I think that the reason America was a better place for working people 30 years ago was in large part because of higher taxes on the rich. The top tax rate for the super rich used to be over 70%. But through a decades-long media propaganda campaign using well-endowed think tanks and foundations, the wealthy have been able to move the top tax rate down to 35% on earned income and 15% on unearned income. Now that they have more money to spare, they are more powerful. THey can now buy more congressmen, etc. THat means they (the rich and the corporations) are better able to crush the little guy, to control the little guy, better able to ship jobs overseas.
This is really the way animal societies work--the golden rule prevails: he who has the gold makes the rules; except in animal societies, it is he who has the most muscle and size gets to kill or eat or run off the competition. For example, if there are three baby birds in a nest, and one of them starts getting more food, then it will get bigger, and may push the smaller chicks out of the nest.
That is why we need to raise the top tax rate back to 55-60% or so, just like they have in Europe, Canada, etc. THat way we can afford universal healthcare and longterm unemployment, just like most of the European countries, Canada, and Australia.
Someone who makes 300K can pay 50% in taxes and have 250K left over. Whereas if someone who makes 25K pays 10%, he has only 22.5K left over. And of course the payroll tax is where they really stick it to the little guy.....
It is relevant because ever increasing competition must of course reach a limit, mathematically speaking. And of course neoliberal exhortations that "you must compete harder in this Grand New Global Economy" are simply turtles-all-the-way-down logical fallacies.
Instead of protecting our job base, neoliberals simply say, "work harder." Why would it matter if the harder work involves working for someone else, or working for yourself?
As the neoliberal policies continue to decimate the job base and increase the unemployed, the unemployed are exhorted to work ever harder. Of course all this ever-harder work is simply turtles all the way down logic.
You are right--Americans used to think more highly of each other. But the rich and the corporations, in order to keep from paying for a stronger welfare state, formed think tanks and foundations to propagate "news stories" that portrayed poor people as worthless and shiftless.
It worked. The propagands destroyed our social capital.
If you want to learn more about this, see my sig link....
When you have a progressive tax system, you maintain a check on the power of the rich. For example, if you have a real progressive tax system, like we used to have 30 years ago, the rich get taxed at rates like 60% or so, and the lower income earners get taxed at 0-5%. But since Reagan taxes have gone up on the lower income earners (via the payroll tax and user taxes and fees), and taxes have gone down on the rich--they now pay 35% on earned income, and 15% on unearned income such as stocks, etc.
So now the rich have more money to do other things, such as manipulate and lobby the government, create think tanks and foundations that flood the media with propaganda, etc. Also, they are now better able to use all that extra money to send jobs overseas.
I say move the tax rates on the rich back up to 60% and eliminate the payroll tax for the working poor. Uncap the payroll tax from its current cap of 87K, so that the upper income earners pay payroll tax on all earned income.
That way we keep the rich under control, and we can use the increased revenue to pay for universal healthcare.
I was there, dude! You couldn't walk 2 blocks down a street in any large metro area without seeing a Help Wanted sign in a window of a business. I live in houston, and I can tell you that I cannot remember the last time I saw a Help Wanted sign in a window. I am not saying small retail shops are not hiring, but the supply of workers is greater than the demand.
You and most other Americans need to understand something: as an American worker, you should WANT the demand for labor to outpace the supply. THat is a good thing for YOU as worker. It is not so good for the business owners and investors, but who cares, they are by definition a small minority of the population.
>>> Success is not a RIGHT. It is earned through taking risks and working your ass off. Not every plan pans out, but I would rather fail trying than sit around and wait for somebody to "give" me a good job. >>>
OK, just suppose I was one of the 131K SW engs who got laid off this past 3 months, and I take your advice to just "work my ass off". But you seemt o forget that there are also 131K other Software Engineers also laid off, who you say should do the same thing--just work their ass off. That worldview of yours is the Achilles heel of globalization/neoliberalism: we are all just supposed to "work harder" each successive round of outsourcing. But you seem to forget we are all competing against each other! And the numbers of laid-off increase with each round of outsourcing! Hello?? Ponzi scheme, anyone?
Are you familiar with the "Turtles all the way down" anecdote that describes a certain logical fallacy? For the edification of those who have not heard it, here it is: >>>> A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy.
At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise."
The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?"
"You're very clever, young man, very clever, but you can't fool me," said the old lady. "It's turtles all the way down!"
>>>>>>>>
That type of flawed logic is the basis of globalization/laisseiz fair/neoliberal/free trade economics; and it really just amounts to a system of concentrating as much wealth as possible in as few hands as possible.
But while you wait for those wonderful free trade jobs to be created, you can get pretty skinny during 50 years of flipping burgers or being unemployed.
In the end we all die, so let's just ahead and keep the jobs we have now, instead of waiting for some magical free trade, lassiez faire, Ayn Rand, globalization outsourcing bonanza. Huh, whattaya say?
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in its July 30 report: "There was no recession in the second quarter of this year, but BLS data show 131,000 fewer American computer software engineers employed in the second quarter than in the first quarter of 2004--a decline of 15% in three months."
So, I seriously doubt that we are going to get anything at all like the late 90s going on for technical workers.
The large corporations, the top levels of government, and the "elite" media have had a chokehold on American workers the last 30-50 years, THey have been able to determine the direction of the political debate in America, and even disenfranchise and alienate the voters so that the political machine is largely in the hands of the upper classes and a few interest groups.
They have been able to do this by control of the mass media. Such is the status quo in America. And it is not a conspiracy; it is just powerful entities and segments of the population acting in their own best interests.
But when wireless broadband comes down the pike in the next couple of years, if you combine that with p2p networks, mass media will no longer exist in its current form. Why watch bland, politically correct mass media teevee when you can have your choice of thousands of movies and documentaries produced using cheap digital cameras and editing PC software?
As long as the client server model is maintained, it will be too expensive for subversive, anti-status quo video to be propagated to the American masses.
However, I think these anti-p2p laws can be beaten in court. But we will need your help....
Media IS liberal SOCIALLY, NOT ECONOMICALLY
on
We the Media
·
· Score: 1
The elite media and the top government officials and the corporations DECIDE for us what is on the table for the political debate, and what is NOT on the table. They decide what the definitions of "Liberal" and "conservative" are. Not surprisingly, CorpGovMedia have decided that the Left vs Right, conservative vs democratic debate is going to be on social issues. Most of the economic issues are either off the table, or are limited in scope.
THe social issues are gays, guns, abortion, religion, etc. The media IS liberal on the social issues.
The economics issues are fair trade, progressive taxes, monopolistic business practices, and immigration. The media (and CorpGovMedia itself) is quite conservative economically. Not a big surprise, seeing as how the elite media is owned and operated by large corporations and the wealthy and upper-income earners. And when I say "conservative", I mean the media is in favor of policies that tend to favor the wealthy and the corporations. For example, on trade, the media favors "free trade", meaning policies that disempower the average person, and lower his wages. Also, the media favors immigration, which is increases corporate profits and decreases American wages. THe media is in favor of regressive taxation (likes flat tax rates, and user and sales taxes). The media is also in favor of war, in general. And so forth....
All of which hangs on the assumption, of course, that if and when humans learn how to revive said corspe, they have even the slightest interest in doing so.
OK, maybe you are right! However, apply the same algorithm to the problem of whether future humans in any particular year will be interested in reviving me: if they are uninterested in reviving me in the year 2500, I can just wait in the dewar for another 100 years. And my caretakeers will try again in the year 2600. Essentially, nothing changes at -390 F.
You also wrote: What I find interesting is the ego of the person who freezes himself in thinking that someone will actually give a crap in 300 years and go to the time and effort to revive him.
OK, now apply that same logic to a situation where a man is walking along a sidewalk with a bunch of other people. The sidewalk is immediately adjacent to a steep drop-off. THe man falls off the edge, but grabs for a root and hangs on for dear life. Will you advise him to scream for help from his fellow pedestrians, or will you scold him for daring to have such a huge ego as to think that some pedestrian would actually give a crap?
Oh, but there is a Big Difference, you would say. We cryonicists are from the past. These future people owe us nothing. I disagree. If these future people are so advanced as to be able to revive me, then it is in part because people from MY time helped build the foundations of that society. Maybe some of those future people are even distantly related to me.
That is why when a cryonicist freezes his head at Alcor, although he may be a corpse today, he will not be one in 300 years. And if indeed he is still a corpse in 300 years, then just chcek again 100 years later. And if still a corpse 100 years, just chcek again 100 years later. Repeat until revived.
You know that they make Nokia phones there, along with many other consumer goods. It is capitalism, but a form of capitalism wherein all citizens get more benefits from capitalism. Finland has a strong welfare state. Half of all Finns live in government owned housing.
FF 0.9 has some sort of threading problem or something so that you cannot have more than 4 tabbed windows downloading at the same time. If you do have more than 4 at once, they all stop downloading.
So I use netscape. Both NS and FF are better designed than MSIE, however.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that the reason America was a better place for working people 30 years ago was in large part because of higher taxes on the rich. The top tax rate for the super rich used to be over 70%. But through a decades-long media propaganda campaign using well-endowed think tanks and foundations, the wealthy have been able to move the top tax rate down to 35% on earned income and 15% on unearned income. Now that they have more money to spare, they are more powerful. THey can now buy more congressmen, etc. THat means they (the rich and the corporations) are better able to crush the little guy, to control the little guy, better able to ship jobs overseas.
This is really the way animal societies work--the golden rule prevails: he who has the gold makes the rules; except in animal societies, it is he who has the most muscle and size gets to kill or eat or run off the competition. For example, if there are three baby birds in a nest, and one of them starts getting more food, then it will get bigger, and may push the smaller chicks out of the nest.
That is why we need to raise the top tax rate back to 55-60% or so, just like they have in Europe, Canada, etc. THat way we can afford universal healthcare and longterm unemployment, just like most of the European countries, Canada, and Australia.
Someone who makes 300K can pay 50% in taxes and have 250K left over. Whereas if someone who makes 25K pays 10%, he has only 22.5K left over. And of course the payroll tax is where they really stick it to the little guy.....
Most small business owners are into exploiting the desperate working poor as much as possible. THat is just what my experience tells me.
They usually work about the same number of hours. And they are treated much better. The poor schlub making 10 an hour gets treated like crap.
It is relevant because ever increasing competition must of course reach a limit, mathematically speaking. And of course neoliberal exhortations that "you must compete harder in this Grand New Global Economy" are simply turtles-all-the-way-down logical fallacies.
Instead of protecting our job base, neoliberals simply say, "work harder." Why would it matter if the harder work involves working for someone else, or working for yourself?
As the neoliberal policies continue to decimate the job base and increase the unemployed, the unemployed are exhorted to work ever harder. Of course all this ever-harder work is simply turtles all the way down logic.
I write for a living, anyway. I aint a software engineer.....
I guess if someone cannot attack an argument, he usually attacks the person making the argument, huh?
You are right--Americans used to think more highly of each other. But the rich and the corporations, in order to keep from paying for a stronger welfare state, formed think tanks and foundations to propagate "news stories" that portrayed poor people as worthless and shiftless.
It worked. The propagands destroyed our social capital.
If you want to learn more about this, see my sig link....
When you have a progressive tax system, you maintain a check on the power of the rich. For example, if you have a real progressive tax system, like we used to have 30 years ago, the rich get taxed at rates like 60% or so, and the lower income earners get taxed at 0-5%. But since Reagan taxes have gone up on the lower income earners (via the payroll tax and user taxes and fees), and taxes have gone down on the rich--they now pay 35% on earned income, and 15% on unearned income such as stocks, etc.
So now the rich have more money to do other things, such as manipulate and lobby the government, create think tanks and foundations that flood the media with propaganda, etc. Also, they are now better able to use all that extra money to send jobs overseas.
I say move the tax rates on the rich back up to 60% and eliminate the payroll tax for the working poor. Uncap the payroll tax from its current cap of 87K, so that the upper income earners pay payroll tax on all earned income.
That way we keep the rich under control, and we can use the increased revenue to pay for universal healthcare.
I was there, dude! You couldn't walk 2 blocks down a street in any large metro area without seeing a Help Wanted sign in a window of a business. I live in houston, and I can tell you that I cannot remember the last time I saw a Help Wanted sign in a window. I am not saying small retail shops are not hiring, but the supply of workers is greater than the demand.
You and most other Americans need to understand something: as an American worker, you should WANT the demand for labor to outpace the supply. THat is a good thing for YOU as worker. It is not so good for the business owners and investors, but who cares, they are by definition a small minority of the population.
Before GW Bush's term, tHe last year that the GOP controlled all three branches of American govt was...1929....
So, it is more than just the presidency that is important.
You wrote:
>>>
Success is not a RIGHT. It is earned through taking risks and working your ass off. Not every plan pans out, but I would rather fail trying than sit around and wait for somebody to "give" me a good job.
>>>
OK, just suppose I was one of the 131K SW engs who got laid off this past 3 months, and I take your advice to just "work my ass off". But you seemt o forget that there are also 131K other Software Engineers also laid off, who you say should do the same thing--just work their ass off. That worldview of yours is the Achilles heel of globalization/neoliberalism: we are all just supposed to "work harder" each successive round of outsourcing. But you seem to forget we are all competing against each other! And the numbers of laid-off increase with each round of outsourcing! Hello?? Ponzi scheme, anyone?
Are you familiar with the "Turtles all the way down" anecdote that describes a certain logical fallacy? For the edification of those who have not heard it, here it is:
>>>>
A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a
public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the
sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection
of stars called our galaxy.
At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at
the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish.
The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant
tortoise."
The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is
the tortoise standing on?"
"You're very clever, young man, very clever, but you can't fool me,"
said the old lady. "It's turtles all the way down!"
>>>>>>>>
That type of flawed logic is the basis of globalization/laisseiz fair/neoliberal/free trade economics; and it really just amounts to a system of concentrating as much wealth as possible in as few hands as possible.
Outsourcing consultants with mod points?
Your guess is as good as mine. But that sure was NOT flamebait!
But while you wait for those wonderful free trade jobs to be created, you can get pretty skinny during 50 years of flipping burgers or being unemployed.
In the end we all die, so let's just ahead and keep the jobs we have now, instead of waiting for some magical free trade, lassiez faire, Ayn Rand, globalization outsourcing bonanza. Huh, whattaya say?
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in its July 30 report:
"There was no recession in the second quarter of this year, but BLS data show 131,000 fewer American computer software engineers employed in the second quarter than in the first quarter of 2004--a decline of 15% in three months."
So, I seriously doubt that we are going to get anything at all like the late 90s going on for technical workers.
Stickin' it to The Man whenever and wherever possible!
The large corporations, the top levels of government, and the "elite" media have had a chokehold on American workers the last 30-50 years, THey have been able to determine the direction of the political debate in America, and even disenfranchise and alienate the voters so that the political machine is largely in the hands of the upper classes and a few interest groups.
They have been able to do this by control of the mass media. Such is the status quo in America. And it is not a conspiracy; it is just powerful entities and segments of the population acting in their own best interests.
But when wireless broadband comes down the pike in the next couple of years, if you combine that with p2p networks, mass media will no longer exist in its current form. Why watch bland, politically correct mass media teevee when you can have your choice of thousands of movies and documentaries produced using cheap digital cameras and editing PC software?
As long as the client server model is maintained, it will be too expensive for subversive, anti-status quo video to be propagated to the American masses.
However, I think these anti-p2p laws can be beaten in court. But we will need your help....
The elite media and the top government officials and the corporations DECIDE for us what is on the table for the political debate, and what is NOT on the table. They decide what the definitions of "Liberal" and "conservative" are. Not surprisingly, CorpGovMedia have decided that the Left vs Right, conservative vs democratic debate is going to be on social issues. Most of the economic issues are either off the table, or are limited in scope.
THe social issues are gays, guns, abortion, religion, etc. The media IS liberal on the social issues.
The economics issues are fair trade, progressive taxes, monopolistic business practices, and immigration. The media (and CorpGovMedia itself) is quite conservative economically. Not a big surprise, seeing as how the elite media is owned and operated by large corporations and the wealthy and upper-income earners. And when I say "conservative", I mean the media is in favor of policies that tend to favor the wealthy and the corporations. For example, on trade, the media favors "free trade", meaning policies that disempower the average person, and lower his wages. Also, the media favors immigration, which is increases corporate profits and decreases American wages. THe media is in favor of regressive taxation (likes flat tax rates, and user and sales taxes). The media is also in favor of war, in general. And so forth....
For more info on this subject, read the websites for bestselling authors Thomas Frank (see the online essays) and Noam Chomsky several books and essays online here).
baggins wrote:
All of which hangs on the assumption, of course, that if and when humans learn how to revive said corspe, they have even the slightest interest in doing so.
OK, maybe you are right! However, apply the same algorithm to the problem of whether future humans in any particular year will be interested in reviving me: if they are uninterested in reviving me in the year 2500, I can just wait in the dewar for another 100 years. And my caretakeers will try again in the year 2600. Essentially, nothing changes at -390 F.
You also wrote:
What I find interesting is the ego of the person who freezes himself in thinking that someone will actually give a crap in 300 years and go to the time and effort to revive him.
OK, now apply that same logic to a situation where a man is walking along a sidewalk with a bunch of other people. The sidewalk is immediately adjacent to a steep drop-off. THe man falls off the edge, but grabs for a root and hangs on for dear life. Will you advise him to scream for help from his fellow pedestrians, or will you scold him for daring to have such a huge ego as to think that some pedestrian would actually give a crap?
Oh, but there is a Big Difference, you would say. We cryonicists are from the past. These future people owe us nothing. I disagree. If these future people are so advanced as to be able to revive me, then it is in part because people from MY time helped build the foundations of that society. Maybe some of those future people are even distantly related to me.
That is why when a cryonicist freezes his head at Alcor, although he may be a corpse today, he will not be one in 300 years. And if indeed he is still a corpse in 300 years, then just chcek again 100 years later. And if still a corpse 100 years, just chcek again 100 years later. Repeat until revived.
You know that they make Nokia phones there, along with many other consumer goods. It is capitalism, but a form of capitalism wherein all citizens get more benefits from capitalism. Finland has a strong welfare state. Half of all Finns live in government owned housing.
PLease, please, America, stop fawning over billionaires, over the rich and famous. Cease this worship of social status and social hierarchies.
Wow, now that bit of flotsam was straight outta 1999!
FF 0.9 has some sort of threading problem or something so that you cannot have more than 4 tabbed windows downloading at the same time. If you do have more than 4 at once, they all stop downloading.
So I use netscape. Both NS and FF are better designed than MSIE, however.
Almost all their writers are firmly on the side of Big Business.