Nobody denies that some changes are necessary. What some people are lying to say is that it needs either radical change, or should be eliminated.
Even without changes the fund only grows until 2024. Even without changes the fund pays full benefits through 2038. I really don't know what the point of your post is now, but the point about SS is simply that it needs only small changes to remain the most successful and popular government program of all time, except perhaps the Revolutionary War and WWII.
Social Security well prepared for retirement of baby boomers in 2016 According to the latest annual report of the Social Security trustees, 2016 is the first year in which Social Security will no longer receive more in taxes than it pays out in benefits (SSA 2001). Yet from 2016 to 2024, the Social Security trust fund will actually continue to grow as its assets earn interest. Then, from 2025 to 2038, Social Security will be able to meet its obligations to retired baby boomers by selling its accumulated assets. This is, in fact, why the assets were accumulated in the first place.
SS is running out of money the same as you are dying. Except that between now and 2038 SS will have plenty of time to make small changes that ensure it continues to pay its way. The changes I propose do not mean anyone receives less benefits. They simply shift the burden out of the absurd current system that is harder for the poorer onto a system that actually taxes the richest the same as everyone but the poorest. Only the richest (over $105K:year income) will pay more, and not much more; everyone else will pay less.
Privately operated insurance corps are allowed to do whatever they damn please. The CDSes that crashed the economy were insurance products. The health insurers that are robbing Americans while the HCR law waits to kick in can do whatever they damn please. The Social Security fund is by far the most reliable retirement fund, because it is allowed to invest in only the safest investment that actually grows: Treasury bonds.
It's strange that you have noticed that the political class and their media servants is on a terror campaign against Social Security, but that you seem to be buying into so much of the fear they're inventing.
The best practice of a newspaper is for a reporter who understands the events to find the actual facts about the events, and tell them in a story that is accurate to those facts in terms the readers understand.
No news is made this way. Which is why nobody treats the news as anything but propaganda, whether they like their propaganda or not. All we've got is infotainverts.
So the public, which "owns" the park, loses. While the state "wins" by shafting the public. Of course the only winners are private companies. Alaska, Republican paradise.
Pure performance is not what I'm talking about, and besides your claim is arguable.
Where's a chart of the watts per performance, when running apps like Photoshop and Office, for each of PPC, Intel and AMD? That's the issue that I'm talking about, and that Jobs claimed made his decision to switch.
When we look at Intel, they've got great performance, yes, but they've got something else that's very important to us. Just as important as performance, is power consumption. And the way we look at it is performance per watt. For one watt of power how much performance do you get? And when we look at the future road maps projected out in mid-2006 and beyond, what we see is the PowerPC gives us sort of 15 units of performance per watt, but the Intel road map in the future gives us 70, and so this tells us what we have to do.
IBM had a roadmap as well as Intel, but Jobs claimed that Intel's roadmap was for better performance per watt. I never saw either roadmap. That's why I want to know how the two chip lines actually performed per watt since. Which would show whether a decision based on it was actually the right one. And if not, suggest that perhaps (if Jobs expected otherwise) that there was a different reason than the one Jobs claimed.
Indeed, neither pay property taxes, but the apartment rent is higher than the property taxes it's used to pay. This is a "quasi state park". State parks in NY charge for camping less than 25% of what I pay here in property taxes. And far less than what my old apartments' rent included for its share of the building's property taxes.
So why not use a big trailer, without including in it the parts necessary for driving it, and just rent a truck for when you infrequently move it? Why haul around and store onsite two vehicles that will be used for such a small fraction of the time? Tow behind it a tiny car, like a 2-seater electric, and rent a small trailer for any occasional hauling (eg. firewood or major shopping). Some people might need the vehicle part more often, but it seems to me that "mobile homes" spend the large majority of the time as homes, not mobile.
Except SS isn't running out of money. Because the current beneficiaries, both Baby Boomers and older, did what was necessary: increased their contributions starting in the 1980s to cover the current beneficiaries. Though they deserve little credit for it; it was Alan Greenspan who raised taxes to protect Americans' pensions. Just as most Baby Boomers and their parents never marched in any streets, but rather voted for what those who did march opposed.
Eventually, in the late 2030s, SS might not have the money to pay benefits. Over a quarter century from now. In fact the SS surplus will continue to grow through at least 2024, a decade and a half from now. Sometime during that decade of actual decline we have to do something. Like what the generation before us did: remove the arbitrary SS $105K income tax cap, and stop SS from being a regressive tax that leaves the poorer with disproportionately less of their income while they work. Tax everyone at the same rate, excluding income below the poverty line, and pay everyone 150% of the poverty line when they retire at 65.
I'd like to see the receipts from SS taxes that buy Treasury bonds mailed to the taxpayer each year along with any tax refund, instead of held by the SS office. Give every American an actual document that shows they're invested in their country and in the success of their government in remaining able to pay off those bonds when they retire. All the years like the last few, when Treasuries beat the market and other investments people make, giving them an assured (if not luxurious) base for retirement would educate them better than the easily lied about system.
Funny how the current beneficiaries think Social Security is pretty great, as has always been the case since SS was implemented. And funny how the people who dislike it always dislike it only in principle, until they receive it.
That sounds like SS is pretty great. Even if the people suck.
The solution is to give a simple framework in which the people can vote for their own district's boundaries, and then vote for the officials representing the district. Parties in general are anti-democratic, and have worked against both democracy and the republic's integrity. Even if we let these private political clubs exist, with their frameworks for graft, bribery and other corruption, they should have no special advantage in getting on a ballot. Anyone with a minimum fraction (like 1-5%) of eligible voters signing a petition should be on the ballot, and the petition should be required for each general election.
I favor letting each zipcode vote every 10 years on which of the surrounding zipcodes they prefer to associate into a district, in preferred order. Then use simple stats to aggregate them according to their own preferences, into the number of districts allocated to the state. Let the people say where there districts are, and who represents them.
You gave examples of how formulas for very complex and dynamic specific budgets failed to model them to the satisfaction of the people.
The redistricting problem is one that a formula can model well, if it's parametrized to include the voting of the people. Just as the Constitution is a set of rules that's highly parameterized by voting (at multiple levels, in multiple cycles) to select the actual implementation, and even the judging after accusations a person has broken a law.
The redistricting that state politicians actually enact comes from the people who have access to those politicians. The people with access have tools to create and analyze the districting that serves them best.
Until now, the public hasn't had a tool like that, so the people with access have all the advantages. Those people still have their access advantage, but that's partly because most people never have anything worthwhile to say to the politicians, certainly not in a form that politicians can understand. But with this tool lots of people can compose and present an argument, in terms both they and their representatives understand.
A tool like this can't solve problems on its own. But it does help in rebalancing the advantages enjoyed by the better funded, more exclusively focused, and hence better organized people who have the access. It can motivate other people to insist on access, or better use the limited access they already have.
And the more a tool like this makes districting better represent the people in general, the more access the people in general will get. Of course much more has to change, but change has to start somewhere, even if somewhere that cannot complete the change.
I want to use this SW to redistrict NY composed of its zipcode areas. Anyone know where I can get the zipcode population and boundaries GIS data, and have ideas on how to integrate that data with the source code of this project's app?
FWIW, I want to use other zipcode data, the demographics data, to aggregate zipcodes into the districts. I also want to simulate the self-selection aggregation method, where each zipcode's voters vote with which of the other zipcodes bordering theirs they want their zipcode to aggregate, in order of preference. The SW crunches the numbers and shows the districts built by consensus. Voting every 10 years would give every election cycle a chance to replace the holder of every level of office governing the zipcode, along with a new census report. Supporters of different maps could draw the districts according to the associations they prefer, and push specific associations in each zipcode before the election.
It's not obvious from the link to the blog how to get the source code. But you can get it, and read how to set it up either on your own server or the Amazon hosting the project seems to prefer. The source is hosted at github, though there's a required R stats package hosted at sourceforge.
Years ago when Apple dropped the PowerPC in favor of Intel, Jobs claimed it was because the electrical W:MIPS of PPC was predicted to soon fall short of the performance of x86, with battery, fan and other limits to consider - just as iP* and other mobiles dominated Jobs' vision.
How has that turned out? Have PPCs really fallen behind, or hit a wall, compared to Intel's CPUs Apple uses? How do the AMD x86es compare to the Intel ones on that criterion?
Does Meraki's equipment work installed outside, in a campsite? Or would it have to be installed inside the trailers? How about booster mesh points between trailers too distant for a single hop to work?
OK, so Slashdot is answering your WiFi questions. How about telling us whether you get a better home out of a mobile home (integrated motor and driving seats, etc) or out of a trailer that you rent a car to haul the few times a year you actually move.
What's a "quasi-State Park"? Obligatory "Georgia is a quasi-state" joke.
What is that area really? Does Georgia allow people to live on public lands, even allow/provide utilities (however shallowly buried the wires) including cable TV and now wireless Internet? Do they make you move somewhere else to summer, after you winter in S Georgia? How often do you have to move? Do they charge you anything, like property taxes? Do you receive US Mail to your local address?
The setup sounds wonderful. Or maybe we're talking about the (maybe not so) ex Communist country Georgia.
Snark aside, my questions are serious. And it does sound wonderful.
Slashdot Mirror
Nobody denies that some changes are necessary. What some people are lying to say is that it needs either radical change, or should be eliminated.
Even without changes the fund only grows until 2024. Even without changes the fund pays full benefits through 2038. I really don't know what the point of your post is now, but the point about SS is simply that it needs only small changes to remain the most successful and popular government program of all time, except perhaps the Revolutionary War and WWII.
SS is running out of money the same as you are dying. Except that between now and 2038 SS will have plenty of time to make small changes that ensure it continues to pay its way. The changes I propose do not mean anyone receives less benefits. They simply shift the burden out of the absurd current system that is harder for the poorer onto a system that actually taxes the richest the same as everyone but the poorest. Only the richest (over $105K:year income) will pay more, and not much more; everyone else will pay less.
Privately operated insurance corps are allowed to do whatever they damn please. The CDSes that crashed the economy were insurance products. The health insurers that are robbing Americans while the HCR law waits to kick in can do whatever they damn please. The Social Security fund is by far the most reliable retirement fund, because it is allowed to invest in only the safest investment that actually grows: Treasury bonds.
It's strange that you have noticed that the political class and their media servants is on a terror campaign against Social Security, but that you seem to be buying into so much of the fear they're inventing.
The best practice of a newspaper is for a reporter who understands the events to find the actual facts about the events, and tell them in a story that is accurate to those facts in terms the readers understand.
No news is made this way. Which is why nobody treats the news as anything but propaganda, whether they like their propaganda or not. All we've got is infotainverts.
So the public, which "owns" the park, loses. While the state "wins" by shafting the public. Of course the only winners are private companies. Alaska, Republican paradise.
Pure performance is not what I'm talking about, and besides your claim is arguable.
Where's a chart of the watts per performance, when running apps like Photoshop and Office, for each of PPC, Intel and AMD? That's the issue that I'm talking about, and that Jobs claimed made his decision to switch.
Jobs most certainly did make that specific claim:
IBM had a roadmap as well as Intel, but Jobs claimed that Intel's roadmap was for better performance per watt. I never saw either roadmap. That's why I want to know how the two chip lines actually performed per watt since. Which would show whether a decision based on it was actually the right one. And if not, suggest that perhaps (if Jobs expected otherwise) that there was a different reason than the one Jobs claimed.
Indeed, neither pay property taxes, but the apartment rent is higher than the property taxes it's used to pay. This is a "quasi state park". State parks in NY charge for camping less than 25% of what I pay here in property taxes. And far less than what my old apartments' rent included for its share of the building's property taxes.
Why presume that? It's a "quasi-state park".
BTW, you're an asshole.
So Meraki is basically WiFi equipment you rent and that's managed remotely by the Meraki company across the Internet?
So why not use a big trailer, without including in it the parts necessary for driving it, and just rent a truck for when you infrequently move it? Why haul around and store onsite two vehicles that will be used for such a small fraction of the time? Tow behind it a tiny car, like a 2-seater electric, and rent a small trailer for any occasional hauling (eg. firewood or major shopping). Some people might need the vehicle part more often, but it seems to me that "mobile homes" spend the large majority of the time as homes, not mobile.
Except SS isn't running out of money. Because the current beneficiaries, both Baby Boomers and older, did what was necessary: increased their contributions starting in the 1980s to cover the current beneficiaries. Though they deserve little credit for it; it was Alan Greenspan who raised taxes to protect Americans' pensions. Just as most Baby Boomers and their parents never marched in any streets, but rather voted for what those who did march opposed.
Eventually, in the late 2030s, SS might not have the money to pay benefits. Over a quarter century from now. In fact the SS surplus will continue to grow through at least 2024, a decade and a half from now. Sometime during that decade of actual decline we have to do something. Like what the generation before us did: remove the arbitrary SS $105K income tax cap, and stop SS from being a regressive tax that leaves the poorer with disproportionately less of their income while they work. Tax everyone at the same rate, excluding income below the poverty line, and pay everyone 150% of the poverty line when they retire at 65.
I'd like to see the receipts from SS taxes that buy Treasury bonds mailed to the taxpayer each year along with any tax refund, instead of held by the SS office. Give every American an actual document that shows they're invested in their country and in the success of their government in remaining able to pay off those bonds when they retire. All the years like the last few, when Treasuries beat the market and other investments people make, giving them an assured (if not luxurious) base for retirement would educate them better than the easily lied about system.
Funny how the current beneficiaries think Social Security is pretty great, as has always been the case since SS was implemented. And funny how the people who dislike it always dislike it only in principle, until they receive it.
That sounds like SS is pretty great. Even if the people suck.
The solution is to give a simple framework in which the people can vote for their own district's boundaries, and then vote for the officials representing the district. Parties in general are anti-democratic, and have worked against both democracy and the republic's integrity. Even if we let these private political clubs exist, with their frameworks for graft, bribery and other corruption, they should have no special advantage in getting on a ballot. Anyone with a minimum fraction (like 1-5%) of eligible voters signing a petition should be on the ballot, and the petition should be required for each general election.
I favor letting each zipcode vote every 10 years on which of the surrounding zipcodes they prefer to associate into a district, in preferred order. Then use simple stats to aggregate them according to their own preferences, into the number of districts allocated to the state. Let the people say where there districts are, and who represents them.
You gave examples of how formulas for very complex and dynamic specific budgets failed to model them to the satisfaction of the people.
The redistricting problem is one that a formula can model well, if it's parametrized to include the voting of the people. Just as the Constitution is a set of rules that's highly parameterized by voting (at multiple levels, in multiple cycles) to select the actual implementation, and even the judging after accusations a person has broken a law.
The redistricting that state politicians actually enact comes from the people who have access to those politicians. The people with access have tools to create and analyze the districting that serves them best.
Until now, the public hasn't had a tool like that, so the people with access have all the advantages. Those people still have their access advantage, but that's partly because most people never have anything worthwhile to say to the politicians, certainly not in a form that politicians can understand. But with this tool lots of people can compose and present an argument, in terms both they and their representatives understand.
A tool like this can't solve problems on its own. But it does help in rebalancing the advantages enjoyed by the better funded, more exclusively focused, and hence better organized people who have the access. It can motivate other people to insist on access, or better use the limited access they already have.
And the more a tool like this makes districting better represent the people in general, the more access the people in general will get. Of course much more has to change, but change has to start somewhere, even if somewhere that cannot complete the change.
I want to use this SW to redistrict NY composed of its zipcode areas. Anyone know where I can get the zipcode population and boundaries GIS data, and have ideas on how to integrate that data with the source code of this project's app?
FWIW, I want to use other zipcode data, the demographics data, to aggregate zipcodes into the districts. I also want to simulate the self-selection aggregation method, where each zipcode's voters vote with which of the other zipcodes bordering theirs they want their zipcode to aggregate, in order of preference. The SW crunches the numbers and shows the districts built by consensus. Voting every 10 years would give every election cycle a chance to replace the holder of every level of office governing the zipcode, along with a new census report. Supporters of different maps could draw the districts according to the associations they prefer, and push specific associations in each zipcode before the election.
It's not obvious from the link to the blog how to get the source code. But you can get it, and read how to set it up either on your own server or the Amazon hosting the project seems to prefer. The source is hosted at github, though there's a required R stats package hosted at sourceforge.
You don't know why people write articles that you admit you find interesting?
You judge Slashdot articles on whether computer supply chain logistics readers already know the stories?
Have another bottle of beer.
Years ago when Apple dropped the PowerPC in favor of Intel, Jobs claimed it was because the electrical W:MIPS of PPC was predicted to soon fall short of the performance of x86, with battery, fan and other limits to consider - just as iP* and other mobiles dominated Jobs' vision.
How has that turned out? Have PPCs really fallen behind, or hit a wall, compared to Intel's CPUs Apple uses? How do the AMD x86es compare to the Intel ones on that criterion?
I first read that as "cutting down on retirees". Chainsaw campsite fantasy, back down in your hole!
Does Meraki's equipment work installed outside, in a campsite? Or would it have to be installed inside the trailers? How about booster mesh points between trailers too distant for a single hop to work?
Combine that with Power Over Ethernet to run the APs, and the whole shebang is totally wireless!
OK, so Slashdot is answering your WiFi questions. How about telling us whether you get a better home out of a mobile home (integrated motor and driving seats, etc) or out of a trailer that you rent a car to haul the few times a year you actually move.
Camping = no property taxes.
A great way for retired and otherwise unemployed people to sponge off the taxes paid by everyone else on their income and property.
What's a "quasi-State Park"? Obligatory "Georgia is a quasi-state" joke.
What is that area really? Does Georgia allow people to live on public lands, even allow/provide utilities (however shallowly buried the wires) including cable TV and now wireless Internet? Do they make you move somewhere else to summer, after you winter in S Georgia? How often do you have to move? Do they charge you anything, like property taxes? Do you receive US Mail to your local address?
The setup sounds wonderful. Or maybe we're talking about the (maybe not so) ex Communist country Georgia.
Snark aside, my questions are serious. And it does sound wonderful.