So you are equating "protection under law" with handouts and forced wealth redistribution?
No. I'm saying that when we have handouts and forced wealth distribution, we don't get to choose favorites and let the scary brown people or the people with funny hats or the pagans, the gays, or whoever we (as a people) don't like today all go hang because they don't go to the same churches as us or have the same skin color as us or vote for the same candidates that we do.
The second commandment God gave was to love your neighbor as yourself. In the early days of our country, most people, even if they did not believe in the Bible personally, gave at least some lip service to that by freely giving to the needy either directly, individually, or through the churches or other faith based organizations.
And if they were doing such a great job of it, we wouldn't have Social Security today. Can you deny this?
As for taking care of the old folks, that has for millennia been the responsibility of the next of kin, usually the children. Nowadays we have to send the police after selfish men, just so they will take care of their own children and their mothers, not to mention their aging parents. Human selfishness is a social cost no government can wholly counteract.
This is why we cannot rely upon the kindness of neighbors to replace the government. While the government cannot wholly counteract human selfishness, it is in a far better position to mitigate it than small organizations that rely on its opposite. Not only was it ineffective in the 30s, but it would be even more disastrous today.
Before health insurance was invented, doctors were less money hungry and were interested foremost in the health of their patients, not whether a given patient was able to pay. Many of the old country doctors would treat indigent people for nothing, because in those days people became doctors in order to serve their fellow human beings, rather than having a way to make a big income. Their hippocratic oath still was paid attention to. Therein it says something about not doing harm. Does that harm include taking a person to the cleaners financially?
I would agree with the sentiment, but healthcare has changed significantly from the time when old country doctors could carry all the tools of their trade in a handbag and in their heads. If an indigent person has come down with MRSE, a regiment of vancomycin will cost $70/day (plus hospitalization expenses). That comes down to a cost of about $1600 for a full treatment regimen. An MRI machine can cost $2 million to install and $800K/yr to operate. Etc.
While doctor's fees are very high in the US, a lot of the cost of modern healthcare is equipment costs that simply won't go away. Not only can't we rely on doctors to do "the decent thing," like they used but, but we can't even fairly ask them to. Other costs like administrative overhead (particularly from dealing with multiple insurance carriers) and malpractice costs (particularly compensatory damages) could be greatly reduced in a public system in a way that charity-driven operations could not.
I'm still for giving the FairTax thing a shot. From my reading of it...it isn't nearly as bad as you describe. Poor people today are paying sales taxes on things with no rebate. With the FairTax...they get a rebate for most everything....more than they get today.
Very poor people may get a slightly better shot under the FairTax, though they pay next to nothing in income taxes right now. I haven't crunched the math on the prebate in a while, so I can't remember if there's a point at which things look better for people who are at least earning minimum wage.
One problem is that the numbers are funny. They talk about a 23% tax, but that's 23 cents on every 77 cents, or 30% on top of every dollar. But even that number is inaccurate. The President's Advisory Panel on Tax Reform claims that it would need to be a 34% tax to be revenue-neutral, and the Brookings Institution puts it as high as 44%.
Both of those figures are without cheating, and unfortunately it's very *easy* to cheat under the FairTax. The reason is that all business expenditures are untaxed, and one of the primary goals of the FairTax is to dismantle the IRS to stop its intrusion into the lives of taxpayers. Add these two together, and think about the following scenario.
Two shoppers go to Costco to buy some bulk snacks and a laptop.
- Shopper A is a school teacher and is buying the goods for personal use. Shopper A pays taxes at the register. - Shopper B owns a small office and intends to use the goods for his office. Shopper B is supposed to pay no taxes. Unlike the European VAT, Shopper B does not pay up front and get a rebate from the government later -- the government is supposed to stay out of Shopper B's life and only bug Costco.
How does the cashier tell the difference between Shoppers A & B? Who to tax and who not to tax? Is it just a matter of showing a business license or ownership of a corporation? What's to prevent Shopper C from coming in and claiming that his restaurant business needs a gallon jug of mayo today and that his childcare business needs that game console tomorrow?
Any voluntary system of taxation is DOOMED to failure.
Next in the FairTax's panoply of myths is the one about taxing the underground economy (where we don't today). The book argues that drug dealers don't pay taxes today and that the government will suddenly turn up a huge revenue stream from the untapped underground economy.
Ummm... no. It's like thermodynamics. You can't say that a refrigerator reduces entropy by only looking inside the fridge door and not at the coils in the back. The same principle applies to an illegal transaction.
Example: John visits Mary, a prostitute. He pays for services. She uses the money to live her life (and doesn't report her income). The FairTax would have you believe that since Mary pays for goods and services that all the missing tax money will come to the government. Right?
Well, no. Does anyone think that John is going to pay sales tax on Mary's services? The missing tax money is shifted from after the worker is paid to when the service is sold. John is now dodging taxes instead of Mary. Boortz ignored that when he wrote the book. He just looked "inside the fridge" and proclaimed a miracle!
The FairTax is a sham. It's nothing but a naked embracing of supply-side economics -- Boortz evenly openly admits as much in the first couple of chapters. Just free up the rich to invest all the money they don't spend and wealth shall rain down into America, the world's tax haven! Yaaay! And Ronald Reagan will rise from the dead and bless us all.
Don't buy it for a second. If the FairTax is going to be revenue-neutral and tax proportionately less of the wealthy's income while giving free money to the poor, then where do you think the difference is going to be made up. Do the math, balance the equation, and vote in your own interests.
I'm not taking a side on the issue, but shouldn't either one be more important than having to move back into an apartment? I mean my swimming pool isn't a life or death issue. As well, recessions happen, they are needed for the proper functioning of an economy.
Devil's Advocate: But that happens over there to other people, and this is happening here to me. </whine> (Maslow's hierarchy of needs seems to also apply, and security of the home trumps security of the community.)
Still every time one happens the cable news channels go off like it is the end of the world. It is extremely unlikely that it will be the end of america as a power.
Keep telling yourself that. Obama's not wrong when he points out that economic collapse is a security risk. The only reason we are a superpower is because we can afford to be. China and India have more people than we do. If their per capita economic power begins to approach ours, we are going to be the New Europe -- influential but no longer dominating. It's practically inevitable, in fact.
Hah. I don't have TV, but I do get mail. So much mail that when I didn't check my mailbox for a week, I found a slip in my box saying that my box had filled up and the post office was keeping my mail and was going to return it to sender if I didn't come pick it up in a few days.
Imagine my surprise when, expecting a bunch fliers and catalogs, I found a stack the size of a textbook of mail opposing or supporting various local initiatives. It was kind of staggering to see that much mail in such a short span.
You know, for someone who calls himself a Democrat, Orson Scott Card has written several articles that gush about President Bush & Cheney, excoriated Kerry & Edwards, advocated voting Republican, supporting the Iraq War, expressing skepticism over evolution and the need for action on global warming, calling gay marriage grounds for overthrowing governments, and praising Fox News for honesty.
If Fox News is his idea of "honest" reporting, then I think that he fully qualifies for Democrat In Name Only status.
Oh, and his article plays up the whole "Raines connection" which was a wild exaggeration, claims that Bush never led the people to believe 9-11 & Iraq were linked because he never explicitly tied the two together despite numerous references to one in speech about the other, and gripes about the press paying some attention to Palin's unwed, pregnant daughter instead of John Edwards' affair when she is a major candidate running for the Vice President and outspoken on her views about abstinence-based sex ed whereas Jon Edwards dropped out of the race the months ago and is no longer relevant to anybody (though the reporting that did happen damaged his campaign, mind you). Never you mind what the coverage would be like if Palin were the Democratic nominee instead.
Last honest Democrat? Pfft. Maybe in Bizarro-Earth.
You should probably watch the second debate, then. Compare the two candidate's answers the following question (trimmed for space, full text of debate here:
Brokaw: There are new economic realities out there that everyone in this hall and across this country understands that there are going to have to be some choices made. Health policies, energy policies, and entitlement reform, what are going to be your priorities in what order? Which of those will be your highest priority your first year in office and which will follow in sequence?
McCain: I think you can work on all three at once, Tom. [...] [W]e can do them all at once. There's no -- and we have to do them all at once. All three you mentioned are compelling national security requirements.
Obama: We're going to have to prioritize, just like a family has to prioritize. Now, I've listed the things that I think have to be at the top of the list.
Energy we have to deal with today [...] Health care is priority number two [...] And, number three, we've got to deal with education so that our young people are competitive in a global economy. [...]
Note which candidate prioritized and which one didn't.
(Summary: Black people *always* vote for the Democrat who just happens to be black this time around. People suggesting that black people are all of a sudden ignoring policy in favor of skin color are only doing so because of Obama's skin color and are themselves viewing the world through racially-tinged eyes and holding black people to a different standard than white people -- i.e. are racists themselves.)
I feel that your second paragraph is good enough indication that you're not really grounded in reality, but why on Earth do you think that Gore would've taken us into a war in Iraq?
(BTW, Marx is still an important part of the Social Philosophy discussion and syllabus, Being called a Marxist should be about as scary as being called a Nietzschen or Kierkegaardian - quite silly to use as a derogatory term)
You mean the term "Nietzschean ideals" hasn't been thoroughly burned to the ground and salted by the specter of the Nazis in your country?
Most of my fellow Americans want a planned economy, since the Soviet system demonstrated such strength and utterly crushed America to finally end the cold war. I don't quite understand their argument, but that's what it is.
Why does it always have to be either the God-Blessed, American-as-Apple Pie Free (AS IN FREEEEEEDOM!) Market or Evil, Godless, Soul-Crushing Red Commie Totalitarianism?
Is this sort of extremist, black-and-white argument that keeps this country lurching around like a slowing top instead of trying to find the working balance that preserves competition and harnesses self-interest for good while preventing predatory practices and avoiding giving businesses enough rope to hang themselves with in the pursuit of short-term executive profit (instead of sustainable, long-term strategies to grow the company for the next generation).
What we want isn't a "planned economy," but what we also do not want is the Law of the Jungle. Neither situation is truly free.
Ah...but, the person making $250K a year likely spends MORE than the $3000/yr that a person on a $30K income. They eat out at nicer restaurants more often, they buy finer foods, wines, booze etc than a lower income earner.
That's a nice theory, but how many people earning $250K/yr are spending an equivalent percentage of their wealth to a person earning $30K/yr.
The person earning more money has the option of spending more of their wealth on finer goods and services, but they also have the option of investing it. A person earning $30K/yr does not. There comes a threshold at which you can't opt for cheaper goods and services. Unless the rich person drives a car than needs higher-octane, Premium gas to operate or drives a Hummer, the poor person probably spends just as much.
Housing costs can be brutal. A person earning $250K is in a different league, but someone earning $40K isn't, and an apartment that's good for someone earning $30K isn't much cheaper than one for someone earning $40K. There actually comes a point where if you get poor enough, housing costs go up. If you can't save enough money to make the first & last month's rent on an apartment -- a common enough problem for people doing unskilled labor jobs -- then you may have to rent month-to-month or week-to-week, and the prices for that are terrible compared to what you could get if you could just save enough to get in a rental contract.
Back to the higher end of the scale, the person earning $250K most likely has plenty of money to play with -- or to save and invest. Over time, that money will start to "work for him," earning income without need for labor. A person with that much money can invest it in stocks, real estate, their own business, etc. and make reap rewards that a person earning $30K can only imagine.
This is the core sham of the national sales tax movement -- the idea that such a tax will be income-neutral because the rich spend more. They do spend more, but they don't spend proportionately more, and the Orwellianly-named "FairTax" specifically shields businesses, the most common places they would put the rest of their money, from taxation. It's a sham -- an explicit redistribution of that tax burden from the wealthy to the middle class, replete with a "rebate check" for the poor to squeeze people from the other side and provide a fig leaf of "totally not socialism" to make it look like the system is still somehow "fair."
(3) I don't consider water under MY ground to be public property. *I* was the one who spent $5000 to drill a well into the ground and tap the reservoir, therefore the well belongs to me. The reservoir is runs under several of my neighbors' property as well. If they want access, let them build their own damn wells.
Same argument applies to any coal I find on MY land, or trees growing on MY property, or cows grazing on MY grasses. This is PRIVATE property, not public. I paid $130,000 for it, and it belongs to me, not you.
Other people have pointed out that in many jurisdictions, you would simply be wrong about that water legally. Others have also pointed out that logically and ethically, that's not right either because you are taking the water from under *their* property as well. If they "build their own damn wells," then you're now in a potential tragedy of the common situations if all of you overuse the reservoir. This is why we have the aforementioned legal separation of aboveground and underground property rights.
You note that you "paid $130,000 for [your land]" and thus it belongs to you. Who did you pay that money to, and why do you think that they had the right to sell you the subsurface and water rights attached to it? What gives them (or you) the right to claim as personal property materials shared by all (like water flowing underground) or materials you are incapable of making use of (like coal buried where you can't access it)? What is the moral and philosophical foundation of that property right you claim, and why is it superior to the claims of others? Why do you deserve to able to claim that water and coal?
These are important questions to answer before simply claming, "Mine!" and expecting that claim to be good against the world.
Ever tried giving to charity? Then you can target the specific individuals, groups or unfortunate circumstances you want to positively affect, eliminating the expansive government overhead and waste inherent in such programs. There are even charity ratings sites that tell you how efficiently any charity gets your money to those who need it.
You can give your money away much more intelligently than the government can.
There are three problems with this:
First, you assume that a cause you support *has* a charity that's more efficient than the government. I note that you imply that inherent waste & overhead are a government problem but don't look at whether such problems apply to smaller charities. Nor do you discuss the differences in economies of scale between a small operation and a national operation.
Second, under this system only the most popular causes will receive adequate funds and other groups may slip under the cracks. The Federal government is limited in its actions by the 14th Amendment's requirement to provide equal protection under the law. Private charities are under no such obligation.
Think back to the 1950s, before the Civil Rights movements. Do you believe that poor blacks got as much charity and assistance as poor whites? Under a purely voluntary, charity-based system, unpopular groups may end up getting far less support than they may deserve based on their need.
Today, we see much of the same targeted, exclusionary approach in charities based on religious beliefs that turn away homosexuals or other "undesirables" or who require one to buy into some of their teachings before receiving benefit (or at least take advantage of a person in a vulnerable place). Just look at Scientology and Narconon.
Third, I have never once seen someone able to seriously argue that if you remove $X million dollars in federal taxation that $X million dollars (or more) will flow into charities for the needy. Taking away government social programs will NOT result in an equivalent amount of help coming from the private sector (and now out of the generous, goodness of people's hearts instead of from the filthy, grubbing government). All people are saying when they say, "Let the people choose what charity to give to," is really, "Let the people choose to say, 'Screw you, panhandlers,' and not give to any charity. I can obviously make better use of my money than those people, or they wouldn't be asking for it."
Frankly, the social costs of the alternative are why we have programs like Social Security in the first place. We didn't come up with a government program to give money to old people just because we wanted to get rid of the existing charity system. We did it because the old system was wholly inadequate and the social costs of an impoverished and unable to work segment of society (which we will all one-day join) was considered intolerable.
Same as the social costs of people unable to afford healthcare today. It's a drain on the economy and productivity as well as just being inhumanly callous to let people be sick because they're afraid that they can't afford to be well. We're the only wealthy nation that ignores this problem, and it's shameful. If the private charity system were working as people pretend it will, then we wouldn't even be *having* this discussion. End of story.
Do current chip manufacturers like Intel and AMD work on new lithography techniques, or do they focus more on architectural changes?
Yes. This research was funded by the National Science Foundation, a federal agency, but IBM, Intel, and AMD are all active in process technology research. I can't dig up much in the way of what they're currently researching, but here are a few things I was aware of in the past few years (and some things I dug while looking for them):
Intel was researching extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) lithography around 2002-2004.
Intel is also funding research into computational lithography to avoid having to do immersion lithography, like IBM and others are doing for the next generation.
AMD & IBM were partnering on a test fab for EUV lithography in 2006 and had successfully demonstrated the ability to create transistors but were still working on metal interconnects at that time. I'd bet money they've gotten past that point by now.
IBM did a lot of pioneering work on strained silicon that they announced back in 2001.
Silicon-on-insulator (SOI) was another fab technology they pioneered in 1998, but it hasn't spread much in the industry beyond them, AMD, and Motorola / Freescale -- in other words, IBM and its partners.
And then again, back to IBM, they were the first company to come up with a viable process for laying down copper interconnects, using what's called a dual-damascene process, in the late 90's.
Hitachi has been actively developing electron-beam lithography for over a decade, but the technology has yet to really live up to its promise as a commercially viable competitor for photolithography AFAIK.
Some of the above research was about commercializing "pure" research done in independent labs like this experiment, but a lot of it was directly funded by the big fabrication companies and their clients and partners. Since I'm not in the fabrication industry myself, I can't really comment any further on who has done what (and how much each of the above deserves credit). This is just news I remember from years past.
What exactly is the problem with this term? Just too "fancy" and "technical" for you salt of the earth Anonymous Cowards? It makes perfect sense if you know the root words for it, and it succinctly describes the technology:
- Plasmonic: Of or using plasmons. - Nano-: At the nanometer scale of operation - Lithography: Lithography.
Maybe you can argue that the "nano" is superfluous, but it captures one of the two things that are significant about the new technique -- it uses plasmons instead of traditional light, and it can theoretically operate at a scale as small as 5-10 nm. ("Nano-" seems to be more significant, when you're at the point where you're talking single-digit nanometer resolution.)
Just because it's long and wordy doesn't mean that it's Star Trek nonsense. The phrase has a useful meaning.
He seems to be black enough for most blacks. Gallup has been showing between 89 and 93% of America's blacks supporting Obama for months, compared to 48-55% whites supporting McCain. For some reason, this hasn't been the slightest bit newsworthy in the mainstream media.
It isn't newsworthy to anyone who has more than a 4 year memory of politics.
According to CNN exit polls, Kerry got 88% of the black vote in 2004. Other polls will show that Gore got 90% in 2000, Clinton got 84% in '96 and 83% in '92 (a historic low), Dukakis got 90% in '88, and Mondale got 90% in 84.
Meanwhile, in 2004, Al Sharpton couldn't crack 20% of the black vote in the South Carolina Democratic primary (32% of SC blacks voted for Kerry and 36% for Edwards).
Was this because all of these white candidates were "black enough," or are you going to just admit that you're a bit wrong (/racist) in accusing black voters of voting based on skin color instead of on issues?
Now, you may bristle at me accusing you of racism for pointing this out, but you are judging black people on a different standard from white people based on their skin color. Instead of looking at whether historically they as a group have supported certain issues (like evangelicals, union members, executives, or any other group with shared values), you accuse them of racism based on your own distorted perception of their values.
It's like how Colin Powell, a moderate Republican, endorsed Obama for a variety of reasons including being deeply troubled by the attacks on him for being Muslim (which he's not, but Powell asks, "So what if he was?") and by the pick of Sarah Palin as VP. Immediately, people like Rush Limbaugh dismissed the endorsement as being racially motivated.
What the heck? Lieberman, a white Senator who would've been the Democratic VP in 2000 but for a few votes and who would be a Democrat today if not for a vigorous primary challenge over the issue of the Iraq War endorsed the McCain-Palin ticket, and no one has accused him of doing so based on race. He did so based on some policy issues, breaking with his traditional political allies to do so, just like Colin Powell did.
So, why hasn't anyone accused him of being racist? Because he's white, and the people accusing black people of voting based on race hold black people to a different standard than they do white people. White people are assumed to vote based on substance. Black people are assumed to vote based on racial loyalty.
And that's racist. Facially racist -- judging people differently based on the color of their skin. It's disgusting, and it's a sign that the people making the accusations view the world through racially-tinged eyes of their own.
Does that mean you like receiving spam mail? Do you think that spam filters are a horrible abridgment of the free speech rights of spammers? Do you think that people trying to sell you stuff should be able to call you up and bug you about it at any time? How about visiting your house to hawk their wares?
The right to speak freely does not include the right to force people to listen who don't want to.
All this technology is is an automated filter for profanity -- just like the spam filter that keeps you mailbox clean of irritating messages you don't want to see. There's nothing that hints that it will be turned on always. That would be irritating and, frankly, would lose Microsoft customers who *like* trash talk.
Too many people have a knee-jerk reaction to the big C-word and think that it's automatically bad. This isn't some government program to prevent people from expressing themselves -- it's a private company offering people selective earplugs who don't want to hear screaming 14 year olds throwing verbal feces at the wall. What's wrong with that?
Why not just mute the stupid player? Or not even use the voip at all? Like the article says, its only really used for trash talk anyway. Unless I know who I'm playing with, I'm not going to try and coordinate anything.
Maybe it's only used for trash talk because stupid kids trash talking prevents anyone from having a civilized game. I mean, I don't play these kinds of games online *because* of all the "new to their testosterone" little brats running around using "fag" like it's punctuation. It's a tragedy of the commons situation.
Muting the player can invite retaliation, and muting everyone (by not using VoIP) is just sticking your head in the sand. If this kind of software works, then I'd love to see it as an option when creating a match. Forcing all of Xbox Live might be "family friendly" would be awful, but giving people the option of raising the maturity level in a particular match they set up would be great.
Forget "save the children." Save me *from* the immature little griefers. (And if they still want to trash talk, then let them be more creative and entertaining about it.)
The one good point with McCain is that we are in zero danger of him having extra marital sex. There isn't a female alive who would sleep with that old fool.
Really? Considering that he met his current wife a year before divorcing his previous wife and then married her a month later? I think that's a pretty good sign that he's probably cheated once before.
I seriously doubt that McCain would do it again, but it's not as unlikely as it might be for someone who never had cheated before.
This is a goddamned presidential election, not a popularity contest. You idiots remind me class president elections in high school.
Ron Paul broke with the Republican Party on the issue of the war in Iraq. That's a big deal for a lot of independent voters, so I'm not surprised the only Republican candidate to come out against the war initially picked up a lot of voters that later jumped ship to the Democrats when McCain won the nomination.
The war is a wedge-issue for a lot of otherwise conservative-minded independents, much the same way abortion or gun control are wedge-issues for a lot of people.
While I have a hard time seeing how anyone could deeply analyze the policies of both candidates and come away with Ron Paul > Obama > McCain, I wouldn't chock it all up to "a popularity contest."
You know, I'm not a fan of (a) sports bars, (b) politics as a game, or frankly (c) Republicans, but I don't feel that that's a fair attack.
I mean, God forbid that people who like sports care enough about politics to preempt ESPN for information on one of the most important decisions they're likely to make this year.
Slashdot Mirror
'Cause you just won one.
If the average user shares song X 1000 times, then the average user downloads song X 1000 times. Who the hell downloads a given song 1000 times?
Why are you assuming that the average user shares a song with only one person?
Well, it really depends on where you are. Didn't you watch the Olympics in Beijing? The sky there was gre... ...
Not after NBC gets a hold of it!
So you are equating "protection under law" with handouts and forced wealth redistribution?
No. I'm saying that when we have handouts and forced wealth distribution, we don't get to choose favorites and let the scary brown people or the people with funny hats or the pagans, the gays, or whoever we (as a people) don't like today all go hang because they don't go to the same churches as us or have the same skin color as us or vote for the same candidates that we do.
The second commandment God gave was to love your neighbor as yourself. In the early days of our country, most people, even if they did not believe in the Bible personally, gave at least some lip service to that by freely giving to the needy either directly, individually, or through the churches or other faith based organizations.
And if they were doing such a great job of it, we wouldn't have Social Security today. Can you deny this?
As for taking care of the old folks, that has for millennia been the responsibility of the next of kin, usually the children. Nowadays we have to send the police after selfish men, just so they will take care of their own children and their mothers, not to mention their aging parents. Human selfishness is a social cost no government can wholly counteract.
This is why we cannot rely upon the kindness of neighbors to replace the government. While the government cannot wholly counteract human selfishness, it is in a far better position to mitigate it than small organizations that rely on its opposite. Not only was it ineffective in the 30s, but it would be even more disastrous today.
Before health insurance was invented, doctors were less money hungry and were interested foremost in the health of their patients, not whether a given patient was able to pay. Many of the old country doctors would treat indigent people for nothing, because in those days people became doctors in order to serve their fellow human beings, rather than having a way to make a big income. Their hippocratic oath still was paid attention to. Therein it says something about not doing harm. Does that harm include taking a person to the cleaners financially?
I would agree with the sentiment, but healthcare has changed significantly from the time when old country doctors could carry all the tools of their trade in a handbag and in their heads. If an indigent person has come down with MRSE, a regiment of vancomycin will cost $70/day (plus hospitalization expenses). That comes down to a cost of about $1600 for a full treatment regimen. An MRI machine can cost $2 million to install and $800K/yr to operate. Etc.
While doctor's fees are very high in the US, a lot of the cost of modern healthcare is equipment costs that simply won't go away. Not only can't we rely on doctors to do "the decent thing," like they used but, but we can't even fairly ask them to. Other costs like administrative overhead (particularly from dealing with multiple insurance carriers) and malpractice costs (particularly compensatory damages) could be greatly reduced in a public system in a way that charity-driven operations could not.
I'm still for giving the FairTax thing a shot. From my reading of it...it isn't nearly as bad as you describe. Poor people today are paying sales taxes on things with no rebate. With the FairTax...they get a rebate for most everything....more than they get today.
Very poor people may get a slightly better shot under the FairTax, though they pay next to nothing in income taxes right now. I haven't crunched the math on the prebate in a while, so I can't remember if there's a point at which things look better for people who are at least earning minimum wage.
One problem is that the numbers are funny. They talk about a 23% tax, but that's 23 cents on every 77 cents, or 30% on top of every dollar. But even that number is inaccurate. The President's Advisory Panel on Tax Reform claims that it would need to be a 34% tax to be revenue-neutral, and the Brookings Institution puts it as high as 44%.
Both of those figures are without cheating, and unfortunately it's very *easy* to cheat under the FairTax. The reason is that all business expenditures are untaxed, and one of the primary goals of the FairTax is to dismantle the IRS to stop its intrusion into the lives of taxpayers. Add these two together, and think about the following scenario.
Two shoppers go to Costco to buy some bulk snacks and a laptop.
- Shopper A is a school teacher and is buying the goods for personal use. Shopper A pays taxes at the register.
- Shopper B owns a small office and intends to use the goods for his office. Shopper B is supposed to pay no taxes. Unlike the European VAT, Shopper B does not pay up front and get a rebate from the government later -- the government is supposed to stay out of Shopper B's life and only bug Costco.
How does the cashier tell the difference between Shoppers A & B? Who to tax and who not to tax? Is it just a matter of showing a business license or ownership of a corporation? What's to prevent Shopper C from coming in and claiming that his restaurant business needs a gallon jug of mayo today and that his childcare business needs that game console tomorrow?
Any voluntary system of taxation is DOOMED to failure.
Next in the FairTax's panoply of myths is the one about taxing the underground economy (where we don't today). The book argues that drug dealers don't pay taxes today and that the government will suddenly turn up a huge revenue stream from the untapped underground economy.
Ummm... no. It's like thermodynamics. You can't say that a refrigerator reduces entropy by only looking inside the fridge door and not at the coils in the back. The same principle applies to an illegal transaction.
Example: John visits Mary, a prostitute. He pays for services. She uses the money to live her life (and doesn't report her income). The FairTax would have you believe that since Mary pays for goods and services that all the missing tax money will come to the government. Right?
Well, no. Does anyone think that John is going to pay sales tax on Mary's services? The missing tax money is shifted from after the worker is paid to when the service is sold. John is now dodging taxes instead of Mary. Boortz ignored that when he wrote the book. He just looked "inside the fridge" and proclaimed a miracle!
The FairTax is a sham. It's nothing but a naked embracing of supply-side economics -- Boortz evenly openly admits as much in the first couple of chapters. Just free up the rich to invest all the money they don't spend and wealth shall rain down into America, the world's tax haven! Yaaay! And Ronald Reagan will rise from the dead and bless us all.
Don't buy it for a second. If the FairTax is going to be revenue-neutral and tax proportionately less of the wealthy's income while giving free money to the poor, then where do you think the difference is going to be made up. Do the math, balance the equation, and vote in your own interests.
At the very least...it HAS to be better than t
I'm not taking a side on the issue, but shouldn't either one be more important than having to move back into an apartment? I mean my swimming pool isn't a life or death issue. As well, recessions happen, they are needed for the proper functioning of an economy.
Devil's Advocate: But that happens over there to other people, and this is happening here to me. </whine>
(Maslow's hierarchy of needs seems to also apply, and security of the home trumps security of the community.)
Still every time one happens the cable news channels go off like it is the end of the world. It is extremely unlikely that it will be the end of america as a power.
Keep telling yourself that. Obama's not wrong when he points out that economic collapse is a security risk. The only reason we are a superpower is because we can afford to be. China and India have more people than we do. If their per capita economic power begins to approach ours, we are going to be the New Europe -- influential but no longer dominating. It's practically inevitable, in fact.
Hah. I don't have TV, but I do get mail. So much mail that when I didn't check my mailbox for a week, I found a slip in my box saying that my box had filled up and the post office was keeping my mail and was going to return it to sender if I didn't come pick it up in a few days.
Imagine my surprise when, expecting a bunch fliers and catalogs, I found a stack the size of a textbook of mail opposing or supporting various local initiatives. It was kind of staggering to see that much mail in such a short span.
You know, for someone who calls himself a Democrat, Orson Scott Card has written several articles that gush about President Bush & Cheney, excoriated Kerry & Edwards, advocated voting Republican, supporting the Iraq War, expressing skepticism over evolution and the need for action on global warming, calling gay marriage grounds for overthrowing governments, and praising Fox News for honesty.
If Fox News is his idea of "honest" reporting, then I think that he fully qualifies for Democrat In Name Only status.
Oh, and his article plays up the whole "Raines connection" which was a wild exaggeration, claims that Bush never led the people to believe 9-11 & Iraq were linked because he never explicitly tied the two together despite numerous references to one in speech about the other, and gripes about the press paying some attention to Palin's unwed, pregnant daughter instead of John Edwards' affair when she is a major candidate running for the Vice President and outspoken on her views about abstinence-based sex ed whereas Jon Edwards dropped out of the race the months ago and is no longer relevant to anybody (though the reporting that did happen damaged his campaign, mind you). Never you mind what the coverage would be like if Palin were the Democratic nominee instead.
Last honest Democrat? Pfft. Maybe in Bizarro-Earth.
You should probably watch the second debate, then. Compare the two candidate's answers the following question (trimmed for space, full text of debate here:
Brokaw: There are new economic realities out there that everyone in this hall and across this country understands that there are going to have to be some choices made. Health policies, energy policies, and entitlement reform, what are going to be your priorities in what order? Which of those will be your highest priority your first year in office and which will follow in sequence?
McCain: I think you can work on all three at once, Tom.
[...]
[W]e can do them all at once. There's no -- and we have to do them all at once. All three you mentioned are compelling national security requirements.
Obama: We're going to have to prioritize, just like a family has to prioritize. Now, I've listed the things that I think have to be at the top of the list.
Energy we have to deal with today [...]
Health care is priority number two [...]
And, number three, we've got to deal with education so that our young people are competitive in a global economy. [...]
Note which candidate prioritized and which one didn't.
Yes, I realize you are joking, but about "racism", how many blacks do you think are voting for the white dude?
See one of my prior posts.
(Summary: Black people *always* vote for the Democrat who just happens to be black this time around. People suggesting that black people are all of a sudden ignoring policy in favor of skin color are only doing so because of Obama's skin color and are themselves viewing the world through racially-tinged eyes and holding black people to a different standard than white people -- i.e. are racists themselves.)
I feel that your second paragraph is good enough indication that you're not really grounded in reality, but why on Earth do you think that Gore would've taken us into a war in Iraq?
(BTW, Marx is still an important part of the Social Philosophy discussion and syllabus, Being called a Marxist should be about as scary as being called a Nietzschen or Kierkegaardian - quite silly to use as a derogatory term)
You mean the term "Nietzschean ideals" hasn't been thoroughly burned to the ground and salted by the specter of the Nazis in your country?
Why, is that what Fox and Rush Limbaugh told you to think?
Most of my fellow Americans want a planned economy, since the Soviet system demonstrated such strength and utterly crushed America to finally end the cold war. I don't quite understand their argument, but that's what it is.
Why does it always have to be either the God-Blessed, American-as-Apple Pie Free (AS IN FREEEEEEDOM!) Market or Evil, Godless, Soul-Crushing Red Commie Totalitarianism?
Is this sort of extremist, black-and-white argument that keeps this country lurching around like a slowing top instead of trying to find the working balance that preserves competition and harnesses self-interest for good while preventing predatory practices and avoiding giving businesses enough rope to hang themselves with in the pursuit of short-term executive profit (instead of sustainable, long-term strategies to grow the company for the next generation).
What we want isn't a "planned economy," but what we also do not want is the Law of the Jungle. Neither situation is truly free.
Ah...but, the person making $250K a year likely spends MORE than the $3000/yr that a person on a $30K income. They eat out at nicer restaurants more often, they buy finer foods, wines, booze etc than a lower income earner.
That's a nice theory, but how many people earning $250K/yr are spending an equivalent percentage of their wealth to a person earning $30K/yr.
The person earning more money has the option of spending more of their wealth on finer goods and services, but they also have the option of investing it. A person earning $30K/yr does not. There comes a threshold at which you can't opt for cheaper goods and services. Unless the rich person drives a car than needs higher-octane, Premium gas to operate or drives a Hummer, the poor person probably spends just as much.
Housing costs can be brutal. A person earning $250K is in a different league, but someone earning $40K isn't, and an apartment that's good for someone earning $30K isn't much cheaper than one for someone earning $40K. There actually comes a point where if you get poor enough, housing costs go up. If you can't save enough money to make the first & last month's rent on an apartment -- a common enough problem for people doing unskilled labor jobs -- then you may have to rent month-to-month or week-to-week, and the prices for that are terrible compared to what you could get if you could just save enough to get in a rental contract.
Back to the higher end of the scale, the person earning $250K most likely has plenty of money to play with -- or to save and invest. Over time, that money will start to "work for him," earning income without need for labor. A person with that much money can invest it in stocks, real estate, their own business, etc. and make reap rewards that a person earning $30K can only imagine.
This is the core sham of the national sales tax movement -- the idea that such a tax will be income-neutral because the rich spend more. They do spend more, but they don't spend proportionately more, and the Orwellianly-named "FairTax" specifically shields businesses, the most common places they would put the rest of their money, from taxation. It's a sham -- an explicit redistribution of that tax burden from the wealthy to the middle class, replete with a "rebate check" for the poor to squeeze people from the other side and provide a fig leaf of "totally not socialism" to make it look like the system is still somehow "fair."
(3) I don't consider water under MY ground to be public property. *I* was the one who spent $5000 to drill a well into the ground and tap the reservoir, therefore the well belongs to me. The reservoir is runs under several of my neighbors' property as well. If they want access, let them build their own damn wells.
Same argument applies to any coal I find on MY land, or trees growing on MY property, or cows grazing on MY grasses. This is PRIVATE property, not public. I paid $130,000 for it, and it belongs to me, not you.
Other people have pointed out that in many jurisdictions, you would simply be wrong about that water legally. Others have also pointed out that logically and ethically, that's not right either because you are taking the water from under *their* property as well. If they "build their own damn wells," then you're now in a potential tragedy of the common situations if all of you overuse the reservoir. This is why we have the aforementioned legal separation of aboveground and underground property rights.
You note that you "paid $130,000 for [your land]" and thus it belongs to you. Who did you pay that money to, and why do you think that they had the right to sell you the subsurface and water rights attached to it? What gives them (or you) the right to claim as personal property materials shared by all (like water flowing underground) or materials you are incapable of making use of (like coal buried where you can't access it)? What is the moral and philosophical foundation of that property right you claim, and why is it superior to the claims of others? Why do you deserve to able to claim that water and coal?
These are important questions to answer before simply claming, "Mine!" and expecting that claim to be good against the world.
Ever tried giving to charity? Then you can target the specific individuals, groups or unfortunate circumstances you want to positively affect, eliminating the expansive government overhead and waste inherent in such programs. There are even charity ratings sites that tell you how efficiently any charity gets your money to those who need it.
You can give your money away much more intelligently than the government can.
There are three problems with this:
First, you assume that a cause you support *has* a charity that's more efficient than the government. I note that you imply that inherent waste & overhead are a government problem but don't look at whether such problems apply to smaller charities. Nor do you discuss the differences in economies of scale between a small operation and a national operation.
Second, under this system only the most popular causes will receive adequate funds and other groups may slip under the cracks. The Federal government is limited in its actions by the 14th Amendment's requirement to provide equal protection under the law. Private charities are under no such obligation.
Think back to the 1950s, before the Civil Rights movements. Do you believe that poor blacks got as much charity and assistance as poor whites? Under a purely voluntary, charity-based system, unpopular groups may end up getting far less support than they may deserve based on their need.
Today, we see much of the same targeted, exclusionary approach in charities based on religious beliefs that turn away homosexuals or other "undesirables" or who require one to buy into some of their teachings before receiving benefit (or at least take advantage of a person in a vulnerable place). Just look at Scientology and Narconon.
Third, I have never once seen someone able to seriously argue that if you remove $X million dollars in federal taxation that $X million dollars (or more) will flow into charities for the needy. Taking away government social programs will NOT result in an equivalent amount of help coming from the private sector (and now out of the generous, goodness of people's hearts instead of from the filthy, grubbing government). All people are saying when they say, "Let the people choose what charity to give to," is really, "Let the people choose to say, 'Screw you, panhandlers,' and not give to any charity. I can obviously make better use of my money than those people, or they wouldn't be asking for it."
Frankly, the social costs of the alternative are why we have programs like Social Security in the first place. We didn't come up with a government program to give money to old people just because we wanted to get rid of the existing charity system. We did it because the old system was wholly inadequate and the social costs of an impoverished and unable to work segment of society (which we will all one-day join) was considered intolerable.
Same as the social costs of people unable to afford healthcare today. It's a drain on the economy and productivity as well as just being inhumanly callous to let people be sick because they're afraid that they can't afford to be well. We're the only wealthy nation that ignores this problem, and it's shameful. If the private charity system were working as people pretend it will, then we wouldn't even be *having* this discussion. End of story.
Do current chip manufacturers like Intel and AMD work on new lithography techniques, or do they focus more on architectural changes?
Yes. This research was funded by the National Science Foundation, a federal agency, but IBM, Intel, and AMD are all active in process technology research. I can't dig up much in the way of what they're currently researching, but here are a few things I was aware of in the past few years (and some things I dug while looking for them):
Some of the above research was about commercializing "pure" research done in independent labs like this experiment, but a lot of it was directly funded by the big fabrication companies and their clients and partners. Since I'm not in the fabrication industry myself, I can't really comment any further on who has done what (and how much each of the above deserves credit). This is just news I remember from years past.
What exactly is the problem with this term? Just too "fancy" and "technical" for you salt of the earth Anonymous Cowards? It makes perfect sense if you know the root words for it, and it succinctly describes the technology:
- Plasmonic: Of or using plasmons.
- Nano-: At the nanometer scale of operation
- Lithography: Lithography.
Maybe you can argue that the "nano" is superfluous, but it captures one of the two things that are significant about the new technique -- it uses plasmons instead of traditional light, and it can theoretically operate at a scale as small as 5-10 nm. ("Nano-" seems to be more significant, when you're at the point where you're talking single-digit nanometer resolution.)
Just because it's long and wordy doesn't mean that it's Star Trek nonsense. The phrase has a useful meaning.
He seems to be black enough for most blacks. Gallup has been showing between 89 and 93% of America's blacks supporting Obama for months, compared to 48-55% whites supporting McCain. For some reason, this hasn't been the slightest bit newsworthy in the mainstream media.
It isn't newsworthy to anyone who has more than a 4 year memory of politics.
According to CNN exit polls, Kerry got 88% of the black vote in 2004. Other polls will show that Gore got 90% in 2000, Clinton got 84% in '96 and 83% in '92 (a historic low), Dukakis got 90% in '88, and Mondale got 90% in 84.
Meanwhile, in 2004, Al Sharpton couldn't crack 20% of the black vote in the South Carolina Democratic primary (32% of SC blacks voted for Kerry and 36% for Edwards).
Was this because all of these white candidates were "black enough," or are you going to just admit that you're a bit wrong (/racist) in accusing black voters of voting based on skin color instead of on issues?
Now, you may bristle at me accusing you of racism for pointing this out, but you are judging black people on a different standard from white people based on their skin color. Instead of looking at whether historically they as a group have supported certain issues (like evangelicals, union members, executives, or any other group with shared values), you accuse them of racism based on your own distorted perception of their values.
It's like how Colin Powell, a moderate Republican, endorsed Obama for a variety of reasons including being deeply troubled by the attacks on him for being Muslim (which he's not, but Powell asks, "So what if he was?") and by the pick of Sarah Palin as VP. Immediately, people like Rush Limbaugh dismissed the endorsement as being racially motivated.
What the heck? Lieberman, a white Senator who would've been the Democratic VP in 2000 but for a few votes and who would be a Democrat today if not for a vigorous primary challenge over the issue of the Iraq War endorsed the McCain-Palin ticket, and no one has accused him of doing so based on race. He did so based on some policy issues, breaking with his traditional political allies to do so, just like Colin Powell did.
So, why hasn't anyone accused him of being racist? Because he's white, and the people accusing black people of voting based on race hold black people to a different standard than they do white people. White people are assumed to vote based on substance. Black people are assumed to vote based on racial loyalty.
And that's racist. Facially racist -- judging people differently based on the color of their skin. It's disgusting, and it's a sign that the people making the accusations view the world through racially-tinged eyes of their own.
Does that mean you like receiving spam mail? Do you think that spam filters are a horrible abridgment of the free speech rights of spammers? Do you think that people trying to sell you stuff should be able to call you up and bug you about it at any time? How about visiting your house to hawk their wares?
The right to speak freely does not include the right to force people to listen who don't want to.
All this technology is is an automated filter for profanity -- just like the spam filter that keeps you mailbox clean of irritating messages you don't want to see. There's nothing that hints that it will be turned on always. That would be irritating and, frankly, would lose Microsoft customers who *like* trash talk.
Too many people have a knee-jerk reaction to the big C-word and think that it's automatically bad. This isn't some government program to prevent people from expressing themselves -- it's a private company offering people selective earplugs who don't want to hear screaming 14 year olds throwing verbal feces at the wall. What's wrong with that?
Why not just mute the stupid player? Or not even use the voip at all? Like the article says, its only really used for trash talk anyway. Unless I know who I'm playing with, I'm not going to try and coordinate anything.
Maybe it's only used for trash talk because stupid kids trash talking prevents anyone from having a civilized game. I mean, I don't play these kinds of games online *because* of all the "new to their testosterone" little brats running around using "fag" like it's punctuation. It's a tragedy of the commons situation.
Muting the player can invite retaliation, and muting everyone (by not using VoIP) is just sticking your head in the sand. If this kind of software works, then I'd love to see it as an option when creating a match. Forcing all of Xbox Live might be "family friendly" would be awful, but giving people the option of raising the maturity level in a particular match they set up would be great.
Forget "save the children." Save me *from* the immature little griefers. (And if they still want to trash talk, then let them be more creative and entertaining about it.)
The one good point with McCain is that we are in zero danger of him having extra marital sex. There isn't a female alive who would sleep with that old fool.
Really? Considering that he met his current wife a year before divorcing his previous wife and then married her a month later? I think that's a pretty good sign that he's probably cheated once before.
I seriously doubt that McCain would do it again, but it's not as unlikely as it might be for someone who never had cheated before.
This is a goddamned presidential election, not a popularity contest. You idiots remind me class president elections in high school.
Ron Paul broke with the Republican Party on the issue of the war in Iraq. That's a big deal for a lot of independent voters, so I'm not surprised the only Republican candidate to come out against the war initially picked up a lot of voters that later jumped ship to the Democrats when McCain won the nomination.
The war is a wedge-issue for a lot of otherwise conservative-minded independents, much the same way abortion or gun control are wedge-issues for a lot of people.
While I have a hard time seeing how anyone could deeply analyze the policies of both candidates and come away with Ron Paul > Obama > McCain, I wouldn't chock it all up to "a popularity contest."
You know, I'm not a fan of (a) sports bars, (b) politics as a game, or frankly (c) Republicans, but I don't feel that that's a fair attack.
I mean, God forbid that people who like sports care enough about politics to preempt ESPN for information on one of the most important decisions they're likely to make this year.
What's the better alternative that you propose?
And even if the current system stinks in your opinion, why is it better to hear no debate than to hear a structured one?