It will be interesting to watch the liberal ideal of mass immigration to the US vs the idea of a basic income. A basic income could be made to work but would open the immigration flood gates even more than they are now. The left has not fully come to grips with mass immigration being bad for existing citizens and ruling out a basic income any more than the far right has acknowledged tax cuts raise deficits unless you also cut spending. Both are obvious yet to even a casual observer yet both paradoxes persist. You can have a nice country or you can have mass immigration.
By has worked I meant a job, as in the kind that pays wages and taxes. I hear your concern that the free market does much of this, however inequality is a greater concern than keeping a "pure" free market. Moreover the market is anything but free or else we'd be able to buy prescription drugs from Canada at 1/3 the cost. What's your plan for improving things?
But even if we could tax at higher rates, what for? So that Bernie or Hillary or whoever can engage in even more crony capitalism?
You touch on what I consider to be one of the largest wrongs of the current way of doing things. If the rich are taxed more what is done with the tax proceeds? That's a fair question that I don't think gets enough attention. The current thinking is to give ever more to the poor such that for many people being a non-working person is advantageous over being a entry level or minimum wage worker. That's just morally wrong. Non-working people should *never* have it better than working people. My personal suggestion is to do something that would affect all productive people not just the poor and especially not the non-working. So I'd suggest taking the taxes and giving them out as a quarterly bonus to anyone who had worked that quarter with no means testing. Legal workers get a bonus, lazy people and those here illegally or working under the table don't. I don't care why you aren't working (ie don't care if you're retired, on medical leave, laid off, fired, can't find a job - really don't care). This could also be done with tariffs. I'm not naive enough to think that this situation would be allowed to last in a pure form, but one can dream.
That conclusion is based on a simplistic analysis of tax records, not taking account demographic changes and not taking into account the vastly increased amounts of government services and benefits people increase.
I agree that there are lots of ways to arrange the data, however all of them show that wages for most people are stagnant or in some cases falling. If you look at the average wage vs productivity, a slightly different argument but still relevant, you find that wages have not risen proportionally with productivity though they largely did until the 70s. The poor have done much better comparatively speaking due to the government programs you mentioned.
Taxing at rates comparable to earlier years is not throwing out the baby with the bath water. Having a graduated capital gains tax would be awesome since that's where all the gains in income have been. Using the NSA's mass surveillance to track down off shore money would be a great idea. There are a lot of things that can and should be done but "free trade", corruption, barely taxing wealth especially capital gains, and off shore money should all be addressed. So far only Bernie and Trump are touching any of these topics so I'm not optimistic.
I see a lot of smug comments about either Democrats (D) or Republicans (R) when the reality is that both parties have done their best, at the behest of their well heeled sponsors, to have the rich get richer while the 99% gets the shaft. "Free trade" deals have been done under both D and R and in both cases created a race to the bottom that decimated the middle class. Wages have been stagnant since the early 70s, and in the past 40+ years there have been multiple D and R administrations. This is not a partisan issue, both D and R sold us out.
Didn't Carter get a Nobel prize for the North Korean's agreeing to not make nuclear weapons. Except that they did anyway. Carter is a fool and should have to return the Nobel prize since it was based on false accomplishments. Good on him if some other things his foundations did turned out well.
Candidates that scare them get ignored. Not unlike how Ron Paul was placing in the primaries in previous elections yet wasn't discussed much by mainstream media. For this election cycle we were clearly told that the preselected candidates were Clinton II vs Bush III, with an outside chance of Bush III being replaced by Rubio. Sanders is not supposed to get taken seriously, and the fact that he is getting traction could upset the script. Trump is definitely a wildcard that they didn't expect to get much traction either, he could also upset the script. Trump vs Sanders would be awesome as then things have no chance of going according to plan for the political elites.
Wouldn't the real answer be, instead of some temporary situation, just expediting the citizenship of well educated, valuable in the field, workers?
If the question was how to make life better for people in the US then of course that would be the answer. If you're a company looking for a workforce on demand that you have leverage over then that is not the answer. Remember that for all practical purposes we live in an oligarchy run for maximizing the oligarchs wealth, not run for the benefit of citizens. Citations:
Both a friend of mine and my mom had their Nissans broken into while at my sister's house and we're pretty sure the thief used a wireless hack since neither vehicle had signs of forced entry yet both were locked. Likely it's a local kid, cameras would help catch him. Funny story though, the suitcase stolen from my mom's car had about 25 pounds of bran and a book on crafting since she was getting ready for a crafting bean bag project. That thief didn't get much:-)
Here's an article that describes this a bit:
http://www.networkworld.com/ar...
Parking in the garage is a simply deterrent as always.
Re:Enough with the "democracy=freedom" tripe
on
The Network Is Hostile
·
· Score: 4, Informative
The US has officially been proven to be an oligarchy as described here:
The current strategy to beat the drought is to cut back. Not bad for the short term, but technology can do much better if we worked on it. While desalination is expensive today it could be *much* cheaper with the application of much lower cost methods like carrbon nanofilters as described here:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...http://www.industrytap.com/wat...
This was the genius of the whole "white privilige" BS. It acts as a great way to separate people and get them riled up at each other rather than look around at the declining standards of living. Not unlike the witch hunt of "women in tech". BlackLivesMatter has been a useful idiot in this as well getting people riled up when the reality is that the most likely thing to take said black lives is definitely not a cop, as they know but don't want to discuss. Abortion, gun control, race relations are all great distractions and in the heat of the moment hard not to fall for.
It's indy media that says, "yet another cop shot an innocent fucking black man in the head," not establishment.
Is this the same media that kept showing a 12 year old was shot by George Zimmerman? I've noticed that any semblance of objective standards, accurate reporting, logic, and a single set of standards applied to all people involved are all out the door when the issue of "race" is involved.
Not exactly. R, G, B are three points that form a triangle and using different combinations you can produce any color found in the triangle. However the total visible light available to humans is not shaped like a triangle, so no matter how well R, G, and B fit into the "corners" of human vision there are still other colors that they couldn't reproduce. Here's a chart that shows this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I always wish people like this were hunted down with the same zeal as terrorists. Black ops on identity thieves is something I could really rally behind:-)
...they worry it will reinforce doubts about the merits or safety of vaccines...
This attitude about let's not discuss any possible downside because it will give the anti-vax people ammunition is part of the problem. Often forgotten is that a certain percentage of people who get vaccines die. That's an extreme form of take one for the team. At least some of these deaths could probably be prevented but rather than examine that more seriously we get polarized into vaccines are always good with no room for an opposing view. Any opposing views must be the opposite end of the spectrum and must be 100% against vaccines. While vaccines have been outstanding public policy in general that doesn't mean that it couldn't be improved upon. As long as people die from vaccinations there is room for improvement. The fact that we don't seem to be looking into how to lower that number is a problem.
Try that at a company when you first get hired and see how well that defense works out for you. A normal (ie not above the law) person might have asked about the oversight rather than saying "oh well, I guess I'll have to make an email server for myself". The "I wasn't given one" is an amazingly poor defense. It takes a lot of chutzpah to use that with a straight face.
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For the damage and grief he caused people I'd be happy if he was locked up and the key thrown away. 4.5 years is far too light.
Don't be silly we are clearly the Terrans. We used a nuke in the last real war.
Might as well use witchcraft for the witch hunts
It will be interesting to watch the liberal ideal of mass immigration to the US vs the idea of a basic income. A basic income could be made to work but would open the immigration flood gates even more than they are now. The left has not fully come to grips with mass immigration being bad for existing citizens and ruling out a basic income any more than the far right has acknowledged tax cuts raise deficits unless you also cut spending. Both are obvious yet to even a casual observer yet both paradoxes persist. You can have a nice country or you can have mass immigration.
By has worked I meant a job, as in the kind that pays wages and taxes. I hear your concern that the free market does much of this, however inequality is a greater concern than keeping a "pure" free market. Moreover the market is anything but free or else we'd be able to buy prescription drugs from Canada at 1/3 the cost. What's your plan for improving things?
But even if we could tax at higher rates, what for? So that Bernie or Hillary or whoever can engage in even more crony capitalism?
You touch on what I consider to be one of the largest wrongs of the current way of doing things. If the rich are taxed more what is done with the tax proceeds? That's a fair question that I don't think gets enough attention. The current thinking is to give ever more to the poor such that for many people being a non-working person is advantageous over being a entry level or minimum wage worker. That's just morally wrong. Non-working people should *never* have it better than working people. My personal suggestion is to do something that would affect all productive people not just the poor and especially not the non-working. So I'd suggest taking the taxes and giving them out as a quarterly bonus to anyone who had worked that quarter with no means testing. Legal workers get a bonus, lazy people and those here illegally or working under the table don't. I don't care why you aren't working (ie don't care if you're retired, on medical leave, laid off, fired, can't find a job - really don't care). This could also be done with tariffs. I'm not naive enough to think that this situation would be allowed to last in a pure form, but one can dream.
- It's the white person's fault
- Men in tech hate women and keep them out in a variety of ways
- Men in general are evil unless they are gay or black and get shot by a white cop
- Anything a white person has ever succeeded at is largely due to their privilege
- Black people are held back by every force conceived by University Professors who study these things
- Christian's are horrible yet Muslims are just mischaracterized
- If you don't want unlimited immigration then you must be xenophobic and racist
I probably missed a few but that's the gist of it.
That conclusion is based on a simplistic analysis of tax records, not taking account demographic changes and not taking into account the vastly increased amounts of government services and benefits people increase.
I agree that there are lots of ways to arrange the data, however all of them show that wages for most people are stagnant or in some cases falling. If you look at the average wage vs productivity, a slightly different argument but still relevant, you find that wages have not risen proportionally with productivity though they largely did until the 70s. The poor have done much better comparatively speaking due to the government programs you mentioned. Taxing at rates comparable to earlier years is not throwing out the baby with the bath water. Having a graduated capital gains tax would be awesome since that's where all the gains in income have been. Using the NSA's mass surveillance to track down off shore money would be a great idea. There are a lot of things that can and should be done but "free trade", corruption, barely taxing wealth especially capital gains, and off shore money should all be addressed. So far only Bernie and Trump are touching any of these topics so I'm not optimistic.
I see a lot of smug comments about either Democrats (D) or Republicans (R) when the reality is that both parties have done their best, at the behest of their well heeled sponsors, to have the rich get richer while the 99% gets the shaft. "Free trade" deals have been done under both D and R and in both cases created a race to the bottom that decimated the middle class. Wages have been stagnant since the early 70s, and in the past 40+ years there have been multiple D and R administrations. This is not a partisan issue, both D and R sold us out.
Didn't Carter get a Nobel prize for the North Korean's agreeing to not make nuclear weapons. Except that they did anyway. Carter is a fool and should have to return the Nobel prize since it was based on false accomplishments. Good on him if some other things his foundations did turned out well.
Candidates that scare them get ignored. Not unlike how Ron Paul was placing in the primaries in previous elections yet wasn't discussed much by mainstream media. For this election cycle we were clearly told that the preselected candidates were Clinton II vs Bush III, with an outside chance of Bush III being replaced by Rubio. Sanders is not supposed to get taken seriously, and the fact that he is getting traction could upset the script. Trump is definitely a wildcard that they didn't expect to get much traction either, he could also upset the script. Trump vs Sanders would be awesome as then things have no chance of going according to plan for the political elites.
So we've exhausted the soap box, the ballot box, and the jury box. Only one box is left.
... it is littering in public places... why do people think it is acceptable to throw cigarette butts on the ground or pee all over public toilets?
My personal observation is that when it comes to littering a lot smokers are first in place and beer drinkers are a somewhat distant second.
The penalties for mishandling classified information can included being barred from holding public office.
Penalties are for you and I, well connected elites like Hillary don't get penalties for misbehavior.
Wouldn't the real answer be, instead of some temporary situation, just expediting the citizenship of well educated, valuable in the field, workers?
If the question was how to make life better for people in the US then of course that would be the answer. If you're a company looking for a workforce on demand that you have leverage over then that is not the answer. Remember that for all practical purposes we live in an oligarchy run for maximizing the oligarchs wealth, not run for the benefit of citizens. Citations:
http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
the actual academic paper is here:
http://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf
Both a friend of mine and my mom had their Nissans broken into while at my sister's house and we're pretty sure the thief used a wireless hack since neither vehicle had signs of forced entry yet both were locked. Likely it's a local kid, cameras would help catch him. Funny story though, the suitcase stolen from my mom's car had about 25 pounds of bran and a book on crafting since she was getting ready for a crafting bean bag project. That thief didn't get much :-)
Here's an article that describes this a bit:
http://www.networkworld.com/ar...
Parking in the garage is a simply deterrent as always.
http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
The actual paper if here:
http://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf
The current strategy to beat the drought is to cut back. Not bad for the short term, but technology can do much better if we worked on it. While desalination is expensive today it could be *much* cheaper with the application of much lower cost methods like carrbon nanofilters as described here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/s... http://www.industrytap.com/wat...
This was the genius of the whole "white privilige" BS. It acts as a great way to separate people and get them riled up at each other rather than look around at the declining standards of living. Not unlike the witch hunt of "women in tech". BlackLivesMatter has been a useful idiot in this as well getting people riled up when the reality is that the most likely thing to take said black lives is definitely not a cop, as they know but don't want to discuss. Abortion, gun control, race relations are all great distractions and in the heat of the moment hard not to fall for.
It's indy media that says, "yet another cop shot an innocent fucking black man in the head," not establishment.
Is this the same media that kept showing a 12 year old was shot by George Zimmerman? I've noticed that any semblance of objective standards, accurate reporting, logic, and a single set of standards applied to all people involved are all out the door when the issue of "race" is involved.
Not exactly. R, G, B are three points that form a triangle and using different combinations you can produce any color found in the triangle. However the total visible light available to humans is not shaped like a triangle, so no matter how well R, G, and B fit into the "corners" of human vision there are still other colors that they couldn't reproduce. Here's a chart that shows this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
From stories I've heard about Kentucky ... yes
I always wish people like this were hunted down with the same zeal as terrorists. Black ops on identity thieves is something I could really rally behind :-)
...they worry it will reinforce doubts about the merits or safety of vaccines...
This attitude about let's not discuss any possible downside because it will give the anti-vax people ammunition is part of the problem. Often forgotten is that a certain percentage of people who get vaccines die. That's an extreme form of take one for the team. At least some of these deaths could probably be prevented but rather than examine that more seriously we get polarized into vaccines are always good with no room for an opposing view. Any opposing views must be the opposite end of the spectrum and must be 100% against vaccines. While vaccines have been outstanding public policy in general that doesn't mean that it couldn't be improved upon. As long as people die from vaccinations there is room for improvement. The fact that we don't seem to be looking into how to lower that number is a problem.
Try that at a company when you first get hired and see how well that defense works out for you. A normal (ie not above the law) person might have asked about the oversight rather than saying "oh well, I guess I'll have to make an email server for myself". The "I wasn't given one" is an amazingly poor defense. It takes a lot of chutzpah to use that with a straight face.