And if he doesn't want to clean the sewer main? How long until liberals decide that everyone should be guaranteed a nice job? That's my issue with this... It never ends.
Of course, as soon as we make robots to clean the sewers, we'll hear how automation is stealing jobs...
Never mind that automation has been doing this for 2000 years.. I can't imagine a group of people whining that the horse stole the plow jobs...
What meaningless jobs? If someone is paying you to do a "meaningless job", it is apparently valid enough that they are willing to pay you to do it. The only place that would/could create useless jobs is the government.. What private enterprise would do that?
Evidence? The ever expanding social programs and the ever expanding tax load on those who work. We started at 1%.. We're over 50% in some cases now.
No doubt you'll dismiss this.. Libs hate them facts.
By the way, if you tax anyone at 50.00001% or more, you have made them a slave. If you take more than they keep, that's slavery. Once you total up Federal, State, County, and Local taxes PLUS sales tax, it's not that hard to peek over 50%.
Here's the relevant rates (top)
Federal - 39.6% ($240K+ / year)
California - 13.3% (we've now passed 50%) if you live in CA and top out under the Feds.
Add County and Locality rates and you could be well over 50% and I wouldn't call someone earning $250K/year _rich_. They are well off, but that's not "I was born rich", that's "I chose the correct career".
No, I'm not claiming that someone in a mansion vs apt is the same starting point. Nice straw man. Need I repeat it very slow for you?
I said that given the EXACT SAME STARTING POINT, two humans will turn out differently and achieve differently because we are DIFFERENT.
You libs hate that. You'll invent any excuse for why it happens. It's always someone else's fault.. Doesn't matter that one person decided to be a surgeon and the other studied basket-weaving. You hate that some people achieve more and you think they should be punished for that..
Giving people (read: citizens) enough cash per month to get a tiny studio or split a 2 bedroom with a roommate, basic food and 1950's era medical care
LIAR
That's what you want to give them today. But for you commies, it's never enough. In 20 years it'll be a modest studio. 20 years after that it'll be a LARGE studio, because by then it will be a human right to not be slightly cramped when you have 30 kids you can't pay for.
You won't be happy until everyone is equally miserable. You despise the fact that given the same starting point, some people have more drive, more talent, and more desire to exceed expectations. You refuse to acknowledge that two humans, of the same intelligence and physical ability, are not the same. One is going to be just a tad bit more driven, or with a just slightly better intuition, or whatever. You HATE that. You want to destroy, or punish, those who succeed. You constantly try to take credit for their success by declaring that "No! It's not you.. It's society that has given you all that you needed". Meanwhile, some lazy cunt of the exact same IQ is doing nothing. Of course you'll lie through your teeth and declare that he was "disadvantaged" and "oppressed".
Yeah. I'm not buying your story. It's a good story, but.. no..
I am unaware of any situation where the cops would force a business owner to serve someone without a court order. They would be opening themselves up to all sorts of liability.
Had it been me, I'd simply have said (assuming the cop story is true) that the business was closing for the night... Everybody out... Then, I would never have let that guy in again.. Right to Refuse Service and all that jazz.
Yes, the market will solve the issue. I'm part of the market that is solving the issue. But, I could be doing it a lot faster, better, and cheaper if I didn't have to fight my own government every step of the way.
So tired of you statists who will say "the market won't do it" when; #1. The market is doing it and #2. The problem originated with the government and your solution is.... the government..
Dealing with the government is my #2 expense, directly behind my transport costs.
No.. the big companies aren't out here because the population is sparse and the ROI would be "too small". But, instead of having an open situation where small companies could fill the void, we are hampered by protectionist legislation and vast amounts of red tape that make it almost miserable to do anything.
The government should limit itself to watching for, and dealing with, monopolistic companies and practices. Regulations should be limited to the bare minimum needed to ensure safety and environmental concerns.. Fees should be limited to the actual cost for the government to carry out its tasks. They shouldn't be driven by a profit motive. Believe me, there is a HUGE profit motive in the fees.
Anything over $10k undeclared will be confiscated at the border.
Sorry, but no...
Yeah, the law says $10K, but that's not what it is.. Right now it's whatever the border agent decides is close to $10K. "Close" being whatever the hell he wants to define it as.
This is not speculation or hyperbole.. There are several cases where someone tried to exit the country with $9,500 (e.g.) and was arrested and charged with "evasion". Yeah.. You comply with the law and you are charged with attempting to evade the law..
I honestly don't understand how that is even a thing.. Either you are in compliance with a law or you are not.. I do not understand how there is a gray area, but there is.. When you can be charged for complying with a law... Yeah... Good luck.
Oh, as an afterthought.. You are also wrong where you said "at the border". That is absolutely untrue.
It's NEAR the border. Once again, "near" being a fucking subjective term decided on the spot.
The agents of the government have decided that if you are in some arbitrary vicinity of the international border with some arbitrarily large amount of cash, then you MUST have crossed the border and your cash needs to be seized..
Once again, not speculation. It's happened and more than once..
I disagree with your first premise, since in my view something that is illegal is generally agreed on by the society as bad, even if certain groups don’t think so. Legislative lag aside, it would not be illegal otherwise. But that is beside the point.
What the actual fuck? Do you really believe this?
You think that society is even aware of 1% of things that are illegal?
How many laws does it really take to outlaw murder, theft, slavery, etc... i.e. the BIG crimes? A dozen? Ten dozen?
How many laws are on the books? Yeah.. it's a lot... I believe the scientific term is a FUCKTON.
You think society agrees that those things are bad? There are laws that make it a crime to transport a non-free-range chicken across state lines. Is there really? Fuck if I know... I know the big laws, like most of my fellow citizens.. And like my fellow citizens I have ZERO idea what is contained within the 800,000 pages of federal laws that don't deal with the big and obvious crimes like beating to death morons who say stupid shit..
What exactly is good about your “good thing”? It enables you to purchase your tomatoes anonymously—totally worth it, I am sure—at the cost of criminal groups having an easy means of exchange for profits derived from their contraband businesses. You can fantasize about how some dystopian science fiction story is totally coming true now, but removing a means of exchange from criminals and forcing them pay in kind makes the said criminal activity considerably less effective. Most people on/. really should get their fucking priorities straight.
Are we really back to this?
C'mon man.. For fuck's sake...It's always the criminals and the pedophiles.. All of society must suffer some inconvenience because.... criminals.
Criminals are fucking ingenious sometimes.. They will, as a group, defeat any roadblocks you put in their way.
We, honest folk, on the other hand will be handing over even more power to governments or corporations. What government do you know of that isn't currently, or hasn't in the recent past, abused power to the detriment of some amount of honest people that it had a beef with?
What corporation do you think has your best interests at heart?
Why are you people so goddamn afraid of your own shadows that you feel the need to be protected from criminals at all cost? At the cost of another slice of liberty, or another small amount of money, or whatever.... No matter how small the cut into your freedom or pocketbook, they add up.
This happens where I live with taxes.. it's always another small amount.. Hey, it's only $100/year for this fire-protection fee (to fund the fire department).. Hey, it's only $150/year for crews to keep the weeds cut on the public right of ways (fire prevention).. Hey it's only... it's always "it's only some small amount".. But they add up...
Not the best analogy, I know.. (I don't want to burn in a fire).. But my point is that it's always something small.. but it's over and over and over and over and...
First it was "we have to stop printing $1000 bills 'cause criminals... Then it was we have to stop printing $500 bills 'cause criminals.. Lately there has been talk of removing the $100 bill because of.... you guessed it.. CRIMINALS..
It won't ever stop... They will go after the $50's...
Imagine the cashless society.. Where the government can arbitrarily decide you owe them money for something and simply, and instantly, take said money from you... No warning, no letter in the mail.. Just instantly gone.
I have yet to encounter a government that wasn't comprised of humans.. Humans with grudges, humans with greed, humans with boredom.. Humans who will fuck with you because they can.. And you want to hand them the total power of your economic situation?
I don't say this lightly... Your system (electronic cash) places middle-men into the system where none is needed. You are advocating a system that will result... MUST RESULT in higher prices... Or.. at the very very best, one that results in the producers of goods/services having losing some quantifiable amount of profit..
With cash, I can pay you and be done with it... With e-cash, some other asshole has to be involved and he's gonna want to be paid (and rightly so, since he is providing a service).. But his service is not necessary.. Sometimes it is desirable, but it should NOT be mandatory....
Honestly, I can't tell if you were serious or not, the more I look at what you wrote... You don't care that you have to pay money... What system of payment do you know of, besides cash, that doesn't come with a middle-man fee?
Is it also down in relation to what it can buy? i.e. What could you buy for one ounce of gold in 1900 (for example) and can you still buy that item for one ounce of gold today?
Gonna keep this short, but... in 1964, you could buy a can of Campbell's Tomato Soup for 25 cents. The silver content of a 1964 quarter can STILL buy a can of Campbell's Tomato Soup today...
Maybe I'm missing something... but that seems pretty stable to me.
Same deal with a Corvette... $10K in 1964.. That's 40,000 quarters.. Had you buried those quarters in the back yard... Dig them up today, sell the silver... you can buy a Corvette... The store of value, to me, seems quite stable..
I don't give a rat's ass what the price is/was/will be in relation to fiat.. What is the price in relation to commodities? What could I buy with the gold/silver and what can I buy with it today? Every time I check, it seems that I could buy the same damn things with the same (roughly) amount of silver. I haven't investigated gold as I have no interest in it.. But silver fascinates me...(long story)
Gold & Silver have 6,000 years of history as currency, but there's always some moron going on about "gold bugs". Fiat has been around for less than 200 years (and only continuously for about 50 years), but we gold/silver enthusiasts are the "delusional" ones...
The fiat experiment has FAILED. Every major government on the planet has abused its power to print money. In 100 years the Dollar has lost 95% of its purchasing power. You cannot reliably store wealth with fiat currency. It simply decreases in value over time.
Gold / Silver do not have this issue, or at least are more immune to it. I'm too tired to go into it, but it doesn't take a whole lot of research to realize that those items you could buy with the equivalent of 1 ounce of silver in 1964 can still be had for the equivalent of 1 ounce of silver today... it's not perfectly matched, but it's pretty damn close.. Using fiat? ha!
The government doesn't recognize gold as legal tender, but I imagine if you tried to buy anything with gold, you would have better luck than cryptocurrency
Gold/Silver coins are still minted to this day.. (in the USA). I suspect you are technically correct insofar as the value of the coin is the number stamped on it and not the actual value of the metal contained within.
Sadly, the state governments were specifically prohibited from using anything besides gold or silver coins for payment of debts (both by the state and to the state -- incoming and outgoing payments).
"No State shall... make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts".
Regardless of how practical or impractical this would be in our current society, it is the supreme law of the land and it has been ignored and subverted. There are legal procedures for making changes to the Constitution, but... they are ignored... The Constitution is ignored.....
Not attempting to be over-dramatic here, but this text is so crystal clear... and it is ignored. You can't have a functional and free society when a government is free to ignore its own laws...Which ours regularly does... and is one of the symptoms (or maybe causes) of our current state of affairs..
No program ever has "all the resources it needs". Hell, the US military, the most overfunded thing ever, still doesn't have moon-bases with lasers to destroy ICBMs.
I disagree with nearly everything you said, BUT... this last part actually made me laugh out loud.. Quite clever and very funny... (I'm not being sarcastic)
Are you high? I'm serious... I'd ask if you were delusional, but... if you were you probably wouldn't know it..
California has a budget surplus in the exact same way the US has a budget surplus... And that's if you don't count the debt...
If you have $1000 in direct spending obligations, and you bring in $1,001 dollars, you only have a surplus if you aren't carrying FOUR HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS IN DEBT. That is a debt load that is nearly 400% of our annual state revenue/income/taxes (whatever you want to call it)
Seriously, I have ZERO doubt you are a liberal, because only a liberal would say something that goddamn retarded.. You people must think that debt is some magical fairy fart that will eventually disappear all by itself...
You know what you do with that extra dollar? YOU PAY DOWN THE DEBT, you millennial a**hat. It doesn't go into a bank account, you don't save it for next year.. You pay off your bills and when that is done, then you can save it for hard times/rainy days.
California has been run by Democrats for 40+ years, don't you dare blame this on Republicans (who are also morons, but in this case not at fault) and don't even imply that Schwarzenegger was a Republican.. He was (R) in name only. His every policy was liberal liberal liberal..
You people are bankrupting this state with your "everything is a right and everyone should be able to sit around doing nothing and eat and have cell phones and..."
FOUR HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS OF DEBT...... Please, oh please tell me about that budget surplus.....
Why the FUCK is the solution always "The Government should...."
The fucking government is why we have the problem in the first place. The GOVERNMENT granted the ILECs their monopolies in the first place. The GOVERNMENT handed out tax breaks and subsidies and then did nothing when the ILECs failed to deliver... In fact, to say they did nothing is a lie... The GOVERNMENT handed out even MORE subsidies and tax breaks and still did nothing.. well, beyond handing out tax breaks and subsides... They've been repeating this cycle since 1991!!!!
AT&T has taken in (or not had to pay out) $300 BILLION DOLLARS IN TAX BREAKS.
But no. let's ignore all of that and "The Government should......"
How about, we remove all the goddamn red tape and protectionist codes/regulations and let the market figure it out?
It can be done.. I've done some of it myself... I have competitors who are doing it.... But we'd be doing it a lot better if we didn't have to fight our government every step of the way.
Everybody has something to hide.. It doesn't have to be "bad" things, but everyone wants a modicum of privacy.
Want your computer surreptitiously videoing you fucking your significant other and uploading it to the cloud? No? But... you have nothing to hide...
Perhaps your bank login/password.... Nothing to hide.. Want it on the cloud for the world to see?
Maybe just your private thoughts or internet searches? Want everyone on Earth to know you Googled "cure for a micro penis"?
C'mon.. You got nothing to hide..
People who say "I've got nothing to hide" are, quite frankly, mouth breathing idiots who can't look forward into the future beyond tomorrow and realize that some day those silly things you did today may not seem so cool..
Once your shit hits the cloud you no longer have ANY control of it, UNLESS you have encrypted it beforehand.. And most of you will use a shitty password anyhow...
Your data in the cloud will stay secure and private until 1 second after some company figures out how to monetize it.
No. The 2nd Amendment is a right enjoyed by citizens. Banning the export of any weapon doesn't affect anyone's 2nd Amendment rights... Banning the importation... well, you could make an argument there...But not the other way around
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah... fuck freedom... Some politician thinks it's a good idea, so I guess everyone will be FORCED to do it. You are a cunt.
And if he doesn't want to clean the sewer main? How long until liberals decide that everyone should be guaranteed a nice job? That's my issue with this... It never ends.
Of course, as soon as we make robots to clean the sewers, we'll hear how automation is stealing jobs...
Never mind that automation has been doing this for 2000 years.. I can't imagine a group of people whining that the horse stole the plow jobs...
What meaningless jobs? If someone is paying you to do a "meaningless job", it is apparently valid enough that they are willing to pay you to do it. The only place that would/could create useless jobs is the government.. What private enterprise would do that?
Evidence? The ever expanding social programs and the ever expanding tax load on those who work. We started at 1%.. We're over 50% in some cases now.
No doubt you'll dismiss this.. Libs hate them facts.
By the way, if you tax anyone at 50.00001% or more, you have made them a slave. If you take more than they keep, that's slavery. Once you total up Federal, State, County, and Local taxes PLUS sales tax, it's not that hard to peek over 50%.
Here's the relevant rates (top)
Federal - 39.6% ($240K+ / year)
California - 13.3% (we've now passed 50%) if you live in CA and top out under the Feds.
Add County and Locality rates and you could be well over 50% and I wouldn't call someone earning $250K/year _rich_. They are well off, but that's not "I was born rich", that's "I chose the correct career".
No, I'm not claiming that someone in a mansion vs apt is the same starting point. Nice straw man. Need I repeat it very slow for you?
I said that given the EXACT SAME STARTING POINT, two humans will turn out differently and achieve differently because we are DIFFERENT.
You libs hate that. You'll invent any excuse for why it happens. It's always someone else's fault.. Doesn't matter that one person decided to be a surgeon and the other studied basket-weaving. You hate that some people achieve more and you think they should be punished for that..
Once again, go fuck yourself commie.
Giving people (read: citizens) enough cash per month to get a tiny studio or split a 2 bedroom with a roommate, basic food and 1950's era medical care
LIAR
That's what you want to give them today. But for you commies, it's never enough. In 20 years it'll be a modest studio. 20 years after that it'll be a LARGE studio, because by then it will be a human right to not be slightly cramped when you have 30 kids you can't pay for.
You won't be happy until everyone is equally miserable. You despise the fact that given the same starting point, some people have more drive, more talent, and more desire to exceed expectations. You refuse to acknowledge that two humans, of the same intelligence and physical ability, are not the same. One is going to be just a tad bit more driven, or with a just slightly better intuition, or whatever. You HATE that. You want to destroy, or punish, those who succeed. You constantly try to take credit for their success by declaring that "No! It's not you.. It's society that has given you all that you needed". Meanwhile, some lazy cunt of the exact same IQ is doing nothing. Of course you'll lie through your teeth and declare that he was "disadvantaged" and "oppressed".
Yeah. I'm not buying your story. It's a good story, but.. no..
I am unaware of any situation where the cops would force a business owner to serve someone without a court order. They would be opening themselves up to all sorts of liability.
Had it been me, I'd simply have said (assuming the cop story is true) that the business was closing for the night... Everybody out... Then, I would never have let that guy in again.. Right to Refuse Service and all that jazz.
Yes, the market will solve the issue. I'm part of the market that is solving the issue. But, I could be doing it a lot faster, better, and cheaper if I didn't have to fight my own government every step of the way.
So tired of you statists who will say "the market won't do it" when; #1. The market is doing it and #2. The problem originated with the government and your solution is.... the government..
Dealing with the government is my #2 expense, directly behind my transport costs.
Limited mind... One doesn't have to put their money into a bank account with cash... ASSHOLE
You COULD stuff it under your mattress.
No.. the big companies aren't out here because the population is sparse and the ROI would be "too small". But, instead of having an open situation where small companies could fill the void, we are hampered by protectionist legislation and vast amounts of red tape that make it almost miserable to do anything.
The government should limit itself to watching for, and dealing with, monopolistic companies and practices. Regulations should be limited to the bare minimum needed to ensure safety and environmental concerns.. Fees should be limited to the actual cost for the government to carry out its tasks. They shouldn't be driven by a profit motive. Believe me, there is a HUGE profit motive in the fees.
Anything over $10k undeclared will be confiscated at the border.
Sorry, but no...
Yeah, the law says $10K, but that's not what it is.. Right now it's whatever the border agent decides is close to $10K. "Close" being whatever the hell he wants to define it as.
This is not speculation or hyperbole.. There are several cases where someone tried to exit the country with $9,500 (e.g.) and was arrested and charged with "evasion". Yeah.. You comply with the law and you are charged with attempting to evade the law..
I honestly don't understand how that is even a thing.. Either you are in compliance with a law or you are not.. I do not understand how there is a gray area, but there is.. When you can be charged for complying with a law... Yeah... Good luck.
Oh, as an afterthought.. You are also wrong where you said "at the border". That is absolutely untrue.
It's NEAR the border. Once again, "near" being a fucking subjective term decided on the spot.
The agents of the government have decided that if you are in some arbitrary vicinity of the international border with some arbitrarily large amount of cash, then you MUST have crossed the border and your cash needs to be seized..
Once again, not speculation. It's happened and more than once..
I disagree with your first premise, since in my view something that is illegal is generally agreed on by the society as bad, even if certain groups don’t think so. Legislative lag aside, it would not be illegal otherwise. But that is beside the point.
What the actual fuck? Do you really believe this?
You think that society is even aware of 1% of things that are illegal?
How many laws does it really take to outlaw murder, theft, slavery, etc... i.e. the BIG crimes? A dozen? Ten dozen?
How many laws are on the books? Yeah.. it's a lot... I believe the scientific term is a FUCKTON.
You think society agrees that those things are bad? There are laws that make it a crime to transport a non-free-range chicken across state lines. Is there really? Fuck if I know... I know the big laws, like most of my fellow citizens.. And like my fellow citizens I have ZERO idea what is contained within the 800,000 pages of federal laws that don't deal with the big and obvious crimes like beating to death morons who say stupid shit..
We? You have a tapeworm of something? How the fuck do you think this is a "we" situation.
What exactly is good about your “good thing”? It enables you to purchase your tomatoes anonymously—totally worth it, I am sure—at the cost of criminal groups having an easy means of exchange for profits derived from their contraband businesses. You can fantasize about how some dystopian science fiction story is totally coming true now, but removing a means of exchange from criminals and forcing them pay in kind makes the said criminal activity considerably less effective. Most people on /. really should get their fucking priorities straight.
Are we really back to this?
C'mon man.. For fuck's sake...It's always the criminals and the pedophiles.. All of society must suffer some inconvenience because.... criminals.
Criminals are fucking ingenious sometimes.. They will, as a group, defeat any roadblocks you put in their way.
We, honest folk, on the other hand will be handing over even more power to governments or corporations. What government do you know of that isn't currently, or hasn't in the recent past, abused power to the detriment of some amount of honest people that it had a beef with?
What corporation do you think has your best interests at heart?
Why are you people so goddamn afraid of your own shadows that you feel the need to be protected from criminals at all cost? At the cost of another slice of liberty, or another small amount of money, or whatever.... No matter how small the cut into your freedom or pocketbook, they add up.
This happens where I live with taxes.. it's always another small amount.. Hey, it's only $100/year for this fire-protection fee (to fund the fire department).. Hey, it's only $150/year for crews to keep the weeds cut on the public right of ways (fire prevention).. Hey it's only ... it's always "it's only some small amount".. But they add up...
Not the best analogy, I know.. (I don't want to burn in a fire).. But my point is that it's always something small.. but it's over and over and over and over and...
First it was "we have to stop printing $1000 bills 'cause criminals... Then it was we have to stop printing $500 bills 'cause criminals.. Lately there has been talk of removing the $100 bill because of.... you guessed it.. CRIMINALS..
It won't ever stop... They will go after the $50's...
Imagine the cashless society.. Where the government can arbitrarily decide you owe them money for something and simply, and instantly, take said money from you... No warning, no letter in the mail.. Just instantly gone.
I have yet to encounter a government that wasn't comprised of humans.. Humans with grudges, humans with greed, humans with boredom.. Humans who will fuck with you because they can.. And you want to hand them the total power of your economic situation?
Fuck off....
You are an idiot..
I don't say this lightly... Your system (electronic cash) places middle-men into the system where none is needed. You are advocating a system that will result... MUST RESULT in higher prices... Or.. at the very very best, one that results in the producers of goods/services having losing some quantifiable amount of profit..
With cash, I can pay you and be done with it... With e-cash, some other asshole has to be involved and he's gonna want to be paid (and rightly so, since he is providing a service).. But his service is not necessary.. Sometimes it is desirable, but it should NOT be mandatory....
Honestly, I can't tell if you were serious or not, the more I look at what you wrote... You don't care that you have to pay money... What system of payment do you know of, besides cash, that doesn't come with a middle-man fee?
It's down in relation to fiat currency...
Is it also down in relation to what it can buy? i.e. What could you buy for one ounce of gold in 1900 (for example) and can you still buy that item for one ounce of gold today?
Gonna keep this short, but... in 1964, you could buy a can of Campbell's Tomato Soup for 25 cents. The silver content of a 1964 quarter can STILL buy a can of Campbell's Tomato Soup today...
Maybe I'm missing something... but that seems pretty stable to me.
Same deal with a Corvette... $10K in 1964.. That's 40,000 quarters.. Had you buried those quarters in the back yard... Dig them up today, sell the silver... you can buy a Corvette... The store of value, to me, seems quite stable..
I don't give a rat's ass what the price is/was/will be in relation to fiat.. What is the price in relation to commodities? What could I buy with the gold/silver and what can I buy with it today? Every time I check, it seems that I could buy the same damn things with the same (roughly) amount of silver. I haven't investigated gold as I have no interest in it.. But silver fascinates me...(long story)
Yes! Bravo.. A fellow Slashdotter who gets it.
Gold & Silver have 6,000 years of history as currency, but there's always some moron going on about "gold bugs". Fiat has been around for less than 200 years (and only continuously for about 50 years), but we gold/silver enthusiasts are the "delusional" ones...
The fiat experiment has FAILED. Every major government on the planet has abused its power to print money. In 100 years the Dollar has lost 95% of its purchasing power. You cannot reliably store wealth with fiat currency. It simply decreases in value over time.
Gold / Silver do not have this issue, or at least are more immune to it. I'm too tired to go into it, but it doesn't take a whole lot of research to realize that those items you could buy with the equivalent of 1 ounce of silver in 1964 can still be had for the equivalent of 1 ounce of silver today... it's not perfectly matched, but it's pretty damn close.. Using fiat? ha!
The government doesn't recognize gold as legal tender, but I imagine if you tried to buy anything with gold, you would have better luck than cryptocurrency
Gold/Silver coins are still minted to this day.. (in the USA). I suspect you are technically correct insofar as the value of the coin is the number stamped on it and not the actual value of the metal contained within.
Sadly, the state governments were specifically prohibited from using anything besides gold or silver coins for payment of debts (both by the state and to the state -- incoming and outgoing payments).
"No State shall... make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts".
Regardless of how practical or impractical this would be in our current society, it is the supreme law of the land and it has been ignored and subverted. There are legal procedures for making changes to the Constitution, but... they are ignored... The Constitution is ignored.....
Not attempting to be over-dramatic here, but this text is so crystal clear... and it is ignored. You can't have a functional and free society when a government is free to ignore its own laws...Which ours regularly does... and is one of the symptoms (or maybe causes) of our current state of affairs..
No program ever has "all the resources it needs". Hell, the US military, the most overfunded thing ever, still doesn't have moon-bases with lasers to destroy ICBMs.
I disagree with nearly everything you said, BUT... this last part actually made me laugh out loud.. Quite clever and very funny... (I'm not being sarcastic)
Are you high? I'm serious... I'd ask if you were delusional, but... if you were you probably wouldn't know it..
California has a budget surplus in the exact same way the US has a budget surplus... And that's if you don't count the debt...
If you have $1000 in direct spending obligations, and you bring in $1,001 dollars, you only have a surplus if you aren't carrying FOUR HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS IN DEBT. That is a debt load that is nearly 400% of our annual state revenue/income/taxes (whatever you want to call it)
Seriously, I have ZERO doubt you are a liberal, because only a liberal would say something that goddamn retarded.. You people must think that debt is some magical fairy fart that will eventually disappear all by itself...
You know what you do with that extra dollar? YOU PAY DOWN THE DEBT, you millennial a**hat. It doesn't go into a bank account, you don't save it for next year.. You pay off your bills and when that is done, then you can save it for hard times/rainy days.
California has been run by Democrats for 40+ years, don't you dare blame this on Republicans (who are also morons, but in this case not at fault) and don't even imply that Schwarzenegger was a Republican.. He was (R) in name only. His every policy was liberal liberal liberal..
You people are bankrupting this state with your "everything is a right and everyone should be able to sit around doing nothing and eat and have cell phones and..."
FOUR HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS OF DEBT...... Please, oh please tell me about that budget surplus.....
Goddamnit.... This again?
Why the FUCK is the solution always "The Government should...."
The fucking government is why we have the problem in the first place. The GOVERNMENT granted the ILECs their monopolies in the first place. The GOVERNMENT handed out tax breaks and subsidies and then did nothing when the ILECs failed to deliver... In fact, to say they did nothing is a lie... The GOVERNMENT handed out even MORE subsidies and tax breaks and still did nothing.. well, beyond handing out tax breaks and subsides... They've been repeating this cycle since 1991!!!!
AT&T has taken in (or not had to pay out) $300 BILLION DOLLARS IN TAX BREAKS.
But no. let's ignore all of that and "The Government should......"
How about, we remove all the goddamn red tape and protectionist codes/regulations and let the market figure it out?
It can be done.. I've done some of it myself... I have competitors who are doing it.... But we'd be doing it a lot better if we didn't have to fight our government every step of the way.
You misspelled "idiot" while calling someone an idiot.
You are an idiot.
Ya know, it's moronic posts like this.....
Everybody has something to hide.. It doesn't have to be "bad" things, but everyone wants a modicum of privacy.
Want your computer surreptitiously videoing you fucking your significant other and uploading it to the cloud? No? But... you have nothing to hide...
Perhaps your bank login/password.... Nothing to hide.. Want it on the cloud for the world to see?
Maybe just your private thoughts or internet searches? Want everyone on Earth to know you Googled "cure for a micro penis"?
C'mon.. You got nothing to hide..
People who say "I've got nothing to hide" are, quite frankly, mouth breathing idiots who can't look forward into the future beyond tomorrow and realize that some day those silly things you did today may not seem so cool..
Once your shit hits the cloud you no longer have ANY control of it, UNLESS you have encrypted it beforehand.. And most of you will use a shitty password anyhow...
Your data in the cloud will stay secure and private until 1 second after some company figures out how to monetize it.
Seriously?
When did "European" become a race?
No. The 2nd Amendment is a right enjoyed by citizens. Banning the export of any weapon doesn't affect anyone's 2nd Amendment rights... Banning the importation... well, you could make an argument there...But not the other way around
(disclaimer: I am pro 2nd amendment)
No.. No it does NOT. They added 5.2 MILLION subscribers... They added the population of the greater Los Angeles Metro Area....
Only an idiot would count that as a stall..