But that's just it, It's not insolvent - the rest of the government owes it plenty of money. What all the panic is about is that it's going to have to call in some of that debt to fund pensions for the baby boomers. Any tax increases that might be needed would be to fund the repayment of this debt and all of the OTHER programs that have been leaching from SS.
And is that the fault of Social Security or the rest of the government? What if the surplus SS had all those years had been saved/invested, instead of being spent by other parts of the government?
And stop talking people wanting something for nothing - the people that want SS to pay them are the same people that have been paying into SS their entire lives. Why is it ok to criticize them, but not, for example, people holding government debt.
What is the difference between abolishing/cutting SS, and defaulting on the rest of the debts?
And does it even matter if he's credible? He's the accused here. If the government's job to prove (legally) that he did something wrong. If they can't do that then they are in the wrong and should be punished for the damage they caused to his business.
What are the reasons for no reprocessing? If governments can be trusted to keep nukes 'safe', then why not trust them with reprocessing?
And storage is a problem because there is no pressure on the government to build it. If all those environmentalists campaigned for building it, instead of ignoring the waste, enough could quickly be built to store the waste of the next few centuries.
And how exactly are we dealing with the pollution that coal causes? Only instead of storing it in the back yard we scatter it around the city before deciding to do something about it 'tomorrow'.
Yes nuclear waste is a problem, but it could fairly easily be handled, either by reprocessing it or by building permanent storage facilities. It's barely a blip compared to all the waste humanity produces or the damage it's causing to the world.
Why waste time and money putting non-violent criminals in jail? Temporarily seize their assets, put them in crappy low cost housing, then put them to work at minimum wage (think affordable nursing homes). Have them work 9-5, and in house arrest the rest of the time. No TVs, no computers, no phones. Easy and cheap compared to prison - they even have to pay for the food and housing.
Any breach of the rules could of course result in a trip to the 'real' prison.
And you just pinpointed the reason coal is so popular : The damage it does is not concentrated. Instead of wiping out a small area it slowly poisons a large one. The number of deaths may be greater, but they (mostly) can't be proved to be the result of the coal - it's hard for it to kill you quickly. So they just fade into the background - and that's when everything goes right with the power plant.
Nuclear power is capable of high death counts when things go wrong, and very little pollution otherwise. But when things do go wrong, the deaths (even if there are relatively few) are gruesome and therefore highly visible. At the same time it's easier to track the radiation they do release - it's above the normal background radiation, rather then setting the background radiation like coal.
And if you want to drag Chernobyl into it (which was the result of scientists experimenting, not some sort of a random accident), then why not also compare it to some other accidents? Like the Banqiao Dam failure, which killed about 170k people.
It can cause more use for a while. When demand collapses products (coal in this case) start piling up. So producers are willing to drop their prices just to get rid of the stuff they have to store (and pay for the storage). Until the surplus is used up the prices will stay low, even if demand temporarily exceeds production.
Sure the business has to pay some of it's employees social security contributions, but so does any employer. It does not have to pay contributions for what it earns itself. Could you employ someone, then claim you don't have to pay your own SS since you're already paying for his/hers? And if your employees were drafted, would that exempt you? And it would be easy to draft a business - just claim everything it produces for the state.
And what if a business does exist without people? What it all a business is is a couple of contracts and a simple computer program. It might have needed employees once, but it can exist perfectly well without them.
If businesses are people, then why aren't they put in jail when they break laws? Why aren't they required to pay income taxes, social security, serve in the army if there is a draft,.......
Businesses may EMPLOY people, and they can be OWNED by people. But they are certainly not people themselves.
But those orders won't be as specific as those of a cruise missile. A missile basically has :
step 1: go to point A step b: go boom
A robot might have orders more like: Go to point A and shoot hostiles. But determining what a hostile IS will be left to the programming. And rules of engagement are only words - how will the robot be able to accurately determine what is or is not a hostile? Even humans can't do it, and you're asking someone to teach a machine how to do it.
And those algorithms will soon be exploited. If you define it as children with no visible weapons you'll soon have kids walking up to the robots, pulling explosives out of their pockets and sticking it to the closest weak spot.
The individuals DO have a choice. They can ignore/resign from the union and go to work. There are laws preventing the unions from stopping them. But given that about 90% of the union voted for a strike, that does not mean much. And yes, the pay decrease wasn't drastic on it's own. But it comes after the decreases they agreed to during the last bankruptcy and the raises they'd given up in the past in exchange for pensions - which would now also be gone.
And again, the unions were not kicking the company while it was down, they were the ones being kicked. They were not demanding raises or bonuses or better working conditions. The company was demanding they accept less then what they'd previously agreed to during the first bankruptcy. They weren't even negotiating - they went to the court with their 'cost cutting plan'. What the union did was dodge the kick and the management broke it's foot. And if you think that that is greed, then how do you describe the decision to now ask the court to approve bonuses now that the company is in liquidation? As for the union being un-trusting, the only thing I can say is good for them. Why trust someone that has already betrayed you? And negotiations involve two parties talking, not one party dictating.
I really don't see a difference between the strike and individual decisions - most workers decided on their own that they want to strike, but those that didn't could and did go to work. Yes, many didn't - but that is because the company wanted to cut each person's pay. And as you said, you have a choice of preparing your resume in that case - they felt that their jobs weren't worth saving at that level of pay. Should they have stayed there with miserable pay until the company went bankrupt again?
Why didn't the management give the company a personal, interest free loan. The CEO had a salary of about $2.5M, surely he could put that at the disposal of the company, giving it a few more weeks to find a different solution to the crisis, or at least time to convince the union. Or how about the other executives give the company their bonuses (they just asked to court to pay them more then $6M - leading a charge into bankruptcy is worthy of a bonus after all).
So the union's refusal to cooperate was only the last blow, because that's what the management decided. Prolonging the fight might have cut down on the bonus money the company still had.
And there is another reason why the employees might have wanted the company to just die - they are among the creditors. If the company is liquidated now, they might still get some money before it all goes to lawyers and executives. If they give them a few more years that might not happen - the company had more debt at the end of the first bankruptcy then at the beginning.
And what exactly is the difference between 'preparing your resume' and striking? The company could have fired them and found new workers, if that's what they wanted - but the new workers would probably have wanted more then the company was willing to pay.
As for being the final straw, wouldn't it be better to say that they just weren't willing to take quite so much straw from the overloaded camel? They didn't demand more money (like the management that gave itself 80% raises after the first bankruptcy), they just wanted the company to keep it's promises. And they were already loaded down with plenty of straw from the first time the company went bankrupt.
The management could have made other proposals - got better loans, found new investors, hell even sold the company (which they refused to do in the past). But they decided that quitting and blaming the union was a 'cleaner' way out. After all, we all know unions are the source of all evil.
But again, why blame the workers for the situation? They were asked to not just give up what they've already earned (their pensions), but to continue investing in the company (by accepting lower wages then what they were entitled to). And all this just a few years after the company emerged from a previous bankruptcy. And why say that they torpedoed the company? Every party in this dispute could have saved it - the creditors could have forgiven debts, management could have done their jobs, owners could have paid off the debts, lawyers could have worked for free,... Why blame the people who had the least ability to absorb the losses?
Just think of what you'd do, if your boss came up to you and asked you to work for minimum wage from now on, with no benefits. And then, when you'd said no, would blame you for ruining the company in the local paper.
But what about law enforcement? Who'd pay for that? Let's say a family is murdered. They have no living relatives. Who pays for finding,trying and punishing the murderer?
Slashdot Mirror
But that's just it, It's not insolvent - the rest of the government owes it plenty of money. What all the panic is about is that it's going to have to call in some of that debt to fund pensions for the baby boomers. Any tax increases that might be needed would be to fund the repayment of this debt and all of the OTHER programs that have been leaching from SS.
Again, the same as with other debt the government has. Why treat it differently?
And is that the fault of Social Security or the rest of the government? What if the surplus SS had all those years had been saved/invested, instead of being spent by other parts of the government?
And stop talking people wanting something for nothing - the people that want SS to pay them are the same people that have been paying into SS their entire lives. Why is it ok to criticize them, but not, for example, people holding government debt.
What is the difference between abolishing/cutting SS, and defaulting on the rest of the debts?
And does it even matter if he's credible? He's the accused here. If the government's job to prove (legally) that he did something wrong. If they can't do that then they are in the wrong and should be punished for the damage they caused to his business.
Baldur's gate, Icewind dale.
What are the reasons for no reprocessing? If governments can be trusted to keep nukes 'safe', then why not trust them with reprocessing?
And storage is a problem because there is no pressure on the government to build it. If all those environmentalists campaigned for building it, instead of ignoring the waste, enough could quickly be built to store the waste of the next few centuries.
And how exactly are we dealing with the pollution that coal causes? Only instead of storing it in the back yard we scatter it around the city before deciding to do something about it 'tomorrow'.
Yes nuclear waste is a problem, but it could fairly easily be handled, either by reprocessing it or by building permanent storage facilities. It's barely a blip compared to all the waste humanity produces or the damage it's causing to the world.
This.
Why waste time and money putting non-violent criminals in jail? Temporarily seize their assets, put them in crappy low cost housing, then put them to work at minimum wage (think affordable nursing homes). Have them work 9-5, and in house arrest the rest of the time. No TVs, no computers, no phones. Easy and cheap compared to prison - they even have to pay for the food and housing.
Any breach of the rules could of course result in a trip to the 'real' prison.
Yeah, I'm sure a hacker won't have any trouble surviving 360 months in jail.
And you just pinpointed the reason coal is so popular : The damage it does is not concentrated. Instead of wiping out a small area it slowly poisons a large one. The number of deaths may be greater, but they (mostly) can't be proved to be the result of the coal - it's hard for it to kill you quickly. So they just fade into the background - and that's when everything goes right with the power plant.
Nuclear power is capable of high death counts when things go wrong, and very little pollution otherwise. But when things do go wrong, the deaths (even if there are relatively few) are gruesome and therefore highly visible. At the same time it's easier to track the radiation they do release - it's above the normal background radiation, rather then setting the background radiation like coal.
And if you want to drag Chernobyl into it (which was the result of scientists experimenting, not some sort of a random accident), then why not also compare it to some other accidents? Like the Banqiao Dam failure, which killed about 170k people.
It can cause more use for a while. When demand collapses products (coal in this case) start piling up. So producers are willing to drop their prices just to get rid of the stuff they have to store (and pay for the storage). Until the surplus is used up the prices will stay low, even if demand temporarily exceeds production.
No problem if you build it yourself and fire it from 30km away.
Ok,ok.
Some of their rights were returned to them after they'd been conquered and mostly wiped out.
Better?
Sure the business has to pay some of it's employees social security contributions, but so does any employer. It does not have to pay contributions for what it earns itself. Could you employ someone, then claim you don't have to pay your own SS since you're already paying for his/hers? And if your employees were drafted, would that exempt you? And it would be easy to draft a business - just claim everything it produces for the state.
And what if a business does exist without people? What it all a business is is a couple of contracts and a simple computer program. It might have needed employees once, but it can exist perfectly well without them.
If businesses are people, then why aren't they put in jail when they break laws? Why aren't they required to pay income taxes, social security, serve in the army if there is a draft,.......
Businesses may EMPLOY people, and they can be OWNED by people. But they are certainly not people themselves.
But those orders won't be as specific as those of a cruise missile. A missile basically has :
step 1: go to point A
step b: go boom
A robot might have orders more like: Go to point A and shoot hostiles. But determining what a hostile IS will be left to the programming. And rules of engagement are only words - how will the robot be able to accurately determine what is or is not a hostile? Even humans can't do it, and you're asking someone to teach a machine how to do it.
And those algorithms will soon be exploited. If you define it as children with no visible weapons you'll soon have kids walking up to the robots, pulling explosives out of their pockets and sticking it to the closest weak spot.
The individuals DO have a choice. They can ignore/resign from the union and go to work. There are laws preventing the unions from stopping them. But given that about 90% of the union voted for a strike, that does not mean much. And yes, the pay decrease wasn't drastic on it's own. But it comes after the decreases they agreed to during the last bankruptcy and the raises they'd given up in the past in exchange for pensions - which would now also be gone.
And yes, the CEO agreed to a salary of 1$ for a few months (after creditors went berserk over the raises) - but that did not stop the company from asking the court to approve bonuses for executives, at the same time the unions were being forced to accept lower pay. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/bankruptcy-week-aheadhostess-to-start-liquidation-2012-11-16/
And again, the unions were not kicking the company while it was down, they were the ones being kicked. They were not demanding raises or bonuses or better working conditions. The company was demanding they accept less then what they'd previously agreed to during the first bankruptcy. They weren't even negotiating - they went to the court with their 'cost cutting plan'. What the union did was dodge the kick and the management broke it's foot. And if you think that that is greed, then how do you describe the decision to now ask the court to approve bonuses now that the company is in liquidation? As for the union being un-trusting, the only thing I can say is good for them. Why trust someone that has already betrayed you? And negotiations involve two parties talking, not one party dictating.
I really don't see a difference between the strike and individual decisions - most workers decided on their own that they want to strike, but those that didn't could and did go to work. Yes, many didn't - but that is because the company wanted to cut each person's pay. And as you said, you have a choice of preparing your resume in that case - they felt that their jobs weren't worth saving at that level of pay. Should they have stayed there with miserable pay until the company went bankrupt again?
Why didn't the management give the company a personal, interest free loan. The CEO had a salary of about $2.5M, surely he could put that at the disposal of the company, giving it a few more weeks to find a different solution to the crisis, or at least time to convince the union. Or how about the other executives give the company their bonuses (they just asked to court to pay them more then $6M - leading a charge into bankruptcy is worthy of a bonus after all).
So the union's refusal to cooperate was only the last blow, because that's what the management decided. Prolonging the fight might have cut down on the bonus money the company still had.
And there is another reason why the employees might have wanted the company to just die - they are among the creditors. If the company is liquidated now, they might still get some money before it all goes to lawyers and executives. If they give them a few more years that might not happen - the company had more debt at the end of the first bankruptcy then at the beginning.
And what exactly is the difference between 'preparing your resume' and striking? The company could have fired them and found new workers, if that's what they wanted - but the new workers would probably have wanted more then the company was willing to pay.
As for being the final straw, wouldn't it be better to say that they just weren't willing to take quite so much straw from the overloaded camel? They didn't demand more money (like the management that gave itself 80% raises after the first bankruptcy), they just wanted the company to keep it's promises. And they were already loaded down with plenty of straw from the first time the company went bankrupt.
The management could have made other proposals - got better loans, found new investors, hell even sold the company (which they refused to do in the past). But they decided that quitting and blaming the union was a 'cleaner' way out. After all, we all know unions are the source of all evil.
'And so Eve offered Adam the gold windows master, and he broke it and they each ate half of it,.... and the world became a better place.'
Ah right, Republicans advocate no taxes for the rich.
Think how much better the outcome would have been if Eve had roasted the snake for Adam, instead of settling for the apple.
But again, why blame the workers for the situation? They were asked to not just give up what they've already earned (their pensions), but to continue investing in the company (by accepting lower wages then what they were entitled to). And all this just a few years after the company emerged from a previous bankruptcy. And why say that they torpedoed the company? Every party in this dispute could have saved it - the creditors could have forgiven debts, management could have done their jobs, owners could have paid off the debts, lawyers could have worked for free,...
Why blame the people who had the least ability to absorb the losses?
Just think of what you'd do, if your boss came up to you and asked you to work for minimum wage from now on, with no benefits. And then, when you'd said no, would blame you for ruining the company in the local paper.
But what about law enforcement? Who'd pay for that?
Let's say a family is murdered. They have no living relatives. Who pays for finding,trying and punishing the murderer?