Services like Amazon could just have a personal preferences for users that allows them to selectively exclude either gay content or content from gay authors. Problem solved.
That's super. You're dad sounds amazing and I hope he's ok now. I've have both my mother and mother in law battle cancer and live through it, but neither was out there jogging at its worst.
It reminds me of the talk about protecting 'American' jobs, all the anti-visa and anti-immigration groups calling for protectionism of American worker
My question is this, if you do not feel any sort of loyalty to the fellow citizens of your country, why the heck should they feel any loyalty to you? Seriously, like, if you are that detached from the USA, why have a government at all, and why even bother to accept that you have some sort of rights to your property.
but the reality is that it's economically inefficient. I think you'd be surprised by the aggregate effect of this on the economy if everyone were to do it.
Economists have us bailing out our banks, again, to the tune of how many trillions? Whatever they say is efficient, I think, we should be tempted to do the opposite.
I guess that depends on what you mean by "Buy American."
Buying products that are made/grown in closer proximity to you has many advantages
Well, I agree with buying local anywhere in the world is the best way to go. I think the nation state is a good as boundary as any but I can see smaller nations wanting to buddy up.
What is wrong with wanting to improve the economic situation in the neighborhood/town/city/state/country where you live?
Agreed. It's like, people think, hey, nothing will happen when they buy a bunch of Chinese stuff and half the factories close down, and then suddenly wonder why property taxes are going up. In fact, taxes are going up everywhere partially because the stock and real estate booms hid the magnitude of the destruction of the tax base because of free trade.
Actually, its not. Let's compare the USA in the eras before free trade, and after.
Before free trade: 1790-1920. The USA goes from a backward farming nation into an industrial superpower.
After free trade: Wilson begins to introduce free trade measures and even includes some its ideas in the 14 points. Since then, we've had two world wars, 1 million dead, a great depression, and, our level of national debt has increased to 74% of GDP, and our private debt the same.
Before free trade: American middle class could, with one wage earner, support a family, own a house, have a car, and send an average of 4 kids to school.
After free trade: Two American adults can barely afford a home and have to take on massive debt for college.
Before free trade: The USA does not need to have a permanent army.This means much lower taxes.
After free trade: The USA has a huge standing army which it deploys to ensure access to foreign markets.
Before free trade: Taxes could be lower because you didn't have to have all the price supports to cities, because cities could support themselves.
After free trade: nearly everyone in the USA receives some form of federal welfare, either in the form of loan guarantees, public benefits, etc. Essentially the country exists so that a few rich people make out like bandits gutting the rest of the country, and then have to pay a few more taxes so the rest of people don't rise up and lynch them.
Additionally, there is a strong ethical argument against protectionism. "Buy American" is essentially a racist statement.
It's not racism to favor your own country first. Are the citizens of Japan to be remembered for their courage as they landed at Okinawa. Or, do we cheer on the Chinese for when they crossed the 38th parallel. Oh wait, they were on the other side!
What right does the foreign citizen have? Does he take an oath of loyalty, support our schools, believe in our customs? Nope. All I know is that I'm pretty fucking tired of seeing all these pro-usa flag waving conservatives, paired up all these flag waving save the worker liberals, all driving japanese cars. Those people make me sick.
You're implying that the value of an American is higher than that of someone from another country by saying that it's better to protect industries in this country to protect the job
It is more valuable. If I buy something in China, my school shuts down because the factory producing the same goods don't pay for it. If I buy something made in the USA, my school stays open. That's funny how that works.
In fact, you could argue that it's not racist to be protectionist, but it might actually be treason to be a free trader.
Protectionist policies are failures - protecting an industry causes higher prices and inferior quality. Competition improves quality and lowers prices
If competition lowers prices, it is because factories seek to exploit the cheapest possible labor world wide, thus, the Americans are on a race to, well, third world wages. Pretty much, you've pissed all of our gold reserves, tossed in about ten trillion in t-bills, god knows how much currency and stock, and shovelled all that over to the mideast so that people on welfare can afford a t-shirt.
Problems of GM should be viewed in light of the failed public policies of the US government. The question is not that GM should have been allowed to go belly up, but, how did GM last so long to begin with, in the face of such governing incompetence on both sides of the aisle.
Front and center is this policy of free trade. The idea of American competition is a total sham. We have been hearing for 50 years that opening our markets to the world would improve our standard of living, and induce the world to do the same, and neither has happened. Instead, the world is more protectionist than ever, makes every excuse to avoid reciprocating imports.
Saying that free trade makes a sick industry better is like telling a chemo patient to take a jog. Friendly competition between industries in different nations is only beneficial if it were friendly. They are not.
Keep in mind that over the last 40 years GM has been paying for the health care of a MILLION of its retirees, and in doing so, basically subsidizes the health care of everyone else in the country.
One could make the argument that until the USA does have some sort of nationalized medicine and protectionist policy, every manufacturing center in the USA will fail.
You (presumably American) may well not realise, this, but as a country of 300 million out of 7 billion, worldwide your cultural views are a small minority.
Yeah, but, when one of those other 7 billion people come to the USA, then, they are radicals if they do not act like Americans.
Which, btw, includes allowing in immigrant groups and letting them gradually assimilate. We did it with the European Jews, the Chinese, the West Indians, the Indians, the Pakistanis, and now others from other Muslim countries.
I think the European model of immigration and assimilation stinks and I prefer the American melting pot model. It makes for a cohesive society. The American model might be harsher in the short term but in the end everyone winds up being happier because they are actually fully engaged in society.
nd the cultural differences between me and most North Americans are huge. This does not make me a radical. It makes me a moderate, centre left Englishman who wants to preserve the traditional culture of his country.
And that, in America would make you a radical. In America you are expected to participate fully in American culture first, and show that you can live by its rules. Then, after that, you can start moving the whole thing your way. But you have to be a good member of the team first, before you can start calling other people's plays.
If there's not capping or charges for bandwidth, then somebody gets rationed. There's a fixed amount of bandwidth available, and you have to decide who gets it. Whether or not that's someone that pays extra to get more or just some random assignment, you still have to decide.
John Lennon sung such a beautiful song it was just such a let down when I found out he was worth approx. 40 million at the time.
Just think. John Lennon decided to become a US Citizen when Richard Nixon was President. Imagine THAT!
Seriously, I think is a bunch of rubbish and no solo work of John's could ever come close to the bass line Paul put down in Silly Love Songs.
But...
if you think Imagine is such a great song that you can quote it and build a religion out of the guy, don't you think that's worth a dollar to you? I mean, if its worth a dollar to you, for the song, pony up. If 40 million other people agreed with you, what's the problem with it? Who cares if John Lennon got 40 million bucks! Did John Lennon do something that was worth a dollar to you? Pony up.
you are as stupid as you are annoying, if people didn't have a god to kill for, they would invent one, like that stupid mother earth ] or bag of crystals you have been worshiping having some stupid thing that if everyone was exactly the same they wouldn't fight just stupid you people are stupid
The thing is, though, even though 98 out of 100 improvements turn out to be flops, those 2 out of 100 seem to have carried humanity from flint tools all the way to nuclear weapons and internet porn. Well, that's some improvement!
(c) Examine the formulation of the pill that somebody else made, and make a copy
That's the thing, is, that, all but the smallest countries actually have sufficient population to manufacture what they need. If anything, adopting protectionist measures encourages the development of automation to cope with labor shortages. The United States, for example, became an industrial power because of protectionist policies in the 19th century. Otherwise, she would have been blown out of the water by the United Kingdom, which was the world manufacturing leader in those days.
I can send you a complete set of JPEG screenshots of KDE, how long will it take you to recreate it all?
How many developers are -really- on KDE? That's the thing. Industrialization and parallel development can occur extremely rapidly in a country. Japan went from a feudal 16th century technology base to an industrial power in barely 50 years. Germany went from a middle european stomping ground for France to exceeding the UK in scarcely a fortnight. South Korea has industrialized extremely rapidly, and best of all, look at how far China has come in the last 30 years. All of those countries, even the USA, in its heyday, got their start by copying and then improving on someone else's inventions. The USA and Germany robbed the British. Japan robbed the USA and now China robs everyone. It's only the silly idea that an idea should entitle one to exclusive rights to resell it that holds countries back.
This is just proof positive that the way forward for the world is to let ideas flow freely across borders, and, as a consequence, let each country make its own goods. The argument that free trade betters humanity is just a lie perpetrated by the various industries and appeasement politicians that benefit from it. All you need is share to ideas.
Canada has been building robotic arms for NASA for quite some time, and they've done their job well. Canada has been a good strategic ally, and there's no reason to switch vendors.
Given the pitiful percentage we pay for a social safety net in the US compared to most other industrialized democracies, it barely qualifies as a Welfare Hood let alone a Welfare State
I would hardly call nearly 1.5 trillion a pitiful percentage. If anything, social programs are ruining the federal budget.
Mandatory Spending, at $1.412 trillion in FY 2006, is over half of the U.S. Federal Budget. The largest mandatory spending programs are Social Security and Medicare, as follows: Social Security - $544 billion Medicare - $325 billion Medicaid - $186 billion All other mandatory programs - $357 billion. These programs include Food Stamps, Unemployment Compensation, Child Nutrition, Child Tax Credits, Supplemental Security for the blind and disabled, Student Loans, and Retirement / Disability programs for Civil Servants, the Coast Guard and the Militar
As I understand it, it was also supposed to be temporary... what happened...
Oh, let's see. On the right, we have a 600 billion dollar a year defense budget, and on the left, we have a welfare state.
We can go back to having no income taxes if we get seriously cut the size of the military, get rid of medicare, all the welfare crap.. and, well, we also have to pay off the national debt.
sounds like a plan to me.
we'd still be stuck with a big payroll tax for social security. really, the only way your state can escape the us welfare crap is to have your state secede.
Nothing about the war in Iraq is beneficial to us. Just because the oil isn't flowing still doesn't mean it wasn't part of the original reason for going in. It's just one more failure on a long list of them.
In the long haul the war in Iraq will prove to be far, far more cost effective than the carbon tax.
Contracts that you talk about are really for staff augmentation. But, if you bring in contractors to execute a project, and actually make something, then the result is rather different. Contractors get particularly paranoid about the quality of work - it has to stand up to more scrutiny than an inhouse team would.
The thing is, permanent employees tend to build up a culture inside a bubble. I have a client that's living in the 1980s, and they have ingrained to taking so many shortcuts that they have utterly forgotten what a good program is. Permanent employees can build up a sense of safety and entitlement and will do enough to move the ball a bit but not ever really score.
Ok on many other points, but, I just cannot even come close to believing this was the motivatio
Of course it wasn't. But I was echoing the talking points of the left. They were convinced, of course, that Halliburton was going to get a 500 billion dollar contract to build a big pipe to take all of the oil out of Iraq and pipe it to Texas.
The posts are comparing Obama to Bush. That's practically the same thing, nowadays.
No they aren't. Obama has rescinded the need to work to get welfare and may well get cap and trade CO2, national healthcare, and probably card check for unions.
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These guys made this deal so that they can get investors and loans to build the thing. It's no risk to PG&E, and now these guys have to execute.
Services like Amazon could just have a personal preferences for users that allows them to selectively exclude either gay content or content from gay authors. Problem solved.
That's super. You're dad sounds amazing and I hope he's ok now. I've have both my mother and mother in law battle cancer and live through it, but neither was out there jogging at its worst.
It reminds me of the talk about protecting 'American' jobs, all the anti-visa and anti-immigration groups calling for protectionism of American worker
My question is this, if you do not feel any sort of loyalty to the fellow citizens of your country, why the heck should they feel any loyalty to you? Seriously, like, if you are that detached from the USA, why have a government at all, and why even bother to accept that you have some sort of rights to your property.
but the reality is that it's economically inefficient. I think you'd be surprised by the aggregate effect of this on the economy if everyone were to do it.
Economists have us bailing out our banks, again, to the tune of how many trillions? Whatever they say is efficient, I think, we should be tempted to do the opposite.
I guess that depends on what you mean by "Buy American."
Buying products that are made/grown in closer proximity to you has many advantages
Well, I agree with buying local anywhere in the world is the best way to go. I think the nation state is a good as boundary as any but I can see smaller nations wanting to buddy up.
What is wrong with wanting to improve the economic situation in the neighborhood/town/city/state/country where you live?
Agreed. It's like, people think, hey, nothing will happen when they buy a bunch of Chinese stuff and half the factories close down, and then suddenly wonder why property taxes are going up. In fact, taxes are going up everywhere partially because the stock and real estate booms hid the magnitude of the destruction of the tax base because of free trade.
We're miles better than before. It's inarguable.
Actually, its not. Let's compare the USA in the eras before free trade, and after.
Before free trade: 1790-1920. The USA goes from a backward farming nation into an industrial superpower.
After free trade: Wilson begins to introduce free trade measures and even includes some its ideas in the 14 points. Since then, we've had two world wars, 1 million dead, a great depression, and, our level of national debt has increased to 74% of GDP, and our private debt the same.
Before free trade: American middle class could, with one wage earner, support a family, own a house, have a car, and send an average of 4 kids to school.
After free trade: Two American adults can barely afford a home and have to take on massive debt for college.
Before free trade: The USA does not need to have a permanent army.This means much lower taxes.
After free trade: The USA has a huge standing army which it deploys to ensure access to foreign markets.
Before free trade: Taxes could be lower because you didn't have to have all the price supports to cities, because cities could support themselves.
After free trade: nearly everyone in the USA receives some form of federal welfare, either in the form of loan guarantees, public benefits, etc. Essentially the country exists so that a few rich people make out like bandits gutting the rest of the country, and then have to pay a few more taxes so the rest of people don't rise up and lynch them.
Additionally, there is a strong ethical argument against protectionism. "Buy American" is essentially a racist statement.
It's not racism to favor your own country first. Are the citizens of Japan to be remembered for their courage as they landed at Okinawa. Or, do we cheer on the Chinese for when they crossed the 38th parallel. Oh wait, they were on the other side!
What right does the foreign citizen have? Does he take an oath of loyalty, support our schools, believe in our customs? Nope. All I know is that I'm pretty fucking tired of seeing all these pro-usa flag waving conservatives, paired up all these flag waving save the worker liberals, all driving japanese cars. Those people make me sick.
You're implying that the value of an American is higher than that of someone from another country by saying that it's better to protect industries in this country to protect the job
It is more valuable. If I buy something in China, my school shuts down because the factory producing the same goods don't pay for it. If I buy something made in the USA, my school stays open. That's funny how that works.
In fact, you could argue that it's not racist to be protectionist, but it might actually be treason to be a free trader.
Protectionist policies are failures - protecting an industry causes higher prices and inferior quality. Competition improves quality and lowers prices
If competition lowers prices, it is because factories seek to exploit the cheapest possible labor world wide, thus, the Americans are on a race to, well, third world wages. Pretty much, you've pissed all of our gold reserves, tossed in about ten trillion in t-bills, god knows how much currency and stock, and shovelled all that over to the mideast so that people on welfare can afford a t-shirt.
Free trade is stupid.
Kinda big for a micro-robot, don't ya think... :-)
I mean, its almost as big as that penny.
Problems of GM should be viewed in light of the failed public policies of the US government. The question is not that GM should have been allowed to go belly up, but, how did GM last so long to begin with, in the face of such governing incompetence on both sides of the aisle.
Front and center is this policy of free trade. The idea of American competition is a total sham. We have been hearing for 50 years that opening our markets to the world would improve our standard of living, and induce the world to do the same, and neither has happened. Instead, the world is more protectionist than ever, makes every excuse to avoid reciprocating imports.
Saying that free trade makes a sick industry better is like telling a chemo patient to take a jog. Friendly competition between industries in different nations is only beneficial if it were friendly. They are not.
Keep in mind that over the last 40 years GM has been paying for the health care of a MILLION of its retirees, and in doing so, basically subsidizes the health care of everyone else in the country.
One could make the argument that until the USA does have some sort of nationalized medicine and protectionist policy, every manufacturing center in the USA will fail.
You (presumably American) may well not realise, this, but as a country of 300 million out of 7 billion, worldwide your cultural views are a small minority.
Yeah, but, when one of those other 7 billion people come to the USA, then, they are radicals if they do not act like Americans.
Which, btw, includes allowing in immigrant groups and letting them gradually assimilate. We did it with the European Jews, the Chinese, the West Indians, the Indians, the Pakistanis, and now others from other Muslim countries.
I think the European model of immigration and assimilation stinks and I prefer the American melting pot model. It makes for a cohesive society. The American model might be harsher in the short term but in the end everyone winds up being happier because they are actually fully engaged in society.
nd the cultural differences between me and most North Americans are huge. This does not make me a radical. It makes me a moderate, centre left Englishman who wants to preserve the traditional culture of his country.
And that, in America would make you a radical. In America you are expected to participate fully in American culture first, and show that you can live by its rules. Then, after that, you can start moving the whole thing your way. But you have to be a good member of the team first, before you can start calling other people's plays.
If there's not capping or charges for bandwidth, then somebody gets rationed. There's a fixed amount of bandwidth available, and you have to decide who gets it. Whether or not that's someone that pays extra to get more or just some random assignment, you still have to decide.
John Lennon sung such a beautiful song it was just such a let down when I found out he was worth approx. 40 million at the time.
Just think. John Lennon decided to become a US Citizen when Richard Nixon was President. Imagine THAT!
Seriously, I think is a bunch of rubbish and no solo work of John's could ever come close to the bass line Paul put down in Silly Love Songs.
But...
if you think Imagine is such a great song that you can quote it and build a religion out of the guy, don't you think that's worth a dollar to you? I mean, if its worth a dollar to you, for the song, pony up. If 40 million other people agreed with you, what's the problem with it? Who cares if John Lennon got 40 million bucks! Did John Lennon do something that was worth a dollar to you? Pony up.
these social groups are mostly not
radical but, from our point of view their views onto the world differ hughly from ours(*)
That would, uh, mean they are radical.
Dear liberals,
you are as stupid as you are annoying,
if people didn't have a god to kill for,
they would invent one,
like that stupid mother earth ]
or bag of crystals you have been worshiping
having some stupid thing that
if everyone was exactly the same
they wouldn't fight
just stupid
you people are stupid
ps. paul was better than john, anyway.
The thing is, though, even though 98 out of 100 improvements turn out to be flops, those 2 out of 100 seem to have carried humanity from flint tools all the way to nuclear weapons and internet porn. Well, that's some improvement!
You forgot option (c)
(c) Examine the formulation of the pill that somebody else made, and make a copy
That's the thing, is, that, all but the smallest countries actually have sufficient population to manufacture what they need. If anything, adopting protectionist measures encourages the development of automation to cope with labor shortages. The United States, for example, became an industrial power because of protectionist policies in the 19th century. Otherwise, she would have been blown out of the water by the United Kingdom, which was the world manufacturing leader in those days.
I can send you a complete set of JPEG screenshots of KDE, how long will it take you to recreate it all?
How many developers are -really- on KDE? That's the thing. Industrialization and parallel development can occur extremely rapidly in a country. Japan went from a feudal 16th century technology base to an industrial power in barely 50 years. Germany went from a middle european stomping ground for France to exceeding the UK in scarcely a fortnight. South Korea has industrialized extremely rapidly, and best of all, look at how far China has come in the last 30 years. All of those countries, even the USA, in its heyday, got their start by copying and then improving on someone else's inventions. The USA and Germany robbed the British. Japan robbed the USA and now China robs everyone. It's only the silly idea that an idea should entitle one to exclusive rights to resell it that holds countries back.
This is just proof positive that the way forward for the world is to let ideas flow freely across borders, and, as a consequence, let each country make its own goods. The argument that free trade betters humanity is just a lie perpetrated by the various industries and appeasement politicians that benefit from it. All you need is share to ideas.
Canada has been building robotic arms for NASA for quite some time, and they've done their job well. Canada has been a good strategic ally, and there's no reason to switch vendors.
Proper attribution. The text from "Mandatory Spending" through the end of the post was taken from an article in Ask.com.
Given the pitiful percentage we pay for a social safety net in the US compared to most other industrialized democracies, it barely qualifies as a Welfare Hood let alone a Welfare State
I would hardly call nearly 1.5 trillion a pitiful percentage. If anything, social programs are ruining the federal budget.
Mandatory Spending, at $1.412 trillion in FY 2006, is over half of the U.S. Federal Budget. The largest mandatory spending programs are Social Security and Medicare, as follows:
Social Security - $544 billion
Medicare - $325 billion
Medicaid - $186 billion
All other mandatory programs - $357 billion. These programs include Food Stamps, Unemployment Compensation, Child Nutrition, Child Tax Credits, Supplemental Security for the blind and disabled, Student Loans, and Retirement / Disability programs for Civil Servants, the Coast Guard and the Militar
As I understand it, it was also supposed to be temporary... what happened...
Oh, let's see. On the right, we have a 600 billion dollar a year defense budget, and on the left, we have a welfare state.
We can go back to having no income taxes if we get seriously cut the size of the military, get rid of medicare, all the welfare crap.. and, well, we also have to pay off the national debt.
sounds like a plan to me.
we'd still be stuck with a big payroll tax for social security. really, the only way your state can escape the us welfare crap is to have your state secede.
Nothing about the war in Iraq is beneficial to us. Just because the oil isn't flowing still doesn't mean it wasn't part of the original reason for going in. It's just one more failure on a long list of them.
In the long haul the war in Iraq will prove to be far, far more cost effective than the carbon tax.
Contracts that you talk about are really for staff augmentation. But, if you bring in contractors to execute a project, and actually make something, then the result is rather different. Contractors get particularly paranoid about the quality of work - it has to stand up to more scrutiny than an inhouse team would.
The thing is, permanent employees tend to build up a culture inside a bubble. I have a client that's living in the 1980s, and they have ingrained to taking so many shortcuts that they have utterly forgotten what a good program is. Permanent employees can build up a sense of safety and entitlement and will do enough to move the ball a bit but not ever really score.
Ok on many other points, but, I just cannot even come close to believing this was the motivatio
Of course it wasn't. But I was echoing the talking points of the left. They were convinced, of course, that Halliburton was going to get a 500 billion dollar contract to build a big pipe to take all of the oil out of Iraq and pipe it to Texas.
The posts are comparing Obama to Bush. That's practically the same thing, nowadays.
No they aren't. Obama has rescinded the need to work to get welfare and may well get cap and trade CO2, national healthcare, and probably card check for unions.
Republicans would not do any of those.