption that $12/year means nothing to you (but if it really does, would you like my Paypal address so you can set up a regular payment to me?);
But if you're dealing in small amounts and we're still considering risk free money storage, have you considered (your local equivalent of) a cash Individual Savings Account? Tax-free, and interest rates over 2.5%;
Interest rates vary and are currently very low. I know the bank is now whispering in your ear, "Stop saving - there's no point - start getting into debt!" but I'd recommend sticking to good habits.
What is more, you potentially miss out on cashback, i.e. proportion of the discount charged to the retailer channeled into your pocket.
Like what? You have statutory protection against billing errors, but purchase protection? There's a little, but it doesn't amount to much, and there are requirements you have to meet to even qualify.
In the UK, the card issuing bank is jointly liable (Consumer Credit Act) with the retailer for any purchases costing between £100 and £30,000. The card issuer usually protects purchases below £100 too. Any argument with a retailer becomes a matter of sending paperwork to your card issuer showing that the retailer broke terms; you then get your money back and the retailer is told to kindly fuck off, has his money channeled back to you, then (usually) has a penalty applied. If the retailer goes bankrupt, the card issuer simply refunds you.
In addition, many card issuers offer extended warranties and travel insurance on goods/tickets paid for with the card. Maybe you haven't shopped around enough.
"Web app" referred to HTML+Javascript, not an ActiveX control. ActiveX is essentially a method for throwing a native Windows app into a browser window, and Slashdotters hate it because in a corporate environment it just gets the job done. And why just get the job done when you can push new, bloated tech for its own sake?
Straight information (a web of hypertext) can be presented with the limited CSS support of IE6. But the pointless marketing department demands to make the page look pixel perfect (I don't want a bloody sales brochure, I want content) will fail. As will attempts to build a modern app UI using HTML+Javascript.
Really? My statement date for my Visa+Mastercard account, for example, is 15th of the month. So, if I buy something on 15th, I get until the statement on the following 15th plus 25 days. 56 days.
And the interest starts accruing from the purchase date, not the end of the grace period.
If your card isn't fully paid off every month, yes.
Avoid credit cards if possible, as all their benefits are wiped out if you slip up once.
If I don't remember - which I do - then my calendaring software reminds me. And, as a last resort, I have a Direct Debit set up to automatically pay the minimum amount - this is managd by the same bank which issues my card. I could make it the whole payment amount, but because I have a secondary card holder the funds come from multiple places.
But yes, if you are terribly disorganised, you might want to get a credit card anyway while your salary+credit's good, then just not use it until you've learnt to organise your life better.
Excepting where you wish to remain anonymous - then cash wins, as always.
I don't know about you, but I find it much easier to develop a cross-platform, high-level ("time to market"), integrated (SWT), and well-engineered (to handle "scope creep") client in Java than Javascript.
But I find it even easier to well separate the business and presentation aspects of my client (N.B. netizens: the client isn't only a place for rendering the Pretty) and write UIs using the native toolkit for the 2 or 3 environments I expect clients to use.
The whim of the PHB is a killer, but proofs-of-concept go a long way to demonstrate that you're an idiot to base your architectural decisions on the most awkward 2% of your potential clients. (N.B. if they aren't "potential" you cater for their particular devices, but still recognise that they're 2%)
Slashdot Mirror
Is there a moral difference between killing a Jew who is of no threat to you, and killing a Muslim who is of no threat to you?
Your strawman: Remove all defences.
Your result: We are overrun by the (non-existent, but that's by the by) superpower Muslim bogeyman.
Your conclusion: Existing military strategies are necessary.
Possible alternative: Limited military for the purposes of national defence combined with strong diplomacy and multilateral arms limitation treaties. Abandonment of defence research and production with the purpose of supporting oppression and endless war.
No. I don't want to put words in people's mouths, but there are many possible arguments, such as Darwinian "it's animal nature to want to dominate" - with individual, regional or racist bases; or "white man's burden" style reasoning which dominated British Empire. But these are just scantily outlined first thoughts. I'm looking for a sound thread of reasoning adequate for someone who has actually decided to spend his life working somewhere like that.
There has been some "it's either me or them", but it wasn't really upheld by any evidence: most countries don't have access to Raytheon-style tech yet their borders aren't endlessly invaded and their people slaughtered. Indeed, some nations seem to prefer to keep a smaller military and are happy to push instead for diplomacy managed with limited centralisation of power. The EU was borne of this philosophy, as indeed was the US - though the US combined this with a degree of isolationism which it has monumentally abandoned over the last century.
It's not causing me sleepless nights that I have decided to work at Raytheon (or similar) because I don't work at Raytheon (or similar).
You and a few ACs have come out with the "it's fun and I just don't care if a bunch of strangers are horribly oppressed and/or killed" answer and it's the most credible so far. But I'd appreciate an attempt to explain what's brought you to thinking like this. You weren't just born with that attitude. It developed somehow. Can you ask yourself how it developed? I am interested.
Are you just going by the Slashdot article summary, or are you actually aware of what Raytheon builds? No-one who applied to work at Raytheon assuming that they build peacemaking equipment to reduce the suffering of war would be given a job - it'd be a classic case of showing a lack of interest in your employer at interview.
Are you aware of who Raytheon contracts to and for what purposes their clients buy those tools, or are you assuming that all its clients fight wars for defensive purposes and with the aim to create a minimum of suffering?
Raytheon isn't staffed by idiots, and, "well, they don't really know what's going on," isn't an answer. Because they know what's going on, I want to understand how they justify their employment. Everyone so far has come out with one of the extremes:
Is that all?
This answer is inadequate, and can be used to justify the production of weaponry for any regime from Ancient Greek Democracy to Hitler's Nazism. "Well, look at what has happened in the past - we must be strong or we'll be crushed!" is the mantra of every abusive government.
You can pretend that what your government actually does with the weaponry is not my department, but you're bright enough to see your link in the causal chain of events. So unless you're exercising wilful intellectual dishonesty your brain has at some point justified the ends. What I want to understand is: what is the moral framework which has enabled you to justify the ends? And what was the argument leading to your conclusion?
FWIW, my personal experience working with specific ex-Raython people is that they were simply racist, believing in the supreme importance of their culture (not even a white man's burden) and domination by the Anglo-Saxon "indigenous" of their nation. But it surely doesn't come down to that for all weapons contractor employees.
What sequence of moral thoughts goes through their heads?
I'm interested.
("To turns swords into ploughshares" is cynical nonsense, of course - why really? Is it just the money?)
You sound like one of those parents that have to beg children to behave.
Why get personal? Did it hit a raw nerve because I advocate reasoning rather than authoritarianism? :-)
Children don't have developed reasoning
Oh, children are very receptive to reasoning, and it can be formalised quite early if you're willing. Modern state education won't give you that, but the brain is there for training.
and thus can't always be convinced.
Unlike the average 40 year old, the perfect model of reason.
Telling your child "No" to McDonald's with an explanation that too much can make you fat should be enough.
You're insulting your child.
Most children can continuosly reply with "but why?" regardless of what you say. You can't convince that.
Most adults have given up on asking "but why?" to everything, instead developing a series of unquestioned assumptions and prejudices. It's a shame.
All you need to avoid is getting involved in a loop. You don't need to skip your responsibility to reason.
1. The brain is a biological organ like any other, able to be manipulated and programmed - "personal responsibility" is a philosophical fiction with a certain limited degree of practical application (e.g. to legal principles) but which cannot be applied to a scientific analysis of animal behaviour;
2. Few /.ers may be in kids' advertising, but it works and it works and then it works some more - if you think there is no problem with encouraging bad behaviour "because no-one's forcing you to do it" then you ought to question your premises;
3. In particular, if you think anyone should be able to make a buck as long as they're not putting a gun to your head, your position is one of self-interest and your opinion is motivated by creating a world full of people fucking each other over;
4. "Parents need to acquiesce less to kids' demands" and "McDonalds should stop pounding kids with advertising to help them get fat" are not mutually exclusive. If you wonder why everyone's eating out and getting fat, perhaps you should cut through the screen of political correctness and check out how families were generally arranged 30 years ago - who isn't at home now to make the meals?
You are completely wrong. The sooner a child learnts to accept "no" for an answer without whining, the sooner he becomes a malleable, passive tool and occasional useful idiot. A child's job is to whine - to learn and to question - and it's your job to provide a convincing argument to him. He can't force you to do anything, so it's not the end of the world. And if you didn't expect your child to keep you up all night while he questioned everything, you may wish to reconsider your parenting!
Meanwhile, it's the adults who whine and don't accept "no" for an answer who actually go on to achieve interesting things, both for themselves and for the world around them. Channel his dissatisfaction.
How did we manage to indicate to emergency services where we were before cellphones with GPS? Did we all die?
I'm not quite sure why the distance people hold printed reading material should equal the distance at which people use their iPhones. For example, it's clear that I (and others around me) hold a 'phone closer than a newspaper, probably because:
(1) I'm interacting with it;
(2) Light's reflecting off it in a different way;
(3) Everything's squeezed up together, so we want the screen to take up more of our field of vision.
1. We had 310dpi mobile screens 2 years ago, so I'm not sure what's groundbreaking here. Hell, even some of the cheaper stuff went to 280dpi.
2. The argument was that you have to hold the 'phone pretty fucking far from your face for it to be impossible for your eyes to perceive pixelisation. This hasn't been disproven.
3. What's your point with the pixel shapes? If you're saying that we have better resolution left/right than up/down, then you do realise the phone is designed to rotate, yes?
4. Pixel size isn't everything. It needs to not bleed and not distort. And even Macrumors is posting bitches about the yellowing (what is it with Apple and yellowing?). Until then, it's not "retina" quality (if it even were) in anything but single issue marketing sense.
So it worked out tautologically well?
Oh, yes, a leader should aim to be loved as well as feared, but it is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with. As long as he avoids hatred.
Yes, kill everyone who is evil. Then only good people remain. Tell me how that's likely to work out, using historical examples.
Joining a union is not, in practice, voluntary. That's the problem with many of your arguments.
You're equivocating. You may not be able to get a particular job without joining a union because other employees refuse to work with you unless you join. That's "not voluntary" in the sense that you can't have everything you want in the world on your terms, and that joining a union is a precondition of having that job; it's not "not voluntary" in the sense that you're forced to take that job and/or join a union.
and have the shop become union against your personal wishes, and be forced to either leave or join.
No-one's forcing you to work there and you don't own the other employees. If you refuse to cooperate with other workers on matters of improving worker conditions, why would those workers support you, and why would the employer risk falling out with all other employees just to accommodate you? Thanks for the memories - the door's that way.
That doesn't fly for providers of essential services.
Yes, it does. No man can sell himself into slavery, and no need you have is so "essential" that he should have to forfeit his freedom for your enjoyment.
Well, it's often the benefits of retired workers as much as the active workers
Retired or active, it's their money. The state already agreed to release it to them on an arranged schedule.
Cali was paying all of its other bills with IOUs, so its only cost was employee compensation
If I pay for something for my business on credit, it's still a cost.
If the Cali government bought somehting from you, you'd be paid with an IOU,
If you're not happy to accept an IOU as payment, don't sell to the government. If you're still giving stuff to a government which has no money to pay you, you will probably receive precisely the amount of compensation you deserve.
Cali is being forced into these measures because of its inability to cut compensation costs
So let me get this right: some union thugs put guns to the CA legislators' heads and demanded more money for existing employees and a host of pointless new government departments to be filled with new unnecessary employees? So the legislators were forced to declare non-existent budget allocation lest they be killed?
Or did the voters elect representatives to promote government programmes and purchasing which the government could not afford? And now unions are being blamed because they're the only ones with the balls to stand up and make sure their members receive what they are owed?
We have this unreasonable situation in many states where the people aren't willing to pay any more taxes, implicitly voting for reduce services, but the government can't cut costs because the only costs left to cut are union wages.
You're not in a Democracy. You're in a Democratic Republic. You can't vote for money which is owed to some man to be arbitrarily stolen from that man. You also can't vote people into slavery. Because of these two things, if you decide not to pay any more taxes then what you describe will inevitably happen. You've got exactly what you asked for.
Nope, you can't do that, those "management" employees and "unnecessary" departments? Fully unionized.
You appear to be painting the picture that every CA government employee will stop working if one employee is laid off. If this comprises the agreement your representatives made with their workers, your voters are uncommonly dumb and it is right and proper that CA should suffer bankruptcy. Got any evidence?
And I don't know where you get the "envy" thing: if I wanted a government job, I'd get one. Not my style.
Because you've clearly identified by now that the problem is incompetent voters selectin
Yeah, it's called diplomacy. Kissinger wrote a good book on it. Your aim is not to make the world fair for everyone but to make it best for yourself. Learn to politic.
Admittedly, it's a little OCD, but when you add it up, you get to about $1200 per year. I do consider that to be real money, and I find it to be worth a bit of neurotic behavior.
No, no, it's cool. I'd certainly not advocate a credit card for cases when a calculated assessment allows you to conclude that another payment method's going to be cheaper without significant risk.
For example, many recurring bills here are cheapest by Direct Debit (authorisation to company to take out varying amounts at well-defined intervals from your bank account with notice, cancellable at any time without involvement from that company). Providing you're aware of how the scheme works and your rights under it, and the company is at least moderately reputable, I'd forego the benefits of CC for the 5%+ discounts this typically provides.
But CCs aren't a road to perdition providing they're chosen wisely and employed where appropriate. People tend to get in debt with them then blame the CC provider. Now the CC provider is invariably a(n) usurious bastard to be trusted as far as you can kick it, but if you play the game and acknowledge some responsibility, you will be no less fine than with any other typical small financial risk. Then you will gain all the benefits, particularly in Europe.
(As an aside, this includes protection when buying from America with a UK card. For example, some firm charged a not insignificant amount to deploy a dedicated server for me a few years ago. Among other things, it promised a certain availability of support staff. When this availability turned out to be less than advertising and small print specified, they offered to cancel the service but wouldn't entirely refund the money I'd paid in return for agreeing to the small print. A few e-mails to my CC provider over a couple of conversations documenting all my contacts with the firm and providing copies of terms as provided, and I was within a week refunded the full amount. The CC provider is as liable as the retailer for service provision, and had it not refunded, I would have taken it to Court - but it wouldn't have refused any way, since it clearly saw an admission that service was not provided, simply clawing the money back from the merchant.)
Non-union auto workers are better paid than union auto workers, and yet union auto workers cost their employers a lot more
Let's take the logic of your argument:
(1) There is an exception to the trend which somehow invalidates the trend;
(2) With this exception, there exists a union which results in worse conditions for workers and worse conditions for employers. Yet workers still collectively choose to be part of the union. Why is that?
Do you really think employee-owned businesses need unions?
Is this a general question, or a question about the government? Because the majority of the government isn't owned by government employees. If the former, well, it depends - it's a matter for the employees to decide.
As long as we dont have a draft, or other corvee, the goernment can't compel you to work for them.
Glad we're agreed on that. Are we also agreed that draft is slavery and completely immoral?
If the government provides low pay and poor working conditions, quality of government services will suffer, and the same voters that are affected by that can decid they want more taxes and better service
The government as an employer can't be compelled by potential employees to pay any particular wage, in particular not a wage in excess of allocated budget. But government employees can collectively tell the government as employer to enjoy no work being done.
We're facing a crises in many states where the state government is bankrupt and simply cannot cut costs, because they can't pay their employees less
So the state's only cost is apparently necessary worker salaries?
- even when that is the will of the voters. That's a bad thing.
If the will of the voters were to hold a gun to Gates' head and demand enough money to fix the deficit, this wouldn't make the will of the voters reasonable or legal in a Democratic Republic. Neither is it acceptable to renege on contracts with individual workers.
You the voter initially accepted a representative who would allow a certain allocation of budget for state workers, and that allocation now belongs to those workers. You're essentially putting the same gun to these workers' heads and telling the same thing you just told Gates.
As for future contracts between government and government employees, that's a matter for negotiation between voters, government, existing employees (who might speak via their union) and future employees.
But, personally, I'd spend time cutting management fat and eliminating unnecessary departments, kick-backed outsourcing and bureaucracy, not campaigning to reduce workers' wages out of envy. That's not going to fix any problem with the mismanagement which caused the problem in the first place, is it, now?
You've shown a great deal of prescience, however, as Scotland is my favorite part of the UK.
Good man. Lovely place. Spoilt by some of its inhabitants, but only some :-).
Aren't ISAs like our (US) Individual Retirement Accounts where you can contribute a little each year and then you get your savings tax-free when you retire? Not sure why you're recommending this.
No. You can deposit up to some maximum each tax year and receive tax-free interest. Terms for withdrawal depend on provider, with "whenever you want" being one option.
I do not miss this. I get 2% cash back for most purchases. 3% cash back in restaurants, and 5% cash back at gas stations and grocery stores.
What scheme could possibly be so general?
If you charge $1000, you could maybe earn a whole dollar - taxes! WOOT W00T!!!!111
Even if your simplifications were accurate, I'm not sure what your problem is with getting $12/year for doing something which also makes life easier. Now:
What is more, you potentially miss out on cashback, i.e. proportion of the discount charged to the retailer channeled into your pocket.
Like what? You have statutory protection against billing errors, but purchase protection? There's a little, but it doesn't amount to much, and there are requirements you have to meet to even qualify.
In the UK, the card issuing bank is jointly liable (Consumer Credit Act) with the retailer for any purchases costing between £100 and £30,000. The card issuer usually protects purchases below £100 too. Any argument with a retailer becomes a matter of sending paperwork to your card issuer showing that the retailer broke terms; you then get your money back and the retailer is told to kindly fuck off, has his money channeled back to you, then (usually) has a penalty applied. If the retailer goes bankrupt, the card issuer simply refunds you.
In addition, many card issuers offer extended warranties and travel insurance on goods/tickets paid for with the card. Maybe you haven't shopped around enough.
"Web app" referred to HTML+Javascript, not an ActiveX control. ActiveX is essentially a method for throwing a native Windows app into a browser window, and Slashdotters hate it because in a corporate environment it just gets the job done. And why just get the job done when you can push new, bloated tech for its own sake?
Straight information (a web of hypertext) can be presented with the limited CSS support of IE6. But the pointless marketing department demands to make the page look pixel perfect (I don't want a bloody sales brochure, I want content) will fail. As will attempts to build a modern app UI using HTML+Javascript.
Most cards' grace period is now only 25 days.
Really? My statement date for my Visa+Mastercard account, for example, is 15th of the month. So, if I buy something on 15th, I get until the statement on the following 15th plus 25 days. 56 days.
And the interest starts accruing from the purchase date, not the end of the grace period.
If your card isn't fully paid off every month, yes.
Avoid credit cards if possible, as all their benefits are wiped out if you slip up once.
If I don't remember - which I do - then my calendaring software reminds me. And, as a last resort, I have a Direct Debit set up to automatically pay the minimum amount - this is managd by the same bank which issues my card. I could make it the whole payment amount, but because I have a secondary card holder the funds come from multiple places.
But yes, if you are terribly disorganised, you might want to get a credit card anyway while your salary+credit's good, then just not use it until you've learnt to organise your life better.
Excepting where you wish to remain anonymous - then cash wins, as always.
I don't know about you, but I find it much easier to develop a cross-platform, high-level ("time to market"), integrated (SWT), and well-engineered (to handle "scope creep") client in Java than Javascript.
But I find it even easier to well separate the business and presentation aspects of my client (N.B. netizens: the client isn't only a place for rendering the Pretty) and write UIs using the native toolkit for the 2 or 3 environments I expect clients to use.
The whim of the PHB is a killer, but proofs-of-concept go a long way to demonstrate that you're an idiot to base your architectural decisions on the most awkward 2% of your potential clients. (N.B. if they aren't "potential" you cater for their particular devices, but still recognise that they're 2%)