If those people had family, then why didn't they get help from their families instead of social services? Since you've assumed that all families have the extra resources to care for someone down on their luck, why did these people need something else?
I never said that Social Security was a for-profit insurance system, only that it was one. It's like the military; I don't think anyone's going to invade me, so I may not need an army to defend my territory. However, if someone did invade, I probably couldn't afford an army to defend myself. Arguably, given my W-2, I receive far more military protection than I pay for. Heck, until I was 18, I got it for free.
The Homesteading of the West was a perfect example of the nation transferring wealth to individuals. The nation owned the land, and we gave it away to anyone who wanted to settle it. Since the wealthy merchants had payed off the nations war debt through custom duties, one could easily argue that the wealth was transferred from those prosperous in business to any luckless hap that managed to survive 5 years out West on a spit of land. It's a well documented part of the nation's history, you shouldn't have any trouble finding plenty of articles on it.
Your idea that you can live off alone without need of society is ridiculous on it's face. No such existence has ever been . Before the state, you depended on the tribe. This basic "control" as you call it, has already been forfeited. You cannot reclaim what never was. Accept your cage and get on with living. Your arguments lose a lot of steam when rested upon a fantasy utopia. Not to mention the historicism implicit in your declarations.
The penalties for failure that you propose removing are harsher than the crime. How is that justice? The entire road of progress has been about reducing the amount of arbitrary fate introduced by nature. By you're logic, why should we spend money on research to cure diseases? If the market can't get a solution to the table, then it must not be valuable.
No one said the man was out to get anyone. "The Man" is only trying to make a buck like everyone else. The idea isn't to control people, it's to keep people from a state of control which interferes with their civil liberties. If you see the failure of someone as a lesson to others, you are using that person as a means, not an ends. I'm not sure why you blame the poor for their poverty when any study of the facts show that poverty is not simply a result of making bad decisions. Most people in poverty have not had ample opportunity to get out of it.
The government is far more constrained and transparent than any private organization. We can hold the government far more accountable than we can hold a private organization. You are searching for absolute answers where the question is one of probability.
As for the results of welfare, the roles of the working poor have gone up. The number of children without access to medical care has gone up. Simple clearing the welfare roles has not increased the quality of life statistics for the people it was supposed to help. I believe that job training and a decent job are the best form of assistance, but the welfare to work programs have only succeeded in getting the poor to subsist, not break free of poverty.
Social Security is hardly a mistake. You're idolizing a past that never existed and expecting fascist like adherence to a cultural ideal. Your idea is as foolhardy as communism, which also believed that man must fit a mold in order for the system to succeed. You assume that results are mere products of human action and not factoring in the enormous unknown variables that influence a person's life. There is no way to insure a child turns out the way you expected, only a seriously naive person would make that claim. What you claim as normal 2 generations ago wasn't. If you'd like to see what it was like 2 generations ago, the Library of Congress has a large collection of Depression era photographs which documented the poverty, misery and child labor of the time.
Your math is fuzzy too. If only 1/3rd of American females have 4 children, that leaves.9 children among the remaining 2/3rds. If another 1/3rd have 2 children, then that leaves.3 children for the remaining 1/3rd. Once you factor in the male population, don't tell me you can't see that a large number in the country, 10% - 15% are going childless. If it wasn't for immigration, our population would be declining.
You're conjecture that Affirmative Action hampers your ability to find a job is unproven. You are already statistically better suited to find a job than a black man. Affirmative Action levels the odds between you, rather than simply allowing you to have complete superiority in the probability of who will get a job. The visible need for Affirmative Action may not be a easy to see, depending on what part of the country you live in, but until the quality of life statistics between blacks and whites aren't so skewed against blacks, programs like Affirmative Action need more time. You only feel like you're rights are violated because, as a credit to you, you see people as people. Unfortunately, while you may be ready to move on, the country as a whol
If the odds are good that society will abandon me at old age due to no fault of my own, what loyalty should I have to that society? Can you actually prove that these people are in a minority? What if my children turned out to be bums, even though I had done everything possible to raise them right? Your entire premise assumes cultural norms that are not normal and hardly universal.
Wealth is not linked to crime in the way poverty is. What nobility is there in dying in the streets, of having no recourse against more powerful people preying on you? Poverty has robbed far more people of their dignity than any handout. The argument for a government program rather than depending on private charity, especially religious charity is that handouts make one dependent on generosity. What is to stop cult like religious organizations from preying on the poor if that is the only place they have to turn to get fed and sheltered? Having the government take care of it insures that we don't have to have a large amount of charity enforcement. If private charity was enough, we wouldn't have ever started these programs in the first place.
As for increases in elderly crime, google for it. There have been a large number of bank robberies committed by seniors to pay for health care over the past year. I remember one in Gainesville about a year ago, followed by quite a few more and all were noted on the mainstream news. Secondly, the time of first offenders among the elderly tend to involve vehicular manslaughter while under the influence, crimes against children, drugs and white collar property crime. (http://www.leg.state.fl.us/Publications/1999/Hous e/reports/corrctns.pdf) In that report they were still debating whether or not there was a 'senior crime wave'. You're attempts to minimize this with assumptions about the elderly are illogical rhetoric not reason.
Rights are never in conflict. Your right to swing your fist ends at my face. The same logic holds for economic and civil rights. Civil rights always trump economic freedom. The only time economic freedom outweighs defense of civil rights is when one cannot afford to defend civil rights. It is the duty of the government to uphold civil rights, there are no such thing as economic rights, only a right to opportunity. That is a civil right and is expressed in part e of Popper's definition of Justice in the Open Society. That is most definitely a right to a living wage, a right to equal access to the markets. These exist as rights, because without them, enforcement of the other rights becomes prohibitive. Under a "free market takes all" system of completely unregulated capitalism, people will be in positions where the only competitive advantage they have is to give up their civil rights. If by economic reasons, one is forced to give up their civil rights to live, then how is the Constitution upheld? The Constitution's rights do not simply prohibit the Federal Government from violating the rights contained. Those rights are upheld by all of society, therefore the courts must provide the means to defend those rights from all. Since the courts are expensive and reasoned justice moves slowly, people must have the resources to defend their rights, they cannot be left to hope for justice or seek swift justice, otherwise the system falls apart as your new group of second class citizens will create chaos and disorder.
This is what the Founding Father's meant by wealth == power. That was part of their logic of power used to construct a slow moving, factionalized institution. I am not arguing against a status quo, but a popular misconception. The rights outlined in the argument between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists show exactly best system of government was the one which led to the future prosperity of all. The believed that this meant not using people as means, but as ends. Any system that creates second class citizens or that requires that people live up to some ideal will not lead to prosperity for all. You'll spend all your time trying to fi
Did you miss the day when Gen. Smedley Butler exposed the plot to overthrow FDR and replace him with a fascist government? How about the day the SCOTUS decided that Slavery was perfectly fine?
The specific issue you are referring to was an interesting one. On one hand you have Justice Sutherland stating that: "the meaning of the Constitution does not change with the ebb and flow of economic events." which seems to directly counter Madison in Federalist 41. It wasn't a unanimous SCOTUS that was opposed to the New Deal, but 4 conservatives, 2 moderates and 3 liberals. The oldest judge was Brandeis, who was a liberal. The conservative wing was all old men, near Brandeis' age, so it appears that the only thing consistent about the conservative wing of the Court was that they had bought into the late 19th century views of the Constitution. These are the views that ignored concentration of power and brought us the Gilded Age. That Gilded Age brought about the oligarchs who tried to enlist Butler to help overthrow FDR.
Defense of FDR's rhetorical flourishes criticizing the court aren't necessary to defend the rights that the New Deal laid out, but since you've sought focus on the character of those involved, perhaps you should look at the character of all involved. BTW, FDR never did actually pack the court and the SCOTUS did uphold the New Deal as Constitutional, so what was your point in all of this, that Constitutional questions are never cleanly answered?
Perhaps the naive shouldn't make so many assumptions?
I quoted it above, but you seemed to have missed it. Madison stated in Federalist 41:
A system of government, meant for duration, ought to contemplate these revolutions, and be able to accommodate itself to them.
That was in regard to the changes that would come about as the nation moved from an argrarian base to an industrial one. My interpretation of the Founding Fathers is consistent with the principles they laid out. They believed in the definition and protection of rights. They understood that in order to provide Justice and maintain the peace, those things would have to be debated and dealt with in the future. The government is bigger because it defends more freedoms than it did at the founding of the country. All of my justifications are based on a specific definition of justice and tied to a definition of rights that are equalitarian. What may appear inconsistent of vague to you is a matter of looking at what was intended for the institutions engineered and the environment from which these ideas came.
The Gilded Age would have caused the FF's to spin pretty hard, the New Deal would have been seen as a restoration of the balance of power. The FF's understood that the only threat to the Constitution was a concentration of power and wealth that would undermine the balance brought by factionalism. You're ideas behind the writing of the Constitution seem far over-simplified. You've applied an extreme Lutheran view of the law to all of the Founding Fathers, while it was an influence, there were other competing ones which your analysis overlooks.
The only way to understand the Constitution is to understand how these different views of law and government played out and the resulting institutions that were designed. These institutions were built with goals and intended to survive mistakes and continue to provide Justice throughout the centuries. The Founding Fathers never attempted to arrest change in how government was handled. They explicitly believed that change was necessary to keep a government relavent, perhaps you should read more about why they set up the government they did and which systems they studied to create this one.
They don't exist, not everyone has children who survive and are able to support them.
What 4 children? Average American family has 2.5 kids. My dad's family only had 3, mine only had 2. Secondly, the average American family makes $30,000 a year. Do you want to try raising your 2 kids and taking care of 4 old people on $30,000 a year + the extra 4% that went to SS? Are you making that $30,000 stretch enough to save for your own retirement or to cover the kid's college education so they don't have to do the same when you get old?
What happens if you had two kids and one died in say Iraq, and the other was the victim of an auto accident? Maybe they didn't have enough life insurance cause they were still in college. What, pop another one out so you have someone to take care of you when you're old?
What if you were childless, because you're infertile and had been saving up a fat pension when the bankruptcy court decided that your employer's creditors were first in line, ahead of the pension they had raided to pay the CEO bonus? What? Too bad, you get to die in the streets? Private Charity could never absorb the numbers of people that would be left destitute without SS, if it could, we never would have created SS in the first place.
1) I won't disagree that SS isn't enough to live on, especially with medical bills. How are any of the proposed changes going to increase the amount of income that old people have? What about the disabled?
1a) You assume everyone has family. It used to also be the case that you had 7 kids. Children are more expensive these days too. You still have the fundamental problem claimed by those who say SS is in crisis of fewer workers per retiree. What if I'm an only child? Do you propose that the average American take care of their family of 4 plus 4 retired parents on the extra 4% of their $30,000 a year they make? Plus they're supposed to save for their own retirement? My Depression era grandparents who washed tinfoil and ziplock bags and wrote down everything they spent weren't that thrifty.
1b) Well, the same guy that wants to get rid of SS cut $1 Billion from the VA budget, so more homeless vets. I feel proud to be an American, don't you?
1c) When these people show up at the emergency room with no insurance and cost the taxpayers $30,000 cause they couldn't a fford a $20 anti-biotic, guess who pays? I do. My taxes go up. I'd rather pay a little bit of preventative costs than take it up the ass on principle. The same goes for the elderly person that is in the public old folks home cause their pension got ripped off and they have no other income and can't work. You will pay one way or another, and you'll pay more the richer you are anyway. Either find more economical means of dealing with human suffering or pay through the nose.
1d) That's great, I guess Ken Lay will start writing checks with the money he swindled away? I don't think Ken Lay's personal assets will cover those Enron pensions. These pension collapses are on a scale of 10's of billions of dollars, I don't think Ken Lay even has 1 billion. What do you do with those people in the meantime, while the wheels of Justice turn? This isn't a few cases, pensions go away in bankruptcy court all the time. We've probably seen $1 trillion in pensions go poof in the last 10 years, but Social Security is still around. Quite frankly, people would freaking lynch CEOs if they pulled this shit without Social Security around, which brings us back to point 1c) in the end you pay anyway.
2) Rights do solely exist in the hands of government. You do not personally have the wealth do defend all of the rights you enjoy. Without the government, it would be way too easy for almost anyone to walk over and violate your rights without fear of retribution. It is only through the sharing of the cost of defending all these rights that someone as lacking in wealth can afford as many rights as the average American enjoys.
3) Yep, they do get back more than they pay in. I've been getting SS statements for years, each time they tell me what I'll get when I retire, looks like a good base so far. You can't measure it on the purchasing power of the dollar in 1965, you have to measure the investment power of the dollar. If you had purchased $1000 on the Dow index in 1946 and $1000 in T-bills, they'd be roughly the same. SS is like purchasing T-bills, since that's where the money goes. You'll need to use some numbers to support your assertion.
4) The Gen X'ers will not be screwed. I'm one of them, I know a bad deal when I see one and touching SS is a bad deal. I want SS around cause I know most Gen X'ers are going to need it. Financial success hasn't been as easy for them as it was for their parents. You'll notice that 20 somethings are moving back home in record numbers these days.
Your ideas about socialism are quaint. There's a difference between infrastructure and socializing competitive markets. Social Security is a catch-all, a bottom line. It's infrastructure, there is still more than enough incentive to save more than what Social Security provides, do you want to just not suffer in your retirement or actually enjoy it? The rest of your post makes no sense, but I will say that it's very difficult to understand the evolution of Liber
That quote was from the veto of a bill to assist refugees with charity. You've taken a specific situation, that is quite different from the nature of Social Security. Your premise seems to be a common misreading of Federalist 41 where Madison takes on criticisms that the 'general welfare' phrase stipulates all-inclusive power to Congress. While Madison states that the powers of Congress to legislate are listed right afterwards, he had just finished talking about systems of taxation and the progress from an agrarian to industrial base. This part he finished with:
A system of government, meant for duration, ought to contemplate these revolutions, and be able to accommodate itself to them.
So again, how is it that the Founding Fathers expected the list of responsibilities of the Federal Government to remain the same forever? Also Noah Webster used the argument that wealth == power as reason the US government would absolutely have to raise taxes. This was part of the argument over the nature of Congress and whether or not there should be a US aristocracy.
Equality is one of the primary principles of the Constitution. The Factionalism that keeps the Constitution strong could not exist without equality. Social Security is simply an efficient way to ensure that individuals have the resources to defend their own rights, rather than requiring the government to monitor and detect such offenses. Without the defense of those rights, the elderly would become second-class citizens.
Enron left a path of destruction. Is it the fault of people who were depending on Enron pensions that Ken Lay and co were a bunch of dirty bastards? If there were no Social Security, what would be their lot?
As for your comment that corrupt governments can last, but corrupt corporations don't, please prove the assertion. The United Fruit company has been linked to numerous horrors in S. America and the Carribean, but it's still in business. Hell, it's been around twice as long as Social Security, even when it defies US law. Why hasn't United Fruit been dealt with? Do you suggest that their continued existence is proof of their innocence?
If you had put $1000 dollars in government bonds in 1946 and $1000 in the Dow, the government bonds would be worth just as much as the $1000 in the Dow. The Dow tends to beat government bonds in short term stretches, but the government bonds reflect the real growth of the GDP over a longer period. In order to come out ahead, one must actively manage their money. How many people are going to screw that up and wind up needing Social Security?
While the Government has been using SS money to pay for other things, those coffers are filled with T-Bills now. The US Government has NEVER defaulted on T-Bills, are they going to start now? Your claim that the money isn't there isn't really true, unless you want to claim anyone buying a US T-Bill is a sucker and is going to get ripped off.
I think you're the 3rd person so far to assume that everyone has a family. Have you people really met so few people that you've never met anyone without living family, especially a senior?
Income is wealth. Cash is wealth. It's a transfer of wealth, partially based on your contributions. It's a freaking insurance policy, how hard is that concept to grasp? If you don't understand how it is harder to defend your rights with no money in the bank, versus having the ability to allow things their due course, you have never had to defend your rights. It isn't that the monthly check gives you rights, it's the means to defend your rights.
You can't imagine, because you haven't studied. Try reading the history behind our little Revolution and try to understand the beliefs and logic of the people who wrote the Constitution. They would not have seen Social Security as intrusive, they would have seen it as a mark of civilization. They would have seen repealing Social Security as barbaric. Your statements show just how little you actually understand your own heritage.
What about people with no family? How about if their entire family was killed in a natural disaster? Poverty is linked to crime. There has been an increase in bank robberies over the past few years committed by seniors, appearently they were in fact "knocking over banks to pay for their medicare bills". But what do facts have to do with your nice clean rhetoric?
Actually, it was the Federalists who said that wealth == power. Noah Webster to be exact. Perhaps you would like to explain how the Founding Fathers were a bunch of "Marxists, Lenninists, Maoists, etc". As for a definition of justice, would you like to start with Matthew Hale or Karl Popper? I think Popper's definition is most apt at describing the ideas left behind by the Founding Fathers.
(a) an equal distribution of the burdens of citizenship, i.e. those limitations of freedom which are necessary in social life; (b) equal treatment of the citizens before the law, provided, of course, that (c) the laws show neither favour nor disfavour towards individual citizens or groups or classes; (d) impartiality of the courts of justice; and (e) an equal share in the advantages (and not only of burden) which membership of the state may offer to its citizens.
You would do well to remember how many of our famous thinkers were productive up through their later years. Your alluding to the relative value of senior citizens is quite anti-equalitarian.
Nullification is a valid debate. After all, didn't the English and American Revolutionaries both argue that the government was acting illegally and therefore they had a right to rebel?
It's not a stretch if it's logically consistent, which I believe the record shows it to be. When the country first started , we provided a right to opportunity for anyone willing to settle a few acres. Giving farmland away like that was the 19th century equivilent of giving someone a corner store for immigrating today. This idea that everyone created this wealth out of thin air and their own sweat is a myth, there was a coordinated effort and policies which contributed to turning this country into a viable nation after the Revolution.
Leaving your neighbors and the elderly to simply fend for themselves wasn't part of it.
You're prejudice against public corporations versus private corporations has no basis in reality. Was Enron more or less corrupt than any public endeavor? Someone has always been our caretaker, either the tribe or the state, take your pick. Social Security has actually beaten the Dow as a total run from 1946 till present, how is this inefficient?
You've taken your illogical philosophy to the point of diminishing returns, hungry people are only responsible to their hunger. Social Security is efficient and it eats you up, because you don't want to give public institutions credit for what they've done. There's nothing I can do to help you there, why not educate yourself before you start making wild gyrations 'bout how the guv'ment can't do anything right.
By your logic you'd like to subsist at the same level as our ancestors? This may come as a shock to you, this program was created for a reason and the industrial revolution was pretty recent too. Your agrarian ideals won't work in an industrial system, the parameters have changed, it's time to rethink problems.
You're also ignoring the fact that most of those old people just died. Is your goal to just let old people die again?
You're going to pay one way or the other, either you do it in an orderly fashion through a system like Social Security or you pay through externalized costs of destitute elderly. Plan on paying for increases in crime, emergency services, healthcare, etc. Or do you think this nation is going to just let old people starve and freeze in the streets? Would you really treat Veterans who hadn't been able to save enough because of constant medical problems not covered by the VA this way? How do you propose to help people whose pensions the courts have stripped through criminal mismanagement by their former employers? You're method is just tough luck, sucks to be you?
No society has been able to progress and remain competitive with the shortsighted advice you've proposed here. Social Security is just a cheaper way to protect rights than "letting the market take care of it". Wealth equals power, the Social Security payments ensure that old people have the power to defend their rights instead of depending on the government to make sure they aren't violated.
The word justice is all over the Constitution and the Federalist Papers; Social Security fits the Founding Father's idea of justice, hence it's in the Constitution. Your argument about being something that people are unwilling to do for themselves is a canard. Only a half-hearted attempt to understand this nation's founding and history could lead you to the conclusions you've vomited all over this page.
No, it's not a refutation of the guys who came up with XML, it's more of a criticism of the community's use. XML in itself is useful, for certain things. I just don't think it should be used everywhere. It's a Rosetta Stone of sorts, while useful for translating data, writing everything in 4 languages simultaneously is inefficient. I have mentioning ASN.1 purposely because I don't think it solves the problems that XML was trying to solve. I just think that in order for XML to fill the shoes the hype that's been around since it's inception, it needs to be more efficient. A binary version should have been there from the get go with a text presentation format that would appear as we see text XML today.
My lack of appreciation is over the way the community has jumped into the void without thinking about what might be inside.
Why wouldn't the parsers handle the text/binary conversion? If the primary presentation format was text XML, what would be the difference, other than a more efficient technology. Your dev tools could still work just as fine. Besides, how much XML do you hand edit? I really don't find it easy to deal with in raw format.
XML and web services were sold as enterprise technologies from the beginning. How we've managed to max out our current generation of hardware without significantly increasing the amount of transactions processed is beyond me. I've seen far too many projects bogged down by all the pitfalls XML and web services allow less experienced developers fall in.
of "I told you so!" coming over. Between all the people who jumped on the web services bandwagon without any clue how to handle distributed systems efficiently and the "OMG! It's human readable!" crowd, the architecture de jour has become a bloated PITA. Why this wasn't built into the spec in the first place alludes me. If we can use tools like ethereal to read those binary IP datagrams, why wouldn't the same concept be used for this standard? A standardized, compressed, data format with a standardized API for outputting plaintext (XML), would have allowed this system to be much more efficient.
Didn't anyone remember that text processing was bulky and expensive? Sometimes the tech community seems to share the same uncritical mind as people who order get-rich-quick schemes off late night infomercials. I doubt XML would have gotten out of the gate as is, had the community demanded these kinds of features from the get-go.
None of the programs were active. The materials were all old, quite probably remnants of pre GWI programs. The inspections ' purpose was to disarm and keep Iraq from developing WMD. Today's announcement proves they were successful.
If you are going to take anything Putin says without checking the background or finding some non-Russian corroboration, I can't take your opinion seriously. Putin has even his most ardent Western supporters wondering about his intentions for the future of Russia, he may be Russia's next totalitarian dictator.
Again, your list is common knowledge, the fact that Saddam was a bad guy is common knowledge. Do you use an automatic rifle for killing gnats in your house? At the start of GWII Saddam had no capabilities of attacking his neighbors, was considered just as evil as America by Bin Laden and was impotent at best when it came to terrorism. He never actually paid any of the money he promised to Palestinian suicide bomber's families. Zaqarwi was part of group that wanted to overthrow him. Saddam had to spend so much energy just keeping himself in power, that he could have done little to damage the rest of the world.
Ignoring the possible freedom the Iraqi people might have, after this bloody mess is done with, how is America more secure now? Our forces are stretched thin, Bin Laden has endorsed Zaqarwi and our best hope are Shiites that have strong ties with the mullahs of Iran. That doesn't even begin to bring up the Kurdish issue. How has this war improved American domestic security? I really would like someone to answer that question. I have yet to see anything in Iraq that justifies the cost of 200 Billion dollars, 10,000 wounded and nearly 1500 dead Americans. Not to mention the thousands of Iraqi civilians killed or the destruction of Iraq's already crumbling infrastructure.
The insurgents are smart and effective, they regularly cause less civilian casualties in their assaults than the American forces, they kill workers on infrastructure projects, frustrating our efforts to win hearts and minds (30 workers from one sewage plant alone). For more facts.
George W Bush has more in common with tyrants and a love for totalitarianism. I really don't think he's thought his political ideology through enough to realize it, but it first showed in his Calvinist moral theology which is prevalent among Christians who call themselves Evangelicals. The Neo-Cons are tyrants all. If you knew anything about them, you'd realize this. They follow Strauss, who was a big believer in Plato, the mother of all tyrants and friend to totalitarians throughout history. As for the rank and file GOP, many have been deceived, but don't want to admit it, others are tyrants and totalitarians wholeheartedly, see the Religious Right for examples.
The Bush Administration treats all criticism as an enemy; which is the primary sign of a totalitarian. This behavior is the opposite of the Liberal and Democratic principles which gave this country it's greatness. You should read more Pericles, I recommend his Funeral Oration in Thucydides II.
Of course you could also read Popper who had the following to say about totalitarians who treat criticism as disloyalty:
Democrats who do not see a difference between a friendly and a hostile criticism of democracy are themselves imbued with the totalitarian spirit. Totalitarianism, of course, cannot consider any criticism as friendly, since every criticism of such an authority must challenge the principle of authority itself.
The justification for invading was that Iraq presented a threat. Not finding WMD or any programs proves that the invasion was unnecessary for dealing with the threat. The only reason people were still debating over whether or not he had WMD were Conservative pundits going on crap intelligence from "heroes in error" like Chalibi and the Iraqi National Congress.
No intelligence organization actually believed Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the US or it's allies. They knew that his capabilities were so reduced and that the existing programs had managed to cripple his ability reinstate any WMD programs. Whether or not he intended to honor the cease-fire or any other treaty in the future was irrelevant. We don't invade countries based on such flimsy rationales. The question to invade was based on the nature and level of threat that Saddam in power posed. Rational and reasonable people argued that it was a dumb idea, that the nature and level of threat would not be improved by invasion, especially one as incompetent as the Bush Administration managed to provide.
Your attempt to equivocate Saddam's future intentions with the evidence is part of the intellectual dishonesty and weakness that got us into this mess. You are also attempting to equivocate the claim that Bush thought Iraq had WMD with the claim that Bush thought invading was going to help the situation. The first claim is simply an over-simplification of the second. The fact that you have chosen to attack the first, rather than the second, undermines the credibility of your reasoning.
Personally, I dislike George Bush, because I hate tyranny and totalitarianism. Bush is like Plato, he uses the language of the Open Society to promote the Closed one. His ends justify his means and his idea of Justice is a social ideal, not an individualists one. The pattern of rewarding loyalty to his own power and treating disloyalty as the ultimate crime is also one of Plato's ideals of Justice. I don't need any bogus reasons to dislike Bush, I've got plenty of rational ones based on the historical record.
BTW, perhaps all of your reading can actually provide a meaning to the phrase "WMD-related program activities". I want to make sure my next hobby isn't a cause for invasion -- so far I've been lucky with the fake oil well in the front yard.
This is infrastructure, not a regular market. We're also going to keep taking the garbage out and paving the roads, no matter how expensive it is. You can't have a modern society without it.
Treating this like a market is a mistake. The economic growth by the markets that depend on the infrastructure more than compensate for any inefficiencies that come from regulation of infrastructure. I really doubt you could even get Hayek to say it would be a bad idea for the local government to provide this if Bell South won't provide reasonably priced services. And yes, Bell South or any other Baby Bell claiming they can do it more efficiently than the government is a smokescreen to preserve a monopoly, but you're right that it has nothing to do with capitalism.
Which is it, smart guy? Make up your mind. Where do you see a condridiction?
Why did you get your education? Did you even think about cheap foreign labor when you were deciding which college to go to? Personally, that was the farthest thing from my mind. Go back and reread The Wealth of Nations to figure out why you make no sense. This phenomenon has been well understood since the 1700's.
In order to better understand the world, I never stopped "getting my education". I'm not sure how you think cheap foreign labor would have factored into my thinking. Smith never envisioned this type of global economy. Perhaps you should reread the Federalist Papers and in particular the writings of Noah Webster.
And to think I always thought it was through an educated and enlightened populace. Also, go read some Ricardo with your Smith if you want to learn about "good-paying jobs". Seriously, where have you been the last 300 years?It's a good thing that's not true. Otherwise, our democracy would have never come to fruition. We didn't exactly start out the richest country on earth, you know.
Do you have any idea what an expense it was to create this country? Do you have any idea the infrastructure that was already in place, especially the English legal tradition. With out the English Revolution and the writings of men like Hale and Blackstone, there never would have been an American Revolution. The American Revolution was a leap of progress, not a spontaneous creation. Our debt and other economic issues were the driving force to create the Constitution, it turns out that defending our rights was really expensive.
Cute. Spend a significant amount of time in a third-world country and you'll realize how utterly stupid that question was. For many immigrants, the biggest reason they make the sacrifice to come here is for the benefit of their children
Then why would they not want to help insure that their offspring will actually get the chance to see the fruits of their sacrifice and hard work. Is that too hard to understand?
It still requires wealth to defend rights. The courts aren't free. You're right to say that defense of rights allows for the creation of new wealth, but without defending the infrastructure they are built on, that wealth can dissapear. Defending the existing rights is required to keep the engine running.
It seems as if the thrust of the book is about the treatment of individual immigrants and their experiences. It addresses, what sounds to me like, the standard xenophobic and racist reactions you get from (for lack of a better term) assholes. While this is certainly interesting, what I am more interested in is the debate over policy WRT immigration. I have never held against anyone who was trying to better themselves, immigrated to this country or took what opportunity came along. I have always maintained that I'd do the same thing if I was in their shoes.
That being said, there is a larger issue here. At what rate can this country absorb immigrants of various economic and educational levels? I realize that some people like to believe that since we have always been a nation of immigrants, we should not restrict new immigration, as it is unfair to those who want to come now.
That's fine and dandy, but there is a practical limitation on immigration. First of all, if the US can get educated workers while India foots the bill for their education, what incentive is there in US society to create an educated domestic workforce? If this country does not have the educated workforce needed to innovate, how will these industries remain competitive as places like India and China increase the capabilities of their domestic infrastructure?
This nation isn't some social darwinist's or anarcho-capitalist's wet dream of an experiment, it's a nation built on a set of principles regarding the defense of rights and the freedom to exercise those rights. The defense of rights requires wealth, in other words, democracy and freedom are expensive. The best way to insure optimum levels of freedom and the ability of citizens to defend their rights is through good-paying jobs. Much as a recent study showed that the most effective (and largest dollar amount) foreign aid was foreign workers who sent money home, the best way to maintain the principles of this country is to insure that anyone willing to work can find a good-paying job. And I better not see those utterly rediculous unemployment numbers, job growth isn't anywhere near handling the issue of underemployment in the US.
While I wouldn't hold the author in any sense accountable for taking someone else's job (wouldn't you do the same?), I do hold our political leaders accountable for creating a system that puts US citizens in line behind another country's citizens. That is what happens if visa programs are too open or if wage arbitration through outsourcing is allowed to happen. You can claim that it's simply a matter of economics, that we must compete with people who don't pay for the same defense of rights that we do in the US, but that's illogical. I don't hold an idea that we should simply subsidize uncompetitive workforces or business practices, but the rapid changes in our modern economy can easily produce income volatility for the average family that was unheard of 50 years ago. Communities and families don't handle change nearly as easily as multi-national corporations. So what are the choices? Do we create a welfare state that "smoothes out" the rough edges of a global economy? Do we export only the tools to create wealth and severely restrict the import of people?
Take the same set of arguments and apply them to illegal immigration. Wouldn't a more expensive labor force for menial tasks provide a larger incentive to automate those tasks? Wouldn't that automation and innovation also help to create good-paying jobs? Isn't automation the most sustainable growth? The largest danger I see from guest worker programs, visa programs and illegal immigration is the creation of second-class citizens. That is a danger to the principles and long-term stability of this nation.
I might pose this question to the author: What would he do if he still resided in India and saw that the Indian government was putting the interests of US citizens ahead of Indian citizens and the bulk of any benefit from the arrangement was going to the wealthiest of Indians?
After all, won't the offspring of anyone immigrating to this country face these same problems as any native US citizen would?
After having to wait in line for nearly 3 hours to vote early in FL, and delivering water to other early voting places where people were waiting just as long... WTF?
In Ohio, some people waited up to 9 hours to vote. We need more polling places, more machines and more poll workers, not less. While I'm all for a 2 week voting period, using one as an excuse to reduce the number of machines and locations is insane. What about people who have a hard time with transportation? Will they no longer be able to go to their local polling place? Will we just cut out polling places in poor areas or rural areas, tell those folks they've got 2 weeks to go stand in a long line miles from home to exercise their Constitutional rights?
This is only a solution if it increases overall availability of the polls to all voters, anything less smells of poll taxes and literacy tests.
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If those people had family, then why didn't they get help from their families instead of social services? Since you've assumed that all families have the extra resources to care for someone down on their luck, why did these people need something else?
I never said that Social Security was a for-profit insurance system, only that it was one. It's like the military; I don't think anyone's going to invade me, so I may not need an army to defend my territory. However, if someone did invade, I probably couldn't afford an army to defend myself. Arguably, given my W-2, I receive far more military protection than I pay for. Heck, until I was 18, I got it for free.
The Homesteading of the West was a perfect example of the nation transferring wealth to individuals. The nation owned the land, and we gave it away to anyone who wanted to settle it. Since the wealthy merchants had payed off the nations war debt through custom duties, one could easily argue that the wealth was transferred from those prosperous in business to any luckless hap that managed to survive 5 years out West on a spit of land. It's a well documented part of the nation's history, you shouldn't have any trouble finding plenty of articles on it.
Your idea that you can live off alone without need of society is ridiculous on it's face. No such existence has ever been . Before the state, you depended on the tribe. This basic "control" as you call it, has already been forfeited. You cannot reclaim what never was. Accept your cage and get on with living. Your arguments lose a lot of steam when rested upon a fantasy utopia. Not to mention the historicism implicit in your declarations.
.9 children among the remaining 2/3rds. If another 1/3rd have 2 children, then that leaves .3 children for the remaining 1/3rd. Once you factor in the male population, don't tell me you can't see that a large number in the country, 10% - 15% are going childless. If it wasn't for immigration, our population would be declining.
The penalties for failure that you propose removing are harsher than the crime. How is that justice? The entire road of progress has been about reducing the amount of arbitrary fate introduced by nature. By you're logic, why should we spend money on research to cure diseases? If the market can't get a solution to the table, then it must not be valuable.
No one said the man was out to get anyone. "The Man" is only trying to make a buck like everyone else. The idea isn't to control people, it's to keep people from a state of control which interferes with their civil liberties. If you see the failure of someone as a lesson to others, you are using that person as a means, not an ends. I'm not sure why you blame the poor for their poverty when any study of the facts show that poverty is not simply a result of making bad decisions. Most people in poverty have not had ample opportunity to get out of it.
The government is far more constrained and transparent than any private organization. We can hold the government far more accountable than we can hold a private organization. You are searching for absolute answers where the question is one of probability.
As for the results of welfare, the roles of the working poor have gone up. The number of children without access to medical care has gone up. Simple clearing the welfare roles has not increased the quality of life statistics for the people it was supposed to help. I believe that job training and a decent job are the best form of assistance, but the welfare to work programs have only succeeded in getting the poor to subsist, not break free of poverty.
Social Security is hardly a mistake. You're idolizing a past that never existed and expecting fascist like adherence to a cultural ideal. Your idea is as foolhardy as communism, which also believed that man must fit a mold in order for the system to succeed. You assume that results are mere products of human action and not factoring in the enormous unknown variables that influence a person's life. There is no way to insure a child turns out the way you expected, only a seriously naive person would make that claim. What you claim as normal 2 generations ago wasn't. If you'd like to see what it was like 2 generations ago, the Library of Congress has a large collection of Depression era photographs which documented the poverty, misery and child labor of the time.
Your math is fuzzy too. If only 1/3rd of American females have 4 children, that leaves
You're conjecture that Affirmative Action hampers your ability to find a job is unproven. You are already statistically better suited to find a job than a black man. Affirmative Action levels the odds between you, rather than simply allowing you to have complete superiority in the probability of who will get a job. The visible need for Affirmative Action may not be a easy to see, depending on what part of the country you live in, but until the quality of life statistics between blacks and whites aren't so skewed against blacks, programs like Affirmative Action need more time. You only feel like you're rights are violated because, as a credit to you, you see people as people. Unfortunately, while you may be ready to move on, the country as a whol
If the odds are good that society will abandon me at old age due to no fault of my own, what loyalty should I have to that society? Can you actually prove that these people are in a minority? What if my children turned out to be bums, even though I had done everything possible to raise them right? Your entire premise assumes cultural norms that are not normal and hardly universal.
Wealth is not linked to crime in the way poverty is. What nobility is there in dying in the streets, of having no recourse against more powerful people preying on you? Poverty has robbed far more people of their dignity than any handout. The argument for a government program rather than depending on private charity, especially religious charity is that handouts make one dependent on generosity. What is to stop cult like religious organizations from preying on the poor if that is the only place they have to turn to get fed and sheltered? Having the government take care of it insures that we don't have to have a large amount of charity enforcement. If private charity was enough, we wouldn't have ever started these programs in the first place.
As for increases in elderly crime, google for it. There have been a large number of bank robberies committed by seniors to pay for health care over the past year. I remember one in Gainesville about a year ago, followed by quite a few more and all were noted on the mainstream news. Secondly, the time of first offenders among the elderly tend to involve vehicular manslaughter while under the influence, crimes against children, drugs and white collar property crime. (http://www.leg.state.fl.us/Publications/1999/Hous e/reports/corrctns.pdf) In that report they were still debating whether or not there was a 'senior crime wave'. You're attempts to minimize this with assumptions about the elderly are illogical rhetoric not reason.
Rights are never in conflict. Your right to swing your fist ends at my face. The same logic holds for economic and civil rights. Civil rights always trump economic freedom. The only time economic freedom outweighs defense of civil rights is when one cannot afford to defend civil rights. It is the duty of the government to uphold civil rights, there are no such thing as economic rights, only a right to opportunity. That is a civil right and is expressed in part e of Popper's definition of Justice in the Open Society. That is most definitely a right to a living wage, a right to equal access to the markets. These exist as rights, because without them, enforcement of the other rights becomes prohibitive. Under a "free market takes all" system of completely unregulated capitalism, people will be in positions where the only competitive advantage they have is to give up their civil rights. If by economic reasons, one is forced to give up their civil rights to live, then how is the Constitution upheld? The Constitution's rights do not simply prohibit the Federal Government from violating the rights contained. Those rights are upheld by all of society, therefore the courts must provide the means to defend those rights from all. Since the courts are expensive and reasoned justice moves slowly, people must have the resources to defend their rights, they cannot be left to hope for justice or seek swift justice, otherwise the system falls apart as your new group of second class citizens will create chaos and disorder.
This is what the Founding Father's meant by wealth == power. That was part of their logic of power used to construct a slow moving, factionalized institution. I am not arguing against a status quo, but a popular misconception. The rights outlined in the argument between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists show exactly best system of government was the one which led to the future prosperity of all. The believed that this meant not using people as means, but as ends. Any system that creates second class citizens or that requires that people live up to some ideal will not lead to prosperity for all. You'll spend all your time trying to fi
Did you miss the day when Gen. Smedley Butler exposed the plot to overthrow FDR and replace him with a fascist government?
How about the day the SCOTUS decided that Slavery was perfectly fine?
The specific issue you are referring to was an interesting one. On one hand you have Justice Sutherland stating that: "the meaning of the Constitution does not change with the ebb and flow of economic events." which seems to directly counter Madison in Federalist 41. It wasn't a unanimous SCOTUS that was opposed to the New Deal, but 4 conservatives, 2 moderates and 3 liberals. The oldest judge was Brandeis, who was a liberal. The conservative wing was all old men, near Brandeis' age, so it appears that the only thing consistent about the conservative wing of the Court was that they had bought into the late 19th century views of the Constitution. These are the views that ignored concentration of power and brought us the Gilded Age. That Gilded Age brought about the oligarchs who tried to enlist Butler to help overthrow FDR.
Defense of FDR's rhetorical flourishes criticizing the court aren't necessary to defend the rights that the New Deal laid out, but since you've sought focus on the character of those involved, perhaps you should look at the character of all involved. BTW, FDR never did actually pack the court and the SCOTUS did uphold the New Deal as Constitutional, so what was your point in all of this, that Constitutional questions are never cleanly answered?
Perhaps the naive shouldn't make so many assumptions?
That was in regard to the changes that would come about as the nation moved from an argrarian base to an industrial one. My interpretation of the Founding Fathers is consistent with the principles they laid out. They believed in the definition and protection of rights. They understood that in order to provide Justice and maintain the peace, those things would have to be debated and dealt with in the future. The government is bigger because it defends more freedoms than it did at the founding of the country. All of my justifications are based on a specific definition of justice and tied to a definition of rights that are equalitarian. What may appear inconsistent of vague to you is a matter of looking at what was intended for the institutions engineered and the environment from which these ideas came.
The Gilded Age would have caused the FF's to spin pretty hard, the New Deal would have been seen as a restoration of the balance of power. The FF's understood that the only threat to the Constitution was a concentration of power and wealth that would undermine the balance brought by factionalism. You're ideas behind the writing of the Constitution seem far over-simplified. You've applied an extreme Lutheran view of the law to all of the Founding Fathers, while it was an influence, there were other competing ones which your analysis overlooks.
The only way to understand the Constitution is to understand how these different views of law and government played out and the resulting institutions that were designed. These institutions were built with goals and intended to survive mistakes and continue to provide Justice throughout the centuries. The Founding Fathers never attempted to arrest change in how government was handled. They explicitly believed that change was necessary to keep a government relavent, perhaps you should read more about why they set up the government they did and which systems they studied to create this one.
They don't exist, not everyone has children who survive and are able to support them.
What 4 children? Average American family has 2.5 kids. My dad's family only had 3, mine only had 2. Secondly, the average American family makes $30,000 a year. Do you want to try raising your 2 kids and taking care of 4 old people on $30,000 a year + the extra 4% that went to SS? Are you making that $30,000 stretch enough to save for your own retirement or to cover the kid's college education so they don't have to do the same when you get old?
What happens if you had two kids and one died in say Iraq, and the other was the victim of an auto accident? Maybe they didn't have enough life insurance cause they were still in college. What, pop another one out so you have someone to take care of you when you're old?
What if you were childless, because you're infertile and had been saving up a fat pension when the bankruptcy court decided that your employer's creditors were first in line, ahead of the pension they had raided to pay the CEO bonus?
What? Too bad, you get to die in the streets? Private Charity could never absorb the numbers of people that would be left destitute without SS, if it could, we never would have created SS in the first place.
1) I won't disagree that SS isn't enough to live on, especially with medical bills. How are any of the proposed changes going to increase the amount of income that old people have? What about the disabled?
1a) You assume everyone has family. It used to also be the case that you had 7 kids. Children are more expensive these days too. You still have the fundamental problem claimed by those who say SS is in crisis of fewer workers per retiree. What if I'm an only child? Do you propose that the average American take care of their family of 4 plus 4 retired parents on the extra 4% of their $30,000 a year they make? Plus they're supposed to save for their own retirement? My Depression era grandparents who washed tinfoil and ziplock bags and wrote down everything they spent weren't that thrifty.
1b) Well, the same guy that wants to get rid of SS cut $1 Billion from the VA budget, so more homeless vets. I feel proud to be an American, don't you?
1c) When these people show up at the emergency room with no insurance and cost the taxpayers $30,000 cause they couldn't a fford a $20 anti-biotic, guess who pays? I do. My taxes go up. I'd rather pay a little bit of preventative costs than take it up the ass on principle. The same goes for the elderly person that is in the public old folks home cause their pension got ripped off and they have no other income and can't work. You will pay one way or another, and you'll pay more the richer you are anyway. Either find more economical means of dealing with human suffering or pay through the nose.
1d) That's great, I guess Ken Lay will start writing checks with the money he swindled away? I don't think Ken Lay's personal assets will cover those Enron pensions. These pension collapses are on a scale of 10's of billions of dollars, I don't think Ken Lay even has 1 billion. What do you do with those people in the meantime, while the wheels of Justice turn? This isn't a few cases, pensions go away in bankruptcy court all the time. We've probably seen $1 trillion in pensions go poof in the last 10 years, but Social Security is still around. Quite frankly, people would freaking lynch CEOs if they pulled this shit without Social Security around, which brings us back to point 1c) in the end you pay anyway.
2) Rights do solely exist in the hands of government. You do not personally have the wealth do defend all of the rights you enjoy. Without the government, it would be way too easy for almost anyone to walk over and violate your rights without fear of retribution. It is only through the sharing of the cost of defending all these rights that someone as lacking in wealth can afford as many rights as the average American enjoys.
3) Yep, they do get back more than they pay in. I've been getting SS statements for years, each time they tell me what I'll get when I retire, looks like a good base so far. You can't measure it on the purchasing power of the dollar in 1965, you have to measure the investment power of the dollar. If you had purchased $1000 on the Dow index in 1946 and $1000 in T-bills, they'd be roughly the same. SS is like purchasing T-bills, since that's where the money goes. You'll need to use some numbers to support your assertion.
4) The Gen X'ers will not be screwed. I'm one of them, I know a bad deal when I see one and touching SS is a bad deal. I want SS around cause I know most Gen X'ers are going to need it. Financial success hasn't been as easy for them as it was for their parents. You'll notice that 20 somethings are moving back home in record numbers these days.
Your ideas about socialism are quaint. There's a difference between infrastructure and socializing competitive markets. Social Security is a catch-all, a bottom line. It's infrastructure, there is still more than enough incentive to save more than what Social Security provides, do you want to just not suffer in your retirement or actually enjoy it? The rest of your post makes no sense, but I will say that it's very difficult to understand the evolution of Liber
So again, how is it that the Founding Fathers expected the list of responsibilities of the Federal Government to remain the same forever? Also Noah Webster used the argument that wealth == power as reason the US government would absolutely have to raise taxes. This was part of the argument over the nature of Congress and whether or not there should be a US aristocracy.
Equality is one of the primary principles of the Constitution. The Factionalism that keeps the Constitution strong could not exist without equality. Social Security is simply an efficient way to ensure that individuals have the resources to defend their own rights, rather than requiring the government to monitor and detect such offenses. Without the defense of those rights, the elderly would become second-class citizens.
Enron left a path of destruction. Is it the fault of people who were depending on Enron pensions that Ken Lay and co were a bunch of dirty bastards? If there were no Social Security, what would be their lot?
As for your comment that corrupt governments can last, but corrupt corporations don't, please prove the assertion. The United Fruit company has been linked to numerous horrors in S. America and the Carribean, but it's still in business. Hell, it's been around twice as long as Social Security, even when it defies US law. Why hasn't United Fruit been dealt with? Do you suggest that their continued existence is proof of their innocence?
If you had put $1000 dollars in government bonds in 1946 and $1000 in the Dow, the government bonds would be worth just as much as the $1000 in the Dow. The Dow tends to beat government bonds in short term stretches, but the government bonds reflect the real growth of the GDP over a longer period. In order to come out ahead, one must actively manage their money. How many people are going to screw that up and wind up needing Social Security?
While the Government has been using SS money to pay for other things, those coffers are filled with T-Bills now. The US Government has NEVER defaulted on T-Bills, are they going to start now? Your claim that the money isn't there isn't really true, unless you want to claim anyone buying a US T-Bill is a sucker and is going to get ripped off.
I think you're the 3rd person so far to assume that everyone has a family. Have you people really met so few people that you've never met anyone without living family, especially a senior?
Income is wealth. Cash is wealth. It's a transfer of wealth, partially based on your contributions. It's a freaking insurance policy, how hard is that concept to grasp? If you don't understand how it is harder to defend your rights with no money in the bank, versus having the ability to allow things their due course, you have never had to defend your rights. It isn't that the monthly check gives you rights, it's the means to defend your rights.
You can't imagine, because you haven't studied. Try reading the history behind our little Revolution and try to understand the beliefs and logic of the people who wrote the Constitution. They would not have seen Social Security as intrusive, they would have seen it as a mark of civilization. They would have seen repealing Social Security as barbaric. Your statements show just how little you actually understand your own heritage.
Poverty is linked to crime. There has been an increase in bank robberies over the past few years committed by seniors, appearently they were in fact "knocking over banks to pay for their medicare bills". But what do facts have to do with your nice clean rhetoric?
Actually, it was the Federalists who said that wealth == power. Noah Webster to be exact. Perhaps you would like to explain how the Founding Fathers were a bunch of "Marxists, Lenninists, Maoists, etc". As for a definition of justice, would you like to start with Matthew Hale or Karl Popper? I think Popper's definition is most apt at describing the ideas left behind by the Founding Fathers.
You would do well to remember how many of our famous thinkers were productive up through their later years. Your alluding to the relative value of senior citizens is quite anti-equalitarian.
Nullification is a valid debate. After all, didn't the English and American Revolutionaries both argue that the government was acting illegally and therefore they had a right to rebel?
It's not a stretch if it's logically consistent, which I believe the record shows it to be. When the country first started , we provided a right to opportunity for anyone willing to settle a few acres. Giving farmland away like that was the 19th century equivilent of giving someone a corner store for immigrating today. This idea that everyone created this wealth out of thin air and their own sweat is a myth, there was a coordinated effort and policies which contributed to turning this country into a viable nation after the Revolution.
Leaving your neighbors and the elderly to simply fend for themselves wasn't part of it.
You're prejudice against public corporations versus private corporations has no basis in reality. Was Enron more or less corrupt than any public endeavor? Someone has always been our caretaker, either the tribe or the state, take your pick. Social Security has actually beaten the Dow as a total run from 1946 till present, how is this inefficient?
You've taken your illogical philosophy to the point of diminishing returns, hungry people are only responsible to their hunger. Social Security is efficient and it eats you up, because you don't want to give public institutions credit for what they've done. There's nothing I can do to help you there, why not educate yourself before you start making wild gyrations 'bout how the guv'ment can't do anything right.
By your logic you'd like to subsist at the same level as our ancestors? This may come as a shock to you, this program was created for a reason and the industrial revolution was pretty recent too. Your agrarian ideals won't work in an industrial system, the parameters have changed, it's time to rethink problems.
You're also ignoring the fact that most of those old people just died. Is your goal to just let old people die again?
You're going to pay one way or the other, either you do it in an orderly fashion through a system like Social Security or you pay through externalized costs of destitute elderly. Plan on paying for increases in crime, emergency services, healthcare, etc. Or do you think this nation is going to just let old people starve and freeze in the streets? Would you really treat Veterans who hadn't been able to save enough because of constant medical problems not covered by the VA this way? How do you propose to help people whose pensions the courts have stripped through criminal mismanagement by their former employers? You're method is just tough luck, sucks to be you?
No society has been able to progress and remain competitive with the shortsighted advice you've proposed here. Social Security is just a cheaper way to protect rights than "letting the market take care of it". Wealth equals power, the Social Security payments ensure that old people have the power to defend their rights instead of depending on the government to make sure they aren't violated.
The word justice is all over the Constitution and the Federalist Papers; Social Security fits the Founding Father's idea of justice, hence it's in the Constitution. Your argument about being something that people are unwilling to do for themselves is a canard. Only a half-hearted attempt to understand this nation's founding and history could lead you to the conclusions you've vomited all over this page.
No, it's not a refutation of the guys who came up with XML, it's more of a criticism of the community's use. XML in itself is useful, for certain things. I just don't think it should be used everywhere. It's a Rosetta Stone of sorts, while useful for translating data, writing everything in 4 languages simultaneously is inefficient. I have mentioning ASN.1 purposely because I don't think it solves the problems that XML was trying to solve. I just think that in order for XML to fill the shoes the hype that's been around since it's inception, it needs to be more efficient. A binary version should have been there from the get go with a text presentation format that would appear as we see text XML today.
My lack of appreciation is over the way the community has jumped into the void without thinking about what might be inside.
Why wouldn't the parsers handle the text/binary conversion? If the primary presentation format was text XML, what would be the difference, other than a more efficient technology. Your dev tools could still work just as fine. Besides, how much XML do you hand edit? I really don't find it easy to deal with in raw format.
XML and web services were sold as enterprise technologies from the beginning. How we've managed to max out our current generation of hardware without significantly increasing the amount of transactions processed is beyond me. I've seen far too many projects bogged down by all the pitfalls XML and web services allow less experienced developers fall in.
of "I told you so!" coming over. Between all the people who jumped on the web services bandwagon without any clue how to handle distributed systems efficiently and the "OMG! It's human readable!" crowd, the architecture de jour has become a bloated PITA. Why this wasn't built into the spec in the first place alludes me. If we can use tools like ethereal to read those binary IP datagrams, why wouldn't the same concept be used for this standard? A standardized, compressed, data format with a standardized API for outputting plaintext (XML), would have allowed this system to be much more efficient.
Didn't anyone remember that text processing was bulky and expensive? Sometimes the tech community seems to share the same uncritical mind as people who order get-rich-quick schemes off late night infomercials. I doubt XML would have gotten out of the gate as is, had the community demanded these kinds of features from the get-go.
If you are going to take anything Putin says without checking the background or finding some non-Russian corroboration, I can't take your opinion seriously. Putin has even his most ardent Western supporters wondering about his intentions for the future of Russia, he may be Russia's next totalitarian dictator.
Again, your list is common knowledge, the fact that Saddam was a bad guy is common knowledge. Do you use an automatic rifle for killing gnats in your house? At the start of GWII Saddam had no capabilities of attacking his neighbors, was considered just as evil as America by Bin Laden and was impotent at best when it came to terrorism. He never actually paid any of the money he promised to Palestinian suicide bomber's families. Zaqarwi was part of group that wanted to overthrow him. Saddam had to spend so much energy just keeping himself in power, that he could have done little to damage the rest of the world.
Ignoring the possible freedom the Iraqi people might have, after this bloody mess is done with, how is America more secure now? Our forces are stretched thin, Bin Laden has endorsed Zaqarwi and our best hope are Shiites that have strong ties with the mullahs of Iran. That doesn't even begin to bring up the Kurdish issue. How has this war improved American domestic security? I really would like someone to answer that question. I have yet to see anything in Iraq that justifies the cost of 200 Billion dollars, 10,000 wounded and nearly 1500 dead Americans. Not to mention the thousands of Iraqi civilians killed or the destruction of Iraq's already crumbling infrastructure.
The insurgents are smart and effective, they regularly cause less civilian casualties in their assaults than the American forces, they kill workers on infrastructure projects, frustrating our efforts to win hearts and minds (30 workers from one sewage plant alone). For more facts.
George W Bush has more in common with tyrants and a love for totalitarianism. I really don't think he's thought his political ideology through enough to realize it, but it first showed in his Calvinist moral theology which is prevalent among Christians who call themselves Evangelicals. The Neo-Cons are tyrants all. If you knew anything about them, you'd realize this. They follow Strauss, who was a big believer in Plato, the mother of all tyrants and friend to totalitarians throughout history. As for the rank and file GOP, many have been deceived, but don't want to admit it, others are tyrants and totalitarians wholeheartedly, see the Religious Right for examples.
The Bush Administration treats all criticism as an enemy; which is the primary sign of a totalitarian. This behavior is the opposite of the Liberal and Democratic principles which gave this country it's greatness. You should read more Pericles, I recommend his Funeral Oration in Thucydides II.
Of course you could also read Popper who had the following to say about totalitarians who treat criticism as disloyalty:
The justification for invading was that Iraq presented a threat. Not finding WMD or any programs proves that the invasion was unnecessary for dealing with the threat. The only reason people were still debating over whether or not he had WMD were Conservative pundits going on crap intelligence from "heroes in error" like Chalibi and the Iraqi National Congress.
No intelligence organization actually believed Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the US or it's allies. They knew that his capabilities were so reduced and that the existing programs had managed to cripple his ability reinstate any WMD programs. Whether or not he intended to honor the cease-fire or any other treaty in the future was irrelevant. We don't invade countries based on such flimsy rationales. The question to invade was based on the nature and level of threat that Saddam in power posed. Rational and reasonable people argued that it was a dumb idea, that the nature and level of threat would not be improved by invasion, especially one as incompetent as the Bush Administration managed to provide.
Your attempt to equivocate Saddam's future intentions with the evidence is part of the intellectual dishonesty and weakness that got us into this mess. You are also attempting to equivocate the claim that Bush thought Iraq had WMD with the claim that Bush thought invading was going to help the situation. The first claim is simply an over-simplification of the second. The fact that you have chosen to attack the first, rather than the second, undermines the credibility of your reasoning.
Personally, I dislike George Bush, because I hate tyranny and totalitarianism. Bush is like Plato, he uses the language of the Open Society to promote the Closed one. His ends justify his means and his idea of Justice is a social ideal, not an individualists one. The pattern of rewarding loyalty to his own power and treating disloyalty as the ultimate crime is also one of Plato's ideals of Justice. I don't need any bogus reasons to dislike Bush, I've got plenty of rational ones based on the historical record.
BTW, perhaps all of your reading can actually provide a meaning to the phrase "WMD-related program activities". I want to make sure my next hobby isn't a cause for invasion -- so far I've been lucky with the fake oil well in the front yard.
This is infrastructure, not a regular market. We're also going to keep taking the garbage out and paving the roads, no matter how expensive it is. You can't have a modern society without it.
Treating this like a market is a mistake. The economic growth by the markets that depend on the infrastructure more than compensate for any inefficiencies that come from regulation of infrastructure. I really doubt you could even get Hayek to say it would be a bad idea for the local government to provide this if Bell South won't provide reasonably priced services. And yes, Bell South or any other Baby Bell claiming they can do it more efficiently than the government is a smokescreen to preserve a monopoly, but you're right that it has nothing to do with capitalism.
Which is it, smart guy? Make up your mind.
Where do you see a condridiction?
Why did you get your education? Did you even think about cheap foreign labor when you were deciding which college to go to? Personally, that was the farthest thing from my mind. Go back and reread The Wealth of Nations to figure out why you make no sense. This phenomenon has been well understood since the 1700's.
In order to better understand the world, I never stopped "getting my education". I'm not sure how you think cheap foreign labor would have factored into my thinking. Smith never envisioned this type of global economy. Perhaps you should reread the Federalist Papers and in particular the writings of Noah Webster.
And to think I always thought it was through an educated and enlightened populace. Also, go read some Ricardo with your Smith if you want to learn about "good-paying jobs". Seriously, where have you been the last 300 years?It's a good thing that's not true. Otherwise, our democracy would have never come to fruition. We didn't exactly start out the richest country on earth, you know.
Do you have any idea what an expense it was to create this country? Do you have any idea the infrastructure that was already in place, especially the English legal tradition. With out the English Revolution and the writings of men like Hale and Blackstone, there never would have been an American Revolution. The American Revolution was a leap of progress, not a spontaneous creation. Our debt and other economic issues were the driving force to create the Constitution, it turns out that defending our rights was really expensive.
Cute. Spend a significant amount of time in a third-world country and you'll realize how utterly stupid that question was. For many immigrants, the biggest reason they make the sacrifice to come here is for the benefit of their children
Then why would they not want to help insure that their offspring will actually get the chance to see the fruits of their sacrifice and hard work. Is that too hard to understand?
It still requires wealth to defend rights. The courts aren't free. You're right to say that defense of rights allows for the creation of new wealth, but without defending the infrastructure they are built on, that wealth can dissapear. Defending the existing rights is required to keep the engine running.
It seems as if the thrust of the book is about the treatment of individual immigrants and their experiences. It addresses, what sounds to me like, the standard xenophobic and racist reactions you get from (for lack of a better term) assholes. While this is certainly interesting, what I am more interested in is the debate over policy WRT immigration. I have never held against anyone who was trying to better themselves, immigrated to this country or took what opportunity came along. I have always maintained that I'd do the same thing if I was in their shoes.
That being said, there is a larger issue here. At what rate can this country absorb immigrants of various economic and educational levels? I realize that some people like to believe that since we have always been a nation of immigrants, we should not restrict new immigration, as it is unfair to those who want to come now.
That's fine and dandy, but there is a practical limitation on immigration. First of all, if the US can get educated workers while India foots the bill for their education, what incentive is there in US society to create an educated domestic workforce? If this country does not have the educated workforce needed to innovate, how will these industries remain competitive as places like India and China increase the capabilities of their domestic infrastructure?
This nation isn't some social darwinist's or anarcho-capitalist's wet dream of an experiment, it's a nation built on a set of principles regarding the defense of rights and the freedom to exercise those rights. The defense of rights requires wealth, in other words, democracy and freedom are expensive. The best way to insure optimum levels of freedom and the ability of citizens to defend their rights is through good-paying jobs. Much as a recent study showed that the most effective (and largest dollar amount) foreign aid was foreign workers who sent money home, the best way to maintain the principles of this country is to insure that anyone willing to work can find a good-paying job. And I better not see those utterly rediculous unemployment numbers, job growth isn't anywhere near handling the issue of underemployment in the US.
While I wouldn't hold the author in any sense accountable for taking someone else's job (wouldn't you do the same?), I do hold our political leaders accountable for creating a system that puts US citizens in line behind another country's citizens. That is what happens if visa programs are too open or if wage arbitration through outsourcing is allowed to happen. You can claim that it's simply a matter of economics, that we must compete with people who don't pay for the same defense of rights that we do in the US, but that's illogical. I don't hold an idea that we should simply subsidize uncompetitive workforces or business practices, but the rapid changes in our modern economy can easily produce income volatility for the average family that was unheard of 50 years ago. Communities and families don't handle change nearly as easily as multi-national corporations. So what are the choices? Do we create a welfare state that "smoothes out" the rough edges of a global economy? Do we export only the tools to create wealth and severely restrict the import of people?
Take the same set of arguments and apply them to illegal immigration. Wouldn't a more expensive labor force for menial tasks provide a larger incentive to automate those tasks? Wouldn't that automation and innovation also help to create good-paying jobs? Isn't automation the most sustainable growth? The largest danger I see from guest worker programs, visa programs and illegal immigration is the creation of second-class citizens. That is a danger to the principles and long-term stability of this nation.
I might pose this question to the author: What would he do if he still resided in India and saw that the Indian government was putting the interests of US citizens ahead of Indian citizens and the bulk of any benefit from the arrangement was going to the wealthiest of Indians?
After all, won't the offspring of anyone immigrating to this country face these same problems as any native US citizen would?
After having to wait in line for nearly 3 hours to vote early in FL, and delivering water to other early voting places where people were waiting just as long... WTF?
In Ohio, some people waited up to 9 hours to vote. We need more polling places, more machines and more poll workers, not less. While I'm all for a 2 week voting period, using one as an excuse to reduce the number of machines and locations is insane. What about people who have a hard time with transportation? Will they no longer be able to go to their local polling place? Will we just cut out polling places in poor areas or rural areas, tell those folks they've got 2 weeks to go stand in a long line miles from home to exercise their Constitutional rights?
This is only a solution if it increases overall availability of the polls to all voters, anything less smells of poll taxes and literacy tests.