The healing process after WWII is an interesting topic to study and debate. Although there were some painful moments, the US, Japan, and Europe emerged as economic superpowers, with very few hard feelings left behind after the war.
It was also important that we won the war in a manner that didn't turn the entire population against us. Of course, the warfare techniques used by the Viet Cong and Iraqi insurgency seem to have been designed to drag as many civilians into the conflict as possible.
It also didn't help that the US forces had a very poor understanding of the foreign culture and language in either of these conflicts. Had there been an extensive ground war in Japan, a similar situation would likely have emerged.
Lesson: The reconstruction is just as (if not more) important than the war itself. Also, make sure you understand the people you're invading.
Are you insinuating that Pharma companies have released 20 other flu strains?
There is absolutely no evidence to support any of these theories.
Yes. I suppose it's possible. Maybe it's even probable, if you insist that they've been up to this sort of thing before [citation-needed]. However, unless you have proof that somebody who could have potentially released H1N1 into the wild had also intentionally released several epidemics in the past, your logic doesn't even stand up.
Given Walt's history, I'd always just assumed that Goofy's early character was a manifestation of his racist beliefs.
(Seriously... part of the reason that Disney don't want their copyrights to expire is that they're repressing a lot of really bad stuff that's in their early archives)
We've also got NJTransit to the south, which has a number of ambitious system expansion projects on the board.
There's also the LIRR to the east.
NYC's arguably the only city in the US with adequate public transportation options. The only issue is that many of these lines are already at capacity.
How about linking the East Coast to the East Coast?
The Northeast Corridor is basically at capacity. We're eventually going to need to add another mainline.
South of DC, the NEC is f-ing terrible. Amtrak don't own the tracks, and on a bad day, it can take 6-8 hours to make it from DC to Hampton Roads. The line from Richmond to Newport News is particularly bad, given that it's single-tracked, carries lots of freight, and only runs 2 Amtrak trains per day in each direction.
(While I'm complaining about Hampton Roads, I might as well add that our other public transportation options appear to have been designed to intentionally suck. The area's geography makes it a *great* candidate for commuter rail, given that you could effectively reach most of the population with one rail line, and a few well-placed buses.)
High-speed rail in the US is also made unnecessarily difficult by the fact that the FRA judges the safety of rail vehicles based upon their weight. This makes most European rolling stock impossible to use on US tracks -- the Acela has been compared to a tank on rails, due to its weight.
The upshot is that the reactors we do have will exceed their safe lifespans in several years (2014 ?) and should really be shut down or require maintenance
AFAIK, the "maximum safe lifespan" estimates were conservatively made before we know how the current generation of reactors would age. As it turns out, they seem to have aged better than we'd anticipated, and are having their lifespans adjusted accordingly.
Of course, we should be doing tests to make sure that the reactors are still safe to operate. However, I wouldn't let the "maximum safe lifespan" phrase scare you.
The containment vessel issue could also be solved very easily. As it stands, the worldwide market for containment vessels is small enough that it only makes sense to have one or two manufacturers. The Japanese steel industry is massive, so it's not particularly surprising that they're the last surviving manufacturer.
Well, for one, Stalin probably shouldn't have purged his own armies.
Killing your own soldiers right before a war is generally unadvised.
Given just how poorly everything else in the Soviet Union was run in the 1930s, it's pretty remarkable that they were able to fight at all, or that the USSR managed to hold together during the war.
Apple Remote Desktop is a bit more complicated than that. VNC, SSH, and SCP are all built-in and supported by every copy of Mac OS X.
ARD provides a convenient interface for an administrator to simultaneously manage a large number of machines. This can easily justify the cost, particularly given the time savings it can lead to. In the realm of systems administration tools, ARD is fairly cheap.
Of course, the program also has a limited market appeal, which also raises the cost to the end user.
True, the USPS lost $5 billion in 2007. However, it's traditionally been a nearly-profitable enterprise, and has an incredibly substantial value to the economy, particularly in rural areas.
The fact that I can send a piece of paper (outdated, blah blah blah) anyplace on the continent in a few days for 40-something cents is darned near miraculous. I doubt you could establish a service to deliver mail within the island of Manhattan alone, and be able to offer those sort of rates, while coming close to profitability.
The USPS should be touted and lauded as a case study for how to run a government agency (and/or regulated monopoly). They're competent, efficient, and provide a valuable service. The limited areas in which private operators are allowed to compete (ie. UPS and FedEx) provides healthy competition, and spurs private enterprise. The USPS has even been lauded as a leader in environmentally-practices.
Postal services are obviously an excellent example of a natural monopoly due to economies of scale. The privatization of the mail and post offices in the UK (which were spun off separately) has frankly been a disaster. Almost immediately after privatization, the post office determined that there was no way it could possibly operate at a profit in rural areas, withdrew from these areas, and sold its assets. As you can imagine, this was extremely unpopular.
Public universities don't necessarily pay salaries from the pool of money that comes from the state. Salaries can be paid via endowment, research grants, or tuition income.
Your points about the velocity of money are all well and good, provided that your figures are correct (I have no reason to doubt them, but citations are always nice, particularly when pulling numbers out of your ass).
However, if there are no free-market dollars (ie. the public is not investing its money), one needs to go with the next best option. Given that the banking industry is in a very bad place right now, it was an appropriate course of action for the government to invest in the economy until the banks got back on their feet and investor confidence recovered.
I would take issue with the assertion that tax cuts stimulate the economy. Critics noted that the Reagan tax cuts inspired some additional private investment, but largely just bought a lot of people a free lunch, and threw the government into debt. The tax cuts were initially appropriate to curb the stagflation crisis, but should have been repealed once the economy had recovered, given that lots of people simply chose to save the money. (Economists hate savings. Any accountant would tell you that it's a great personal strategy, but really does throw a wrench into most economic models.)
And finally -- please suggest some agencies for the government to cut. I'm open to any suggestions. You can't throw around a lofty suggestion such as "shrink the government" without offering any specifics.
If somebody told me to "make more money," I'd agree that it's an excellent suggestion. However, without a specific plan of action, it's not going to happen.
The machine must be fed. The US tax code is so bloated and filled with special interest deals that unless government shrinks, TAXES WILL GO UP! This is a Demopublican problem.
Care to explain your logic here? I can think of many scenarios under which a revised tax code would lead to bigger taxes. The FairTax proposal is interesting, but feels a bit weird, and would almost certainly cause some individuals to pay more. That's not to say that the tax code isn't bloated -- it needs to be streamlined and rewritten in modern english, though I don't think we're complaining about the same thing.
Do you have any suggestions regarding places where we can reduce the size of the government that won't cost the economy more money than it saves?
Politicians have been promising to reduce government spending for 30 years now. In fact, the conservatives have tended to be the biggest spenders.
But this kind of proposed spending is hardly fiscally responsible.
Not necessarily. Virtually all economists agree that it's a good idea during a recession for the government to spend more, and tax less, thus running up a deficit.
When times are good, we slowly ramp off spending, and raise taxes to pay the deficit.
The problem now is that we had a president who cut taxes and recklessly increased spending during a bull market, while allowing infrastructure to depreciate, which has left us with a massive deficit and a pile of bills to pay.
As long as the spending can be justified, I'm fine with it.
I don't exactly get what your argument is? That government workers should somehow be exempt from the system? They're employees, just like everybody else, and deserve to be treated equally under the law.
For instance, in addition to his presidential salary, Barack Obama makes quite a bit of money off of his books, negating any potential tax credits that he might have otherwise received to pay for expenses relating to the care of his children.
Similarly, I need to repeat again and again that not all government employees have their salaries funded by income taxes. The postal service is mostly self-sufficient. Salaries at public universities are increasingly paid out of tuition and grants. Some agencies are funded via regulatory fees and fines (I'm pretty sure that the FCC is a net source of income for the government, although their income is primarily derived from broadcasting corporations rather than individuals).
If you want to argue about what constitutes a tax, you could also turn to tollbooth operators and DMV employees. Nobody is forcing you to drive on toll roads or possess a drivers' license. Even though public transport agencies are notoriously unprofitable, I'm sure you could dig up a few examples of bus drivers that collect enough fares to cover their own salaries.
Under these circumstances, I think that it's easily possible that there are government employees that are net taxpayers.
The IRS reliably collect my taxes each year. I don't think anybody's happy that they do it, but they seem to be pretty competent at it, especially in light of the absurd complexity of our tax code.
We're not really comparing the cost of goods, but the devaluation of the dollar. i.e. A dollar in 1910 is equivalent to just 4 cents today.
Ah, yes, but it's not that simple.
4 cents placed in a plain-old savings account would actually alsoequal a dollar today. If you don't want your money to lose value, put it in the bank, and forget about it -- savings rates appear to have kept up with dollar's declining purchasing power.
Invested in bonds or an index fund, that $0.04 would now be worth $9. A 9x return on any investment (adjusted for inflation) is considered to be phenomenal.
Inflation drives the economy forward. There are numerous safeguards in place to prevent it from biting you in the ass. Stagflation can still be a problem, although there are numerous theories about how to deal with this, should it appear again to the extent that it did in the 1970s.
Unions are in place for the same reason at every workplace -- to protect employees and attempt to even out the power balance between employee and employer.
Although I'll agree with you here, I do believe that there is a fundamental difference between the teachers union and autoworkers union.
For starters, the employer-employee dynamic is quite different in the two industries. Teachers tend to operate as independent units, while autoworkers tend to work in well-organized teams.
Unions were also hugely responsible for delivering improved safety standards in factories and mines before the federal government (finally) stepped in and began regulating workplace safety. This was never an issue with teachers -- teaching is not an inherently hazardous occupation.
An autoworkers strike will likely not affect the general public. If teachers or transit workers strike, the impact is far more visible (and unpopular).
For whatever reason, it's currently fashionable to take the "slash and burn" approach to cutting taxes, with teachers salaries often being the first thing on the cutting block. My hometown is dominated by retirees who love to vote 'no' on the "wasteful" school budget. If the union wasn't present to protect the teachers interests, we'd almost certainly lose our best faculty members. Although autoworkers can be faced with similar budget cuts, I would argue that the situation is somewhat different.
Teachers don't have to worry (yet) about being replaced by robots. Distance learning is clearly and objectively worse than the presence of a live instructor, and therefore doesn't pose a huge threat. Unfortunately, unions have yet to learn that opposing advancements in technology is an uphill and unwinnable battle.
Tenure is a tricky one, although I understand the ideological basis. Teachers should not be persecuted for teaching unpopular or controversial subjects. However, the current system feels broken. On the flipside, wage laborers don't tend to engage in ideological struggles.
Like it or not, labor does greatly benefit from having a voice to protect its own interests within reason. In some industries, governmental regulation or natural economic pressures seem to be sufficient. It could very well be the case that the autoworkers union is no longer necessary, given the federal government's role in regulating safety standards, wages, and other employment practices.
I do wish that unions could clean up their image, so that occupations that do not currently benefit from a unified voice could be brought together without severe opposition. IT workers, programmers, and paid graduate students could all benefit from some sort of moderate unionization. (Yes, graduate students. Everybody knows that they do all the work, and it's about time that they're paid accordingly and treated like normal employees)
I'm not a huge fan of unions, and am surprised by my rush to defend them. I suppose there are examples where they're appropriate -- the teachers union seems to be fairly rational and functional, despite the pressing need to revamp the tenure system.
If you want an example of true insanity, take a look at the unions in the entertainment industry for stagehands, performers, and the like.
You're assuming that it's impossible to be a liberal and not a centrist.
By your definition, anybody who supports any political philosophy is inherently and necessarily closed-minded.
Similarly, I wouldn't try to use the words 'Liberal' and 'Conservative' as synonyms for 'Republican' and 'Democrat.' Political philosophy is hardly two-dimensional, and the positions of the two parties have changed (and even reversed) many times over the years.
Most foreigners would laugh if you called the Democrats liberals. (Not that this is necessarily a good or a bad thing. Politics in America have always been extremely moderate; although the current Republican platform is a bit extreme compared to conservative parties in other industrialized nations, it's still a far cry from actual fascism)
Yes, but take a look at states without teachers' unions. Well-qualified educators tend to flock far away from these places, due to the low pay and frankly abusive working conditions.
Although there are a few genuine good souls out there who are willing to make sacrifices for the sake of educating children, we're going to have a tough time recruiting teachers until they're paid fairly and competitively. Unions help accomplish this goal.
Unionized states do have their own problems. The union tends to protect its own members a bit too strongly (tenure needs to be revised, if not abolished). Similarly, they need to start speaking out against unqualified administrators with absurdly high salaries. The theory of teaching education likely needs to be revised as well, given that the current crop of EdDs don't seem to hold onto their jobs very long.
One solution could be to loosely regulate the unions. Completely abolishing them has not proven to be a great strategy, as it turns out that abuses are indeed inherent in the system.
A well-placed self-destruct mechanism (for the ship, not the reactor) could calm most of these fears.
Yes. I'm serious.
If these reactors are truly self-sufficient, there's no reason why we can't build them into an impermeable container, placed deep within the ship. Penetrating a several-feet-thick layer of steel-reinforced concrete in a confined space would be incredibly difficult to accomplish without destroying the surrounding ship (or the reactor inside) in the process.
The UK and US have done quite a bit of research designing containers for the transport of nuclear waste, and have done a number of spectacular tests on these vessels, crashing planes, high-speed trains, and rockets into them.
I worked in big pharma for a time, and although I'm not entirely convinced that they're 100% innocent, I fail to see how medical marketing is particularly insidious, particularly under a private health system.
A new medical product is going to be useless unless doctors know about it, how/when to prescribe it, and how to avoid any complications (nobody wants a lawsuit).
Given that doctors have few incentives to research these things on their own (beyond a cursory level), marketing is a necessary evil to make sure that doctors learn about newer and more effective treatments for the conditions that they treat. This is particularly relevant, given that the government doesn't enforce any sort of powerful evidence-based-medicine regulations.
"Steak dinners" are also not exactly the norm (pens and post-its are, and cost close to nothing). Occasionally, pharma companies will offer incentives to doctors who participate in trials, or provide feedback to the company regarding the performance of their product. This information most certainly has a monetary value to the company.
Similarly, I don't believe that sales reps are actually aware of doctors' prescription-writing habits (especially due to patient confidentiality laws). There are quite a few steps in the sales/distribution chain between the manufacturer and the client. Any scheme under which a doctor 'gets a steak dinner for every 10 doses sold' however, would certainly be immoral.
Of course, the system is *far* from perfect. Doctors are encouraged to prescribe unnecessary treatments. Private medicine and HMOs are largely to blame. A fully-nationalized single-payer healthcare system that took responsibility for researching and practicing evidence-based medicine, and educating doctors about new treatment options would solve most of the complaints being discussed in this thread.
*EBM can be a nasty beast though. Nobody wants to hear that the government won't pay for your treatment because they don't believe that you're going to survive, or that a 20 year old who shows up at the ER will likely be treated before the 70 year old who showed up at the same time with the same condition. Even though these decisions are made every day at hospitals across America, there is certainly something dehumanizing about seeing it written in official policy.
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Mod parent way up.
The healing process after WWII is an interesting topic to study and debate. Although there were some painful moments, the US, Japan, and Europe emerged as economic superpowers, with very few hard feelings left behind after the war.
It was also important that we won the war in a manner that didn't turn the entire population against us. Of course, the warfare techniques used by the Viet Cong and Iraqi insurgency seem to have been designed to drag as many civilians into the conflict as possible.
It also didn't help that the US forces had a very poor understanding of the foreign culture and language in either of these conflicts. Had there been an extensive ground war in Japan, a similar situation would likely have emerged.
Lesson: The reconstruction is just as (if not more) important than the war itself. Also, make sure you understand the people you're invading.
There's a big gap between covering up flaws in your product, and releasing an epidemic.
Maybe he's talking about the SR-71 Blackbird?
Wait. What?
Are you insinuating that Pharma companies have released 20 other flu strains?
There is absolutely no evidence to support any of these theories.
Yes. I suppose it's possible. Maybe it's even probable, if you insist that they've been up to this sort of thing before [citation-needed]. However, unless you have proof that somebody who could have potentially released H1N1 into the wild had also intentionally released several epidemics in the past, your logic doesn't even stand up.
Given Walt's history, I'd always just assumed that Goofy's early character was a manifestation of his racist beliefs.
(Seriously... part of the reason that Disney don't want their copyrights to expire is that they're repressing a lot of really bad stuff that's in their early archives)
What about Metro North?
We've also got NJTransit to the south, which has a number of ambitious system expansion projects on the board.
There's also the LIRR to the east.
NYC's arguably the only city in the US with adequate public transportation options. The only issue is that many of these lines are already at capacity.
How about linking the East Coast to the East Coast?
The Northeast Corridor is basically at capacity. We're eventually going to need to add another mainline.
South of DC, the NEC is f-ing terrible. Amtrak don't own the tracks, and on a bad day, it can take 6-8 hours to make it from DC to Hampton Roads. The line from Richmond to Newport News is particularly bad, given that it's single-tracked, carries lots of freight, and only runs 2 Amtrak trains per day in each direction.
(While I'm complaining about Hampton Roads, I might as well add that our other public transportation options appear to have been designed to intentionally suck. The area's geography makes it a *great* candidate for commuter rail, given that you could effectively reach most of the population with one rail line, and a few well-placed buses.)
High-speed rail in the US is also made unnecessarily difficult by the fact that the FRA judges the safety of rail vehicles based upon their weight. This makes most European rolling stock impossible to use on US tracks -- the Acela has been compared to a tank on rails, due to its weight.
Sports? What are those?
The upshot is that the reactors we do have will exceed their safe lifespans in several years (2014 ?) and should really be shut down or require maintenance
AFAIK, the "maximum safe lifespan" estimates were conservatively made before we know how the current generation of reactors would age. As it turns out, they seem to have aged better than we'd anticipated, and are having their lifespans adjusted accordingly.
Of course, we should be doing tests to make sure that the reactors are still safe to operate. However, I wouldn't let the "maximum safe lifespan" phrase scare you.
The containment vessel issue could also be solved very easily. As it stands, the worldwide market for containment vessels is small enough that it only makes sense to have one or two manufacturers. The Japanese steel industry is massive, so it's not particularly surprising that they're the last surviving manufacturer.
Well, for one, Stalin probably shouldn't have purged his own armies.
Killing your own soldiers right before a war is generally unadvised.
Given just how poorly everything else in the Soviet Union was run in the 1930s, it's pretty remarkable that they were able to fight at all, or that the USSR managed to hold together during the war.
Apple Remote Desktop is a bit more complicated than that. VNC, SSH, and SCP are all built-in and supported by every copy of Mac OS X.
ARD provides a convenient interface for an administrator to simultaneously manage a large number of machines. This can easily justify the cost, particularly given the time savings it can lead to. In the realm of systems administration tools, ARD is fairly cheap.
Of course, the program also has a limited market appeal, which also raises the cost to the end user.
True, the USPS lost $5 billion in 2007. However, it's traditionally been a nearly-profitable enterprise, and has an incredibly substantial value to the economy, particularly in rural areas.
The fact that I can send a piece of paper (outdated, blah blah blah) anyplace on the continent in a few days for 40-something cents is darned near miraculous. I doubt you could establish a service to deliver mail within the island of Manhattan alone, and be able to offer those sort of rates, while coming close to profitability.
The USPS should be touted and lauded as a case study for how to run a government agency (and/or regulated monopoly). They're competent, efficient, and provide a valuable service. The limited areas in which private operators are allowed to compete (ie. UPS and FedEx) provides healthy competition, and spurs private enterprise. The USPS has even been lauded as a leader in environmentally-practices.
Postal services are obviously an excellent example of a natural monopoly due to economies of scale. The privatization of the mail and post offices in the UK (which were spun off separately) has frankly been a disaster. Almost immediately after privatization, the post office determined that there was no way it could possibly operate at a profit in rural areas, withdrew from these areas, and sold its assets. As you can imagine, this was extremely unpopular.
Public universities don't necessarily pay salaries from the pool of money that comes from the state. Salaries can be paid via endowment, research grants, or tuition income.
Your points about the velocity of money are all well and good, provided that your figures are correct (I have no reason to doubt them, but citations are always nice, particularly when pulling numbers out of your ass).
However, if there are no free-market dollars (ie. the public is not investing its money), one needs to go with the next best option. Given that the banking industry is in a very bad place right now, it was an appropriate course of action for the government to invest in the economy until the banks got back on their feet and investor confidence recovered.
I would take issue with the assertion that tax cuts stimulate the economy. Critics noted that the Reagan tax cuts inspired some additional private investment, but largely just bought a lot of people a free lunch, and threw the government into debt. The tax cuts were initially appropriate to curb the stagflation crisis, but should have been repealed once the economy had recovered, given that lots of people simply chose to save the money. (Economists hate savings. Any accountant would tell you that it's a great personal strategy, but really does throw a wrench into most economic models.)
And finally -- please suggest some agencies for the government to cut. I'm open to any suggestions. You can't throw around a lofty suggestion such as "shrink the government" without offering any specifics.
If somebody told me to "make more money," I'd agree that it's an excellent suggestion. However, without a specific plan of action, it's not going to happen.
The machine must be fed. The US tax code is so bloated and filled with special interest deals that unless government shrinks, TAXES WILL GO UP! This is a Demopublican problem.
Care to explain your logic here? I can think of many scenarios under which a revised tax code would lead to bigger taxes. The FairTax proposal is interesting, but feels a bit weird, and would almost certainly cause some individuals to pay more. That's not to say that the tax code isn't bloated -- it needs to be streamlined and rewritten in modern english, though I don't think we're complaining about the same thing.
Do you have any suggestions regarding places where we can reduce the size of the government that won't cost the economy more money than it saves?
Politicians have been promising to reduce government spending for 30 years now. In fact, the conservatives have tended to be the biggest spenders.
But this kind of proposed spending is hardly fiscally responsible.
Not necessarily. Virtually all economists agree that it's a good idea during a recession for the government to spend more, and tax less, thus running up a deficit.
When times are good, we slowly ramp off spending, and raise taxes to pay the deficit.
The problem now is that we had a president who cut taxes and recklessly increased spending during a bull market, while allowing infrastructure to depreciate, which has left us with a massive deficit and a pile of bills to pay.
As long as the spending can be justified, I'm fine with it.
Wouldn't a trade embargo sufficiently solve the problem without killing anybody?
I don't exactly get what your argument is? That government workers should somehow be exempt from the system? They're employees, just like everybody else, and deserve to be treated equally under the law.
For instance, in addition to his presidential salary, Barack Obama makes quite a bit of money off of his books, negating any potential tax credits that he might have otherwise received to pay for expenses relating to the care of his children.
Similarly, I need to repeat again and again that not all government employees have their salaries funded by income taxes. The postal service is mostly self-sufficient. Salaries at public universities are increasingly paid out of tuition and grants. Some agencies are funded via regulatory fees and fines (I'm pretty sure that the FCC is a net source of income for the government, although their income is primarily derived from broadcasting corporations rather than individuals).
If you want to argue about what constitutes a tax, you could also turn to tollbooth operators and DMV employees. Nobody is forcing you to drive on toll roads or possess a drivers' license. Even though public transport agencies are notoriously unprofitable, I'm sure you could dig up a few examples of bus drivers that collect enough fares to cover their own salaries.
Under these circumstances, I think that it's easily possible that there are government employees that are net taxpayers.
The Postal Service seems to operate pretty well.
The IRS reliably collect my taxes each year. I don't think anybody's happy that they do it, but they seem to be pretty competent at it, especially in light of the absurd complexity of our tax code.
We're not really comparing the cost of goods, but the devaluation of the dollar. i.e. A dollar in 1910 is equivalent to just 4 cents today.
Ah, yes, but it's not that simple.
4 cents placed in a plain-old savings account would actually also equal a dollar today. If you don't want your money to lose value, put it in the bank, and forget about it -- savings rates appear to have kept up with dollar's declining purchasing power.
Invested in bonds or an index fund, that $0.04 would now be worth $9. A 9x return on any investment (adjusted for inflation) is considered to be phenomenal.
Inflation drives the economy forward. There are numerous safeguards in place to prevent it from biting you in the ass. Stagflation can still be a problem, although there are numerous theories about how to deal with this, should it appear again to the extent that it did in the 1970s.
Yes, but they're not necessarily paid through income taxes.
The federal government has more than one source of revenue, you know.
Unions are in place for the same reason at every workplace -- to protect employees and attempt to even out the power balance between employee and employer.
Although I'll agree with you here, I do believe that there is a fundamental difference between the teachers union and autoworkers union.
For starters, the employer-employee dynamic is quite different in the two industries. Teachers tend to operate as independent units, while autoworkers tend to work in well-organized teams.
Unions were also hugely responsible for delivering improved safety standards in factories and mines before the federal government (finally) stepped in and began regulating workplace safety. This was never an issue with teachers -- teaching is not an inherently hazardous occupation.
An autoworkers strike will likely not affect the general public. If teachers or transit workers strike, the impact is far more visible (and unpopular).
For whatever reason, it's currently fashionable to take the "slash and burn" approach to cutting taxes, with teachers salaries often being the first thing on the cutting block. My hometown is dominated by retirees who love to vote 'no' on the "wasteful" school budget. If the union wasn't present to protect the teachers interests, we'd almost certainly lose our best faculty members. Although autoworkers can be faced with similar budget cuts, I would argue that the situation is somewhat different.
Teachers don't have to worry (yet) about being replaced by robots. Distance learning is clearly and objectively worse than the presence of a live instructor, and therefore doesn't pose a huge threat. Unfortunately, unions have yet to learn that opposing advancements in technology is an uphill and unwinnable battle.
Tenure is a tricky one, although I understand the ideological basis. Teachers should not be persecuted for teaching unpopular or controversial subjects. However, the current system feels broken. On the flipside, wage laborers don't tend to engage in ideological struggles.
Like it or not, labor does greatly benefit from having a voice to protect its own interests within reason. In some industries, governmental regulation or natural economic pressures seem to be sufficient. It could very well be the case that the autoworkers union is no longer necessary, given the federal government's role in regulating safety standards, wages, and other employment practices.
I do wish that unions could clean up their image, so that occupations that do not currently benefit from a unified voice could be brought together without severe opposition. IT workers, programmers, and paid graduate students could all benefit from some sort of moderate unionization. (Yes, graduate students. Everybody knows that they do all the work, and it's about time that they're paid accordingly and treated like normal employees)
I'm not a huge fan of unions, and am surprised by my rush to defend them. I suppose there are examples where they're appropriate -- the teachers union seems to be fairly rational and functional, despite the pressing need to revamp the tenure system.
If you want an example of true insanity, take a look at the unions in the entertainment industry for stagehands, performers, and the like.
You're assuming that it's impossible to be a liberal and not a centrist.
By your definition, anybody who supports any political philosophy is inherently and necessarily closed-minded.
Similarly, I wouldn't try to use the words 'Liberal' and 'Conservative' as synonyms for 'Republican' and 'Democrat.' Political philosophy is hardly two-dimensional, and the positions of the two parties have changed (and even reversed) many times over the years.
Most foreigners would laugh if you called the Democrats liberals. (Not that this is necessarily a good or a bad thing. Politics in America have always been extremely moderate; although the current Republican platform is a bit extreme compared to conservative parties in other industrialized nations, it's still a far cry from actual fascism)
Nice try, though.
Yes, but take a look at states without teachers' unions. Well-qualified educators tend to flock far away from these places, due to the low pay and frankly abusive working conditions.
Although there are a few genuine good souls out there who are willing to make sacrifices for the sake of educating children, we're going to have a tough time recruiting teachers until they're paid fairly and competitively. Unions help accomplish this goal.
Unionized states do have their own problems. The union tends to protect its own members a bit too strongly (tenure needs to be revised, if not abolished). Similarly, they need to start speaking out against unqualified administrators with absurdly high salaries. The theory of teaching education likely needs to be revised as well, given that the current crop of EdDs don't seem to hold onto their jobs very long.
One solution could be to loosely regulate the unions. Completely abolishing them has not proven to be a great strategy, as it turns out that abuses are indeed inherent in the system.
A well-placed self-destruct mechanism (for the ship, not the reactor) could calm most of these fears.
Yes. I'm serious.
If these reactors are truly self-sufficient, there's no reason why we can't build them into an impermeable container, placed deep within the ship. Penetrating a several-feet-thick layer of steel-reinforced concrete in a confined space would be incredibly difficult to accomplish without destroying the surrounding ship (or the reactor inside) in the process.
The UK and US have done quite a bit of research designing containers for the transport of nuclear waste, and have done a number of spectacular tests on these vessels, crashing planes, high-speed trains, and rockets into them.
[citation-needed]
I worked in big pharma for a time, and although I'm not entirely convinced that they're 100% innocent, I fail to see how medical marketing is particularly insidious, particularly under a private health system.
A new medical product is going to be useless unless doctors know about it, how/when to prescribe it, and how to avoid any complications (nobody wants a lawsuit).
Given that doctors have few incentives to research these things on their own (beyond a cursory level), marketing is a necessary evil to make sure that doctors learn about newer and more effective treatments for the conditions that they treat. This is particularly relevant, given that the government doesn't enforce any sort of powerful evidence-based-medicine regulations.
"Steak dinners" are also not exactly the norm (pens and post-its are, and cost close to nothing). Occasionally, pharma companies will offer incentives to doctors who participate in trials, or provide feedback to the company regarding the performance of their product. This information most certainly has a monetary value to the company.
Similarly, I don't believe that sales reps are actually aware of doctors' prescription-writing habits (especially due to patient confidentiality laws). There are quite a few steps in the sales/distribution chain between the manufacturer and the client. Any scheme under which a doctor 'gets a steak dinner for every 10 doses sold' however, would certainly be immoral.
Of course, the system is *far* from perfect. Doctors are encouraged to prescribe unnecessary treatments. Private medicine and HMOs are largely to blame. A fully-nationalized single-payer healthcare system that took responsibility for researching and practicing evidence-based medicine, and educating doctors about new treatment options would solve most of the complaints being discussed in this thread.
*EBM can be a nasty beast though. Nobody wants to hear that the government won't pay for your treatment because they don't believe that you're going to survive, or that a 20 year old who shows up at the ER will likely be treated before the 70 year old who showed up at the same time with the same condition. Even though these decisions are made every day at hospitals across America, there is certainly something dehumanizing about seeing it written in official policy.