But that does not change the fact that the passengers COULD have stopped them but did not. The simple fact is now passengers have been "upgraded" and provide real security whereas before, in general, they did not.
That's still not fair -- by the same logic, the designer of the airplane COULD have put a secure, reinforced, locked door between the cockpit and the passengers. It's a perfectly valid stance to blame the security of the plane and/or airline. Hell, when I was a kid, they used to let children come up and see the cockpit when the plane was in mid-flight!
Drug companies have zero motivation to cure illnesses. They are motivated to treat the symptoms of illnesses, and extend the lives of those people who have them while still not treating the illness itself.
Ya, because I'm sure a cure for cancer would be worthless in the free market. Zero motive. Right.
I honestly did not like win7's new taskbar but when I changed it to "never combine" and "use small icons" it was great. Being able to pin stuff to it and move programs around helped a lot. It also looked much better to place along the sides than any of the previous ones.
You pretty much changed it to "Windows XP mode w/ Quicklaunch menu that already existed in WinXP" -- I think the only "improvements" Win7 brought to the table there was the ability to move taskbar programs around and "glitz".
That's just it with Windows though -- things start as an "option" and then eventually the "old way" just gets phased out. The lack of Start Menu in Win 8 is proof of that.
Vista too was a fairly drastic change. "Windows Explorer" saw a pretty drastic rewrite there. (breadcrumbs, lack of two-pane, inclusion of "Libraries", etc, etc. And if you're int he "Win7 is basically Vista SP2" camp like me, you can add that Win 7 had the snap-to-screen functionality, and the "shake the mouse and things go away" -- many of these things were pretty drastic UI changes.
And it's not just OSes -- it's applications too. Might I remind you of the infernal ribbon? Or applications that don't show the menu bar defaultly? (media player comes to mind)
Asked if she had the right to the public assistance money, Clayton answered, "I kind of do. I have no income, and I have bills to pay. I have two houses."
They had their 'points' clearly outlined in their 'Declaration of the Occupation of NYC',
You think that's clearly outlined? It's so broad and "rambling" that you might as well call it "everything on the Democrat platform". I mean seriously, it touches on everything from "real problems" (bailout/foreclosures) to whining about student debt to PETA-esque pleas for animal rights. There's no singular message there. If they had focused on the abuses of wall street instead of using their influence to branch into a bully pulpit to push all their utopian ideals, maybe they would have gotten somewhere. But seriously, claiming Wall Street is somehow tied to the "torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals"? That's reaching, to say the least.
It doesn't make it acceptable, but it makes it much easier for taxpayers to see where the money is coming from, and where it's going to, and if there's a surplus or a deficit.
You give people far too much credit if you think they go to the trouble of looking to see exactly how much of each tax they're paying. All they see is the bottom line (i.e. "what do I have left after total taxes?"). And it still doesn't in any way address the original root problem -- namely, are we spending too much on these programs? Just because "total social security tax income" exceeds "total social security spending", that doesn't make that expense feasible or prudent, even if you might have made it "solvent" through bookkeeping and tax rate adjustment.
We should be doing many more things this way, not just FICA.
I have no opposition to apportioning taxes towards what they're meant to pay for -- my opposition lies in the fact that people are trying to claim social security is sustainable because it is a separate tax where the proceeds exceed the expense and then pretending it isn't part of the budget. And that's horseshit, because you can set tax levels (including FICA) at whatever level you want -- and that doesn't change the total cost we're spending on said program. Such spending doesn't occur in a vacuum: comparing the ~800 billion we spend on social security vs the money we spend on other things is a perfectly valid comparison. And when you do that comparison, suddenly "defense" is NOT the largest part of our fiduciary irresponsibility.
As for the 57% of the total budget, don't forget that much or most of the money for these programs comes from FICA taxes, which are separate from income taxes.
Why do you think it's relevant that it's a separate tax? We're still paying for it, right? The money is coming from the same people, right? It's still an expense, right? By what logic do you pretend it's not part of the budget? (or otherwise not worth consideration) What makes a separate tax suddenly acceptable? As a for instance, if they parceled off the cost of the Iraq War into a special annual "Iraq surtax", does that suddenly make the ~2 trillion we spent on that war "acceptable" or not part of the budget? It's an insane way to view money management.
In addition, don't be fooled by budget line items that say "Social Security". That's a big catch-all term that includes all kinds of other programs that have absolutely nothing to do with retirement.
I'll grant you that, but it's still a far more accurate assessment than you give it credit for. According to the SSA budget (https://www.socialsecurity.gov/budget/2013BudgetOverview.pdf), 672 billion went toward OASI -- it's certainly the lion's share of the money.
57% of our total budget this year went to your "promises to seniors" (well, and Medicaid)-- yet I bet you can't name many people receiving benefits that can tell you that their Social Security check is "plenty to live on" or that their Medicare in anyway adequately covers their medical expenses. And fuck the people who happen to be in the "ailing 50 to 62" age range, because they're shit out of luck -- maybe they'll be comforted by the fact that IF they make it to age 62, they'll get their money, but for now they have to give it to the government to pay for the cost of the people just slightly healthier & older than they are
And that's 57% now -- projections have these programs spiraling WAY out of control in total expenses -- how in hell can you claim they're sustainable?
If you want to "make due on your promise to seniors", so be it, but don't pretend these programs are somehow salvageable or continuable. They should be phased out _immediately_ on a pro-rated benefit basis and we should go back to square one to come with an idea that works, like mandatory 401ks.
pretty much everyone over the age of 65, who are probably some of our best voters (they have a much longer life experience to apply to current events, and they have the spare time to get involved and educate themselves on the issues and candidates, whereas younger people are too busy working).
That's some strange logic you got there and certainly not what I've witnessed. The older generation tends to be far more concerned with getting every penny out of government they can (hands off my unsustainable benefit program!), tend to be oblivious of any non-biased source of information (internet-incapable Fox News watchers), and a good chunk are probably on the senile end of things. The younger crowd tend to be far more informed (even if that comes to watching shows like the Daily Show).
You raise some good points but the above is not really relevant. One can be uninterested in civics/politics while at the same time holding very valid points about an issue. Case in point, should the 'ruling' of the internet be left to the politicians/lawyers or to engineers who built it
This is exactly why a civics lesson is necessary -- because otherwise some jackass (be it laywer or engineer) will think they have every right to pass federal law willy-nilly to support their private cause in complete ignorance of the Constitution and the restrictions it is meant to enforce. This applies to almost everything. The sheer number of people that want to impose their will via federal mandate is mind-boggling.
It was hard enough just to get subsidized coverage for the poor,
Medicaid has been around since '65 -- I don't recall it being "hard" to get through either (majority vote in both the House (307-116) and Senate (70-24)). Fat lot of good it did you too since we're all out of money and even sicker than we were back then.
The more you delay and procrastinate, the more drastic your solution needs to be
That's not true. Just look at the emergence of hybrid/electric/nat-gas vehicles. None of that tech was rushed -- market forces simply "deemed it into existence" as gas prices rose (and nat gas prices fell) and as the technologies matured. The process has been a gradual one (and continues to be a gradual one). Yet it is occurring without special forcing. Solar will be the next big boom (since it's finally stating to get into the bang-for-buck consideration range).
There's another benefit as well - when the cheap oil supplies run out - the economy won't crash. So much of our lives are powered by oil that a sudden spike after all the easy oil supplies have disappeared will put us in an even worlse economic state than the current recession, maybe even worse than the great depression.
Except that resource shortages don't work that way. It's not like a dotcom bust where things change practically overnight -- if we're anywhere near a supply-restriction on oil, the cost spike will be gradual, so gradual that we'll have plenty of time to shift to more efficient tech. The only way this would NOT occur gradually is if our industries simultaneously tapped out all oil on the planet. That kind of cataclysmic talk simply can't happen.
You're an idiot to even bring up Greece. In Greece, there was (and is) a national culture of cheating on taxes AND a national culture of ridiculous government waste caused by nepotistic assignment of cushy no-work ultra-high-pay civil service jobs...... There is absolutely nothing comparable to Greece going on in the US.
Hey, I'm cool with the government telling me it's not good to buy lead paint -- I'm less cool with them leveling rifles at me and ordering me to back away from the lead paint.
It's funny you say that, because I get the almost exact opposite view -- Romney and Gingrich aren't devious at all. They don't even try to _hide_ their true nature -- every word out of Romney's mouth screams "spoiled rich boy who does not connect with the common man". And Gingrich is just an asshole and isn't afraid to hide it -- he's always "in your face". Santorum on the other hand seems to be going out of his way to try to paint himself as a "true fiscal conservative", when he's nothing of the sort. He's completely redefined his image to make himself more palatable to voters (flipflopped on No Child Left Behind & Amtrack, change his pro-choice stance to pro-life, softened his gay-hating-views). Underneath, he's a religious zealot and a HUGE "big-government" advocate (I mean, he's outright openly hostile to libertarians). And his views on higher education are deplorable. He's the last thing I'd want in office. What's worst is that his "nuttiness" comes off as "reasonable", so there would be a good chance of it becoming law.
Ron Paul gets my vote. He may have some extreme views (like his rabid isolationism), but those would never see the like of day in law. What's important is that the country's direction changes (from "reducing spending increases" to "reducing SPENDING") -- and no one is willing to do that except Ron.
The degree of human involvement is questioned -- very few skeptics assume outright that humans aren't a possible factor in global warming. But quantification matters, especially when doing cost-risk comparisons. And frankly, environmentalists don't do a great job clarifying with any sufficient degree of certainty exactly how large of an effect mankind (vs natural forces) is having on this particular equation.
Nooo..the TEABAGGERS wanted them to go under, because honestly they are what we used to call back in the day a "Barry Goldwater conservative" that actually believes in smaller government and personal responsibility. If you look at the votes the majority of the reps voted for the money,
More than HALF of the Republicans in Congress were against the bill -- it only went through with Democratic support. And this was PRIOR to the Tea Party politicians making it into office. And the discrepancies between the parties grow even larger if you consider the "stimulus" bills that followed (where Republicans were almost 100% in opposition). So don't try to call the Republicans the shills that believe in "socialized rich corporatism", because the voting record clearly shows the Democrats more in that camp.
But I agree with you on one thing at least: both parties suck.
I have heard no "skeptic" ever talking about risk.
Then you're selectively tuning out a good portion of the audience. I've never debated this topic without bringing up cost-risk analysis (namely, the lack thereof by any environmentalist on this topic).
Don't you just love how they use the word socialism like kiddie fiddler yet socialism for the rich is EXACTLY what we have in the USA? What else would you call it when you privatize all the profits while making the losses public but classic Soviet style socialism?
The Republicans don't support that shit -- just look at the votes on the bailouts. The Dems are the one that let the taxpayers eat all the losses -- the Republicans wanted the companies to go under.
Slashdot Mirror
That's still not fair -- by the same logic, the designer of the airplane COULD have put a secure, reinforced, locked door between the cockpit and the passengers. It's a perfectly valid stance to blame the security of the plane and/or airline. Hell, when I was a kid, they used to let children come up and see the cockpit when the plane was in mid-flight!
Ya, because I'm sure a cure for cancer would be worthless in the free market. Zero motive. Right.
To be fair, that's a valid complaint -- that new skin was, and still remains, atrocious.
You pretty much changed it to "Windows XP mode w/ Quicklaunch menu that already existed in WinXP" -- I think the only "improvements" Win7 brought to the table there was the ability to move taskbar programs around and "glitz".
That's just it with Windows though -- things start as an "option" and then eventually the "old way" just gets phased out. The lack of Start Menu in Win 8 is proof of that.
And it's not just OSes -- it's applications too. Might I remind you of the infernal ribbon? Or applications that don't show the menu bar defaultly? (media player comes to mind)
Asked if she had the right to the public assistance money, Clayton answered, "I kind of do. I have no income, and I have bills to pay. I have two houses."
Actually, it's "Nothing is working, stop what you're doing"
You think that's clearly outlined? It's so broad and "rambling" that you might as well call it "everything on the Democrat platform". I mean seriously, it touches on everything from "real problems" (bailout/foreclosures) to whining about student debt to PETA-esque pleas for animal rights. There's no singular message there. If they had focused on the abuses of wall street instead of using their influence to branch into a bully pulpit to push all their utopian ideals, maybe they would have gotten somewhere. But seriously, claiming Wall Street is somehow tied to the "torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals"? That's reaching, to say the least.
You give people far too much credit if you think they go to the trouble of looking to see exactly how much of each tax they're paying. All they see is the bottom line (i.e. "what do I have left after total taxes?"). And it still doesn't in any way address the original root problem -- namely, are we spending too much on these programs? Just because "total social security tax income" exceeds "total social security spending", that doesn't make that expense feasible or prudent, even if you might have made it "solvent" through bookkeeping and tax rate adjustment.
I have no opposition to apportioning taxes towards what they're meant to pay for -- my opposition lies in the fact that people are trying to claim social security is sustainable because it is a separate tax where the proceeds exceed the expense and then pretending it isn't part of the budget. And that's horseshit, because you can set tax levels (including FICA) at whatever level you want -- and that doesn't change the total cost we're spending on said program. Such spending doesn't occur in a vacuum: comparing the ~800 billion we spend on social security vs the money we spend on other things is a perfectly valid comparison. And when you do that comparison, suddenly "defense" is NOT the largest part of our fiduciary irresponsibility.
Why do you think it's relevant that it's a separate tax? We're still paying for it, right? The money is coming from the same people, right? It's still an expense, right? By what logic do you pretend it's not part of the budget? (or otherwise not worth consideration) What makes a separate tax suddenly acceptable? As a for instance, if they parceled off the cost of the Iraq War into a special annual "Iraq surtax", does that suddenly make the ~2 trillion we spent on that war "acceptable" or not part of the budget? It's an insane way to view money management.
I'll grant you that, but it's still a far more accurate assessment than you give it credit for. According to the SSA budget (https://www.socialsecurity.gov/budget/2013BudgetOverview.pdf), 672 billion went toward OASI -- it's certainly the lion's share of the money.
You seriously believe that? http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/entitlement-reform-lawmakers-stuck-medicare-medicaid-social-security/story?id=12933651
57% of our total budget this year went to your "promises to seniors" (well, and Medicaid)-- yet I bet you can't name many people receiving benefits that can tell you that their Social Security check is "plenty to live on" or that their Medicare in anyway adequately covers their medical expenses. And fuck the people who happen to be in the "ailing 50 to 62" age range, because they're shit out of luck -- maybe they'll be comforted by the fact that IF they make it to age 62, they'll get their money, but for now they have to give it to the government to pay for the cost of the people just slightly healthier & older than they are
And that's 57% now -- projections have these programs spiraling WAY out of control in total expenses -- how in hell can you claim they're sustainable?
If you want to "make due on your promise to seniors", so be it, but don't pretend these programs are somehow salvageable or continuable. They should be phased out _immediately_ on a pro-rated benefit basis and we should go back to square one to come with an idea that works, like mandatory 401ks.
That's some strange logic you got there and certainly not what I've witnessed. The older generation tends to be far more concerned with getting every penny out of government they can (hands off my unsustainable benefit program!), tend to be oblivious of any non-biased source of information (internet-incapable Fox News watchers), and a good chunk are probably on the senile end of things. The younger crowd tend to be far more informed (even if that comes to watching shows like the Daily Show).
This is exactly why a civics lesson is necessary -- because otherwise some jackass (be it laywer or engineer) will think they have every right to pass federal law willy-nilly to support their private cause in complete ignorance of the Constitution and the restrictions it is meant to enforce. This applies to almost everything. The sheer number of people that want to impose their will via federal mandate is mind-boggling.
Medicaid has been around since '65 -- I don't recall it being "hard" to get through either (majority vote in both the House (307-116) and Senate (70-24)). Fat lot of good it did you too since we're all out of money and even sicker than we were back then.
That's not true. Just look at the emergence of hybrid/electric/nat-gas vehicles. None of that tech was rushed -- market forces simply "deemed it into existence" as gas prices rose (and nat gas prices fell) and as the technologies matured. The process has been a gradual one (and continues to be a gradual one). Yet it is occurring without special forcing. Solar will be the next big boom (since it's finally stating to get into the bang-for-buck consideration range).
Except that resource shortages don't work that way. It's not like a dotcom bust where things change practically overnight -- if we're anywhere near a supply-restriction on oil, the cost spike will be gradual, so gradual that we'll have plenty of time to shift to more efficient tech. The only way this would NOT occur gradually is if our industries simultaneously tapped out all oil on the planet. That kind of cataclysmic talk simply can't happen.
Uh huh, that's nothing like the US.
Hey, I'm cool with the government telling me it's not good to buy lead paint -- I'm less cool with them leveling rifles at me and ordering me to back away from the lead paint.
Ron Paul gets my vote. He may have some extreme views (like his rabid isolationism), but those would never see the like of day in law. What's important is that the country's direction changes (from "reducing spending increases" to "reducing SPENDING") -- and no one is willing to do that except Ron.
The degree of human involvement is questioned -- very few skeptics assume outright that humans aren't a possible factor in global warming. But quantification matters, especially when doing cost-risk comparisons. And frankly, environmentalists don't do a great job clarifying with any sufficient degree of certainty exactly how large of an effect mankind (vs natural forces) is having on this particular equation.
You are wrong. Look at the votes yourself: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-1424
Yeas: 172 Democrats, 91 Republicans
Nays: 63 Democrats, 108 Republicans
More than HALF of the Republicans in Congress were against the bill -- it only went through with Democratic support. And this was PRIOR to the Tea Party politicians making it into office. And the discrepancies between the parties grow even larger if you consider the "stimulus" bills that followed (where Republicans were almost 100% in opposition). So don't try to call the Republicans the shills that believe in "socialized rich corporatism", because the voting record clearly shows the Democrats more in that camp.
But I agree with you on one thing at least: both parties suck.
Then you're selectively tuning out a good portion of the audience. I've never debated this topic without bringing up cost-risk analysis (namely, the lack thereof by any environmentalist on this topic).
The Republicans don't support that shit -- just look at the votes on the bailouts. The Dems are the one that let the taxpayers eat all the losses -- the Republicans wanted the companies to go under.
Ya, it's a good thing Obama voted against that...oh wait...