I'd also like to point out that american's have slightly larger families than most Japanese or Europeans, on average. Thus an SUV/minivan makes more sense. (Better milage/ton). YMMV:)
Just take a look at what the average american produces (see national income) and where they live (less densely populated areas). I mean if we are going to look at the "obvious" starting points.
--Whenever anyone tells you that something is obvious (or says "everyone knows..."), it may well be that something is, just not in the way they think.
Sigh, why oh why don't you tell the WHOLE story.
Shamlessly stolen from
http://www.davekopel.org/Terror/Fiftysix-Deceits -in-Fahrenheit-911.htm#2000_Election_Night
Florida Purge of Convicted Felons from Voter Rolls
Deceit 4
According to Fahrenheit, Bush cronies hired Data Base Technologies to purge Florida voters who might vote for Gore, and these potential voters were purged from the voting rolls on the basis of race. ("Second, make sure the chairman of your campaign is also the vote count woman. And that her state has hired a company that's gonna knock voters off the rolls who aren't likely to vote for you. You can usually tell 'em by the color of their skin.") As explained by the Palm Beach Post, Moore's suggestion is extremely incomplete, and on at least one fact, plainly false.
The 1998 mayoral election in Miami was a fiasco which was declared void by Florida courts, because--in violation of Florida law--convicted felons had been allowed to vote. The Florida legislature ordered the executive branch to purge felons from the voting rolls before the next election. Following instructions from Florida officials, Data Base Technologies (DBT) aggressively attempted to identify all convicted felons who were illegally registered to vote in Florida.
There were two major problems with the purge. First, several states allow felons to vote once they have completed their sentences. Some of these ex-felons moved to Florida and were, according to a court decision, eligible to vote. Florida improperly purged these immigrant felons.
Second, the comprehensive effort to identify all convicted felons led to a large number of false positives, in which persons with, for example, the same name as a convicted felon, were improperly purged. Purged voters were, in most cases, notified months before the election and given an opportunity to appeal, but the necessity to file an appeal was in itself a barrier which probably discouraged some legitimate, non-felon citizens from voting. According to the Palm Beach Post, at least 1,100 people were improperly purged.
The overbreadth of the purge was well-known in Florida before the election. As a result, election officials in 20 of Florida's counties ignored the purge list entirely. In these counties, convicted felons were allowed to vote. Also according to the Post, thousands of felons were improperly allowed to vote in the 20 non-purging counties. Analysis by Abigail Thernstrom and Russell G. Redenbaugh, dissenting from a report by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, suggests that about 5,600 felons voted illegally in Florida. (The Thernstrom/Redenbaugh dissent explains why little credit should be given to the majority report, which was produced by flagrantly ignoring data.)
When allowed to vote, felons vote approximately 69 percent Democratic, according to a study in the American Sociological Review. Therefore, if the thousands of felons in the non-purging 20 counties had not been illegally allowed to vote, it is likely that Bush's statewide margin would have been substantially larger.
Regardless, Moore's suggestion that the purge was conducted on the basis of race was indisputably false. As the Palm Beach Post details, all the evidence shows that Data Base Technologies did not use race as a basis for the purge. Indeed, DBT's refusal to take note of a registered voter's race was one of the reasons for the many cases of mistaken identity.
DBT's computers had matched these people with felons, though in dozens of cases they did not share the same name, birthdate, gender or race...[A] review of state records, internal e-mails of DBT employees and testimony before the civil rights commission and an elections task force showed no evidence that minorities were specifically targeted. Records show that DBT told the state it would not use race as a criterion to identify felons. The list itself bears that out: More than 1,000 voters were matched with felons though they were of different races.
The appeals record supports the Palm Beach Post's findings.
Clinton never got 50% of the popular vote either. In 1992 he recieved only 43%. That's less of a mandate than either Bush or Gore would have had. I don't buy into this sudden lust for a popular vote as being more fair.
The reason that works in criminal cases is because the governement is the prosecutor. Iit would tilt the system the other way, right now we worry about a rich plaintiff and poor defendant, under this scenario the problem is a poor plaintiff.
I wasn't limiting it to democracy and elections. I was just pointing out that it is a bias that MOST american's share. I'm saying that bias isn't right or wrong, it's a product of being human. Our beliefs inexorably color how we view things. You know, shared cultural memes and such aren't always shared.....
Utility is ordinal, not cardinal. This means that we cannot make comparisions between two different groups/individuals/nations, because they all have different utilities at different levels. Thus it isn't a good logical basis for a progressive tax system. The flat-tax argument is an "equal share of burden" argument too. The point being that if you cannot equalize marginal sacrifice, then the best way is proportional sacrifice (flat income tax). I agree your idea would be better, if you could compare utitilty across individuals/families.
Re:As someone else pointed out, meaningless figure
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 1
The movie you are thinking of is "My fellow americans." (Jack Lemon and James Garner)
"I don't know much about america but I seen to many shows and "documentaries" were american families are working 2 jobs per parent and still barely making ends meet to have much fate in your style of economy. A simple stat like the number of unemployed has very little meaning when you can have a 4 job household and still be in debt."
I would say just the opposite, it's very hard to tell how representative your documentary family is w.r.t most poor people. Naturally, the documentary maker has an agenda, which is fine but we do have to assume that he/she found the worst case they could for their film.
The other problem is that debt isn't just about income, it's about spending. The average poor person in the US has a larger house, more cars, etc, than a poor person in the EU, even though the EU has (relative to it's economy) a more generous safety net. The reason is pretty simple, the median income in the US is significantly higher, thus some people who are poor by US standards would not be considered poor in some EU member countries. The higher median income in the US also influences the cultural definition of "subsistance". I would bet that some things that poor people in the US would consider necessary or normal would be considered normal or luxury. In other words, expectations are higher, thus many poor people feel the
"need" to go into debt. Just look at things like Cable TV, cars, etc in the US.
How is that addressing unemployment in a "more positive way".
It actually sounds like it isn't being addressed at all, they are just waiting for Eastern Europe to catch up and accepting a more frugal lifestyle. Sorta "spreading the misery." rather than reducing it.
Re:low unemployment compared to europe
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 1
Well, muslims are the fastest growing group in Europe, one of the few growing groups on a contintent with a shrinking population. I think that's what he was alluding to.
I think parent's point, which you seem to have missed when you called it a "fluff definition" is that marriage is both a religious/social institution and a legal one; however we don't clearly distinguish between them today. He was saying that you can be religiously married or married socially (committed) without being legally married. However the social definition (by defintion) is not clearly defined like a legal definition is.
My view is that a government has no business in the social/religious definition (the social contract). However it obviously does have the authority to make laws, thus any legal definition of a union falls to the legislature. Since marriage, by definition, gives benefits to some individuals and not others it inherently "discriminates". So in my view, either these unions are legal and the government can place restrictions on them accordingly, or the rules are discriminatory, in which case unions cannot have any restrictions at all and they would have a meaning entirely different from their current one.
The point is that any other restrictions on marriage are arbitrary as well. So if the sex/gender restriction is unconstitutional/wrong, then so are all of the others. If that is the case, if marriage applies to ANYONE who wants it, then why not just codify the benefits into common law instead of requiring people to jump through hoops? The idea (legally) was for society to promote certain behaviors that it liked, but if doing so constitutes discrimination, then marriage shouldn't exist at all.
Saddam was never given a "go-ahead" for the invasion of Kuwait by the US. He was under the MISTAKEN IMPRESSION that the US wouldn't go to war to remove him though. There is a difference. Just as there is a difference between committing genocide yourself, and choosing not to deploy troops every time 1000 people get butchered somewhere.
That's true, not just because of the money spent on these schools (especially given that many states try to equalize student funding, plus the federal money aimed at low income students) It's also a problem of parental involvement and the environment that surrounds the school.
Your example doesn't disprove that you have free will, it only means that you have consequences to your actions. Free will never implies that there are no consequences, which are very much a product of time, place, etc. Just because you don't like the consequences doesn't mean that you don't have free will anymore. No if the law says you can't you can say that you are legally not free to do so. In that case you have Freedom but not freedom.
Really, the US displaced a democratically elected government in Iran and all of these outher countries? Or did we make alliances with them. There certainly is a difference. I don't remember sending US troops into Iran or Laos or Cambodia FOR THE PURPOSE of changing their government. Especially during the post coldwar period. Which isn't to say that these governments weren't "displaced", but the US certainly didn't just drop in and replace the government with a murderous dictator instead of a reasonable and democratically elected leader. We back(ed) a lot of distasteful characters simply because the ideal person isn't available. That's not evil, it's realistic.
I think it's funny that people thing the FOX is biased but CNN is all objective, or the other way around. Actually, the press was highly biased during the time of the founders. I doubt they would be surprised at all. The idea of "objective journalism" (which it really never truly was, if you are honest, it was "populist") is a relatively recent idea that really didn't take off in the US til the 1950s. Until that time towns usually had multiple papers catering to different groups with different beliefs, with names like the $City Republican or the ______ Democrat Observer as their title. Press bias is always present, it's just more obvoius when you don't agree with it.
Americans are biased toward democracy and elections? Is this bad? Is it bad that the press appears to push this idea?
That's my point, sure people cared about them before, but they had more pressing concerns. Smoking wasn't a big deal then, cause so many more things were likely to kill you before cancer. Like I said, it's just like the environment, sure we care about it, but it's a lot easier to care when you are a citizen living in a rich industrialized nation than a subsistance farmer trying to basically survive in China. Who do you think is going to worry more about the long term consequences of something like DDT?
OH YEAH, great idea, let's subsidize lawsuit filings so that it doesn't cost anyone anything to file them. That's only going to open the floodgates. Right now there is at least some incentive (if not a lot) not to file totally frivolous suits. With this rule there is no cost to file essentiall.
You are right that it MIGHT convince congress to simplify their regulations, but that's only half the problem (the other part being contracts). Plus it's going to take forever to rewrite all the rules. And we are going to be stuck with a huge bill.
Dan Quale, of all people, proposed a loser pays system back during Bush Senior's term as President as a way of discouraging obvously frivolous lawsuits. I think this is referred to as the "English rule", except they modified it, stipulating that the losing side would pay the winning side's legal costs, but only up to the amount the losing side spent on it's own. Thus preventing a powerful/wealthy party from trying to break the other side with a giantic bill (or potential bill).
Slashdot Mirror
I'd also like to point out that american's have slightly larger families than most Japanese or Europeans, on average. Thus an SUV/minivan makes more sense. (Better milage/ton). YMMV :)
--Whenever anyone tells you that something is obvious (or says "everyone knows..."), it may well be that something is, just not in the way they think.
Yes, but the US also is about 25% of the world's GDP. I'd say the US is about average then in terms of CO2/income.
http://www.davekopel.org/Terror/Fiftysix-Deceits -in-Fahrenheit-911.htm#2000_Election_Night Florida Purge of Convicted Felons from Voter Rolls Deceit 4 According to Fahrenheit, Bush cronies hired Data Base Technologies to purge Florida voters who might vote for Gore, and these potential voters were purged from the voting rolls on the basis of race. ("Second, make sure the chairman of your campaign is also the vote count woman. And that her state has hired a company that's gonna knock voters off the rolls who aren't likely to vote for you. You can usually tell 'em by the color of their skin.") As explained by the Palm Beach Post, Moore's suggestion is extremely incomplete, and on at least one fact, plainly false. The 1998 mayoral election in Miami was a fiasco which was declared void by Florida courts, because--in violation of Florida law--convicted felons had been allowed to vote. The Florida legislature ordered the executive branch to purge felons from the voting rolls before the next election. Following instructions from Florida officials, Data Base Technologies (DBT) aggressively attempted to identify all convicted felons who were illegally registered to vote in Florida. There were two major problems with the purge. First, several states allow felons to vote once they have completed their sentences. Some of these ex-felons moved to Florida and were, according to a court decision, eligible to vote. Florida improperly purged these immigrant felons. Second, the comprehensive effort to identify all convicted felons led to a large number of false positives, in which persons with, for example, the same name as a convicted felon, were improperly purged. Purged voters were, in most cases, notified months before the election and given an opportunity to appeal, but the necessity to file an appeal was in itself a barrier which probably discouraged some legitimate, non-felon citizens from voting. According to the Palm Beach Post, at least 1,100 people were improperly purged. The overbreadth of the purge was well-known in Florida before the election. As a result, election officials in 20 of Florida's counties ignored the purge list entirely. In these counties, convicted felons were allowed to vote. Also according to the Post, thousands of felons were improperly allowed to vote in the 20 non-purging counties. Analysis by Abigail Thernstrom and Russell G. Redenbaugh, dissenting from a report by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, suggests that about 5,600 felons voted illegally in Florida. (The Thernstrom/Redenbaugh dissent explains why little credit should be given to the majority report, which was produced by flagrantly ignoring data.) When allowed to vote, felons vote approximately 69 percent Democratic, according to a study in the American Sociological Review. Therefore, if the thousands of felons in the non-purging 20 counties had not been illegally allowed to vote, it is likely that Bush's statewide margin would have been substantially larger. Regardless, Moore's suggestion that the purge was conducted on the basis of race was indisputably false. As the Palm Beach Post details, all the evidence shows that Data Base Technologies did not use race as a basis for the purge. Indeed, DBT's refusal to take note of a registered voter's race was one of the reasons for the many cases of mistaken identity. DBT's computers had matched these people with felons, though in dozens of cases they did not share the same name, birthdate, gender or race...[A] review of state records, internal e-mails of DBT employees and testimony before the civil rights commission and an elections task force showed no evidence that minorities were specifically targeted. Records show that DBT told the state it would not use race as a criterion to identify felons. The list itself bears that out: More than 1,000 voters were matched with felons though they were of different races. The appeals record supports the Palm Beach Post's findings.
Clinton never got 50% of the popular vote either. In 1992 he recieved only 43%. That's less of a mandate than either Bush or Gore would have had. I don't buy into this sudden lust for a popular vote as being more fair.
Y me :)
The reason that works in criminal cases is because the governement is the prosecutor. Iit would tilt the system the other way, right now we worry about a rich plaintiff and poor defendant, under this scenario the problem is a poor plaintiff.
I wasn't limiting it to democracy and elections. I was just pointing out that it is a bias that MOST american's share. I'm saying that bias isn't right or wrong, it's a product of being human. Our beliefs inexorably color how we view things. You know, shared cultural memes and such aren't always shared.....
The welfare state IS socialism. It's not Pure Socialism, but it is socialism.
Utility is ordinal, not cardinal. This means that we cannot make comparisions between two different groups/individuals/nations, because they all have different utilities at different levels. Thus it isn't a good logical basis for a progressive tax system. The flat-tax argument is an "equal share of burden" argument too. The point being that if you cannot equalize marginal sacrifice, then the best way is proportional sacrifice (flat income tax). I agree your idea would be better, if you could compare utitilty across individuals/families.
"I don't know much about america but I seen to many shows and "documentaries" were american families are working 2 jobs per parent and still barely making ends meet to have much fate in your style of economy. A simple stat like the number of unemployed has very little meaning when you can have a 4 job household and still be in debt."
I would say just the opposite, it's very hard to tell how representative your documentary family is w.r.t most poor people. Naturally, the documentary maker has an agenda, which is fine but we do have to assume that he/she found the worst case they could for their film.
The other problem is that debt isn't just about income, it's about spending. The average poor person in the US has a larger house, more cars, etc, than a poor person in the EU, even though the EU has (relative to it's economy) a more generous safety net. The reason is pretty simple, the median income in the US is significantly higher, thus some people who are poor by US standards would not be considered poor in some EU member countries. The higher median income in the US also influences the cultural definition of "subsistance". I would bet that some things that poor people in the US would consider necessary or normal would be considered normal or luxury. In other words, expectations are higher, thus many poor people feel the "need" to go into debt. Just look at things like Cable TV, cars, etc in the US.
How is that addressing unemployment in a "more positive way". It actually sounds like it isn't being addressed at all, they are just waiting for Eastern Europe to catch up and accepting a more frugal lifestyle. Sorta "spreading the misery." rather than reducing it.
Well, muslims are the fastest growing group in Europe, one of the few growing groups on a contintent with a shrinking population. I think that's what he was alluding to.
NT
... then GAFC.
My view is that a government has no business in the social/religious definition (the social contract). However it obviously does have the authority to make laws, thus any legal definition of a union falls to the legislature. Since marriage, by definition, gives benefits to some individuals and not others it inherently "discriminates". So in my view, either these unions are legal and the government can place restrictions on them accordingly, or the rules are discriminatory, in which case unions cannot have any restrictions at all and they would have a meaning entirely different from their current one.
The point is that any other restrictions on marriage are arbitrary as well. So if the sex/gender restriction is unconstitutional/wrong, then so are all of the others. If that is the case, if marriage applies to ANYONE who wants it, then why not just codify the benefits into common law instead of requiring people to jump through hoops? The idea (legally) was for society to promote certain behaviors that it liked, but if doing so constitutes discrimination, then marriage shouldn't exist at all.
Saddam was never given a "go-ahead" for the invasion of Kuwait by the US. He was under the MISTAKEN IMPRESSION that the US wouldn't go to war to remove him though. There is a difference. Just as there is a difference between committing genocide yourself, and choosing not to deploy troops every time 1000 people get butchered somewhere.
That's true, not just because of the money spent on these schools (especially given that many states try to equalize student funding, plus the federal money aimed at low income students) It's also a problem of parental involvement and the environment that surrounds the school.
Your example doesn't disprove that you have free will, it only means that you have consequences to your actions. Free will never implies that there are no consequences, which are very much a product of time, place, etc. Just because you don't like the consequences doesn't mean that you don't have free will anymore. No if the law says you can't you can say that you are legally not free to do so. In that case you have Freedom but not freedom.
Really, the US displaced a democratically elected government in Iran and all of these outher countries? Or did we make alliances with them. There certainly is a difference. I don't remember sending US troops into Iran or Laos or Cambodia FOR THE PURPOSE of changing their government. Especially during the post coldwar period. Which isn't to say that these governments weren't "displaced", but the US certainly didn't just drop in and replace the government with a murderous dictator instead of a reasonable and democratically elected leader. We back(ed) a lot of distasteful characters simply because the ideal person isn't available. That's not evil, it's realistic.
Americans are biased toward democracy and elections? Is this bad? Is it bad that the press appears to push this idea?
That's my point, sure people cared about them before, but they had more pressing concerns. Smoking wasn't a big deal then, cause so many more things were likely to kill you before cancer. Like I said, it's just like the environment, sure we care about it, but it's a lot easier to care when you are a citizen living in a rich industrialized nation than a subsistance farmer trying to basically survive in China. Who do you think is going to worry more about the long term consequences of something like DDT?
You are right that it MIGHT convince congress to simplify their regulations, but that's only half the problem (the other part being contracts). Plus it's going to take forever to rewrite all the rules. And we are going to be stuck with a huge bill.
Dan Quale, of all people, proposed a loser pays system back during Bush Senior's term as President as a way of discouraging obvously frivolous lawsuits. I think this is referred to as the "English rule", except they modified it, stipulating that the losing side would pay the winning side's legal costs, but only up to the amount the losing side spent on it's own. Thus preventing a powerful/wealthy party from trying to break the other side with a giantic bill (or potential bill).