Mitch McConnell may or may not lie more than Trump, but he's definitely more stragetic about how and when he lies. He's arguably the biggest lackey to corporate America, constantly working in their favor. He's quite possibly the biggest enemy of the middle class in modern America.
The sad thing is that Democrats aren't good at messaging, so instead of getting together as a group and blasting him for the anti-middle class elitist that he is, they let such opportunities pass. McConnell single-handedly did away with the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, and just recently did the same for other federal judicial nominees. Because if long-standing rules protecting the rights of the minority party get in your way, why not just destory them?
I agree that fasting in various forms can do wonders for your health. The more I've looked into it, the more studies there are that demonstrate some of the effects it can have at the cellular level.
Many of the studies are done on mice, whose circadian rhythm and metabolism are certainly different from humans. But the general thrust seems to be that when we fast, our bodies do things like engaging in autophagy (repairing somewhat damaged cells and entirely replacing very damaged cells) and increasing hormones that spur muscle growth. Dr. Berg and an athlete named Thomas Delauer have some basic explanations on YouTube about how some of this works.
This makes some intuitive sense, too. From an evolutionary standpoint, humans weren't doing what many people do nowadays: eating right after or shortly after waking up, and continuing to eat throughout the day until shorlty before going to sleep. We just didn't have that much food, so prior to the agricultural revolution, we probably went several hours throughout the day with no food at all. Or we may have gone a day or several days without food.
Another way of thinking about it is that, if you never fast, your body is constantly spending resources to process food. If you give it a break from food now and then, it can spend more resources doing things other than digesting food - things like repairing cells.
Anecdotally, I've been doing intermittent fasting for a few weeks, wherein Monday through Friday I only eat from 12:30pm to 8:30pm. On the weekends, I eat whenever I feel like it. This means my fast each weekday is the remaining 16 hours that I'm not eating. And since starting this regimen, my muscles having been growing faster than I've ever seen before (I do some calisthenics like pull ups, dips, leg raises, and pushups). This could be due to increased hormones for muscle growth.
Wealth is relative, and so is poverty. While poor Americans have quite a lot by the standards of other societies, that's not the point. They still struggle to afford food, housing, transporation, medical care, etc. And they especially struggle to have these things on a predictable, reliable basis. That's where the poverty really comes in - that these things are not predictable and reliable, when they are essential for living in the given society. That lack of predictability and reliability exerts a mental stress on people, as they are preoccupied with thoughts of whether or not they will be able to maintain what they have.
This is why income and wealth inequality are valuable measures in a given country. A country like the US with extreme wealth but great wealth inequality experiences a variety of social problems as a result. Researchers from the UK have done a good job exploring the relationships between income/wealth inequality and social ills (https://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/).
The real problem is first-past-the-post plurality voting. In any of the early primaries, Trump would have lost every single head-to-head matchup, so any decent electoral system (i.e. any kind of Condorcet preference balloting) would have avoided this disaster.
Ding, ding, ding!
First-past-the-post, aka plurality voting, is a very poor system for choosing a candidate that best fits everyone's tastes. All it says is, "Out of these x candidates, which ONE will you pick if you have to?" We have no idea how the voter feels about the other candidates - they might really like 3 and hate the rest, but they only get to pick one.
Approval voting is a great system we should be using instead. Instead of only getting to vote for one candidate, you can vote for as many as you like. If you want to vote for a Republican and a Libertarian, you can do that. If you want to vote for a Democrat and a Green, you could do that, too. If it's a primary and you like most of them just fine but really hate one (maybe Trump?), then you can vote for every candidate except for the one you hate, which is effectively like voting against the candidate you hate. In other words, approval voting gives voters a much greater ability to express their opinion. (approvalvoting.com)
Ranked choice voting would also be a good alternative, though it's more complicated for voters and people counting the votes, too. I think approval voting is just easier and better, but I would definitely prefer ranked choice elections to plurality elections.
This brings to mind Jamie Lanister from Game of Thrones, known as the Kingslayer because he was a member of the kingsguard and yet he killed the king. Although he was the rightful king, he was also known as the mad king because he was insane and commanded his men to kill people recklessly. When asked what the king said as Jamie stabbed him in the back he replied, "The same thing he'd been saying for hours, "burn them all!""
Although many people questioned how a member of the kingsguard could kill the "rightful" king and consider it just, Jamie indicated that the man was literally insane and was intent on mindlessly killing lots of innocent people.
While Trump is not literally saying, "burn them all!," we are hearing from high-level people in the White House that he wanted to assassinate the leader of Syria, that he has little knowledge of or concern about war on the Korean peninsula, and generally isn't intellectually up to considering the consequences of his actions and who might die as a result. But if this anonymous person is like Jamie Lanister and knows that Trump, although the elected President, is borderline insane or mentally unfit for the job, do you think it is ethically right for him to subvert the will of the elected President? I'm not speaking legally because it would seem to be illegal, but do you think it is ethical?
Glad to hear it - some local libraries in my area do offer some basic classes on topics like using Microsoft Office, Windows 10, and similar topics. However, I don't think many/any focus on how to keep your information secure while using the Internet.
And frankly, even if they do, it's nice to have other organizations (like colleges and universities) offering training so that it's more available and more people will have access to it. While people like Opportunist have noted that their own parents may not listen to them, those same older people might listen to a stranger with a bit more of an open mind.
That's the problem with CEO salaries: While there are formulas and charts explaining exactly how much you should pay a line worker at McDonalds (and it happens to be "just enough so that desperate people will apply"), there is no formula for figuring out how much you should pay a CEO.
This is definitely part of it. Consider the government analog: the President of the United States: "Effective January 1, 2001, the annual salary of the President of the United States was increased to $400,000 per year, including a $50,000 expense allowance, a $100,000 nontaxable travel account, and a $19,000 entertainment account." (https://www.thoughtco.com/presidential-pay-and-compensation-3322194)
If we combine the salary with the expense allowance, that gives us $450,000 that the President can spend on anything. Compare that with a government employee working 40 hours a week and earning the minimum wage: $7.25 per hour * 40 hours per week * 52 weeks per year = $15,080 per year.
$450,000/$15,080 = 29.84; the President of the United States earns roughly 30 times the lowest-paid full-time federal government employee.
So I ask you this: is it hard to find qualified people who want to be President of the US? Of course not. Now I'm not saying the people who end up getting the job are qualified, but there are plenty of qualified, interested candidates even though the President makes *only* 30 times more than the lowest-paid full-time federal government employee.
The point here is that CEO wages are insanely inflated and for poor reasons.
While a minimum wage is a good thing to have, it's measured in absolute, not relative, terms. In addition to or instead of a minimum wage we should impose a rule that says something like: in all forms of compensation (salary, stock options, health coverage, etc) the highest-paid employee of any company employing more than 30 people cannot earn more than 20 times what the company's lowest-paid full-time employee earns.
Then the company can appropriate compensation as it wishes, abiding by this rule. It would be truly revolutionary in the changes it would bring about to the US economy by enforcing some level of equality, while still allowing for great differences in pay so that people with more education and skill, or a rarer education or skill, still get rewarded.
I would love to see democratic socialists pushing a policy like this.
Most of the upvoted comments here seem to be totally missing the point. The impetus behind this idea didn't come out of thin air - it's not as if these city supervisors pulled the idea out of a hat. They're not hell-bent on telling people what to do because they're authoritarians, or think they know better than other people.
As the article states, "Mr. Peskin's ordinance is also aimed at getting more out of a tax deal given to tech companies that would agree to move into a troubled area called Mid-Market. In 2011, the companies were given tax breaks on payroll and stock options with the hope that they would bring jobs and investment to the neighborhood, just a short walk from San Francisco's City Hall. Within a few years, a number of companies like Twitter, Square and Uber moved into Mid-Market. But despite initial excitement over the opening of a number of restaurants and shops, the neighborhood has not yet flourished the way many had hoped."
In other words, the city supervisors are basically saying, "Hey tech companies, we gave you tax breaks and other benefits so that you would come here and help out existing local businesses by your employees patronizing said businesses. It turns out your workers aren't really doing that, which means we're giving you these benefits and not getting much in return. To make the deal more fair, we're going to find ways to force/encourage your employees to spend money in the local economy."
Now I happen to think this is the wrong solution to the problem. The solution is not to offer big corporations special tax breaks in the first place, since that really means everyone else is subsidizing them, including the citizens and local businesses who the move was intended to help. But for all of these people commenting that the city supervisors are proposing this out of some authoritarian mindset - that's just not the case.
So this company gets to slap its name on an existing compound which other companies have been isolating for years, and suddenly they get to make it a prescription drug and get major headlines? CBD has been known to the cannabis community for years, and it's already legal in all 50 states if derived from hemp (though not if derived from cannabis).
Where were all the headlines when companies were selling CBD derived from hemp? Same compound, different source. It doesn't matter what strain it came from, it's still CBD.
What I fear is that corporate America will try and succeed in patenting cannabis such that when it's legal, it will be a pharmaceutical owned by major corporations. It will be difficult, if not impossible, to grow your own or buy from small growers. That's what we need to watch out for and oppose at every turn. Cannabis is both a fantastic medicine, and a great recreational drug. For anyone not aware, it can do an amazing job of lowering blood pressure in those with hypertension.
Agreed, ZorroXXX. Properly functioning markets are called competitive markets, not free markets. Let's get rid of worshiping the "free market" and instead focus on attaining competitive markets.
I don't want markets to be "free"; I want them to be fair and competitive, because in the end it's best for consumers and businesses alike. And often getting to the point where a market is competitive (no company or set of companies controls too much market share, and the barriers to entry are reasonably low) requires some degree of government regulation. Sadly, Republicans have done such a great job marketing the idea of "free markets" that they easily steam-roll common-sense regulations time and time again. But in many industries, barriers to entry will be too high and/or existing giants in the industry become too large for their to be meaningful competition. As many of us know all too well, the internet service provider industry in the US is a great example of a market in dire need of government regulation in order to make it competitive.
It's really unfortunate that science and research into cannabis and hemp extracts has been hampered for so long, since the more we analyze these plants, the more we understand just how beneficial some of their cannabinoids are.
I bring this up because an increasing number of patients and doctors are discovering the ability of CBD (cannabidiol, non-psychoactive) to relieve pain. Take the case of long-time professional baseball pitcher, David Wells: https://www.youtube.com/watch?.... There is plenty of additional evidence to the efficacy of CBD - just search online. But here's an additional example: https://www.forbes.com/sites/d...
My hope is that more people will become aware that CBD can be a very effective alternative to opioids for pain relief, since CBD has very few negative side effects and is not habit-forming the way opioids are. And in fact, while CBD extracted from cannabis is only legal in some states, CBD extracted from hemp is legal in all 50 states. For those curious, the only real difference between marijuana and hemp is that the former has more than 0.3% THC content, whereas the latter has less than 0.3% THC content. THC is the psychoactive cannabinoid - the one that makes you feel high.
1) Gradually raise tariffs over a period of many years on goods imported from other countries. Tariffs would be determined based on something like minimum or median wage in the country of origin, where tariffs are greater on low-wage countries and lower on medium or high-wage countries.
This will help encourage domestic production of goods, helping our economy by keeping jobs and profits here.
2) Just like Teddy Roosevelt did, actually enforce our antitrust laws. As best I can tell, we don't need to write new antitrust laws - just enforce the ones already on the books which aren't being enforced as they should. The whole point of antitrust laws is to promote competition by breaking up companies that stifle it. There are many industries which have players that are far too large for their to be a competitive market, but banking is the first place to start. It's possible some technology companies like Amazon or Google could be broken up as they are likely bad for competition in some of the markets in which they compete.
I won't claim to know much about the topic, but Wikipedia clearly states,
"...and statements that smallpox was intentionally spread to Native Americans by John Smith in 1614 and by the United States Army at Fort Clark in 1837 (not to be confused with the well-documented use of smallpox-infected blankets at Fort Pitt in 1764)." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Churchill#Research_misconduct_investigation)
It's not that requiring IDs in and of itself is somehow racist. It's that minorities (as well as students and the elderly) are the least likely to have ID that meets the requirements of the law.
So if you don't currently have valid ID, you obviously need to get a new one. And since that costs money, requiring it is akin to a poll tax.
As a result, a federal court ordered Wisconsin to offer IDs for free at the DMV (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/25/us/wisconsin-voters.html). However, this has not been implemented very smoothly (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wisconsin-voter-id/wisconsin-official-told-dmv-not-to-push-free-voter-id-cards-idUSTRE78713P20110908).
You could argue that the requirement of an ID is still ok, Wisconsin just did a poor job of implementing it. But really, you've just created an ADDITIONAL barrier to voting (in addition to getting time off work/waiting in a line/registering to vote).
The thing is, the whole voter ID movement is a solution in search of a problem (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/washington/12fraud.html). There has never been evidence of voter fraud at any meaningful scale, and there is little reason to believe people would risk getting caught given the small benefit an extra vote would offer. However, as noted in one of the articles above, voter ID helps increase turnout among those who have proper ID, and decrease turnout among those who are less likely to have it to begin with (people who tend to vote Democratic). There are conservatives on record expressing their preference for lower voter turnout (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GBAsFwPglw) and we're seeing them get their way.
Most people seem to think "crazy idea with no backing" when they hear "conspiracy" or "conspiracy theory." This is unfortunate, because what a conspiracy theory is (by literal definition) is a theory that some group of individuals or other actors are working together to achieve something, likely in secret.
While common "conspiracy theories" like Pizzagate may be nonsense, the idea that literal conspiracy theories (as described above) are inherently wrong/crazy/nonsense is itself wrong. On the contrary - OF COURSE wealthy and powerful people work together in secret to achieve many of their goals. And yes, some of these are nefarious goals in which these people are working to consolidate their power or wealth by taking it from someone else.
How else do we explain the numerous attempts my US intelligence agencies to influence foreign elections, or straight-up depose leaders of other countries? How do we explain what corporations do to lobby Congress? These are examples of groups of people working together (conspiring) to achieve goals - goals which the public would often find reprehensible.
Of course we should be skeptical of what we take in, and work to confirm and validate it with as much first-hand evidence as possible. But to dismiss all conspiracy theories as nonsense is the wrong way to go - it's clear that there are powerful people in this world, and some of these people work together to consolidate their power. Watergate, anyone?
My wife and I had been renting for a few years, paying about $1,350 per month for a 2-bedroom ranch with a fenced in yard. Earlier this year our landlord moved out of state and sold his rentals, giving us 2 months to find a new place. We discovered that our rent was incredibly cheap relative to anything similar: we'd have to pay at least $1,700 to $1,800 to rent anything comparable to what we were living in in the same area.
It turns out that a mortgage for a similar house around here is about $1,800 to $1,900, so we hurriedly applied for mortgages and got an FHA loan and bought a house before we had to leave the rental. So fortunately I am now a homeowner living in a better house than earlier this year, and paying only a little more than if I were renting. The fact that I know so many people around me renting tells me that they have so little extra income that they can afford to rent, but not the little more it would cost to buy.
In other words, yes, around here the rent is way too high when it's barely cheaper than buying a home.
Any sources on that? That would seem to be difficult to verify. At least anecdotally, many of the people I saw at a local protest against the Republican healthcare plans I attended this past spring are politically active in other ways, including voting.
But your point remains true - people concerned with issues and who pressure their legislators to do the right thing need to follow up by voting accordingly. Unfortunately, the spoiler effect and the resulting two-party system make it hard to do that in some cases.
Clearly many national politicians don't much care what the people think, but they do care about getting re-elected.
As it turns out, chanting and protesting can draw media attention. And when the media actually does cover protests, that's when politicians start to feel the heat - when they start to realize that the issue might affect their re-election, at least a little bit. And that's when they'll start to care.
So protesting matters in that sense. It also helps the public see what others in society think is important enough to protest about, which can affect the viewers' own thinking on the issue. Protesting also matters in that sense.
The most important economic question is: how are working people fairing?
The answer is that they're not fairing well, and most live paycheck to paycheck, struggling to afford a home, food, transportation, insurance, clothes, Internet, a phone, and a few extras. When working people struggle to (and often simply can't) afford the basics, no, the economy is not doing well. Many businesses and the wealthy are doing great, but not your typical person who must work for a living.
The idea of cutting "waste and abuse" is a good idea in theory, except there often really isn't that much of it. And when there is, conservatives tend to use it as an excuse to severely cut spending on a program altogether, rather than truly trying to cut only the waste or abuse and improve it.
In my state, Illinois, over 90% of the state's discretionary budget goes to providing education, public safety, healthcare, and social services. There's very little, if anything, that can be cut without hurting citizens. The fact is our economy simply doesn't pay many people enough - someone making $10 an hour just won't have enough to support themselves. So using tax money as a way to make sure they're adequately supported makes up for the difference between what they earn and what they need.
If you don't like the tax and redistribute route of fixing the problem of working people not earning enough (the Sweden route, let's call it), the other solution is to make sure that working people earn enough money to afford the basics to begin with (let's call it the Japan route). If you want a country and economy that works for its people, you have to choose either the Sweden route or the Japan route, or some combination thereof.
In the US we've largely gone the Sweden route - allowing businesses to not pay people enough in wages, and so using wealth/resource redistribution through taxation to compensate. But since people hate taxes so much, we don't do very well in redistributing resources. That's why I think we're better off with the Japan route - having a higher minimum wage or having laws limiting how much more a CEO can make than a janitor, for instance. And to go along with that, making college and vocational training free/inexpensive so anyone who wants to prepare for a higher-paying job can do that.
There is definitely a connection between Trump, Prince, and DeVoss (https://www.democracynow.org/2017/1/18/scahill_blackwater_founder_erik_prince_the). It is Robert Mercer, who, as I understand, stepped in to fund a major pro-Trump PAC late in the general election. Mercer has had ties to Prince for some time, as well as a number of other people Trump has brought into his administration (formally or otherwise).
As best as I can tell, Trump is in part doing the bidding of Mercer and his allies.
I like this idea because the whole point of having to pay a fine is to discourage the bad behavior. If a wealthy person has to pay a tiny fine, that does very little to discourage the bad behavior.
As you say, fines should be proportional, not fixed.
Possible FCC Reactions:
Oh, repealing net neutrality would hinder a free and open exchange of ideas to promote democracy and mutual understanding? That's too bad, and we disagree because....
Wait, it might cost corporations money? Oh, maybe it is a bad idea, after all.
---
Yeah, it turns out that many current officials in government will only listen when money is on the line.
Given that doing so will raise attention because of Verizon's popularity, yes, it could be effective.
The whole point of protest isn't that the act of protesting itself changes things. It's that it directs the attention of the media and the public to the issue. And if that works, then advocates may have a chance of their grievances being addressed.
As a vegetarian who eats a lot of vegan food, my response is: what?
Eating vegan can be quite healthy, although some nutrients are difficult, if not impossible, to get from a natural vegan diet.
The best way to eat is to eat minimally processed whole foods: fruits, veggies, nuts/legumes, eggs, and cheese. It's ok to have some grains, but they're not necessary and not all that healthy.
As far as macronutrients go (fat, carbs, and protein), we only need fat and protein from our diet. Our body doesn't need carbs, though it does need sugar (glucose, specifically) - but it can make sugar on its own.
Slashdot Mirror
Mitch McConnell may or may not lie more than Trump, but he's definitely more stragetic about how and when he lies. He's arguably the biggest lackey to corporate America, constantly working in their favor. He's quite possibly the biggest enemy of the middle class in modern America.
The sad thing is that Democrats aren't good at messaging, so instead of getting together as a group and blasting him for the anti-middle class elitist that he is, they let such opportunities pass. McConnell single-handedly did away with the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, and just recently did the same for other federal judicial nominees. Because if long-standing rules protecting the rights of the minority party get in your way, why not just destory them?
I agree that fasting in various forms can do wonders for your health. The more I've looked into it, the more studies there are that demonstrate some of the effects it can have at the cellular level.
Many of the studies are done on mice, whose circadian rhythm and metabolism are certainly different from humans. But the general thrust seems to be that when we fast, our bodies do things like engaging in autophagy (repairing somewhat damaged cells and entirely replacing very damaged cells) and increasing hormones that spur muscle growth. Dr. Berg and an athlete named Thomas Delauer have some basic explanations on YouTube about how some of this works.
This makes some intuitive sense, too. From an evolutionary standpoint, humans weren't doing what many people do nowadays: eating right after or shortly after waking up, and continuing to eat throughout the day until shorlty before going to sleep. We just didn't have that much food, so prior to the agricultural revolution, we probably went several hours throughout the day with no food at all. Or we may have gone a day or several days without food.
Another way of thinking about it is that, if you never fast, your body is constantly spending resources to process food. If you give it a break from food now and then, it can spend more resources doing things other than digesting food - things like repairing cells.
Anecdotally, I've been doing intermittent fasting for a few weeks, wherein Monday through Friday I only eat from 12:30pm to 8:30pm. On the weekends, I eat whenever I feel like it. This means my fast each weekday is the remaining 16 hours that I'm not eating. And since starting this regimen, my muscles having been growing faster than I've ever seen before (I do some calisthenics like pull ups, dips, leg raises, and pushups). This could be due to increased hormones for muscle growth.
Wealth is relative, and so is poverty. While poor Americans have quite a lot by the standards of other societies, that's not the point. They still struggle to afford food, housing, transporation, medical care, etc. And they especially struggle to have these things on a predictable, reliable basis. That's where the poverty really comes in - that these things are not predictable and reliable, when they are essential for living in the given society. That lack of predictability and reliability exerts a mental stress on people, as they are preoccupied with thoughts of whether or not they will be able to maintain what they have.
This is why income and wealth inequality are valuable measures in a given country. A country like the US with extreme wealth but great wealth inequality experiences a variety of social problems as a result. Researchers from the UK have done a good job exploring the relationships between income/wealth inequality and social ills (https://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/).
The real problem is first-past-the-post plurality voting. In any of the early primaries, Trump would have lost every single head-to-head matchup, so any decent electoral system (i.e. any kind of Condorcet preference balloting) would have avoided this disaster.
Ding, ding, ding!
First-past-the-post, aka plurality voting, is a very poor system for choosing a candidate that best fits everyone's tastes. All it says is, "Out of these x candidates, which ONE will you pick if you have to?" We have no idea how the voter feels about the other candidates - they might really like 3 and hate the rest, but they only get to pick one.
Approval voting is a great system we should be using instead. Instead of only getting to vote for one candidate, you can vote for as many as you like. If you want to vote for a Republican and a Libertarian, you can do that. If you want to vote for a Democrat and a Green, you could do that, too. If it's a primary and you like most of them just fine but really hate one (maybe Trump?), then you can vote for every candidate except for the one you hate, which is effectively like voting against the candidate you hate. In other words, approval voting gives voters a much greater ability to express their opinion. (approvalvoting.com)
Ranked choice voting would also be a good alternative, though it's more complicated for voters and people counting the votes, too. I think approval voting is just easier and better, but I would definitely prefer ranked choice elections to plurality elections.
This brings to mind Jamie Lanister from Game of Thrones, known as the Kingslayer because he was a member of the kingsguard and yet he killed the king. Although he was the rightful king, he was also known as the mad king because he was insane and commanded his men to kill people recklessly. When asked what the king said as Jamie stabbed him in the back he replied, "The same thing he'd been saying for hours, "burn them all!""
Although many people questioned how a member of the kingsguard could kill the "rightful" king and consider it just, Jamie indicated that the man was literally insane and was intent on mindlessly killing lots of innocent people.
While Trump is not literally saying, "burn them all!," we are hearing from high-level people in the White House that he wanted to assassinate the leader of Syria, that he has little knowledge of or concern about war on the Korean peninsula, and generally isn't intellectually up to considering the consequences of his actions and who might die as a result. But if this anonymous person is like Jamie Lanister and knows that Trump, although the elected President, is borderline insane or mentally unfit for the job, do you think it is ethically right for him to subvert the will of the elected President? I'm not speaking legally because it would seem to be illegal, but do you think it is ethical?
Glad to hear it - some local libraries in my area do offer some basic classes on topics like using Microsoft Office, Windows 10, and similar topics. However, I don't think many/any focus on how to keep your information secure while using the Internet.
And frankly, even if they do, it's nice to have other organizations (like colleges and universities) offering training so that it's more available and more people will have access to it. While people like Opportunist have noted that their own parents may not listen to them, those same older people might listen to a stranger with a bit more of an open mind.
That's the problem with CEO salaries: While there are formulas and charts explaining exactly how much you should pay a line worker at McDonalds (and it happens to be "just enough so that desperate people will apply"), there is no formula for figuring out how much you should pay a CEO.
This is definitely part of it. Consider the government analog: the President of the United States: "Effective January 1, 2001, the annual salary of the President of the United States was increased to $400,000 per year, including a $50,000 expense allowance, a $100,000 nontaxable travel account, and a $19,000 entertainment account." (https://www.thoughtco.com/presidential-pay-and-compensation-3322194)
If we combine the salary with the expense allowance, that gives us $450,000 that the President can spend on anything. Compare that with a government employee working 40 hours a week and earning the minimum wage: $7.25 per hour * 40 hours per week * 52 weeks per year = $15,080 per year.
$450,000/$15,080 = 29.84; the President of the United States earns roughly 30 times the lowest-paid full-time federal government employee.
So I ask you this: is it hard to find qualified people who want to be President of the US? Of course not. Now I'm not saying the people who end up getting the job are qualified, but there are plenty of qualified, interested candidates even though the President makes *only* 30 times more than the lowest-paid full-time federal government employee.
The point here is that CEO wages are insanely inflated and for poor reasons.
While a minimum wage is a good thing to have, it's measured in absolute, not relative, terms. In addition to or instead of a minimum wage we should impose a rule that says something like: in all forms of compensation (salary, stock options, health coverage, etc) the highest-paid employee of any company employing more than 30 people cannot earn more than 20 times what the company's lowest-paid full-time employee earns.
Then the company can appropriate compensation as it wishes, abiding by this rule. It would be truly revolutionary in the changes it would bring about to the US economy by enforcing some level of equality, while still allowing for great differences in pay so that people with more education and skill, or a rarer education or skill, still get rewarded.
I would love to see democratic socialists pushing a policy like this.
Most of the upvoted comments here seem to be totally missing the point. The impetus behind this idea didn't come out of thin air - it's not as if these city supervisors pulled the idea out of a hat. They're not hell-bent on telling people what to do because they're authoritarians, or think they know better than other people.
As the article states, "Mr. Peskin's ordinance is also aimed at getting more out of a tax deal given to tech companies that would agree to move into a troubled area called Mid-Market. In 2011, the companies were given tax breaks on payroll and stock options with the hope that they would bring jobs and investment to the neighborhood, just a short walk from San Francisco's City Hall. Within a few years, a number of companies like Twitter, Square and Uber moved into Mid-Market. But despite initial excitement over the opening of a number of restaurants and shops, the neighborhood has not yet flourished the way many had hoped."
In other words, the city supervisors are basically saying, "Hey tech companies, we gave you tax breaks and other benefits so that you would come here and help out existing local businesses by your employees patronizing said businesses. It turns out your workers aren't really doing that, which means we're giving you these benefits and not getting much in return. To make the deal more fair, we're going to find ways to force/encourage your employees to spend money in the local economy."
Now I happen to think this is the wrong solution to the problem. The solution is not to offer big corporations special tax breaks in the first place, since that really means everyone else is subsidizing them, including the citizens and local businesses who the move was intended to help. But for all of these people commenting that the city supervisors are proposing this out of some authoritarian mindset - that's just not the case.
So this company gets to slap its name on an existing compound which other companies have been isolating for years, and suddenly they get to make it a prescription drug and get major headlines? CBD has been known to the cannabis community for years, and it's already legal in all 50 states if derived from hemp (though not if derived from cannabis).
Where were all the headlines when companies were selling CBD derived from hemp? Same compound, different source. It doesn't matter what strain it came from, it's still CBD.
What I fear is that corporate America will try and succeed in patenting cannabis such that when it's legal, it will be a pharmaceutical owned by major corporations. It will be difficult, if not impossible, to grow your own or buy from small growers. That's what we need to watch out for and oppose at every turn. Cannabis is both a fantastic medicine, and a great recreational drug. For anyone not aware, it can do an amazing job of lowering blood pressure in those with hypertension.
Agreed, ZorroXXX. Properly functioning markets are called competitive markets, not free markets. Let's get rid of worshiping the "free market" and instead focus on attaining competitive markets.
I don't want markets to be "free"; I want them to be fair and competitive, because in the end it's best for consumers and businesses alike. And often getting to the point where a market is competitive (no company or set of companies controls too much market share, and the barriers to entry are reasonably low) requires some degree of government regulation. Sadly, Republicans have done such a great job marketing the idea of "free markets" that they easily steam-roll common-sense regulations time and time again. But in many industries, barriers to entry will be too high and/or existing giants in the industry become too large for their to be meaningful competition. As many of us know all too well, the internet service provider industry in the US is a great example of a market in dire need of government regulation in order to make it competitive.
It's really unfortunate that science and research into cannabis and hemp extracts has been hampered for so long, since the more we analyze these plants, the more we understand just how beneficial some of their cannabinoids are.
I bring this up because an increasing number of patients and doctors are discovering the ability of CBD (cannabidiol, non-psychoactive) to relieve pain. Take the case of long-time professional baseball pitcher, David Wells: https://www.youtube.com/watch?.... There is plenty of additional evidence to the efficacy of CBD - just search online. But here's an additional example: https://www.forbes.com/sites/d...
My hope is that more people will become aware that CBD can be a very effective alternative to opioids for pain relief, since CBD has very few negative side effects and is not habit-forming the way opioids are. And in fact, while CBD extracted from cannabis is only legal in some states, CBD extracted from hemp is legal in all 50 states. For those curious, the only real difference between marijuana and hemp is that the former has more than 0.3% THC content, whereas the latter has less than 0.3% THC content. THC is the psychoactive cannabinoid - the one that makes you feel high.
I see a 2-part solution.
1) Gradually raise tariffs over a period of many years on goods imported from other countries. Tariffs would be determined based on something like minimum or median wage in the country of origin, where tariffs are greater on low-wage countries and lower on medium or high-wage countries.
This will help encourage domestic production of goods, helping our economy by keeping jobs and profits here.
2) Just like Teddy Roosevelt did, actually enforce our antitrust laws. As best I can tell, we don't need to write new antitrust laws - just enforce the ones already on the books which aren't being enforced as they should. The whole point of antitrust laws is to promote competition by breaking up companies that stifle it. There are many industries which have players that are far too large for their to be a competitive market, but banking is the first place to start. It's possible some technology companies like Amazon or Google could be broken up as they are likely bad for competition in some of the markets in which they compete.
I won't claim to know much about the topic, but Wikipedia clearly states,
"...and statements that smallpox was intentionally spread to Native Americans by John Smith in 1614 and by the United States Army at Fort Clark in 1837 (not to be confused with the well-documented use of smallpox-infected blankets at Fort Pitt in 1764)." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Churchill#Research_misconduct_investigation)
More information regarding the intentional spread of infected blankets is described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It's not that requiring IDs in and of itself is somehow racist. It's that minorities (as well as students and the elderly) are the least likely to have ID that meets the requirements of the law.
So if you don't currently have valid ID, you obviously need to get a new one. And since that costs money, requiring it is akin to a poll tax.
As a result, a federal court ordered Wisconsin to offer IDs for free at the DMV (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/25/us/wisconsin-voters.html). However, this has not been implemented very smoothly (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wisconsin-voter-id/wisconsin-official-told-dmv-not-to-push-free-voter-id-cards-idUSTRE78713P20110908).
You could argue that the requirement of an ID is still ok, Wisconsin just did a poor job of implementing it. But really, you've just created an ADDITIONAL barrier to voting (in addition to getting time off work/waiting in a line/registering to vote).
The thing is, the whole voter ID movement is a solution in search of a problem (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/washington/12fraud.html). There has never been evidence of voter fraud at any meaningful scale, and there is little reason to believe people would risk getting caught given the small benefit an extra vote would offer. However, as noted in one of the articles above, voter ID helps increase turnout among those who have proper ID, and decrease turnout among those who are less likely to have it to begin with (people who tend to vote Democratic). There are conservatives on record expressing their preference for lower voter turnout (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GBAsFwPglw) and we're seeing them get their way.
Most people seem to think "crazy idea with no backing" when they hear "conspiracy" or "conspiracy theory." This is unfortunate, because what a conspiracy theory is (by literal definition) is a theory that some group of individuals or other actors are working together to achieve something, likely in secret.
While common "conspiracy theories" like Pizzagate may be nonsense, the idea that literal conspiracy theories (as described above) are inherently wrong/crazy/nonsense is itself wrong. On the contrary - OF COURSE wealthy and powerful people work together in secret to achieve many of their goals. And yes, some of these are nefarious goals in which these people are working to consolidate their power or wealth by taking it from someone else.
How else do we explain the numerous attempts my US intelligence agencies to influence foreign elections, or straight-up depose leaders of other countries? How do we explain what corporations do to lobby Congress? These are examples of groups of people working together (conspiring) to achieve goals - goals which the public would often find reprehensible.
Of course we should be skeptical of what we take in, and work to confirm and validate it with as much first-hand evidence as possible. But to dismiss all conspiracy theories as nonsense is the wrong way to go - it's clear that there are powerful people in this world, and some of these people work together to consolidate their power. Watergate, anyone?
My wife and I had been renting for a few years, paying about $1,350 per month for a 2-bedroom ranch with a fenced in yard. Earlier this year our landlord moved out of state and sold his rentals, giving us 2 months to find a new place. We discovered that our rent was incredibly cheap relative to anything similar: we'd have to pay at least $1,700 to $1,800 to rent anything comparable to what we were living in in the same area.
It turns out that a mortgage for a similar house around here is about $1,800 to $1,900, so we hurriedly applied for mortgages and got an FHA loan and bought a house before we had to leave the rental. So fortunately I am now a homeowner living in a better house than earlier this year, and paying only a little more than if I were renting. The fact that I know so many people around me renting tells me that they have so little extra income that they can afford to rent, but not the little more it would cost to buy.
In other words, yes, around here the rent is way too high when it's barely cheaper than buying a home.
Any sources on that? That would seem to be difficult to verify. At least anecdotally, many of the people I saw at a local protest against the Republican healthcare plans I attended this past spring are politically active in other ways, including voting.
But your point remains true - people concerned with issues and who pressure their legislators to do the right thing need to follow up by voting accordingly. Unfortunately, the spoiler effect and the resulting two-party system make it hard to do that in some cases.
Clearly many national politicians don't much care what the people think, but they do care about getting re-elected.
As it turns out, chanting and protesting can draw media attention. And when the media actually does cover protests, that's when politicians start to feel the heat - when they start to realize that the issue might affect their re-election, at least a little bit. And that's when they'll start to care.
So protesting matters in that sense. It also helps the public see what others in society think is important enough to protest about, which can affect the viewers' own thinking on the issue. Protesting also matters in that sense.
The most important economic question is: how are working people fairing?
The answer is that they're not fairing well, and most live paycheck to paycheck, struggling to afford a home, food, transportation, insurance, clothes, Internet, a phone, and a few extras. When working people struggle to (and often simply can't) afford the basics, no, the economy is not doing well. Many businesses and the wealthy are doing great, but not your typical person who must work for a living.
The idea of cutting "waste and abuse" is a good idea in theory, except there often really isn't that much of it. And when there is, conservatives tend to use it as an excuse to severely cut spending on a program altogether, rather than truly trying to cut only the waste or abuse and improve it.
In my state, Illinois, over 90% of the state's discretionary budget goes to providing education, public safety, healthcare, and social services. There's very little, if anything, that can be cut without hurting citizens. The fact is our economy simply doesn't pay many people enough - someone making $10 an hour just won't have enough to support themselves. So using tax money as a way to make sure they're adequately supported makes up for the difference between what they earn and what they need.
If you don't like the tax and redistribute route of fixing the problem of working people not earning enough (the Sweden route, let's call it), the other solution is to make sure that working people earn enough money to afford the basics to begin with (let's call it the Japan route). If you want a country and economy that works for its people, you have to choose either the Sweden route or the Japan route, or some combination thereof.
In the US we've largely gone the Sweden route - allowing businesses to not pay people enough in wages, and so using wealth/resource redistribution through taxation to compensate. But since people hate taxes so much, we don't do very well in redistributing resources. That's why I think we're better off with the Japan route - having a higher minimum wage or having laws limiting how much more a CEO can make than a janitor, for instance. And to go along with that, making college and vocational training free/inexpensive so anyone who wants to prepare for a higher-paying job can do that.
There is definitely a connection between Trump, Prince, and DeVoss (https://www.democracynow.org/2017/1/18/scahill_blackwater_founder_erik_prince_the). It is Robert Mercer, who, as I understand, stepped in to fund a major pro-Trump PAC late in the general election. Mercer has had ties to Prince for some time, as well as a number of other people Trump has brought into his administration (formally or otherwise).
As best as I can tell, Trump is in part doing the bidding of Mercer and his allies.
I like this idea because the whole point of having to pay a fine is to discourage the bad behavior. If a wealthy person has to pay a tiny fine, that does very little to discourage the bad behavior.
As you say, fines should be proportional, not fixed.
Possible FCC Reactions:
Oh, repealing net neutrality would hinder a free and open exchange of ideas to promote democracy and mutual understanding? That's too bad, and we disagree because....
Wait, it might cost corporations money? Oh, maybe it is a bad idea, after all.
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Yeah, it turns out that many current officials in government will only listen when money is on the line.
Given that doing so will raise attention because of Verizon's popularity, yes, it could be effective.
The whole point of protest isn't that the act of protesting itself changes things. It's that it directs the attention of the media and the public to the issue. And if that works, then advocates may have a chance of their grievances being addressed.
As a vegetarian who eats a lot of vegan food, my response is: what?
Eating vegan can be quite healthy, although some nutrients are difficult, if not impossible, to get from a natural vegan diet.
The best way to eat is to eat minimally processed whole foods: fruits, veggies, nuts/legumes, eggs, and cheese. It's ok to have some grains, but they're not necessary and not all that healthy.
As far as macronutrients go (fat, carbs, and protein), we only need fat and protein from our diet. Our body doesn't need carbs, though it does need sugar (glucose, specifically) - but it can make sugar on its own.