Logic is a path to follow in order to reach a predefined purpose.
I think implied in Nimoy's statement is the goal of "live long and prosper" as the primary purpose in life, and from that point of view, smoking is illogical. If you adopt the "have fun and don't worry" purpose, smoking is not illogical.
Now, here, in declaring that smoking is illogical, the contemporary capitalistic dominant value system is implied, defining as purpose the 'long live (and be productive...)' doctrine.
You people can't make up your minds, can you? At times you condemn the "contemporary capitalistic dominant value system" as hedonistic, materialistic, and consumption oriented; and now you condemn it for causing people to be long-term focused health nuts.
FWIW, in my experience with both systems, capitalism wants you to have fun, while socialism and communism try to force you to be productive in various ways and prevent you from enjoying illogical things. Both, however, prefer you drop dead right after retirement.
That's something Spock would say to Uhura. You know, "singing is illogical", "fun is illogical", "kissing is illogical", "sex is illogical". Many things we humans like to do are "illogical", but we generally do them anyway, often because they are enjoyable, and sometimes because a lot of illogical risk taking propels humanity along as a whole.
There are many things that shorten you life, and at age 82, Nimoy really can't complain about his life span. I think a better reason to quit smoking isn't necessarily health, it's that it's a dirty and smelly habit that gets in the way of other fun-but-illogical activities, like kissing.
What these people who you denigrate as "wealthy strangers" are doing is provide a better, and usually less costly, alternative for education, after public schools have already sucked vast amounts of money out of the pockets of low and middle income Americans and wasted them on a poor public school system.
Hey, when the U.S. Secretary of Education turns to corporate sponsors and auctions to fund his Mother's afterschool program for kids of low-income families in the President's hometown, don't look for things to change anytime soon."
No, of course, things won't change. The problem with US public education isn't lack of money; it has plenty of that, it's is structure: an ineffective mix of curricula, bureaucracy, social engineering, tenure, unions, test scores, and outdated teaching methods. And the solution is to create alternative forms of schooling, and private money is important for that because tax dollars alone can't do it, in large part because of demagogues and ideologues like you.
Taking more money in taxes and shoving it into a failing educational system under the control of the same people who have given us our current system won't help students; creating viable and better alternatives, tailored to the needs of communities, will.
For the same reason we still write text-based news articles, textbooks, letters, novels, recipes, screen plays, diplomatic cables, and other stuff: it works better than the alternatives.
Good analogy: BMW's are actually pretty unreliable and overpriced. There are much better deals out there if you want a good car, sports car or otherwise. The "quality" you pay for with BMW is all in the brand name and the styling.
Somehow government largesse doesn't actually hurt Monsanto, or Halliburton, or Northrup Grumman.
Actually, government largesse does hurt big corporations too: it makes them complacent and uncompetitive; there are plenty of examples throughout history of that. Fiscal conservatives oppose most handouts to large corporations as much as they oppose most handouts to individuals.
Note that Democrats have done little on defense spending or agricultural subsidies when they had the chance, and have handed even more money to corporations through stimulus programs, bailouts, energy "research". When it comes to fiscal irresponsibility, crony capitalism, and handouts to big corporations, although there are clearly plenty of example of Republican politicians doing it, Democrats are far worse, despite their anti-corporate pretenses.
Republicans take the position that the way to rein in both corporate and individual handouts is to lower taxes and balance the budget; that's their party platform and at least it's something that would work (even if you disagree with whether it's a good idea). Democrats have no concrete, feasible proposal in their party platform at all.
Well, even if it's anecdotal, I know several people (including *myself*) who were encouraged to purchase a home due to mortgage deductions.
What that means is that other people pay for part of your mortgage, and the more income you earn, the more they pay you. It's an income progressive subsidy to well-off home buyers from renters and people who have paid off their mortgage; how is that fair? So, in the short term, it "encouraged" you to buy a home, although you did it in part with poorer people's money. In the long term, it causes home prices to go up, and probably was responsible in part for the real estate bubble.
but you can't argue that they don't encourage any home buying. When you speak in absolutes it just takes one counter example to be wrong...
I didn't "speak in absolutes". I carefully worded my statement as "But home mortgage deductions and health care deductions don't just do that (in fact, it's debatable whether they even do that); they come with lots of costs and problems." It's "debatable" whether they do that because, although it appears to you that mortgage interest deductions encouraged you to buy a house, the high housing prices simultaneously discouraged you, and the high housing prices are also caused in part by mortgage interest deductions. The overall effect of home ownership of mortgage interest deductions is probably small; US home ownership rates are below many nations that don't have such deductions.
The problem is, as often, that you and people like you focus on the single, desired positive effect of some policy and ignore all the costs and negative effects associated with it. That's often because the positive effects are concentrated on a few people and the negative effects are diluted across a much larger population.
Anyway, this isn't even a real argument or debate.
No, it isn't, for starters because you keep putting words in my mouth. If you actually started responding to what I said instead of fabricating outrageous positions, we could.
The post refuted stenvar's statement that "Republicans oppose government programs" by pointing out things like the recent stories of Republican Senator Wicker forcing the completion of a project that no longer has any use
But it failed to "refute" my statement.
Participating in pork and opposing it are not mutually exclusive. I strongly oppose the mortgage interest deduction because I think it's unfair to the poor, but I still take advantage of it.
Fiscal conservatives want a lot of government programs to end for everybody as a matter of policy, but that is unrelated to whether they individually take part in those programs while they exist.
Furthermore, "Republicans oppose..." refers to what the party stands for, not what every single Republican does.
As long as vast amounts of taxes are being redistributed as pork spending, Republicans need to bring home the bacon for their constituents, since their constituents also pay taxes and should get their share.
Pork spending will naturally get reduced once the US starts balancing its budget and reduces taxes. Republicans at least pay lip service to that, while Democrats even refuse to admit that it's the right thing to do.
how SPECIFICALLY is encouraging home purchases and proactive health care a bad deal for *everybody*
Ah, see, you do the usual bait-and-switch. Encouraging home purchases and proactive health care by themselves are good. But home mortgage deductions and health care deductions don't just do that (in fact, it's debatable whether they even do that); they come with lots of costs and problems.
And yet they didn't MAKE those decisions. They were made by a few people in political office.
The typical arrogant Democratic view, in which voters are mindless, manipulated minions. If you hade democracy so much, why do you try to keep up the appearance of standing for it?
In Arizona and Florida (your primary examples) the Republican voters
Stop lying and stop putting words in my mouth. I have not given Arizona or Florida as examples of anything in this discussion.
You're making the usual error of conflating "opposing a program" with "turning down money from a program". There are many programs I oppose. Most of them, I will take money from. That is neither hypocritical nor inconsistent.
How did the Republican politicians "they themselves" receive Medicaid? Most of them are millionaires,
You need a good dose of reality and look at some statistics. Republicans pull in nearly 50% of the vote; millionaires are a small percentage of the population. Statistically, what you say is impossible. Most Republicans and Independents (I'm an Independent) are people who think that the Democrats are ruining the country.
Fiscal conservatives (including myself) oppose things like mortgage interest deductions, health care deductions, and many other deductions that have saved us a lot of money. We also oppose a lot of federal funding for facilities that we actually use day-to-day and benefit from. We oppose them because they are overall, a bad deal for everybody. We take those "benefits" because we paid for them, and getting something in return for the money we paid is still better than getting nothing.
Your evaluation of her lack of planning is baseless. Her husband was the primary partner in an architecture firm here. He's living nicely in retirement now...we still see him occasionally. She got screwed in the divorce process...rules vary wildly from state to state
Virginia's divorce laws seem pretty reasonable and don't just "screw" people. In any case, she knew who she was marrying and she knew the rules. Apparently, her husband managed to save and leave the marriage with a good retirement so she could have done the same.
I think it's a bit much to ask for a working single woman to move away from an area where her two children live, and quit her job, only to hope to start fresh in a new area.
She can live wherever she wants to if she can afford it. I think it's a bit much for her to ask others to pay for her choices, though. She chose to get married, she chose her husband, she chose to merge her finances, she chose to have kids, and she had a divorce. Those aren't things that just happen by accident, and many others have made choices that are less fun but more prudent.
Of course that's the argument they make, because if they explicitly voiced their real argument ("poor people don't deserve our help, they deserve to be poor"), they'd be rightly seen as uncaring bastards.
Look, you can believe whatever nonsense you like yourself, but you are not entitled to misrepresent the beliefs of others. Republicans tell you what their position is, you have to accept that, just like most Republicans accept that Democratic social programs are well-intentioned if misguided.
The constructive response would be to find ways to make those programs more effective.
There is no way to fix most of those programs because they change incentives in such a way that people make more and more bad choices: single parenthood, lack of retirement savings, hasty marriages and divorce, risky health choices, etc. If you believe that society is going to take care of you if you fail, people end up taking those kinds of risks and let others pay for the consequences. It's really no different when we let big investors take big risks and then bail them out at taxpayer expense when they fail. It's not sustainable.
We need a minimal safety net because nobody should be starving or homeless, no matter how stupid their choices may have been, but our government programs are far beyond that (and, in many cases, beyond what other Western nations have).
The minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. MANY people still work at or slightly above that. $7.25 * 2000 hours (full time) = $14,500 a year,
About 4.7% of hourly workers, or roughly 3% of all workers work at minimum wage. Many of those are people who receive tips or other compensation, so they actually make far more than minimum wage in reality.
Even assuming they pay no taxes (they will pay at least a little) that means they need to come up with housing, utilities, transportation, medical expenses, food, clothing, etc on that. That's nearly impossible
From personal experience I can tell you that it is quite possible.
As far as federal taxes are concerned, that's mostly true. State and local taxes pay for roads, schools, and other daily infrastructure that local communities have decided they want.
As for the rest of your scenario, yeah, that's a good illustration of the level of understanding most progressives have of economics.
Ah, the typical left-wing straw man: "Republicans and the wealthy are greedy and don't want to have their money taken away to help the poor".
However, the actual argument many Republicans make is completely different, namely that these government programs actually hurt people. That is why Republicans oppose government programs even if they know people who are receiving money from them. Heck, many Republicans oppose government programs that they themselves receive money from.
If you objectively look at the kinds of government programs progressives and Democrats have sunk huge amounts of money into, they have generally not been effective at accomplishing what they were designed to accomplish. But the answer from Democrats always to shift blame to others instead of admitting that their programs actually often don't work.
Sort of. If you save and invest regularly, you will be rich in a few decades. But if taxes eat into your earnings along the way, it's much harder to get there, in particular for middle class people.
There's nothing "apocryphal" about it. $150k base salary for a senior software engineer is pretty standard in SV, as are $50k bonuses. That puts you into the top 1% if you're single or a double income couple. Check for yourself on Glassdoor:
Progressives in the US want to "tax the rich" and don't want to let them get off the hook by moving abroad. This kind of worldwide tracking and enforcement is the inevitable consequence.
European nations just let their wealthy move abroad and don't tax them when they're living outside the country. They also don't count them in inequality statistics, which is one reason why European Gini indexes are so low. Maybe a good dose of this kind of European-style progressivism would do the US some good?
Slashdot Mirror
I think implied in Nimoy's statement is the goal of "live long and prosper" as the primary purpose in life, and from that point of view, smoking is illogical. If you adopt the "have fun and don't worry" purpose, smoking is not illogical.
You people can't make up your minds, can you? At times you condemn the "contemporary capitalistic dominant value system" as hedonistic, materialistic, and consumption oriented; and now you condemn it for causing people to be long-term focused health nuts.
FWIW, in my experience with both systems, capitalism wants you to have fun, while socialism and communism try to force you to be productive in various ways and prevent you from enjoying illogical things. Both, however, prefer you drop dead right after retirement.
That's something Spock would say to Uhura. You know, "singing is illogical", "fun is illogical", "kissing is illogical", "sex is illogical". Many things we humans like to do are "illogical", but we generally do them anyway, often because they are enjoyable, and sometimes because a lot of illogical risk taking propels humanity along as a whole.
There are many things that shorten you life, and at age 82, Nimoy really can't complain about his life span. I think a better reason to quit smoking isn't necessarily health, it's that it's a dirty and smelly habit that gets in the way of other fun-but-illogical activities, like kissing.
America spends vast amounts of money on its public education system, but it's not yielding better outcomes.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
What these people who you denigrate as "wealthy strangers" are doing is provide a better, and usually less costly, alternative for education, after public schools have already sucked vast amounts of money out of the pockets of low and middle income Americans and wasted them on a poor public school system.
No, of course, things won't change. The problem with US public education isn't lack of money; it has plenty of that, it's is structure: an ineffective mix of curricula, bureaucracy, social engineering, tenure, unions, test scores, and outdated teaching methods. And the solution is to create alternative forms of schooling, and private money is important for that because tax dollars alone can't do it, in large part because of demagogues and ideologues like you.
Taking more money in taxes and shoving it into a failing educational system under the control of the same people who have given us our current system won't help students; creating viable and better alternatives, tailored to the needs of communities, will.
Just imagine all the chemical and physics hacks you can do once gain access to a car's hardware!
For the same reason we still write text-based news articles, textbooks, letters, novels, recipes, screen plays, diplomatic cables, and other stuff: it works better than the alternatives.
Good analogy: BMW's are actually pretty unreliable and overpriced. There are much better deals out there if you want a good car, sports car or otherwise. The "quality" you pay for with BMW is all in the brand name and the styling.
BETA must have started with an HVAC account as well; that's why it sucks so badly.
BETA, I command you: turn into dust NOW.
Actually, government largesse does hurt big corporations too: it makes them complacent and uncompetitive; there are plenty of examples throughout history of that. Fiscal conservatives oppose most handouts to large corporations as much as they oppose most handouts to individuals.
Note that Democrats have done little on defense spending or agricultural subsidies when they had the chance, and have handed even more money to corporations through stimulus programs, bailouts, energy "research". When it comes to fiscal irresponsibility, crony capitalism, and handouts to big corporations, although there are clearly plenty of example of Republican politicians doing it, Democrats are far worse, despite their anti-corporate pretenses.
Republicans take the position that the way to rein in both corporate and individual handouts is to lower taxes and balance the budget; that's their party platform and at least it's something that would work (even if you disagree with whether it's a good idea). Democrats have no concrete, feasible proposal in their party platform at all.
What that means is that other people pay for part of your mortgage, and the more income you earn, the more they pay you. It's an income progressive subsidy to well-off home buyers from renters and people who have paid off their mortgage; how is that fair? So, in the short term, it "encouraged" you to buy a home, although you did it in part with poorer people's money. In the long term, it causes home prices to go up, and probably was responsible in part for the real estate bubble.
I didn't "speak in absolutes". I carefully worded my statement as "But home mortgage deductions and health care deductions don't just do that (in fact, it's debatable whether they even do that); they come with lots of costs and problems." It's "debatable" whether they do that because, although it appears to you that mortgage interest deductions encouraged you to buy a house, the high housing prices simultaneously discouraged you, and the high housing prices are also caused in part by mortgage interest deductions. The overall effect of home ownership of mortgage interest deductions is probably small; US home ownership rates are below many nations that don't have such deductions.
The problem is, as often, that you and people like you focus on the single, desired positive effect of some policy and ignore all the costs and negative effects associated with it. That's often because the positive effects are concentrated on a few people and the negative effects are diluted across a much larger population.
No, it isn't, for starters because you keep putting words in my mouth. If you actually started responding to what I said instead of fabricating outrageous positions, we could.
But it failed to "refute" my statement.
Participating in pork and opposing it are not mutually exclusive. I strongly oppose the mortgage interest deduction because I think it's unfair to the poor, but I still take advantage of it.
Fiscal conservatives want a lot of government programs to end for everybody as a matter of policy, but that is unrelated to whether they individually take part in those programs while they exist.
Furthermore, "Republicans oppose..." refers to what the party stands for, not what every single Republican does.
As long as vast amounts of taxes are being redistributed as pork spending, Republicans need to bring home the bacon for their constituents, since their constituents also pay taxes and should get their share.
Pork spending will naturally get reduced once the US starts balancing its budget and reduces taxes. Republicans at least pay lip service to that, while Democrats even refuse to admit that it's the right thing to do.
Ah, see, you do the usual bait-and-switch. Encouraging home purchases and proactive health care by themselves are good. But home mortgage deductions and health care deductions don't just do that (in fact, it's debatable whether they even do that); they come with lots of costs and problems.
The typical arrogant Democratic view, in which voters are mindless, manipulated minions. If you hade democracy so much, why do you try to keep up the appearance of standing for it?
Stop lying and stop putting words in my mouth. I have not given Arizona or Florida as examples of anything in this discussion.
Economically, yes, my position is the "Republican way". But I'm socially liberal, meaning I don't care where you stick your weenie.
You're making the usual error of conflating "opposing a program" with "turning down money from a program". There are many programs I oppose. Most of them, I will take money from. That is neither hypocritical nor inconsistent.
You need a good dose of reality and look at some statistics. Republicans pull in nearly 50% of the vote; millionaires are a small percentage of the population. Statistically, what you say is impossible. Most Republicans and Independents (I'm an Independent) are people who think that the Democrats are ruining the country.
Fiscal conservatives (including myself) oppose things like mortgage interest deductions, health care deductions, and many other deductions that have saved us a lot of money. We also oppose a lot of federal funding for facilities that we actually use day-to-day and benefit from. We oppose them because they are overall, a bad deal for everybody. We take those "benefits" because we paid for them, and getting something in return for the money we paid is still better than getting nothing.
There's nothing to "debate"; I was correcting the original poster.
Virginia's divorce laws seem pretty reasonable and don't just "screw" people. In any case, she knew who she was marrying and she knew the rules. Apparently, her husband managed to save and leave the marriage with a good retirement so she could have done the same.
She can live wherever she wants to if she can afford it. I think it's a bit much for her to ask others to pay for her choices, though. She chose to get married, she chose her husband, she chose to merge her finances, she chose to have kids, and she had a divorce. Those aren't things that just happen by accident, and many others have made choices that are less fun but more prudent.
Look, you can believe whatever nonsense you like yourself, but you are not entitled to misrepresent the beliefs of others. Republicans tell you what their position is, you have to accept that, just like most Republicans accept that Democratic social programs are well-intentioned if misguided.
There is no way to fix most of those programs because they change incentives in such a way that people make more and more bad choices: single parenthood, lack of retirement savings, hasty marriages and divorce, risky health choices, etc. If you believe that society is going to take care of you if you fail, people end up taking those kinds of risks and let others pay for the consequences. It's really no different when we let big investors take big risks and then bail them out at taxpayer expense when they fail. It's not sustainable.
We need a minimal safety net because nobody should be starving or homeless, no matter how stupid their choices may have been, but our government programs are far beyond that (and, in many cases, beyond what other Western nations have).
About 4.7% of hourly workers, or roughly 3% of all workers work at minimum wage. Many of those are people who receive tips or other compensation, so they actually make far more than minimum wage in reality.
http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage...
From personal experience I can tell you that it is quite possible.
As far as federal taxes are concerned, that's mostly true. State and local taxes pay for roads, schools, and other daily infrastructure that local communities have decided they want.
As for the rest of your scenario, yeah, that's a good illustration of the level of understanding most progressives have of economics.
Ah, the typical left-wing straw man: "Republicans and the wealthy are greedy and don't want to have their money taken away to help the poor".
However, the actual argument many Republicans make is completely different, namely that these government programs actually hurt people. That is why Republicans oppose government programs even if they know people who are receiving money from them. Heck, many Republicans oppose government programs that they themselves receive money from.
If you objectively look at the kinds of government programs progressives and Democrats have sunk huge amounts of money into, they have generally not been effective at accomplishing what they were designed to accomplish. But the answer from Democrats always to shift blame to others instead of admitting that their programs actually often don't work.
Sort of. If you save and invest regularly, you will be rich in a few decades. But if taxes eat into your earnings along the way, it's much harder to get there, in particular for middle class people.
There's nothing "apocryphal" about it. $150k base salary for a senior software engineer is pretty standard in SV, as are $50k bonuses. That puts you into the top 1% if you're single or a double income couple. Check for yourself on Glassdoor:
http://www.glassdoor.com/Salar...
Netflix pays over $300k for some senior software engineers.
I'm sorry that shatters your illusion of who "the 1%" are, but there you have it.
As for "unearned income", it's not a loophole, you can't close it, and if you could, it would be a disaster for the economy.
Progressives in the US want to "tax the rich" and don't want to let them get off the hook by moving abroad. This kind of worldwide tracking and enforcement is the inevitable consequence.
European nations just let their wealthy move abroad and don't tax them when they're living outside the country. They also don't count them in inequality statistics, which is one reason why European Gini indexes are so low. Maybe a good dose of this kind of European-style progressivism would do the US some good?