Apple fanbois couldn't stop bashing Google's wifi tracking, meanwhile saying Apple's ethics are superior. I for one can't wait until lawyers get a hold of this. Karmic retribution.
We have to normalize data across the years since you could define the "middle class" as a group of people that make somewhere around the average wage for the US. I have somewhat of a broader definition in that because the wealth distribution has been heavily shifted from something like a logarithm to something like an exponential function over the last 70 years the middle class is being diluted in with everyone else while the wealthy are getting super wealthy. If you factor in the fact that over the last 30 years the cumulative growth in the top 1 percent's salaries are somewhere around 253 percent, and the middle 40 percent hits somewhere around 5 percent we are barely keeping up with inflation. Its on the verge of a middle class squeeze. Factor in perpetually rising bankruptcies and the fact that more often than not its bankruptcy of the not-rich its not to hard to see qualitatively that there is a problem. If you look at the following link you will see that its pretty clear what I mean. http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html . Unless you define the top 10 percent of all Americans the middle class things look pretty bad.
No. Someday I want a self sufficient three bedroom house and I don't like being riddled with debts from school tuition while having to use a credit card or starve. Disparity in wealth causes all sort of problems that will reduce everyone but the super-rich's comfort in the long term. We need to fix it for the long run, not for today.
A homeless person can look at a poor person and think "Hey, they aren't that much richer than I am, I could be that one day". The poor can look at the middle class and think the same thing. The middle class is diminishing. Soon it will be only poor looking at super-rich and they will know they have no chance to get that way. It will end in revolution or collapse. Even though you are right, our poor are better off, the disparity in wealth causes these sort of problems and Id rather not have it in my country.
Yeah. Like I said, we aren't there yet. Don't get me wrong, I like having the opportunity to get rich that capitalism gives us, but I don't like the fact that our version of it makes it so only the lucky and rich can get rich if you know what I mean. Also, I was including money as a form of property.
Private property rights and limited taxes on the rich's income sources also cause poverty because the end results is 1 percent of the people owning everything. Then us peons have to lease it or borrow it and obey their rules on its use. Its no different than leasing from the government, and frankly I think its worse. It hasn't totally happened here yet but its coming if we don't do something about it. True communism would work out just fine if people weren't people, i.e. selfish, and corrupt. Actually, capitalism would work out just fine if the same wasn't true.
This sort of idea actually could be applied to space colonization. Make simply constructed machines that bootstrap the construction of more complex machines that can be built using stuff on the planet you are targeting.
Too bad it would take about a year to get to Titan. The best option would be to find some way to go 10 percent the speed of light like a Fusion rocket engine. Then we could get there in 12 hours (relative to the traveler).
Justice? If you don't want coffee that is too hot don't buy it at McDonalds. Why should the government dictate how how coffee can be? Give me a break. Its not like they were selling time bombs disguised as sandwiches, they were selling something with an expectation its hot. Its still a case of dumb bitch spilled coffee on herself to me. Didn't she get all the penalty money?
Then why did she deserve anything beyond medical bills and a small settlement (like a few thousand)? Either way, if you put coffee there its your own damn fault for spilling it on yourself. She could have put it in a cup holder or drove more carefully. Coffee is hot, you risk burning yourself when you put it between your legs, you knowingly take that risk. You are an idiot if you blame someone else for putting hot things between your legs regardless of how hot they made it. Even espresso from any espresso place would cause significant discomfort and possibly first degree burns if you spilled it on yourself just after purchasing it. I chipped my tooth one time eating a sausage because I accidentally bit the fork. Maybe I should sue the sausage company for not making their sausages transparent so I could see the fork. Their penalty for making opaque sausages should all go to me because I am the only one in the world that has ever ate sausage.
That old lady was a degenerate bitch. The law isn't supposed to protect you from things that only require basic common sense that even a toddler has after they try to touch a hot object. Hot things = hurts. Hurts = be careful.
Interesting. Still, if you abuse an unjust system you are as guilty of the injustice as those who enable it in the first place. A whole generation of us younger folks that have higher educations than preceding generations have to suffer because of this shit. Im just trying to start my life here, I have a MS in a science field, and am working on a PhD. I can't get work. I am actually considering going back to manual labor, which is fine, but a waste of my education and pays shitty in comparison to what I could actually do.
Well, it sucks being stuck in the middle of that. Im not against a society that has poor people and rich people, I am against a society that has 10 percent rich and 90 percent poor. People used to be able to buy homes with savings on a factory job. You can't do that anymore. Living costs including rent alone end up taking most of your paycheck even if you own your own car outright. You must get a mortgage to get a house, and the minute you get laid off because the economy sucks you lose it back to the bank. Its not the average persons fault that the recession hit. Its bankers and wallstreet guys pulling get rich quick schemes and shooting for short term unsustainable gains. Its not fair. The world ain't fair, but no one even tries to make it better.
The problem is the disparity in wealth. All I advocate is a tax system that cycles the wealth from the super rich down to the middle and poor class. Its the only way to keep things balanced and keep the economy working well. Call it enforce philanthropy. Right now the only reason we function is because of debt. That includes our government and its people. Only so much debt can accumulate before the whole system collapses. The key is to properly manage the distribution in wealth. Its getting worse and worse. Last time it was this bad was during 1920 and then a depression hit. I have nothing against a society that has rich people and poor people, I am against a society where 10 percent of the population is rich and 90 percent of them are poor. That is equivalent to a feudal system. Its asking for trouble when it gets that bad.
The rich should pay more. I am the OP. Having a 90 percent income tax on the super-rich acts as a way to keep the disparity in wealth in check. It also funds projects for the benefit of society. The wealthy owe it to society since our society is what enables them to be rich.
The poor are better off today than they were 100 years ago because of the generation of wealth, but the disparity is what matters. Its worse now than 30 years ago when our economy actually functioned and we produced things and the poor and middle class benefited from the wealth creation things were much more fair and balanced. You could say a slave lives better than a cavemen, clearly the slave is benefiting from the wealth in their society. Slavery must be OK. We shouldn't aim the economy at improving their lives since they live better than cavemen, even if the plantation owners live like gods in comparisons.
At one point in the US history the rich paid 90 percent income tax, and still lived lavish lifestyles like gods. It doesn't matter if they pay 50 percent of all income tax. The disparity in wealth is what matters. having 10 percent of the people with 95 percent of the money, OF COURSE they pay all the taxes. You could argue a poor person today lives better than a poor person 100 years ago, so we all are getting richer. But I say to you : A slave lived better than a caveman, clearly they are sharing in the wealth of their society. Slavery is AOK! The DISPARITY in wealth is what matters. If everyone was paid fairly and shared in the wealth creation in this country, the bottom 95 percent would be paying 60-70 percent of the taxes.
Consumption taxes always unfairly hurt the poor. Contrary to the belief of many, wealthy people only consume marginally more than poor people. This is evident by the fact they get rich in the first place. They save money, invest it, etc. They may spend on higher quality goods, but in the end it doesn't make up for the massive salaries they have. Consumption tax would just end up making rich people richer unless you were to give huge refunds to poor people or otherwise subsidize their purchases for essential items. I believe FairTax is about that.
Except exposing infants causes quite a bit more suffering than removing some cells. Abortion is more humane. Unless pro lifers want to fund every single unwanted baby in this country that is born and put their money where there mouth is, abortion must remain legal. I am opposed to second trimester abortions.
People here hate MBA's because its one of the easiest degrees to get in graduate school but also these people end up making big bucks later in life more often than not producing nothing. Also, people hate managers. There are too many good for nothing ones that make a better paycheck than you and they end up getting credit off of your efforts. You end up with MBA's in charge of engineers that went to school the same amount of time with a much harder curriculum than they did. Even a undergrad engineer has a harder time than a MBA student. I know this because I too have a bright friend that went to school at a pretty prestigious school for an MBA. I saw how often he did not have homework and how easy the homework was. Compared to my math curriculum its a joke. No doubt ivy league MBA's are harder than most other MBA's but imagine what your friend could do for the world with a MS in engineering, medicine or science from the same school?
The government produces a lot. Just through military programs alone, we get a trickle down of technology. Also, NASA gave us so many things its unbelievable http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off. WIthout a big government NASA wouldn't exist. Then there is the interstate system, bridges, the post office, etc. The main problem with our government is that its full of self serving rich assholes who have special benefits no ordinary citizen gets and time and time vote against our interests in favor or big corporate fuck bags. Wallstreet and big business is sucking the life out of this country through the revolving door in congress. Fix that problem and we fix the big government = bad problem. The Chinese havent beat us yet, but they are beating us. If you look at growth in scientific output, they are making us look like a joke. Europe and Japan make us look even worse since they themselves make China look like a joke. So we are doing excellent here in 40th place just above South America who is above Africa in scientific output.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple fanbois couldn't stop bashing Google's wifi tracking, meanwhile saying Apple's ethics are superior. I for one can't wait until lawyers get a hold of this. Karmic retribution.
Why not just throw it in a small incinerator?
We have to normalize data across the years since you could define the "middle class" as a group of people that make somewhere around the average wage for the US. I have somewhat of a broader definition in that because the wealth distribution has been heavily shifted from something like a logarithm to something like an exponential function over the last 70 years the middle class is being diluted in with everyone else while the wealthy are getting super wealthy. If you factor in the fact that over the last 30 years the cumulative growth in the top 1 percent's salaries are somewhere around 253 percent, and the middle 40 percent hits somewhere around 5 percent we are barely keeping up with inflation. Its on the verge of a middle class squeeze. Factor in perpetually rising bankruptcies and the fact that more often than not its bankruptcy of the not-rich its not to hard to see qualitatively that there is a problem. If you look at the following link you will see that its pretty clear what I mean. http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html . Unless you define the top 10 percent of all Americans the middle class things look pretty bad.
No. Someday I want a self sufficient three bedroom house and I don't like being riddled with debts from school tuition while having to use a credit card or starve. Disparity in wealth causes all sort of problems that will reduce everyone but the super-rich's comfort in the long term. We need to fix it for the long run, not for today.
A homeless person can look at a poor person and think "Hey, they aren't that much richer than I am, I could be that one day". The poor can look at the middle class and think the same thing. The middle class is diminishing. Soon it will be only poor looking at super-rich and they will know they have no chance to get that way. It will end in revolution or collapse. Even though you are right, our poor are better off, the disparity in wealth causes these sort of problems and Id rather not have it in my country.
Yeah. Like I said, we aren't there yet. Don't get me wrong, I like having the opportunity to get rich that capitalism gives us, but I don't like the fact that our version of it makes it so only the lucky and rich can get rich if you know what I mean. Also, I was including money as a form of property.
Private property rights and limited taxes on the rich's income sources also cause poverty because the end results is 1 percent of the people owning everything. Then us peons have to lease it or borrow it and obey their rules on its use. Its no different than leasing from the government, and frankly I think its worse. It hasn't totally happened here yet but its coming if we don't do something about it. True communism would work out just fine if people weren't people, i.e. selfish, and corrupt. Actually, capitalism would work out just fine if the same wasn't true.
This sort of idea actually could be applied to space colonization. Make simply constructed machines that bootstrap the construction of more complex machines that can be built using stuff on the planet you are targeting.
Too bad it would take about a year to get to Titan. The best option would be to find some way to go 10 percent the speed of light like a Fusion rocket engine. Then we could get there in 12 hours (relative to the traveler).
Justice? If you don't want coffee that is too hot don't buy it at McDonalds. Why should the government dictate how how coffee can be? Give me a break. Its not like they were selling time bombs disguised as sandwiches, they were selling something with an expectation its hot. Its still a case of dumb bitch spilled coffee on herself to me. Didn't she get all the penalty money?
Then why did she deserve anything beyond medical bills and a small settlement (like a few thousand)? Either way, if you put coffee there its your own damn fault for spilling it on yourself. She could have put it in a cup holder or drove more carefully. Coffee is hot, you risk burning yourself when you put it between your legs, you knowingly take that risk. You are an idiot if you blame someone else for putting hot things between your legs regardless of how hot they made it. Even espresso from any espresso place would cause significant discomfort and possibly first degree burns if you spilled it on yourself just after purchasing it. I chipped my tooth one time eating a sausage because I accidentally bit the fork. Maybe I should sue the sausage company for not making their sausages transparent so I could see the fork. Their penalty for making opaque sausages should all go to me because I am the only one in the world that has ever ate sausage.
That old lady was a degenerate bitch. The law isn't supposed to protect you from things that only require basic common sense that even a toddler has after they try to touch a hot object. Hot things = hurts. Hurts = be careful.
Interesting. Still, if you abuse an unjust system you are as guilty of the injustice as those who enable it in the first place. A whole generation of us younger folks that have higher educations than preceding generations have to suffer because of this shit. Im just trying to start my life here, I have a MS in a science field, and am working on a PhD. I can't get work. I am actually considering going back to manual labor, which is fine, but a waste of my education and pays shitty in comparison to what I could actually do.
My other argument is still valid.
Well, it sucks being stuck in the middle of that. Im not against a society that has poor people and rich people, I am against a society that has 10 percent rich and 90 percent poor. People used to be able to buy homes with savings on a factory job. You can't do that anymore. Living costs including rent alone end up taking most of your paycheck even if you own your own car outright. You must get a mortgage to get a house, and the minute you get laid off because the economy sucks you lose it back to the bank. Its not the average persons fault that the recession hit. Its bankers and wallstreet guys pulling get rich quick schemes and shooting for short term unsustainable gains. Its not fair. The world ain't fair, but no one even tries to make it better.
The problem is the disparity in wealth. All I advocate is a tax system that cycles the wealth from the super rich down to the middle and poor class. Its the only way to keep things balanced and keep the economy working well. Call it enforce philanthropy. Right now the only reason we function is because of debt. That includes our government and its people. Only so much debt can accumulate before the whole system collapses. The key is to properly manage the distribution in wealth. Its getting worse and worse. Last time it was this bad was during 1920 and then a depression hit. I have nothing against a society that has rich people and poor people, I am against a society where 10 percent of the population is rich and 90 percent of them are poor. That is equivalent to a feudal system. Its asking for trouble when it gets that bad.
Not false at all. Us lower class folks are slaves to the bank. We can thank the government for caving in to the wealthy's demands.
The rich should pay more. I am the OP. Having a 90 percent income tax on the super-rich acts as a way to keep the disparity in wealth in check. It also funds projects for the benefit of society. The wealthy owe it to society since our society is what enables them to be rich.
The poor are better off today than they were 100 years ago because of the generation of wealth, but the disparity is what matters. Its worse now than 30 years ago when our economy actually functioned and we produced things and the poor and middle class benefited from the wealth creation things were much more fair and balanced. You could say a slave lives better than a cavemen, clearly the slave is benefiting from the wealth in their society. Slavery must be OK. We shouldn't aim the economy at improving their lives since they live better than cavemen, even if the plantation owners live like gods in comparisons.
At one point in the US history the rich paid 90 percent income tax, and still lived lavish lifestyles like gods. It doesn't matter if they pay 50 percent of all income tax. The disparity in wealth is what matters. having 10 percent of the people with 95 percent of the money, OF COURSE they pay all the taxes. You could argue a poor person today lives better than a poor person 100 years ago, so we all are getting richer. But I say to you : A slave lived better than a caveman, clearly they are sharing in the wealth of their society. Slavery is AOK! The DISPARITY in wealth is what matters. If everyone was paid fairly and shared in the wealth creation in this country, the bottom 95 percent would be paying 60-70 percent of the taxes.
Consumption taxes always unfairly hurt the poor. Contrary to the belief of many, wealthy people only consume marginally more than poor people. This is evident by the fact they get rich in the first place. They save money, invest it, etc. They may spend on higher quality goods, but in the end it doesn't make up for the massive salaries they have. Consumption tax would just end up making rich people richer unless you were to give huge refunds to poor people or otherwise subsidize their purchases for essential items. I believe FairTax is about that.
Except exposing infants causes quite a bit more suffering than removing some cells. Abortion is more humane. Unless pro lifers want to fund every single unwanted baby in this country that is born and put their money where there mouth is, abortion must remain legal. I am opposed to second trimester abortions.
People here hate MBA's because its one of the easiest degrees to get in graduate school but also these people end up making big bucks later in life more often than not producing nothing. Also, people hate managers. There are too many good for nothing ones that make a better paycheck than you and they end up getting credit off of your efforts. You end up with MBA's in charge of engineers that went to school the same amount of time with a much harder curriculum than they did. Even a undergrad engineer has a harder time than a MBA student. I know this because I too have a bright friend that went to school at a pretty prestigious school for an MBA. I saw how often he did not have homework and how easy the homework was. Compared to my math curriculum its a joke. No doubt ivy league MBA's are harder than most other MBA's but imagine what your friend could do for the world with a MS in engineering, medicine or science from the same school?
The government produces a lot. Just through military programs alone, we get a trickle down of technology. Also, NASA gave us so many things its unbelievable http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off. WIthout a big government NASA wouldn't exist. Then there is the interstate system, bridges, the post office, etc. The main problem with our government is that its full of self serving rich assholes who have special benefits no ordinary citizen gets and time and time vote against our interests in favor or big corporate fuck bags. Wallstreet and big business is sucking the life out of this country through the revolving door in congress. Fix that problem and we fix the big government = bad problem. The Chinese havent beat us yet, but they are beating us. If you look at growth in scientific output, they are making us look like a joke. Europe and Japan make us look even worse since they themselves make China look like a joke. So we are doing excellent here in 40th place just above South America who is above Africa in scientific output.
:) Ok. I apologize for not getting it. They have worthwhile points, but they never would have thought we would be in the situation we are in today.