A little rough grant you, but, why does an intelligent being stay where there aren't any resources...move till you find food or where it will grow easier??
When people try to do that here, we tend to call them "illegal aliens" and send them back where they came from.
If you had read "Guns, Germs, and Steel", (mentioned earlier), you would realize that the differences in the relative technology of civilations is a result of many generations of advantage. And while civilizations could move, there were not always good places to move to. Other places were so small that they had little diversity, and thus were outclassed by larger, more diverse civilizations.
And for those who think that humans can't possibly cause massive ecological harm, just look at Mesopotamia. The "Fertile Crescent" sure isn't fertile now. I fact, there are huge salt deserts where nothing grows. Why? Irrigation in Babylonian times brought salt with the water. The salt deposits built up and eventually destroyed the environment.
Jared Diamond (author of Guns, Germs, and Steel) has another book called Collapse, which talks about cases where civilations have brought about their own collapse. Degrading their environment and exhausting their natural resources destroyed the Mayans. It can happen to us, too.
This post is so wrong I'm not even sure where to begin, but I'll give it a go.
Fair? What kind of reason is that? Life inheritly is not fair...never has been, never will be. The US and other countries all started off back in the ages as the same basic place as the other poor countries of today.
All countries and civilizations did not start in the same place. I suggest you read the excellent book Guns, Germs, and Steel which details why societies flourished in some parts of the world and languished in others. Hint: It's geography and natural resources, not an innate "superiority" of one people over another.
But, we worked, educated ourselves, and did what it took to grow, industrialize and progress.
Because we didn't have to work 16 hours a day trying to feed ourselves, thnanks to our civilization's geographical advantages. That, and we didn't have to defend outselves from invaders with far superior weapons and germs we had no natural resistance to.
They could have done the same thing way back when, but, for some reason did not.
Well, at least you admit not knowing why. The above book will tell you.
The rest of your post is simply a self-serving argument from ignorance. We as an entire species are in this together. If each of us felt as you do, that you owe nothing to the world and the world ows nothing to you, perhaps you ought to give back all those things our society gave you, starting with your computer. After all, I'm sure you can build one yourself from the ores, sand, and oil that are the basis for all its components.
It is something that has been debated for a long time -- how much "freedom" do you allow students in High School?
IANAL, so take with the appropriate grain of salt.
First, remember that until age 18, you are still by law a minor, and so you don't enjoy all the rights and responsibilities of full citizenship. The school is legally responsible for you, and can be held liable for anything that you do, or is done to you. Our litigious society has forced them to impose these Draconian rules and regulations.
Now after age 18, the rules change, and the school may not actually have much legal ground to stand on, though they may not have to give you your diploma, either. When I was graduating (23(Yikes!) years ago) the school administration said if anyone threw their hats at graduation they would not receive their dimploma. I don't think that was enforceable, but we were sufficiently cowed so no one did it. And we were all over 18.
That said though, I agree with you about the lack of respect shown towards teenagers by society. And lack of respect breeds lack of respect in return. I do a lot of work with high schoolers and try to treat them with respect, but so many people today don't, and I don't know how to change it.
That sounds like a flawed system, because obviously population fluctuations will continue to exist. There should be a transition to a system where one generation pays for their own generation's retirement, as opposed to another generation's. I can't believe why any country wouldn't do it this way.
I'm not totally opposed to the idea, though I don't see it working practically, mostly because some generation has to start the ball rolling by paying for both themselves and their elders. Also, there's the problem of now knowing how much money will be needed in retirement, though the law of large numbers can make this more predictable.
But that's not what Bush is proposing. Rather than promoted shared responsibility for the entire country's welfare, he wants a Wild West type system where everyone is out for himself, and the consequences to society be damned. And if you run out of money in your retirement, well, you just are not a good enough person. Because if you had been good, you would have made enough money to support yourself for all eventualities.
If your objective is to "protect the system", then you may be correct.
But, with this change, young workers will be paying into the system far more than they can expect to receive in benefits. The average young worker will pay more than he will receive.
This proposal and my assertion was based on a "Marketplace" (business show on public radio) commentary by Robert Reich, where he proposed the same thing. Will benefits be reduced under this plan? Yes. Will there be such an inequity as what you described? I don't know, but it doesn't seem likely, unless the retirement age is extended. Do you have a link to an analysis that shows this to be true?
Private accounts give the average guy a way to do better. And even if the system works against you (because you died too young to get to the break-even point), the funds in your private account are yours. You can leave them to your children. That's something. It's a lot better than the guaranteed loss that the average young worker gets under your plan.
Private accounts also give the average guy a way to do far, far worse. Which is actually more likely, since how many Average Joe's can play the stock market and win, when Wall Street insiders have stacked the deck?
But that's beside the point. Social Security is a retirement insurance plan. All insurance works this way. All insurees pay in, according to there expected payout. Some get more back, some less. Health insurance works the same, except that health insurance companies take a far bigger piece off the top (convervatives call it "profit") than the government does for Social Security (conservatives call it "governmental waste").
You don't expect your heirs to get money left over from your health insurance, or term life insurance, why do you expect to get money back from retirement insurance?
The fact is this is a "crisis" manufactured by a right-wing ideologically opposed to social programs, period, and they are trying to manipulate public opinion by setting up a series of false choices.
Social Security is not broken. Private accounts are too risky, and the only ones who will profit are the Wall Street money managers.
None of which is related to the fact that steal 12.5% of my money just isn't fair. Let me invest it and earn 8-9% annually over the 45 years I work.
We all have a shared responsibility to promote broader prosperity. Your ability to earn a living in this country was provided for you by the tax dollars previous generation paid to build roads, schools, and the infrastructre that has allowed the U.S. to become properous. And for the last 70 years, part of that promise includes a guaranteed income when you retire.
That 12.5% is our payment into that same promise. So our descendents will understand that we paid with our tax dollars in order to preserve the system that allows them to become prosperous.
Perhaps when you pay that 12.5% you should think about who you're helping, rather than you own selfish self-interest.
Oh, and what investment is going to provide that "guaranteed" 8-9% return. You really think it's going to be the stock market after everybody and his brother starts investing? And after the Wall Street elite have taken their cut?
I'm not right or left, I'm central. But, please tell me what platform Al Gore ran on in 2000. I do recall being hit on the head with the phrase "lock box" about a billion times. The Democrats are notorious for running on platforms of "But my opponent wants to plunder Social Security and hates old people!"
Bush may not hate old people, but he certainly wants to plunder Social Security.
Remember, Bush and his supporters are ideological conservatives, and as such they are ideologically opposed to "wasteful" social programs, because they believe that giving things that aren't earned to people is immoral (fostering dependency). Social Security is by far the most successful U.S. social program ever, in that it has fostered a tremendous increase in the standard of living for retirees. Since a successful social program would endanger mass acceptance of their worldview, they are trying to destroy it, thereby "proving" that the conservative worldview is the correct one.
Let's examine some of your other assertions:
Politicians don't know how to reduce spending.
Sure they do. Just not the kind of spending they like. Liberal politicians would love to eliminate spending for missile defence, and conservatives want to eliminate spending for Head Start.
Politicians have been spending the SS income rather than investing it for years now.
True. But SS was never designed as a "retirement savings" system. It was more like, "You pay to support your elders, and your youngers will pay to support you". There is a baby-boom bubble coming, and it will require increased taxes/reduced benefits to cover it, but it's not a crisis. It's fixable, and it's temporary.
There are going to be more people collecting from SS when the baby boomers retire than there will be contributing to it.
This statement is just plain wrong. If it were true, there would be more people over 65 than there are in the work force 18-65, which just doesn't compute. There will be a bubble, where they ratio may drop to 2 workers to 1 retiree, but it's temporary.
Politicians bought votes in years past by adjusting the cost of living based on wage inflation, versus the previous (more reasonable) way of calculating it based on regular inflation.
I'm in complete agreement with you here. And furthermore, this change alone would make the system solvent therough the baby-boom bubble. Nothing else need be done.
If you raise taxes, it won't help social security, it will result in more spending, though. Want proof? Please refer to the last 70 years of spending increases by the government.
70 years? Where did that come from? Ah yes. 1935. The Great Depression. Americans were literally starving in the streets.
There's a reason for government spending and social programs. It's to smooth out the peaks and valleys in the natural economic system.
I don't agree with Bush on much, but I like his ideas for SS reform. It's a broken system. You can either start to fix it, or you can try to prop it up until it completely collapses.
You sound like you've been reading too many White House or Cato Institute press releases. The system is not broken. There is no crisis. This "crisis" is being manufactured by the right-wing because that's the only way they'll convince moderates to go along with such a risky, reactionary, and thoughoughly unecessary return to 1929.
Another set of abuses is revealed: "Oh, it's no worse than Abu Ghraib."
Then another: "It's only a little worse than Abu Ghraib".
And so on.
Remember, the Nazis didn't send the Jews to the concentratyion camps right away; they eroded their rights gradually. That's the fear. (And thus, I've invoked Godwin's Law, end of argument:-)
There's nothing logically inconsistent about the stances given the circumstances.
Case 1: Company buys up many questionable patents for next to nothing, then hires a squadron of patent attorneys to try to extract royalties from whomever doesn't have the time/energy/money to fight them.
Opinion: Questionable patents bad - companies greedy/stupid.
Case 2: Inventor creates well-deserved patent which leads to multi-billion dollars of business for many companies and does not receive a cent of royalties, due to bad/greedy decisions by corporate management.
Opinion: Well-deserved patents good - companies greedy/stupid.
What company pays negative tax rates? Do you have a link for that (that isn't mother jones or IWW or some other nonsense)?
Obviously the previous poster didn't mean negative tax rates. What was meant was some companies have received more in subsidies than they pay in taxes. Due to all it's fancy accounting tricks. Enron pulled this neat trick off in 4 of the 5 years from 1996-2000. Here is a link.
Of course, considering your slap at any information provided by Mother Jones, IWW, or such "nonsense", you'll probably consider the previous link "nonsense", too.
If you fix senior management's compensation and do not tie it to the financial performance of the company in some way, what type of management do you think you'll get? A style that is focused on increasing shareholder value?
I know this flies in the face of conservative orthodoxy, but "increasing shareholder value" is not the only reponsibility corporations have, though they desperately want it to be. By living in my community, I derive benefits from that community, and the community should expect that I give back to the community to a certain degree. The same logic must hold true for corporations. If it doesn't, you are giving the corporation free rein to move into a community (receiving property tax abatements), drive local competitors out of business, pollute the environoment, overwork the workers while driving down wages, and then, when more profits can be made elsewhere, close shop and leave, taking all the money with it.
Is this the kind of neighbor you want?
Finding somebody who wants to be a senior VP isn't difficult, finding somebody who is good at is, that's why the salaries for those positions are so inflated.
The salaries are so inflated mainly for three reasons:
There's a artificial limit on the supply. Unless you have an MBA from the "right" school and friends in the "right" places, you need not apply.
The boards of directors of compaines (which set executive salaries) are one big clique. Look at the median salary (exec salaries are public knowledge) for the position, and say, "Our guys are better than average!" So they raise the salary of the VP to be above the median, which raises the median. Next board comes along and does the same thing. And so on. And so on.
It is a difficult job, and many who try fail. But those that fail can usually rely on friends to find them enough work so that they will be properly, financially taken care of.
Let me say this from experience (I have two mathematically able girls, 13 and 11). Most elementary school teachers don't understand math and science. And because they don't understand it, they don't know an interesting way to teach it. It just plain work to them. Some schools provides a "drill and kill" curriculum (think Kumon Math), because that's the quickest and cheapest way to improve test scores. Other take the "Rainforest Math" approach and ask all these "how does x make you feel?" questions in math class. Mathematically Correct has documented lots of horror stories. While I don't agree with everything MC says, they make a lot of good points.
After an hour of this in class, and an hour of the same kind of problems as homework, these kids want more math like they want a hole in the head.
Don't wait until Middle School to fix this! By then it's too late. There's plenty of sites on the web that provide assistance for parents of "gifted" kids. (True that many people think they have "gifted" kids when they really don't, but that's another argument.) My favorite
is this one.
The problem here is that the rich in the US (at least as represented by the Republican party) don't have the old "noblesse oblige" morality, where they have a responsibility to help those less well off than themselves. Instead, the main arguments are that the less well off (read "poor") are only poor due to their lack of morals (work ethic, self-destructive behavior, etc.) and are undeserving of help.
There is no sense that a person might be poor due to "bad luck" or some other reason that is not their direct fault. And so they can convince themselves not to feel guilty about poor people's troubles (like the guy in the original article), because that guy obviously had some moral failing, or he wouldn't have gotten in that situation in the first place.
So, when the rich have abrogated their responsibility to the rest of society while reaping the rewards that society gives, what are we supposed to do? Tax them.
"But you're taking their money at gunpoint" you say. I say, "Of course we are. However, they have reaped the rewards of a society that generations of taxpayers have given them, without being willing to make their own contributions themselves."
There's a certain amount of responsibility the rich need to have to the poor. Otherwise you get the French Revolution.
It just happens to be a fact that human beings are incurably religious. Every culture has some sort of religion. Atheism is a religion that doesn't purport to believe in a God outside of humanity, but atheists are gods unto themselves. Most of them believe in the religion of humanism which holds that man is god.
Thank you for that wonderful strawman definition of atheism/humanism which is so easy for you to (mis)characterize. Too bad that isn't what most atheism/humanism actually is.
Humanism is simply the idea that there is no "God" out there that will show up and make life better here on Earth. If we want life to be better, we've got to do it ourselves. None of this "man is god" BS, unless you believe that only God has the ability to improve life on Earth.
I suggest you look at documents written by actual Humanists (like the Humanist Manifesto) to learn what humanism truly is. You'll find that in the link I gave you, the word "god" is never used.
There is no human on this planet that doesn't have some sort of belief or life philosophy or life view that governs all of their behavior. These things can be lumped under the term: "religion".
They can be lumped under "religion" if you are incredibly narrow-minded. Typical religion (at least as practiced by American Fundamentalists) implies a world-view that stresses faith over fact. It stresses supernatural events/rewards/prophecies over history. And it stresses an unquestioning adherence to a doctrine given from on high ("God/Jesus" but they are monotheists) and faithfully interpreted by the preachers, who would of course never let their own personal prejudices influence their interpretation of God's word.
The only possible definition I can think of for "political obstinance" would be someone that goes out of teir way to choose every option save the one they don't like the most (ie, the best option), as opposed to someone who chooses the best option. Personally I think it depends on your viewpoint and also implies another generalization (closed-mindedness).
How about this one? Making a decision about a policy and sticking to it, regardless of any new information about the basis for the decision, and also regardless of the actual effects that policy is having.
Religously prejudiced: yep, that me, make jew jokes all the time. Course, they are just jokes and, oh yeah, I'm Jewish. Funny how that works.
Really? Assuming all policies were equal, and one was an atheist and the other a Jew, would you vote for the atheist?
And I've been around plenty of evangelicals and other right-wingers who've made Jew jokes. Maybe they were "just jokes", but they certainly believed that the stereotypes were true.
Remeber, the KKK didn't just go after blacks.
I find it interesting that the group that is supposed to be the most open-minded and supportive of democracy is also the same group that screams the loudest and longest when the system doesn't go their own way.
I seem to remember a group of Republicans mobbing the Dade County election HQ in 2000, preventing them from finishing the recount in time. I also remember a certain group of Republicans who threw everything in the book at Bill Clinton, because he had the audacity to win. So don't even pretend that the Repubs would take a loss quietly.
Or, on the other hand, you may want to take your generalizations and ask how "your" party could possibly have lost if your party's representative was against such poor competition.
It couldn't be because of the large percentage of Repub. votes who believed Saddam was intimately involved in 9/11? No. Can't be that, nor any of the other bits of mis-information passionately believed to be true by the Bush voters.
And to your other snarky comment about wait times, some people in Columbus were still waiting to vote at 1 in the morning, because many urban voting places didn't have enough machines. I live in the suburbs, and had to wait a little more than an hour. Lines in the city here (St. Louis) were sometimes 3 hours. I work by the hour as a contractor, and a 3 hour wait would cost me money, since it eats into my day. Time is as much of a poll tax as money, and vast inequities in the amount of time you have to wait to vote should be violations of the Voting Rights Act.
But honestly, I do think that the Dems have a big misunderstanding of the whole Bush phenomenon. Bush has become a religious figure in many of the true believers' eyes. They have faith in him, because he professes his faith so strongly. This faith, just like religious faith, is simply unshakable by facts. So a crappy economy, deaths in Iraq and elsewhere, a growing gap between rich and poor, loss of manufacturing jobs and lack of decent education and health care is replaced by a feel-good evangelism and a faith that "Don't worry, God (through Bush) will provide, but only if we truly believe.
Because the mainstream US media doesn't care about the rest of the world, either. I listen to the supposedly liberally-biased NPR all the time, and I never heard a single mention of it there. Like so much information that can put BushCo. in a bad light, the only US sources have been specifically Anti-Bush web sites and blogs.
Bush/Cheney website blocked for non-US addresses
on
Pre-Election Discussion
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Some of the liberal blogs (like this one) have stated that www.georgewbush.com is blocked for non-US visitors. They get a simple "Access Denied".
If this is true, why would they do this? While I can certainly think of real reasons (like not wanting non-US traffic to get in the way of US traffic, or avoiding DOS attacks from abroad), there are also ex-pats and travelers who are eligible to vote who might want to access the site from overseas. GWB.com could do like Google and refer you to a local site when you're overseas (when in the Netherlands, google.com automatically redirects to google.nl).
To me, this seems to simply reinforce the image that they couldn't care less about the rest of the world. This attitude will come back to bite us, sooner or later.
I've had to pretty much stop watching the network news channels as of late, because it would seem that every time I turn to them, there's a liberal and conservative trying to talk over each other. It's just a nuisance!
You're not the only one. Jon Stewart really put it to the "political hacks" on Crossfire. The transcript is definitely worth your time.
Putting squirrels into a canon won't work, because canons are much too simple. For them to be shot properly, you've got to use a full-blown six-part fugue.
The wife is a manager at the local Wally Mart, and she says that the long line policy is still in effect. They will get people from the floor if they are qualified to work on a register. However, when they run out of the registers or qualified people to run said registers, that policy is no longer possible.
So, what is the correct management response to failing to meet this corporate goal? Shrug you shoulders and say, "Sorry." No, you go out and hire more workers, you spend the money to train more workers to work the register, and you pay more so you you can attract and retain the workers who can help you meet this goal.
But what's really happened is that Wal-Mart drove all their competitors out of business, and now simply runs on the cheap (e.g. the long line policy can be discarded when it's no longer convenient) to maximize its own profits, extracting as much money out of small-town America as it can, and in return giving dead-end jobs and salaries so low that its workers must remain on some form of government assistance.
But hey, I saved 12 cents on that leaf rake!
P.S. The wife is a manager? I didn't think they allowed women to become managers there.
Slashdot Mirror
Where's my mod points when I need them!
Modding up to 5 a 15-second cut and paste post is simply ridiculous.
You moderators ought to be ashamed of yourselves.
the Supreme Court has proven time and time again its ability to make wise decisions
Dred Scott v. Sandford? - Don't like slavery in your state? Too bad!
Plessy v. Fergeson? - "Separate but equal" turned out to be "Separate and massively different."
Roe v. Wade? - Found a "Right to Privacy" and fostered a period of intense politicization of judicial appointments.
Bush v. Gore? - Equal protection for voting standards only applies if it helps a Republican President get elected.
Personally, that word really bugs me.
The mark of a smart nerd: Receiving a $2.56 check from Donald Knuth.
The mark of a stupid nerd: Cashing a $2.56 check from Donald Knuth.
A little rough grant you, but, why does an intelligent being stay where there aren't any resources...move till you find food or where it will grow easier??
When people try to do that here, we tend to call them "illegal aliens" and send them back where they came from.
If you had read "Guns, Germs, and Steel", (mentioned earlier), you would realize that the differences in the relative technology of civilations is a result of many generations of advantage. And while civilizations could move, there were not always good places to move to. Other places were so small that they had little diversity, and thus were outclassed by larger, more diverse civilizations.
And for those who think that humans can't possibly cause massive ecological harm, just look at Mesopotamia. The "Fertile Crescent" sure isn't fertile now. I fact, there are huge salt deserts where nothing grows. Why? Irrigation in Babylonian times brought salt with the water. The salt deposits built up and eventually destroyed the environment.
Jared Diamond (author of Guns, Germs, and Steel) has another book called Collapse, which talks about cases where civilations have brought about their own collapse. Degrading their environment and exhausting their natural resources destroyed the Mayans. It can happen to us, too.
This post is so wrong I'm not even sure where to begin, but I'll give it a go.
Fair? What kind of reason is that? Life inheritly is not fair...never has been, never will be. The US and other countries all started off back in the ages as the same basic place as the other poor countries of today.
All countries and civilizations did not start in the same place. I suggest you read the excellent book Guns, Germs, and Steel which details why societies flourished in some parts of the world and languished in others. Hint: It's geography and natural resources, not an innate "superiority" of one people over another.
But, we worked, educated ourselves, and did what it took to grow, industrialize and progress.
Because we didn't have to work 16 hours a day trying to feed ourselves, thnanks to our civilization's geographical advantages. That, and we didn't have to defend outselves from invaders with far superior weapons and germs we had no natural resistance to.
They could have done the same thing way back when, but, for some reason did not.
Well, at least you admit not knowing why. The above book will tell you.
The rest of your post is simply a self-serving argument from ignorance. We as an entire species are in this together. If each of us felt as you do, that you owe nothing to the world and the world ows nothing to you, perhaps you ought to give back all those things our society gave you, starting with your computer. After all, I'm sure you can build one yourself from the ores, sand, and oil that are the basis for all its components.
It is something that has been debated for a long time -- how much "freedom" do you allow students in High School?
IANAL, so take with the appropriate grain of salt.
First, remember that until age 18, you are still by law a minor, and so you don't enjoy all the rights and responsibilities of full citizenship. The school is legally responsible for you, and can be held liable for anything that you do, or is done to you. Our litigious society has forced them to impose these Draconian rules and regulations.
Now after age 18, the rules change, and the school may not actually have much legal ground to stand on, though they may not have to give you your diploma, either. When I was graduating (23(Yikes!) years ago) the school administration said if anyone threw their hats at graduation they would not receive their dimploma. I don't think that was enforceable, but we were sufficiently cowed so no one did it. And we were all over 18.
That said though, I agree with you about the lack of respect shown towards teenagers by society. And lack of respect breeds lack of respect in return. I do a lot of work with high schoolers and try to treat them with respect, but so many people today don't, and I don't know how to change it.
How dare you suggest doing anything that might reduce the profits of Bush's friends in industry and reduce our dependence on Big Energy.
Report to the nearest Republican re-education center at once.
That sounds like a flawed system, because obviously population fluctuations will continue to exist. There should be a transition to a system where one generation pays for their own generation's retirement, as opposed to another generation's. I can't believe why any country wouldn't do it this way.
I'm not totally opposed to the idea, though I don't see it working practically, mostly because some generation has to start the ball rolling by paying for both themselves and their elders. Also, there's the problem of now knowing how much money will be needed in retirement, though the law of large numbers can make this more predictable.
But that's not what Bush is proposing. Rather than promoted shared responsibility for the entire country's welfare, he wants a Wild West type system where everyone is out for himself, and the consequences to society be damned. And if you run out of money in your retirement, well, you just are not a good enough person. Because if you had been good, you would have made enough money to support yourself for all eventualities.
Welcome to the Gilded Age.
If your objective is to "protect the system", then you may be correct.
But, with this change, young workers will be paying into the system far more than they can expect to receive in benefits. The average young worker will pay more than he will receive.
This proposal and my assertion was based on a "Marketplace" (business show on public radio) commentary by Robert Reich, where he proposed the same thing. Will benefits be reduced under this plan? Yes. Will there be such an inequity as what you described? I don't know, but it doesn't seem likely, unless the retirement age is extended. Do you have a link to an analysis that shows this to be true?
Private accounts give the average guy a way to do better. And even if the system works against you (because you died too young to get to the break-even point), the funds in your private account are yours. You can leave them to your children. That's something. It's a lot better than the guaranteed loss that the average young worker gets under your plan.
Private accounts also give the average guy a way to do far, far worse. Which is actually more likely, since how many Average Joe's can play the stock market and win, when Wall Street insiders have stacked the deck?
But that's beside the point. Social Security is a retirement insurance plan. All insurance works this way. All insurees pay in, according to there expected payout. Some get more back, some less. Health insurance works the same, except that health insurance companies take a far bigger piece off the top (convervatives call it "profit") than the government does for Social Security (conservatives call it "governmental waste").
You don't expect your heirs to get money left over from your health insurance, or term life insurance, why do you expect to get money back from retirement insurance?
The fact is this is a "crisis" manufactured by a right-wing ideologically opposed to social programs, period, and they are trying to manipulate public opinion by setting up a series of false choices.
Social Security is not broken. Private accounts are too risky, and the only ones who will profit are the Wall Street money managers.
None of which is related to the fact that steal 12.5% of my money just isn't fair. Let me invest it and earn 8-9% annually over the 45 years I work.
We all have a shared responsibility to promote broader prosperity. Your ability to earn a living in this country was provided for you by the tax dollars previous generation paid to build roads, schools, and the infrastructre that has allowed the U.S. to become properous. And for the last 70 years, part of that promise includes a guaranteed income when you retire.
That 12.5% is our payment into that same promise. So our descendents will understand that we paid with our tax dollars in order to preserve the system that allows them to become prosperous. Perhaps when you pay that 12.5% you should think about who you're helping, rather than you own selfish self-interest.
Oh, and what investment is going to provide that "guaranteed" 8-9% return. You really think it's going to be the stock market after everybody and his brother starts investing? And after the Wall Street elite have taken their cut?
I'm not right or left, I'm central. But, please tell me what platform Al Gore ran on in 2000. I do recall being hit on the head with the phrase "lock box" about a billion times. The Democrats are notorious for running on platforms of "But my opponent wants to plunder Social Security and hates old people!"
Bush may not hate old people, but he certainly wants to plunder Social Security.
Remember, Bush and his supporters are ideological conservatives, and as such they are ideologically opposed to "wasteful" social programs, because they believe that giving things that aren't earned to people is immoral (fostering dependency). Social Security is by far the most successful U.S. social program ever, in that it has fostered a tremendous increase in the standard of living for retirees. Since a successful social program would endanger mass acceptance of their worldview, they are trying to destroy it, thereby "proving" that the conservative worldview is the correct one.
Let's examine some of your other assertions:
Politicians don't know how to reduce spending.
Sure they do. Just not the kind of spending they like. Liberal politicians would love to eliminate spending for missile defence, and conservatives want to eliminate spending for Head Start.
Politicians have been spending the SS income rather than investing it for years now.
True. But SS was never designed as a "retirement savings" system. It was more like, "You pay to support your elders, and your youngers will pay to support you". There is a baby-boom bubble coming, and it will require increased taxes/reduced benefits to cover it, but it's not a crisis. It's fixable, and it's temporary.
There are going to be more people collecting from SS when the baby boomers retire than there will be contributing to it.
This statement is just plain wrong. If it were true, there would be more people over 65 than there are in the work force 18-65, which just doesn't compute. There will be a bubble, where they ratio may drop to 2 workers to 1 retiree, but it's temporary.
Politicians bought votes in years past by adjusting the cost of living based on wage inflation, versus the previous (more reasonable) way of calculating it based on regular inflation.
I'm in complete agreement with you here. And furthermore, this change alone would make the system solvent therough the baby-boom bubble. Nothing else need be done.
If you raise taxes, it won't help social security, it will result in more spending, though. Want proof? Please refer to the last 70 years of spending increases by the government.
70 years? Where did that come from? Ah yes. 1935. The Great Depression. Americans were literally starving in the streets.
There's a reason for government spending and social programs. It's to smooth out the peaks and valleys in the natural economic system.
I don't agree with Bush on much, but I like his ideas for SS reform. It's a broken system. You can either start to fix it, or you can try to prop it up until it completely collapses.
You sound like you've been reading too many White House or Cato Institute press releases. The system is not broken. There is no crisis. This "crisis" is being manufactured by the right-wing because that's the only way they'll convince moderates to go along with such a risky, reactionary, and thoughoughly unecessary return to 1929.
But the problem is the "slippery slope."
:-)
Another set of abuses is revealed: "Oh, it's no worse than Abu Ghraib."
Then another: "It's only a little worse than Abu Ghraib".
And so on.
Remember, the Nazis didn't send the Jews to the concentratyion camps right away; they eroded their rights gradually. That's the fear. (And thus, I've invoked Godwin's Law, end of argument
There's nothing logically inconsistent about the stances given the circumstances.
Case 1: Company buys up many questionable patents for next to nothing, then hires a squadron of patent attorneys to try to extract royalties from whomever doesn't have the time/energy/money to fight them.
Opinion: Questionable patents bad - companies greedy/stupid.
Case 2: Inventor creates well-deserved patent which leads to multi-billion dollars of business for many companies and does not receive a cent of royalties, due to bad/greedy decisions by corporate management.
Opinion: Well-deserved patents good - companies greedy/stupid.
Where is this logical inconsistency again?
What company pays negative tax rates? Do you have a link for that (that isn't mother jones or IWW or some other nonsense)?
Obviously the previous poster didn't mean negative tax rates. What was meant was some companies have received more in subsidies than they pay in taxes. Due to all it's fancy accounting tricks. Enron pulled this neat trick off in 4 of the 5 years from 1996-2000. Here is a link.
Of course, considering your slap at any information provided by Mother Jones, IWW, or such "nonsense", you'll probably consider the previous link "nonsense", too.
If you fix senior management's compensation and do not tie it to the financial performance of the company in some way, what type of management do you think you'll get? A style that is focused on increasing shareholder value?
I know this flies in the face of conservative orthodoxy, but "increasing shareholder value" is not the only reponsibility corporations have, though they desperately want it to be. By living in my community, I derive benefits from that community, and the community should expect that I give back to the community to a certain degree. The same logic must hold true for corporations. If it doesn't, you are giving the corporation free rein to move into a community (receiving property tax abatements), drive local competitors out of business, pollute the environoment, overwork the workers while driving down wages, and then, when more profits can be made elsewhere, close shop and leave, taking all the money with it.
Is this the kind of neighbor you want?
Finding somebody who wants to be a senior VP isn't difficult, finding somebody who is good at is, that's why the salaries for those positions are so inflated.
The salaries are so inflated mainly for three reasons:
Let me say this from experience (I have two mathematically able girls, 13 and 11). Most elementary school teachers don't understand math and science. And because they don't understand it, they don't know an interesting way to teach it. It just plain work to them. Some schools provides a "drill and kill" curriculum (think Kumon Math), because that's the quickest and cheapest way to improve test scores. Other take the "Rainforest Math" approach and ask all these "how does x make you feel?" questions in math class. Mathematically Correct has documented lots of horror stories. While I don't agree with everything MC says, they make a lot of good points.
After an hour of this in class, and an hour of the same kind of problems as homework, these kids want more math like they want a hole in the head.
Don't wait until Middle School to fix this! By then it's too late. There's plenty of sites on the web that provide assistance for parents of "gifted" kids. (True that many people think they have "gifted" kids when they really don't, but that's another argument.) My favorite is this one.
Good Luck.
The problem here is that the rich in the US (at least as represented by the Republican party) don't have the old "noblesse oblige" morality, where they have a responsibility to help those less well off than themselves. Instead, the main arguments are that the less well off (read "poor") are only poor due to their lack of morals (work ethic, self-destructive behavior, etc.) and are undeserving of help.
There is no sense that a person might be poor due to "bad luck" or some other reason that is not their direct fault. And so they can convince themselves not to feel guilty about poor people's troubles (like the guy in the original article), because that guy obviously had some moral failing, or he wouldn't have gotten in that situation in the first place.
So, when the rich have abrogated their responsibility to the rest of society while reaping the rewards that society gives, what are we supposed to do? Tax them.
"But you're taking their money at gunpoint" you say. I say, "Of course we are. However, they have reaped the rewards of a society that generations of taxpayers have given them, without being willing to make their own contributions themselves."
There's a certain amount of responsibility the rich need to have to the poor. Otherwise you get the French Revolution.
It just happens to be a fact that human beings are incurably religious. Every culture has some sort of religion. Atheism is a religion that doesn't purport to believe in a God outside of humanity, but atheists are gods unto themselves. Most of them believe in the religion of humanism which holds that man is god.
Thank you for that wonderful strawman definition of atheism/humanism which is so easy for you to (mis)characterize. Too bad that isn't what most atheism/humanism actually is.
Humanism is simply the idea that there is no "God" out there that will show up and make life better here on Earth. If we want life to be better, we've got to do it ourselves. None of this "man is god" BS, unless you believe that only God has the ability to improve life on Earth.
I suggest you look at documents written by actual Humanists (like the Humanist Manifesto) to learn what humanism truly is. You'll find that in the link I gave you, the word "god" is never used.
There is no human on this planet that doesn't have some sort of belief or life philosophy or life view that governs all of their behavior. These things can be lumped under the term: "religion".
They can be lumped under "religion" if you are incredibly narrow-minded. Typical religion (at least as practiced by American Fundamentalists) implies a world-view that stresses faith over fact. It stresses supernatural events/rewards/prophecies over history. And it stresses an unquestioning adherence to a doctrine given from on high ("God/Jesus" but they are monotheists) and faithfully interpreted by the preachers, who would of course never let their own personal prejudices influence their interpretation of God's word.
The only possible definition I can think of for "political obstinance" would be someone that goes out of teir way to choose every option save the one they don't like the most (ie, the best option), as opposed to someone who chooses the best option. Personally I think it depends on your viewpoint and also implies another generalization (closed-mindedness).
How about this one? Making a decision about a policy and sticking to it, regardless of any new information about the basis for the decision, and also regardless of the actual effects that policy is having.
Religously prejudiced: yep, that me, make jew jokes all the time. Course, they are just jokes and, oh yeah, I'm Jewish. Funny how that works.
Really? Assuming all policies were equal, and one was an atheist and the other a Jew, would you vote for the atheist?
And I've been around plenty of evangelicals and other right-wingers who've made Jew jokes. Maybe they were "just jokes", but they certainly believed that the stereotypes were true.
Remeber, the KKK didn't just go after blacks.
I find it interesting that the group that is supposed to be the most open-minded and supportive of democracy is also the same group that screams the loudest and longest when the system doesn't go their own way.
I seem to remember a group of Republicans mobbing the Dade County election HQ in 2000, preventing them from finishing the recount in time. I also remember a certain group of Republicans who threw everything in the book at Bill Clinton, because he had the audacity to win. So don't even pretend that the Repubs would take a loss quietly.
Or, on the other hand, you may want to take your generalizations and ask how "your" party could possibly have lost if your party's representative was against such poor competition.
It couldn't be because of the large percentage of Repub. votes who believed Saddam was intimately involved in 9/11? No. Can't be that, nor any of the other bits of mis-information passionately believed to be true by the Bush voters.
And to your other snarky comment about wait times, some people in Columbus were still waiting to vote at 1 in the morning, because many urban voting places didn't have enough machines. I live in the suburbs, and had to wait a little more than an hour. Lines in the city here (St. Louis) were sometimes 3 hours. I work by the hour as a contractor, and a 3 hour wait would cost me money, since it eats into my day. Time is as much of a poll tax as money, and vast inequities in the amount of time you have to wait to vote should be violations of the Voting Rights Act.
But honestly, I do think that the Dems have a big misunderstanding of the whole Bush phenomenon. Bush has become a religious figure in many of the true believers' eyes. They have faith in him, because he professes his faith so strongly. This faith, just like religious faith, is simply unshakable by facts. So a crappy economy, deaths in Iraq and elsewhere, a growing gap between rich and poor, loss of manufacturing jobs and lack of decent education and health care is replaced by a feel-good evangelism and a faith that "Don't worry, God (through Bush) will provide, but only if we truly believe.
Because the mainstream US media doesn't care about the rest of the world, either. I listen to the supposedly liberally-biased NPR all the time, and I never heard a single mention of it there. Like so much information that can put BushCo. in a bad light, the only US sources have been specifically Anti-Bush web sites and blogs.
Some of the liberal blogs (like this one) have stated that www.georgewbush.com is blocked for non-US visitors. They get a simple "Access Denied".
If this is true, why would they do this? While I can certainly think of real reasons (like not wanting non-US traffic to get in the way of US traffic, or avoiding DOS attacks from abroad), there are also ex-pats and travelers who are eligible to vote who might want to access the site from overseas. GWB.com could do like Google and refer you to a local site when you're overseas (when in the Netherlands, google.com automatically redirects to google.nl).
To me, this seems to simply reinforce the image that they couldn't care less about the rest of the world. This attitude will come back to bite us, sooner or later.
I've had to pretty much stop watching the network news channels as of late, because it would seem that every time I turn to them, there's a liberal and conservative trying to talk over each other. It's just a nuisance!
You're not the only one. Jon Stewart really put it to the "political hacks" on Crossfire. The transcript is definitely worth your time.
Putting squirrels into a canon won't work, because canons are much too simple. For them to be shot properly, you've got to use a full-blown six-part fugue.
The wife is a manager at the local Wally Mart, and she says that the long line policy is still in effect. They will get people from the floor if they are qualified to work on a register. However, when they run out of the registers or qualified people to run said registers, that policy is no longer possible.
So, what is the correct management response to failing to meet this corporate goal? Shrug you shoulders and say, "Sorry." No, you go out and hire more workers, you spend the money to train more workers to work the register, and you pay more so you you can attract and retain the workers who can help you meet this goal.
But what's really happened is that Wal-Mart drove all their competitors out of business, and now simply runs on the cheap (e.g. the long line policy can be discarded when it's no longer convenient) to maximize its own profits, extracting as much money out of small-town America as it can, and in return giving dead-end jobs and salaries so low that its workers must remain on some form of government assistance.
But hey, I saved 12 cents on that leaf rake!
P.S. The wife is a manager? I didn't think they allowed women to become managers there.