This is the result of the 'user pays' mentality that seems to have the US in its grip. Something that even a lot of fairly well educated people adhere to, because they're in a good position and they really don't care what happens to anyone else. This is extremely short-sighted behaviour
Free (or at least affordable) health care and education are not communist plots, they're a necessity to ensure you have an educated and healthy population that is able to resist power grabs from the wealthy, such as the one happening (has already happened) in the US. Anywhere where neo-liberalists are preaching austerity and 'user pays', the same pattern can be seen.
If you don't give a damn about someone else's fate, eventually you'll live in a society where people will no longer give a damn about your fate either.
Possible. But what if he didn't have any real dirt on Putin and was just disgruntled.
If that was the case he would not be of any use to Poroshenko in any other way than a way to make Putin look bad.
Not saying either scenario is true, it may well be that Putin was behind this; it's just that people jumping to conclusions without any further evidence, that rubs me in the wrong way.
No, I mean rebels. They're supported by Russia, sure. But these people are former Ukranian citizens, so 'rebels' would be the correct word to describe them.
If you haven't followed this conflict from the start. Some of the eastern province attempted to secede from the Ukrain, directly after the former president was overthrown. The people who did this were at the time Ukranian citizens, so regardless on whether they're supported by Russia, China or the spaghetti monster, the correct word would be rebel.
Either that or there also wasn't any 'south vietnamese' government during the Vietnam police action, which was at the time heavily supported by the US, but just a conflict between North Vietnam and the US.
Quite frankly, with Poroshenko's neo-nazi militias fighting against the rebels in the east, I would actually no put it beyond him (or his neo-nazi buddies) to just kill this person to be able to point the finger of blame at Putin.
It's funny (in a not so 'haha' way) that the dictatorship that is the UAE (sorry 'monarchy'), is actually less intrusive to travel through than the shining beacon of democracy that the US is supposed to be...
You've put the onus on the wrong part of this text as well. It's crystal clear that this part of the text refers to smuggling of contraband to evade duties ONLY
This emphasis should be on:
goods, wares or for, seized, and merchandise subject to duty
My phone, or any other personal effect for that matter, is not subject to duty. Which means the statement above is by no means a 'free-for-all' for customs officers to inspect my phone.
Not only this, management who introduces this is usually piss-poor at performing themselves and are usually projecting their behaviour on others.
KPIs are to managing people as what paint-by-number is to painting. Having something that resembles a picture after you fill up each marked space with the right colour, does not make you a painter.
Either you're a good manager and you're able to not only get a productive team that is happy to do the work that's thrown at them, all the while keeping in touch with who is and who is not performing optimally, or you're a shitty manager, who needs to synergise his KPIs to leverage employee empowerment, in which case it's more efficient for the company as a whole if that person is assigned to cleaning toilets.
Six whole minutes is quite luxurious, we have two minutes a day to empty our catheter bags and we get are only allowed to buy the official company issues bags from the company store at special discount employee rates.
That's not the direct cause. Were there sufficient accommodations for them all the prices would not go up as much. It is the SCARCITY that is created by DEMAND that causes the prices to go up.
That's exactly what I am saying:
From my earlier reply:
"Because everybody is attempting to use the same limited resources within the very limited area of the area where employment can be found, prices are driven up."
why there are five million people is irrelevant.
No it's not irrelevant, because if you remove the reason for those five million people to be clumped up in one small area, cost of living will go down and disposable income will go up.
They could all be looking for housing in NYC because they like smog and being shoulder to shoulder with their neighbor and have no interest in working in the city and the prices would still be high.
Availability of work is a well known factor for cities to attract people. If people on only receive UBI want to live in the city, they will pay a huge amount on rent. There is a possibility that people spend all their UBI on rent and want to live that way.
There will also be a significant group of people who don't want to spend 100% of their income on rent, only live in the city because that's were most of the work is, who will move out to where cost of living is lower.
Uhh, once again, wrong. You add another layer of administration (who should be on the recipient list, who should be removed, who is faking a second or third registration, who doesn't meet the restrictions that any welfare system has to have, etc.) to an existing welfare system
This information is already present with Inland Revenue; every registered tax-payer will receive UBI. The only place where this needs to be maintained is in the IRS database. All information structures maintained by the current (separate) wellfare system, its employees and maintenance on the information system disappear.
(that you can't eliminate because UBI won't cover every situation
UBI is not supposed to cover every situation. It's supposed to promote certain human behaviour. I am not pretending that UBI will solve world hunger or create world peace.
Uh, yeah, moving people out of the cities into the rural areas is moving the problems they have (unemployment, etc) into someone else's backyard. How can you claim that it isn't?
As I mentioned above, even people on just UBI will be consumers of rental accommodation, food and services, this alone will increase economic activity for the existing population of the area where these people move to. How do you think basic economies get started? Demand creates supply. Whether these people are unemployed or not is irrelevant, since they have money to consume the services they need in the areas where cost of living is lower anyway. If these people were unemployed and had no income, yes, they would be a burden; this is not the case.
If you think government is going to get smaller and cost less when you start increasing handouts, you have ignored history.
Something like UBI has NEVER before been done in history. Please point me to an implementation of UBI that has gone completely wrong?
Wellfare != UBI.
If people have enough money to start a business when they're living on UBI then it isn't a BASIC income, now is it?
Let's say for example that UBI=$1000/month. Mr. A lives in New York, where rent is $800m, leaving him $200/m for food and services. Mr A moves to Nebraska. UBI is still $1000/month, while rent is $500/m. Food may be somewhat cheaper, services possibly somewhat more expensive; let's assume this will remain $200/m. All of a sudden Mr A. has a disposable income of $300/m. Maybe not enough to finance a manufacturing plant, but definitely a bit more room to save up and start something small if
I don't know that creating a scarcity of affordable housing "in those areas" and thus driving the prices up will be a Good Thing.
The very reason for prices being so high in cities, is because people all want to live in the cities, because that's where employment can be found. Because everybody is attempting to use the same limited resources within the very limited area of the area where employment can be found, prices are driven up.
Once people are able to provide for their basic necessities with having to be near a spot where employment can be found, the threshold to move to somewhere with a cheaper cost of living become a lot lower.
If the population of the US was more spread out across the entire US, instead of focused on the east and west coasts, prices in those areas would go down. Prices would slightly go up, in areas that don't have large population pressure, but the population pressure would need to go up to levels that are currently present in those places to reach the same price levels. Something which will take considerable time (don't have any ideas yet on what to do when that happens).
In exchange for higher costs of living, you'll get an influx of people with no disposable income
Just the fact that there are more people, results in more economic activity. Houses need to be built, maintained. Roads need to be built. People still eat; more people consuming food leads to higher food production, which in turn leads to more people being hired to help out.
You'd be right if these people would not be spending any money in the place they'd be living, this is not the case.
This sounds like a situation of "moved the problem to someone else's backyard"
As I described above, it's not a 'problem' that you're moving to someone else's backyard. These are actually consumers, which will initiate an upwards spiral of economic activity.
"it looks like we care because we're handing out other people's money but we don't actually have to care".
We're handing over 'other people's' money already on welfare as you pointed out. Attaching no strings to the money turns the recipients into free agents, with a low threshold to both move somewhere else or start a business (as there is always a safety-net of UBI if someone fails).
These are hallmarks of existing welfare programs, so what's actually new?
No strings attached means greatly reduced overhead compared to maintaining the 'welfare' structure. The people who receive UBI are no longer 'victims' or 'free-loaders' if they don't happen to have work. Everybody will receive it regardless of whether they make $1 or $1,000,000 a year.
Additionally, due to the fact that people will be able to have a safety net if they lose work, they can choose to walk away from abusive employers, without fear of living on the streets. This will force employers to improve working conditions (especially for employees with lower wages) without having to push through any restrictive labour laws..
My only hope is that he will do something that can get him impeached relatively quickly, before too much damage can be done.
Trump has already put a fail-safe in place for that. Unless someone really wants to see Mike Pence as president, they would do their very best to make sure that doesn't happen.
Initially I had the same objections you are having
You're missing a vital point though.
At the moment the market for rental accommodations is limited to where the most jobs can be found at the moment. Once people are no longer financially tied to cities where costs are high because of the huge amount of people trying to get the same limited amount of resources, people will be able to spread out to areas that are currently not economically viable to live.
As a side effect; the influx of people will generate economic activity in those areas.
UBI will have a harmonising effect on the economy where cities become less of a focal point for economic activity.
I do not know whether that will be enough to ensure a stable economy and a continuation of UBI as a viable option and it will take some time, but UBI will effectively enlarge the land area viable for people to live in, hugely increasing the market for rental accommodation.
You're correct in your assumption, but fail to take something into account.
Increase in rent may, at least in part, be off-set by the fact that people with a guaranteed income will move to areas of a country that at the moment have very little economical activity (hence low rents).
This means less demand for rental accommodation in big cities, which in turn puts pressure on the amount of rent that can be charged.
As a side-effect, due to people moving to areas that are currently not economically active, economic activity in those areas will increase.
Now whether economic activity moving out of the crowded areas, where everybody is vying for the same limited amount of resources, and spreading out more evenly counter-balances some private actors to eat up people's UBI completely, is not guaranteed.
It will take time to see if this is actually effective and in short term land-lords will probably indeed put up their rents. Until the time people get fed up enough to move out of the cities.
US laws only apply to events within US jurisdiction.
A company operating from New Zealand does NOT fall under US jurisdiction.
What you're implying, would make Saudi Arabian law enforceable in the US. I'd like to see someone being extradited to SA from the US for being pro-democracy, something which apparently gets you crucified (literally) in SA.
Unless of course, you're attempting to imply that US law should be enforceable everywhere else, but the reverse should not be the case.
Slashdot Mirror
This is the result of the 'user pays' mentality that seems to have the US in its grip. Something that even a lot of fairly well educated people adhere to, because they're in a good position and they really don't care what happens to anyone else. This is extremely short-sighted behaviour
Free (or at least affordable) health care and education are not communist plots, they're a necessity to ensure you have an educated and healthy population that is able to resist power grabs from the wealthy, such as the one happening (has already happened) in the US. Anywhere where neo-liberalists are preaching austerity and 'user pays', the same pattern can be seen.
If you don't give a damn about someone else's fate, eventually you'll live in a society where people will no longer give a damn about your fate either.
If you're protesting and you see that thing coming your way with other protesters pressing from behind.
Which fuckwit came up with this vehicle? Someone who either doesn't care about or understand human group psychology.
Go bend over for Trump and lube up idiot.
At least you're consistent. I actually have to give that some thought.
Possible. But what if he didn't have any real dirt on Putin and was just disgruntled.
If that was the case he would not be of any use to Poroshenko in any other way than a way to make Putin look bad.
Not saying either scenario is true, it may well be that Putin was behind this; it's just that people jumping to conclusions without any further evidence, that rubs me in the wrong way.
No, I mean rebels. They're supported by Russia, sure. But these people are former Ukranian citizens, so 'rebels' would be the correct word to describe them.
If you haven't followed this conflict from the start. Some of the eastern province attempted to secede from the Ukrain, directly after the former president was overthrown. The people who did this were at the time Ukranian citizens, so regardless on whether they're supported by Russia, China or the spaghetti monster, the correct word would be rebel.
Either that or there also wasn't any 'south vietnamese' government during the Vietnam police action, which was at the time heavily supported by the US, but just a conflict between North Vietnam and the US.
Get a VPN provider inside EU borders.
Quite frankly, with Poroshenko's neo-nazi militias fighting against the rebels in the east, I would actually no put it beyond him (or his neo-nazi buddies) to just kill this person to be able to point the finger of blame at Putin.
Beat me to it....
Just don't make it angry, you wouldn't like it if it gets angry.
LMAO. Good trolling fucktard.
It's funny (in a not so 'haha' way) that the dictatorship that is the UAE (sorry 'monarchy'), is actually less intrusive to travel through than the shining beacon of democracy that the US is supposed to be...
These regulations will not violate my rights, because I have even stopped considering any travel through the US as a stop-ever.
If the US wants my tourist dollars, they should stop treating their customers like criminals first.
You've put the onus on the wrong part of this text as well. It's crystal clear that this part of the text refers to smuggling of contraband to evade duties ONLY
This emphasis should be on:
goods, wares or for, seized, and merchandise subject to duty
My phone, or any other personal effect for that matter, is not subject to duty. Which means the statement above is by no means a 'free-for-all' for customs officers to inspect my phone.
So, now you have flowers exploding in your face, when you pick it? How is that supposed to be less violent?
Not only this, management who introduces this is usually piss-poor at performing themselves and are usually projecting their behaviour on others.
KPIs are to managing people as what paint-by-number is to painting. Having something that resembles a picture after you fill up each marked space with the right colour, does not make you a painter.
Either you're a good manager and you're able to not only get a productive team that is happy to do the work that's thrown at them, all the while keeping in touch with who is and who is not performing optimally, or you're a shitty manager, who needs to synergise his KPIs to leverage employee empowerment, in which case it's more efficient for the company as a whole if that person is assigned to cleaning toilets.
Here's a 2014 report on a company that tried to limit employee bathroom use to 6 minutes per day. http://abcnews.go.com/Business...
Six whole minutes is quite luxurious, we have two minutes a day to empty our catheter bags and we get are only allowed to buy the official company issues bags from the company store at special discount employee rates.
That's not the direct cause. Were there sufficient accommodations for them all the prices would not go up as much. It is the SCARCITY that is created by DEMAND that causes the prices to go up.
That's exactly what I am saying: From my earlier reply: "Because everybody is attempting to use the same limited resources within the very limited area of the area where employment can be found, prices are driven up."
why there are five million people is irrelevant.
No it's not irrelevant, because if you remove the reason for those five million people to be clumped up in one small area, cost of living will go down and disposable income will go up.
They could all be looking for housing in NYC because they like smog and being shoulder to shoulder with their neighbor and have no interest in working in the city and the prices would still be high.
Availability of work is a well known factor for cities to attract people. If people on only receive UBI want to live in the city, they will pay a huge amount on rent. There is a possibility that people spend all their UBI on rent and want to live that way. There will also be a significant group of people who don't want to spend 100% of their income on rent, only live in the city because that's were most of the work is, who will move out to where cost of living is lower.
Uhh, once again, wrong. You add another layer of administration (who should be on the recipient list, who should be removed, who is faking a second or third registration, who doesn't meet the restrictions that any welfare system has to have, etc.) to an existing welfare system
This information is already present with Inland Revenue; every registered tax-payer will receive UBI. The only place where this needs to be maintained is in the IRS database. All information structures maintained by the current (separate) wellfare system, its employees and maintenance on the information system disappear.
(that you can't eliminate because UBI won't cover every situation
UBI is not supposed to cover every situation. It's supposed to promote certain human behaviour. I am not pretending that UBI will solve world hunger or create world peace.
Uh, yeah, moving people out of the cities into the rural areas is moving the problems they have (unemployment, etc) into someone else's backyard. How can you claim that it isn't?
As I mentioned above, even people on just UBI will be consumers of rental accommodation, food and services, this alone will increase economic activity for the existing population of the area where these people move to. How do you think basic economies get started? Demand creates supply. Whether these people are unemployed or not is irrelevant, since they have money to consume the services they need in the areas where cost of living is lower anyway. If these people were unemployed and had no income, yes, they would be a burden; this is not the case.
If you think government is going to get smaller and cost less when you start increasing handouts, you have ignored history.
Something like UBI has NEVER before been done in history. Please point me to an implementation of UBI that has gone completely wrong? Wellfare != UBI.
If people have enough money to start a business when they're living on UBI then it isn't a BASIC income, now is it?
Let's say for example that UBI=$1000/month. Mr. A lives in New York, where rent is $800m, leaving him $200/m for food and services. Mr A moves to Nebraska. UBI is still $1000/month, while rent is $500/m. Food may be somewhat cheaper, services possibly somewhat more expensive; let's assume this will remain $200/m. All of a sudden Mr A. has a disposable income of $300/m. Maybe not enough to finance a manufacturing plant, but definitely a bit more room to save up and start something small if
I don't know that creating a scarcity of affordable housing "in those areas" and thus driving the prices up will be a Good Thing.
The very reason for prices being so high in cities, is because people all want to live in the cities, because that's where employment can be found. Because everybody is attempting to use the same limited resources within the very limited area of the area where employment can be found, prices are driven up. Once people are able to provide for their basic necessities with having to be near a spot where employment can be found, the threshold to move to somewhere with a cheaper cost of living become a lot lower. If the population of the US was more spread out across the entire US, instead of focused on the east and west coasts, prices in those areas would go down. Prices would slightly go up, in areas that don't have large population pressure, but the population pressure would need to go up to levels that are currently present in those places to reach the same price levels. Something which will take considerable time (don't have any ideas yet on what to do when that happens).
In exchange for higher costs of living, you'll get an influx of people with no disposable income
Just the fact that there are more people, results in more economic activity. Houses need to be built, maintained. Roads need to be built. People still eat; more people consuming food leads to higher food production, which in turn leads to more people being hired to help out. You'd be right if these people would not be spending any money in the place they'd be living, this is not the case.
This sounds like a situation of "moved the problem to someone else's backyard"
As I described above, it's not a 'problem' that you're moving to someone else's backyard. These are actually consumers, which will initiate an upwards spiral of economic activity.
"it looks like we care because we're handing out other people's money but we don't actually have to care".
We're handing over 'other people's' money already on welfare as you pointed out. Attaching no strings to the money turns the recipients into free agents, with a low threshold to both move somewhere else or start a business (as there is always a safety-net of UBI if someone fails).
These are hallmarks of existing welfare programs, so what's actually new?
No strings attached means greatly reduced overhead compared to maintaining the 'welfare' structure. The people who receive UBI are no longer 'victims' or 'free-loaders' if they don't happen to have work. Everybody will receive it regardless of whether they make $1 or $1,000,000 a year. Additionally, due to the fact that people will be able to have a safety net if they lose work, they can choose to walk away from abusive employers, without fear of living on the streets. This will force employers to improve working conditions (especially for employees with lower wages) without having to push through any restrictive labour laws..
My only hope is that he will do something that can get him impeached relatively quickly, before too much damage can be done.
Trump has already put a fail-safe in place for that. Unless someone really wants to see Mike Pence as president, they would do their very best to make sure that doesn't happen.
Initially I had the same objections you are having
You're missing a vital point though.
At the moment the market for rental accommodations is limited to where the most jobs can be found at the moment. Once people are no longer financially tied to cities where costs are high because of the huge amount of people trying to get the same limited amount of resources, people will be able to spread out to areas that are currently not economically viable to live.
As a side effect; the influx of people will generate economic activity in those areas.
UBI will have a harmonising effect on the economy where cities become less of a focal point for economic activity.
I do not know whether that will be enough to ensure a stable economy and a continuation of UBI as a viable option and it will take some time, but UBI will effectively enlarge the land area viable for people to live in, hugely increasing the market for rental accommodation.
You're correct in your assumption, but fail to take something into account.
Increase in rent may, at least in part, be off-set by the fact that people with a guaranteed income will move to areas of a country that at the moment have very little economical activity (hence low rents).
This means less demand for rental accommodation in big cities, which in turn puts pressure on the amount of rent that can be charged.
As a side-effect, due to people moving to areas that are currently not economically active, economic activity in those areas will increase.
Now whether economic activity moving out of the crowded areas, where everybody is vying for the same limited amount of resources, and spreading out more evenly counter-balances some private actors to eat up people's UBI completely, is not guaranteed.
It will take time to see if this is actually effective and in short term land-lords will probably indeed put up their rents. Until the time people get fed up enough to move out of the cities.
Did you have any other expectation of what happens when critical infrastructure is privatised?
Also PASS the savings on
Passing savings on? What kind of commie talk is this. Real capitalism is asking the highest price the market will bear.
Please don't let logic and facts stand in the way of good rhetoric, emotions and knee-jerk reactions.
US laws only apply to events within US jurisdiction.
A company operating from New Zealand does NOT fall under US jurisdiction.
What you're implying, would make Saudi Arabian law enforceable in the US. I'd like to see someone being extradited to SA from the US for being pro-democracy, something which apparently gets you crucified (literally) in SA.
Unless of course, you're attempting to imply that US law should be enforceable everywhere else, but the reverse should not be the case.