No one wants a government so small it cannot handle externalities and things that only work and/or benefit in aggregate.
But money is more effective in wealth creation when it's exchanged between two willing participants in free market trade, where successful parties have competitive advantages in producing their goods and services. So government spending should be minimized, not pumped up like Keynes suggests.
Machines aren't taking our jobs - they're just changing what kind of jobs are available. Engineering and services are adding jobs, manufacturing needs less jobs. People used to have to be farmers, now they're pilots, cooks, and codemonkeys, and we're all better off.
I will argue exactly that: what happened in 2009 was a result of government social engineering forcing quasi-businesses Fannie+Freddie to give loans to people who couldn't pay them back.
If Keynsian economics "works" then why was the depression so long? Why do we still have unemployment above 8% after the "stimulus"?
The answer is it doesn't work, and FDR+Obama made things worse.
Every dollar the government spends is a dollar taken from the free market.
... and zonker's (and my) point is that that doesn't make sense.
The Republicans are already in the direction of less government. Much easier guiding the trained elephant than pulling the stubborn ass in the uphill battle you suggest.
I think there's a reason Ron Paul (fiscal conservative, socially liberal) found his home in the Republican party, even though the party is clearly flawed. There are many Republicans that have strong morals but don't want the government forcing them on other people, especially not at the federal level.
The media does a great job scaring you into thinking the "more government: legislate morality" people are more prevalent than they really are. They take people who are "less government: more morality/individual responsibility" and twist them.
What Magius_AR said: "reason to not trust the results with the same degree of certainty"
They're really testing models which, realistic or not, have a myriad of input parameters and equations. When in 5-10 years the temperature is off from their prediction, how do they know which input or which equation was wrong?
No one's talking about 0% or 100%.
The Democrats want more government in general. (see: FDR, LBJ, Obama)
The Republicans want less government in general, and the government that must exist to be as local (read: accountable) as possible.
I'm not defending the Catholic Church, but communists/statists killed 100 million people in the last century alone. I think we've had our fill of the left.
Did you read my last sentence?
"If his stuff is considered "scientific" these days" - that is the problem. You and I don't give a crap what he says because he's not scientist and his movie isn't scientific. But a lot of people think it is, and are willing to vote for cap+trade taxes, global government, global taxes, left-wing junk that will leave government powerful enough to dictate what kind of car I'm going to buy (or scooter maybe - that's "greener", right?).
The point is leftists are dressing themselves up in science as an excuse to grow government. Conservatives (like any good scientist) question their premises/data/methods, and voila, you have articles like this.
We've spent $700,000 investigating methane gas emissions from dairy cows. The conclusion? "Cows emit most of their methane through belching, only a small fraction from flatulence,"
And you're going to talk to me about practicality in government spending?
You seem reasonable - I will throw in my two conservative cents.:)
No man-hours are essentially free: most people don't want to farm/garden.
If a large-scale farmer can efficiently farm say, 100 acres in a year and sell it as bread to people - those people are better off because they're getting cheap bread and can spend their leftover money on something else they want. Similarly one of those people could be a shoemaker, and sell shoes to the farmer for cheaper than he could make them, and he can spend his leftover money on something else he wants.
Both parties have leftover money, both parties have leftover time (imagine how long it would take you to make a pair of Nikes from scratch), both are doing the things they prefer to do for work, and it's because they're both more efficient at their trades than the other would be.
Yay capitalism!
If one man earns $10,000,000 - it's his to spend.
Aside from the immorality of taking what's his, 40 people are not more likely to invest it better than his stock market manager. Whether it goes to the stock market or it goes to a local business, it goes to a business.
It matters more whether the companies invested in use the capital to increase productivity or create more goods that are in demand, or squander it on pensions, bad union contracts, or CEO pay+perks. (gave ya both sides there:-P)
I find it ironic that people consider the solution to income disparity to be government redistribution, when that itself is the cause of the problem.
Wealthy people can pay for lawyers to evade taxes when the tax code is complicated.
Big businesses can pay for lawyers to evade taxes, and deal with complicated laws+regulations.
If the government had businesses and individuals pay 10% (fair - everyone the same portion), and made laws simple so the little guy wasn't at a disadvantage, the playing field would be level.
Disparity in and of itself is not a problem, and one could even argue that some level of disparity is good - who would be a yacht-builder if there were no rich to buy them?
If only it was actually sludge that they consider a problem, us conservatives wouldn't have a problem.
When they say the skies are falling and the seas are inundating with every breath you breathe out, we stop taking them seriously.
Conservatives aren't against science, they're against Al Gore.
If his stuff is considered "scientific" these days, you'll see more articles like this.
I'm with you on most of your other posts (see mine on this topic too) - I think people need to focus on the point of Genesis which is that God made everything and He is the creator.
But I'd have to quote some science to disagree with that last post. Fossil records of humans can only go back to 10 million years ago, and that's if you're stretching the definition of "human" a bit. There's no evidence (and quite a bit to the contrary, e.g. Himalayas) that the land masses of the earth were somehow all flatter sometime within those last 10 million years when people were around.
I hate to kill your idea. The flood is the part that gives me the most trouble as well.
I find it's likely what some others have mentioned - worldwide tsunamis from an asteroid maybe? There certainly was a population bottleneck at some point.
But the fact that Genesis lines up quite well with science seems to me impossible to be a coincidence. I agree with what you said above, particularly your assumptions - I accept both are accurate and have to keep searching (when it comes to the flood at least).
"misses the point of Genesis" - that was my first point in my first post on this.
Likewise when Jesus is talking about vines and fruit, he isn't giving a horticulture lesson.
The Bible does not purport to be a geology book, for laymen or not, nor do I ascribe it to be such a book. I wouldn't expect a detailed description of the atmosphere as this would only obscure the point that God is behind everything being created. (please forgive my awful word play)
All I'm saying is when you're not picking apart the meaning of the word "livestock" (is the connotation of domestication there in the Hebrew?) the broad outline matches what science says.
I make this point because it removes barriers to faith and reinforces it when you know that the Bible doesn't contradict reason and science. If people are stumbling on this stuff, they'll miss the point... (God is the creator).
Unless the sky was hazy akin to Venus up until that point, which is quite likely after continued bombardment and geologic activity. Bacteria and/or vegetation clean up our atmosphere and give oxygen now - it is only reasonable to think they preceded a clear sky. In keeping with explaining to laymen, the narrative is from the perspective of one on the surface of the earth, to whom the sun and moon would become visible at this point.
Where's the artful footwork? Do you not like the Bible's layman's terms?
I believe the point of Genesis is the "who" and not the "how".
Though the Bible does pretty well on the "how" if you ask me:
"let there be light" = big bang
"streched out the heavens" = inflation, continued expansion of universe
land->vegetation->sea creatures->livestock->humans - order agrees with science so far.
How would you word it if you were explaining it to someone thousands of years ago?
P.S. Jesus on a moped is an amusing thought - just be careful who you mock!
Is anyone else just sick of terrible UIs in general these days?
Windows 8
Unity
GNOME 3
I'm tired of all this crap. I won't use them. I will skip Windows 8 and use old versions of Linux until they get their heads on straight - this is a PC I'm using not a damn tablet (which is just a poor excuse for a laptop anyways).
"special effort to train and recruit people of color" = treating black people differently = racism
Putting the facility there against the wishes of the neighborhood is a good example of a higher level of government stepping on (what should be more powerful) local government. But it would be mean to do this whether the people in the neighborhood are white, black, rich, poor, or purple.
History should not compel us to reparations (big or small) for what our ancestors did. It should show us that we need to treat people equally. This means no "special efforts" for one group or another.
I'm not sure how useful expected value is in something like this.
If a jackpot is $200M and chance of winning is 1 in 100M, you have expected value of $2. So if the ticket is $1, your expected value > ticket price which would indicate it's a good time to buy a ticket.
But unless you plan on buying 100M tickets, you still have the same ridiculously small chance of winning......
It's still a Ponzi scheme though - it relies on more people paying in than people to pay out who joined the scheme earlier on. If population growth (new investors) doesn't outpace spending, it collapses the same way.
The ratio of taxpayers to SS recipients has been declining, and if you include medicare, medicaid, welfare, unemployment, etc. I think it's not a stretch to say we probably have half the country paying for the other half (especially since just under half pay no income taxes). The collapse will come if we don't stop the spending.
Cuts to spending growth, not spending
on
Debt Deal Reached
·
· Score: 2
The government is slated to spend almost 10 trillion more over the next decade due to built-in yearly spending increases.
So if we cut 1 trillion, we're really going to be spending 9 trillion more.
If the plan was to just freeze spending, the CBO would score that as a 9.5 trillion "cut".
Well if I make enough money someday, and something like this actually is feasible, albeit with lots of time and say a $20k rocket, then I'd much rather get a cheap $20k car and a satellite than a fancy $40k car.
So in that sense there's more reason (at least for me) to take a closer look at this than the value of G.
Slashdot Mirror
No one wants a government so small it cannot handle externalities and things that only work and/or benefit in aggregate.
But money is more effective in wealth creation when it's exchanged between two willing participants in free market trade, where successful parties have competitive advantages in producing their goods and services. So government spending should be minimized, not pumped up like Keynes suggests.
Machines aren't taking our jobs - they're just changing what kind of jobs are available. Engineering and services are adding jobs, manufacturing needs less jobs. People used to have to be farmers, now they're pilots, cooks, and codemonkeys, and we're all better off.
I will argue exactly that: what happened in 2009 was a result of government social engineering forcing quasi-businesses Fannie+Freddie to give loans to people who couldn't pay them back.
If Keynsian economics "works" then why was the depression so long? Why do we still have unemployment above 8% after the "stimulus"?
The answer is it doesn't work, and FDR+Obama made things worse.
Every dollar the government spends is a dollar taken from the free market.
... and zonker's (and my) point is that that doesn't make sense.
The Republicans are already in the direction of less government. Much easier guiding the trained elephant than pulling the stubborn ass in the uphill battle you suggest.
I think there's a reason Ron Paul (fiscal conservative, socially liberal) found his home in the Republican party, even though the party is clearly flawed. There are many Republicans that have strong morals but don't want the government forcing them on other people, especially not at the federal level.
The media does a great job scaring you into thinking the "more government: legislate morality" people are more prevalent than they really are. They take people who are "less government: more morality/individual responsibility" and twist them.
What Magius_AR said: "reason to not trust the results with the same degree of certainty"
They're really testing models which, realistic or not, have a myriad of input parameters and equations. When in 5-10 years the temperature is off from their prediction, how do they know which input or which equation was wrong?
Nailed it!
Wish i had mod points for this, even though I'm way late to the post.
No one's talking about 0% or 100%.
The Democrats want more government in general. (see: FDR, LBJ, Obama)
The Republicans want less government in general, and the government that must exist to be as local (read: accountable) as possible.
"I believe in spending on a, b, c, ... z." "I also believe, quite firmly, that the government should never be allowed to run deficit spending"
:-P
And you wonder why the Republicans are "winning a propaganda war"
Name a fact I've twisted.
Freedom is in everyone's best interest.
I'm not defending the Catholic Church, but communists/statists killed 100 million people in the last century alone. I think we've had our fill of the left.
Did you read my last sentence?
"If his stuff is considered "scientific" these days" - that is the problem. You and I don't give a crap what he says because he's not scientist and his movie isn't scientific. But a lot of people think it is, and are willing to vote for cap+trade taxes, global government, global taxes, left-wing junk that will leave government powerful enough to dictate what kind of car I'm going to buy (or scooter maybe - that's "greener", right?).
The point is leftists are dressing themselves up in science as an excuse to grow government. Conservatives (like any good scientist) question their premises/data/methods, and voila, you have articles like this.
Informative? wat.
We've spent $700,000 investigating methane gas emissions from dairy cows. The conclusion? "Cows emit most of their methane through belching, only a small fraction from flatulence,"
And you're going to talk to me about practicality in government spending?
I can study the male cow poop from here...
You seem reasonable - I will throw in my two conservative cents. :)
:-P)
No man-hours are essentially free: most people don't want to farm/garden.
If a large-scale farmer can efficiently farm say, 100 acres in a year and sell it as bread to people - those people are better off because they're getting cheap bread and can spend their leftover money on something else they want. Similarly one of those people could be a shoemaker, and sell shoes to the farmer for cheaper than he could make them, and he can spend his leftover money on something else he wants.
Both parties have leftover money, both parties have leftover time (imagine how long it would take you to make a pair of Nikes from scratch), both are doing the things they prefer to do for work, and it's because they're both more efficient at their trades than the other would be.
Yay capitalism!
If one man earns $10,000,000 - it's his to spend.
Aside from the immorality of taking what's his, 40 people are not more likely to invest it better than his stock market manager. Whether it goes to the stock market or it goes to a local business, it goes to a business.
It matters more whether the companies invested in use the capital to increase productivity or create more goods that are in demand, or squander it on pensions, bad union contracts, or CEO pay+perks. (gave ya both sides there
I find it ironic that people consider the solution to income disparity to be government redistribution, when that itself is the cause of the problem.
Wealthy people can pay for lawyers to evade taxes when the tax code is complicated.
Big businesses can pay for lawyers to evade taxes, and deal with complicated laws+regulations.
If the government had businesses and individuals pay 10% (fair - everyone the same portion), and made laws simple so the little guy wasn't at a disadvantage, the playing field would be level.
Disparity in and of itself is not a problem, and one could even argue that some level of disparity is good - who would be a yacht-builder if there were no rich to buy them?
If only it was actually sludge that they consider a problem, us conservatives wouldn't have a problem.
When they say the skies are falling and the seas are inundating with every breath you breathe out, we stop taking them seriously.
Conservatives aren't against science, they're against Al Gore.
If his stuff is considered "scientific" these days, you'll see more articles like this.
I'm with you on most of your other posts (see mine on this topic too) - I think people need to focus on the point of Genesis which is that God made everything and He is the creator.
But I'd have to quote some science to disagree with that last post. Fossil records of humans can only go back to 10 million years ago, and that's if you're stretching the definition of "human" a bit. There's no evidence (and quite a bit to the contrary, e.g. Himalayas) that the land masses of the earth were somehow all flatter sometime within those last 10 million years when people were around.
I hate to kill your idea. The flood is the part that gives me the most trouble as well.
I find it's likely what some others have mentioned - worldwide tsunamis from an asteroid maybe? There certainly was a population bottleneck at some point.
But the fact that Genesis lines up quite well with science seems to me impossible to be a coincidence. I agree with what you said above, particularly your assumptions - I accept both are accurate and have to keep searching (when it comes to the flood at least).
"misses the point of Genesis" - that was my first point in my first post on this.
Likewise when Jesus is talking about vines and fruit, he isn't giving a horticulture lesson.
The Bible does not purport to be a geology book, for laymen or not, nor do I ascribe it to be such a book. I wouldn't expect a detailed description of the atmosphere as this would only obscure the point that God is behind everything being created. (please forgive my awful word play)
All I'm saying is when you're not picking apart the meaning of the word "livestock" (is the connotation of domestication there in the Hebrew?) the broad outline matches what science says.
I make this point because it removes barriers to faith and reinforces it when you know that the Bible doesn't contradict reason and science. If people are stumbling on this stuff, they'll miss the point... (God is the creator).
Unless the sky was hazy akin to Venus up until that point, which is quite likely after continued bombardment and geologic activity. Bacteria and/or vegetation clean up our atmosphere and give oxygen now - it is only reasonable to think they preceded a clear sky. In keeping with explaining to laymen, the narrative is from the perspective of one on the surface of the earth, to whom the sun and moon would become visible at this point.
Where's the artful footwork? Do you not like the Bible's layman's terms?
I believe the point of Genesis is the "who" and not the "how".
Though the Bible does pretty well on the "how" if you ask me:
"let there be light" = big bang
"streched out the heavens" = inflation, continued expansion of universe
land->vegetation->sea creatures->livestock->humans - order agrees with science so far.
How would you word it if you were explaining it to someone thousands of years ago?
P.S. Jesus on a moped is an amusing thought - just be careful who you mock!
Is anyone else just sick of terrible UIs in general these days?
Windows 8
Unity
GNOME 3
I'm tired of all this crap. I won't use them. I will skip Windows 8 and use old versions of Linux until they get their heads on straight - this is a PC I'm using not a damn tablet (which is just a poor excuse for a laptop anyways).
You know what this means - the next time he wears a bonnet on campus, he'll be threatened by the "Threat Assessment Team".
"I swear by my pretty floral bonnet I will end you."
"special effort to train and recruit people of color" = treating black people differently = racism
Putting the facility there against the wishes of the neighborhood is a good example of a higher level of government stepping on (what should be more powerful) local government. But it would be mean to do this whether the people in the neighborhood are white, black, rich, poor, or purple.
History should not compel us to reparations (big or small) for what our ancestors did. It should show us that we need to treat people equally. This means no "special efforts" for one group or another.
I reject your comment completely.
Giving help to a black person to fix a "racial inequity" is tantamount to saying they can't do things on their own, which is racist.
Doesn't focusing on differences (like this study) just perpetuate racism?
Who pays for such a "study" anyways?
I'm not sure how useful expected value is in something like this.
If a jackpot is $200M and chance of winning is 1 in 100M, you have expected value of $2. So if the ticket is $1, your expected value > ticket price which would indicate it's a good time to buy a ticket.
But unless you plan on buying 100M tickets, you still have the same ridiculously small chance of winning......
It's still a Ponzi scheme though - it relies on more people paying in than people to pay out who joined the scheme earlier on. If population growth (new investors) doesn't outpace spending, it collapses the same way.
The ratio of taxpayers to SS recipients has been declining, and if you include medicare, medicaid, welfare, unemployment, etc. I think it's not a stretch to say we probably have half the country paying for the other half (especially since just under half pay no income taxes). The collapse will come if we don't stop the spending.
The government is slated to spend almost 10 trillion more over the next decade due to built-in yearly spending increases.
So if we cut 1 trillion, we're really going to be spending 9 trillion more.
If the plan was to just freeze spending, the CBO would score that as a 9.5 trillion "cut".
Well if I make enough money someday, and something like this actually is feasible, albeit with lots of time and say a $20k rocket, then I'd much rather get a cheap $20k car and a satellite than a fancy $40k car.
So in that sense there's more reason (at least for me) to take a closer look at this than the value of G.