The fact you have to tell some people in the developed world that they have to "take a haircut" implies implies that all the benefits from last 60 years or so wasn't a result of capitalism and free trade (really, you sound like some Star Trek hippie talking about the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few)
Buggy whip manufacturers had to take a hair cut too. Just because the pie is growing doesn't mean there won't be losers.
Someone has a heart problem. You hold them up at gun point. The robbery triggers a heart attack and they die. Do you think you would be charged with felony murder? Quite likely.
They have an existing condition that anything could trigger. You trigger it by doing something illegal. You are guilty of killing them under just about any state's laws.
Then show us with direct citations from the congressional record, HRC's lies. Can't can you? If Gowdy or the rest of that clown parade* could find anything, do you think they wouldn't be pushing it?
Boy, that went south fast. Now, we've gone from discussion Congressional perjury to "You can't prove my client lied".
Do both sides play the game? You betcha.
Does the GOP have a proven record of such lies? Certainly since Ailes/Atwater etc. brought us the Nixon "southern strategy" and "stripping the bark" off political opponents. Gingrich brought the new age of incivility (go read about the GOPAC letter). So i believe they are lying long before I believe their opponents are.
And now the argument that if the Republicans do it, then it's ok to do.
Is HRC pure? No. Is she the devil they want us to believe? No.
And of course, the final rationale for why it's ok that Clinton committed multiple national security felonies. She's imperfect. It is rare to see all three of these morally dysfunctional arguments in one place. But I guess it's just not that hard to do, if morality matters far less to you than your tribe.
I guess your post is one of those examples where the post says more about the poster than about the subject they're posting about.
The need for huge energy storage systems or nuclear power from the very start is a significant problem for the moon.
Also, there is geothermal power. That gives you the huge energy storage system and it works even better during night. As to the thermal transport fluid, oxygen is readily available anywhere on the Moon. Argon and CFCs may be available as well.
Doesn't matter how dumb South Carolina voters are.
Lying to Congress under oath is perjury. And the point of the law is so that Congress creates law and conducts its business using the best available knowledge, not lies. It is lethal to a democracy, for example, to have the executive branch lie without consequence and in that way steer the passage of law based on those lies.
I used the same words to show the similarity. (a) If something would have happened otherwise, like a person dying or an earthquake occurring, then an (b) action would be a trigger and the (c) action would not be a cause.
No, the point here is that the drilling and oil extraction is not enough on its own to generate the Long Beach earthquake. There's not enough energy there. That means it is triggering an existing condition. Generic murder is not analogous.
Very frustrating to be modded down for pointing out such a simple logical error
Correcting errors by generating new ones is not very effective. Maybe less hand wringing over other's irrationality and more cleaning up your own house?
In both cases you face a challenge of how to burn the fuel and oxidizer, since you don't have a binder for a traditional hybrid, nor a liquid to gel powders into.
Sulfur would work as a binder, assuming you need one.
The 6 mbar CO2 atmosphere on Mars may as well be hard vacuum. Exposure to cosmic rays will be similar in either location.
Not really. The Martian atmosphere does provide significant protection. Mars also has a full spectrum of elements needed for plants and animals. The Moon is notably deficient in hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen.
I wonder if he didn't want to go the post-factual route for some kind of moral reason, or if he just didn't foresee the rise of anti-intellectualism and post-truth politics.
I still remember your stand on Fukushima, such as taking new thyroid cancer surveys out of context, rationalizing Japanese nuclear plants should be shut down indefinitely because they couldn't be demonstrated to be safe, or instinctively blaming the Fukushima plant operator and assuming they were lying just because there was a nuclear accident.
In addition to your brazen hypocrisy on this matter, we have some pretty obvious history of anti-intellectualism which dates back to the dawn of Man (and perhaps even started as an evolutionary response to competing with smarter people, let us note). In more recent history, we have such things as the Puritans and their many anti-intellectual offshoots, the Know Nothings, fairy watchers, and some nasty strains of environmentalism.
And your assertion of "post-truth" politics is ridiculous. There has never been "truth" politics so there never has been a "post-truth" politics. Politics is the same oily machine of deception that it's always been since the dawn of history.
In all, this is just a pointless ad hominem against "Leave" voters in Brexit.
Moving on, what's the point of characterizing the half-assed "Remain" campaign as a hypercompetent effort whose only flaw was overestimating the intelligence of the voter (incidentally, something a competent campaign wouldn't have done)? Ridiculous. You should be embarrassed for even writing that fantasy.
Sure, it's comforting to think that the reason you didn't get your way is that voters are stupid. That may even be true in this case. But as I see in comments, you continue to ignore the interests of the "Leave" voters. Never attribute to incompetence, that which can be adequately explained by self-interest.
Hilary was asked if it was Colin's idea to run the server and she said no, it was her responsibility. A few weeks later Wikileaks dumped emails showing it _was_ Powell suggesting it.
Yea, right. Was that while they were tooling around in the UFO from Area 51? Or petting unicorns at the Cheyenne Mountain Strategic Unicorn Reserve? I think it more impressive that Powell could give her advice on setting up an email server to evade FOIA and public records laws. He didn't strike me as an IT guy.
You might find that the city on the moon is far more capable of supporting Mars exploration, than trying to do it from earth
The city on the Moon has to exist first. And IMHO it's not much harder to start doing stuff on Mars than to start doing stuff on the Moon. By the time, you have a city on the Moon, you'll have the means to similarly settle Mars.
A lunar colony does have two big things in its favor, it's only a few days shipping distance from Earth. And economically, it's that and a few seconds delay from Earth. There's a more economically, one can do on the Moon that's not going to be similarly feasible on Mars.
Does a murderer cause a victim's death or trigger it? The victim would have died "at some time in the future as a natural" death.
That analogy would work, if the murderer does something relatively subtle that wouldn't normally kill a person, but takes advantage of a condition that would kill the person anyway. I don't know, maybe give a person with a serious heart condition a fright or put them in a situation where they have to exert themselves.
You're already wrong because workers DO do that now, since most workers ARE replaceable and cogs. Walmart is subsidized by the taxpayer and shows their employees how they can collect food stamps and other government assistance programs.
Duh, Walmart employing poor people and helping them get government assistance is precisely the sort of thing we want to subsidize. Also keep in mind that it costs Walmart some to provide that service.
But I don't see that as being relevant to my point. In the absence of an official minimum wage, Walmart isn't going to get free labor.
And that minimum wage will reach the "homeless starvation" wage in our lifetimes. Well, mine anyway, you may be extra old with that extra white attitude. Taxi and truck drivers are being replaced by robots and there isn't a new sector being created that they can migrate to, free training or not.
Unless, of course, you're wrong, then it won't. I'll just note that I have already mentioned that the rest of the world is getting wealthier. It's not going to take many decades before most of the world's population enjoys developed world status. At that point, there won't be starvation wages, instead there will be a growing demand for labor just like there was in the first few decades of the 20th Century in the US.
The realists, the pro trader AND pro basic income crowd is simply saying let's not let Walmart and other mega corps benefit disproportionately through regulatory capture at the expense of small businesses who can't afford to hire the legal, tax and accounting staff.
Any actual realists would know that this isn't a real problem now. The benefit of social programs are not benefits for employers who have to pay for them in higher taxes. And there's plenty of other regulation that's enabling these mega corps, which doesn't get touched by basic income.
X ray imaging of the human body, better model of the atom and chemical reactions, and the cathode ray tube.
Relativity?
Radio communications, fission/fusion power, and part of the theory of the photoelectric effect (justification for why photon energy is proportional to frequency of the photon). It also explains why things seem to propagate no faster than the speed of light in vacuum.
Newtonian gravitation?
More accurate cannon fire and good explanation of the motion of the planets, including practical applications such as time keeping. For example, the moons of Jupiter can be used to tell time to within an hour or so (due to speed of light propagation delay).
There's been a lot of basic research with no apparent near future applications.
And I showed how each of the examples you gave did have near future application.
Works can't supply free labor and tax cuts indefinitely. They'll starve.
Why is that even considered a problem? Workers don't do that now. Are workers going to forget how to negotiate or job hop, if Big Brother isn't carefully guiding them? Even in a completely free job market, there would be an effective minimum wage below which employers simply won't get workers.
I was responding to a false either-or often put forth when it comes to resources which contrasts the current-limited vs the unrealistic-unlimited.
Ok, I was responding in the first place to a post which characterized any attempt to discern utility of potential research as based on false premises. Plus, as my more recent post indicates, I don't believe funding for research is "severely limited" either. Our societies have been creating scientists at a far greater rate than funding has been increasing. The high competitivity and difficulty of obtaining funding is a natural consequence of that.
There are some benefits of the current science-as-profit-sector culture, but there is also mounting evidence that this culture might be hurting both science and humanity more than helps.
I think rather the problem is that there's too much public funding. Science-as-profit is self funding. But why fund your own research (or get a rich patron) when governments have taken over the niche?
My somewhat educated intuition leans toward the theory that scientists try to justify funding in terms of material return. Perhaps we do ourselves, and humanity, a disservice in the long run.
What other way is scientifically valid to justify science than some variation of material return? If scientists had to eat their own dog food and justify their work by the same methods and ideals they conduct research by, what would remain?
The fact that "most estimates conclude that the deal had a modest but positive impact on U.S. GDP of less than 0.5 percent" (from your link) is largely irrelevant when most people do not get to see the benefits. Indeed, median American income has been shrinking since the late 1990s (when adjusted for inflation) even while the mean has increased.
The obvious rebuttal is "Compared to what?" There is this mythology that the US's economic conditions of the 1950s and 1960s would continue, if only the US stopped trading with the rest of the world (or at least imposed punitive tariffs on goods and services from the poor parts of the world).
But back in 1950 after the end of the Second World War, aside from the US and a handful of other countries, no one was developed world. Europe was a vast mess and the rest of the world was as poor as it was going to get.
Trade changed that. Trade with the US was a key factor in helping keep western Europe and Japan free of the communist menace. And the US benefited as well with a golden age of expansion in STEM fields and industry.
Since then, we've seen a huge improvement globally. I don't know how some people can rationalize away the signs of growing prosperity (things like road networks where dirt roads existed before, for example). But it's turned out to be quite easy for some to not see the benefits.
And that brings me to your quote. Just because people "don't see the benefits" doesn't mean that the benefits don't exist. I see several really large warning signs from recent history that should encourage us to resist such unthinking protectionism.
First, the US went from benefiting hugely from trade in the 1950s and 1960s to its current state. What changed? Some would say "greed" as if corporations had suddenly invented the idea back then. The obvious answer though is that the rest of the world got a lot better and a lot more competitive with respect to the US.
Second, despite a lot of claims to the contrary, the US continues to enjoy strong labor protections, social safety nets, etc. These just haven't turned out to be very useful when the problem is labor competition with the rest of the world.
Third, while a number of countries have used selective protectionism to build economic powerhouses, labor always sacrifices in those cases.There is no historical example where some country put up tariffs or stronger defenses against competition, gave their labor all sorts of advantages and privileges, and ended up doing better for it than the outside world. If you're behind economically, then labor has to take a haircut.
Fourth, there's a lot of labor or socialism-friendly economic fantasies out there that are treated as fact, such as the model of demand-driven economics (which of course, completely blow off the demand from employers, a big part of real world economies) or Keynesian economics (which is basically used as a political excuse to spend public funds, no adherents bothers to save money when times are good). But where's the evidence that these things actually work? Too much of the time, it's confirmation bias with the thrashing of the moment assumed to have fixed things that would have fixed themselves anyway.
Another sort of fantasy which drives the demand-driven model is the assumption that what we want must be good for the economy. Want basic income? Must be good for the economy. Don't want to compete with darker skinned folk from other countries who work for far less than you do? NAFTA must be bad for the economy. Have large medical bills? Any public system of paying those bills for you, no matter how badly run or how harmful it'll be in the future, there's always someone who thinks it's hot stuff, economically because it paid for a relative's bill. There seems to be this huge unawareness that things we want can be bad for our society. It leads to cargo cult economics where we recall what was wonderful about economies of the past (say having the same job fo
Having a roof and food should be the right of every citizen, I don't see this as entitlement, more like leveling the playing field for the poor...
What makes it a right? Where can you exercise this right? And who's going to pay for it?
For me, the enormous problem is simply that once you no longer work for a living, you lose a great deal of power even in the presence of these supposed rights. You're beholden to the provider of the "right". They not you get to decide where you'll live. You get to vote for their political policies or risk loss of your right. And you don't have any options when not if they overextend the nation's finances and promise too much to too many people.
My view is that a basic income can work if a) the payout depends on the health of the society with higher payouts when society is doing well (perhaps a fixed rate based on GDP or income), and b) is coupled with a complete elimination of minimum wage laws.
There is a lot of room between severely limited resources and unlimited resources. Sufficient resources is doable in many cases if we had the will to invest in the future as a society instead of leaving the funding of science to profiteers.
Last I checked as a percentage of GDP (keep in mind that GDP has been increasing for everyone as well over the span of decades), research funding, including public funding, is as high as it's ever been outside of the Second World War (such things as the Manhattan Project). I can't find any support for that, but I do see solid indications that research spending has been going up over the recent past (here and here).
Maybe more money isn't going to fix a problem that wasn't due to level of funding in the first place?
I'm registered Libertarian, though if there was A PARTY THAT WAS REAL HONEST TO GOD REPUBLICAN, I would switch.
The fact is, that the GOP is no longer Republican. It has been being destroyed by the Tea* that continues to run out the Republicans calling them all RINOs. Sadly, the TEA* do not have a clue that they have more in common with constitutional or even a nazi fascists party.
What a bizarre thing to write. Take away the Tea Party people and what do you have left? Big business, neo-cons, and social conservatives. And it's been much that way since shortly after the US Civil War (neo-conservativism is relatively new, but the rest has been around for a while). I don't recall your beliefs aligning with any of them, but YMMV.
A good example is plant-based pharmaceuticals; another one is new treatments using old medicines whose patents have expired. In both cases funding is deficient because the private sector won't devote significant funding to something it can't make a killing on.
Your pharmaceuticals market is different from mine. The latter, new treatments for old medicines is a huge market since it has vastly cheaper R&D and testing costs than a brand new drug target would have and they can patent the new use, of course.
As to plant-based pharmaceuticals, we have the enormous herbal medicine market. Regulation not lack of profit is what keeps that pot from boiling.
Slashdot Mirror
The fact you have to tell some people in the developed world that they have to "take a haircut" implies implies that all the benefits from last 60 years or so wasn't a result of capitalism and free trade (really, you sound like some Star Trek hippie talking about the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few)
Buggy whip manufacturers had to take a hair cut too. Just because the pie is growing doesn't mean there won't be losers.
Someone has a heart problem. You hold them up at gun point. The robbery triggers a heart attack and they die. Do you think you would be charged with felony murder? Quite likely.
They have an existing condition that anything could trigger. You trigger it by doing something illegal. You are guilty of killing them under just about any state's laws.
Good, that's an excellent analogy.
Then show us with direct citations from the congressional record, HRC's lies. Can't can you? If Gowdy or the rest of that clown parade* could find anything, do you think they wouldn't be pushing it?
Boy, that went south fast. Now, we've gone from discussion Congressional perjury to "You can't prove my client lied".
Do both sides play the game? You betcha.
Does the GOP have a proven record of such lies? Certainly since Ailes/Atwater etc. brought us the Nixon "southern strategy" and "stripping the bark" off political opponents. Gingrich brought the new age of incivility (go read about the GOPAC letter). So i believe they are lying long before I believe their opponents are.
And now the argument that if the Republicans do it, then it's ok to do.
Is HRC pure? No. Is she the devil they want us to believe? No.
And of course, the final rationale for why it's ok that Clinton committed multiple national security felonies. She's imperfect. It is rare to see all three of these morally dysfunctional arguments in one place. But I guess it's just not that hard to do, if morality matters far less to you than your tribe.
I guess your post is one of those examples where the post says more about the poster than about the subject they're posting about.
The need for huge energy storage systems or nuclear power from the very start is a significant problem for the moon.
Also, there is geothermal power. That gives you the huge energy storage system and it works even better during night. As to the thermal transport fluid, oxygen is readily available anywhere on the Moon. Argon and CFCs may be available as well.
Doesn't matter how dumb South Carolina voters are.
Lying to Congress under oath is perjury. And the point of the law is so that Congress creates law and conducts its business using the best available knowledge, not lies. It is lethal to a democracy, for example, to have the executive branch lie without consequence and in that way steer the passage of law based on those lies.
I used the same words to show the similarity. (a) If something would have happened otherwise, like a person dying or an earthquake occurring, then an (b) action would be a trigger and the (c) action would not be a cause.
No, the point here is that the drilling and oil extraction is not enough on its own to generate the Long Beach earthquake. There's not enough energy there. That means it is triggering an existing condition. Generic murder is not analogous.
Very frustrating to be modded down for pointing out such a simple logical error
Correcting errors by generating new ones is not very effective. Maybe less hand wringing over other's irrationality and more cleaning up your own house?
In both cases you face a challenge of how to burn the fuel and oxidizer, since you don't have a binder for a traditional hybrid, nor a liquid to gel powders into.
Sulfur would work as a binder, assuming you need one.
The 6 mbar CO2 atmosphere on Mars may as well be hard vacuum. Exposure to cosmic rays will be similar in either location.
Not really. The Martian atmosphere does provide significant protection. Mars also has a full spectrum of elements needed for plants and animals. The Moon is notably deficient in hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen.
I wonder if he didn't want to go the post-factual route for some kind of moral reason, or if he just didn't foresee the rise of anti-intellectualism and post-truth politics.
I still remember your stand on Fukushima, such as taking new thyroid cancer surveys out of context, rationalizing Japanese nuclear plants should be shut down indefinitely because they couldn't be demonstrated to be safe, or instinctively blaming the Fukushima plant operator and assuming they were lying just because there was a nuclear accident.
In addition to your brazen hypocrisy on this matter, we have some pretty obvious history of anti-intellectualism which dates back to the dawn of Man (and perhaps even started as an evolutionary response to competing with smarter people, let us note). In more recent history, we have such things as the Puritans and their many anti-intellectual offshoots, the Know Nothings, fairy watchers, and some nasty strains of environmentalism.
And your assertion of "post-truth" politics is ridiculous. There has never been "truth" politics so there never has been a "post-truth" politics. Politics is the same oily machine of deception that it's always been since the dawn of history.
In all, this is just a pointless ad hominem against "Leave" voters in Brexit.
Moving on, what's the point of characterizing the half-assed "Remain" campaign as a hypercompetent effort whose only flaw was overestimating the intelligence of the voter (incidentally, something a competent campaign wouldn't have done)? Ridiculous. You should be embarrassed for even writing that fantasy.
Sure, it's comforting to think that the reason you didn't get your way is that voters are stupid. That may even be true in this case. But as I see in comments, you continue to ignore the interests of the "Leave" voters. Never attribute to incompetence, that which can be adequately explained by self-interest.
Gowdy had no right to ask her questions
It is felony perjury to lie during congressional testimony. Not that anyone enforces that.
Hilary was asked if it was Colin's idea to run the server and she said no, it was her responsibility. A few weeks later Wikileaks dumped emails showing it _was_ Powell suggesting it.
Yea, right. Was that while they were tooling around in the UFO from Area 51? Or petting unicorns at the Cheyenne Mountain Strategic Unicorn Reserve? I think it more impressive that Powell could give her advice on setting up an email server to evade FOIA and public records laws. He didn't strike me as an IT guy.
You might find that the city on the moon is far more capable of supporting Mars exploration, than trying to do it from earth
The city on the Moon has to exist first. And IMHO it's not much harder to start doing stuff on Mars than to start doing stuff on the Moon. By the time, you have a city on the Moon, you'll have the means to similarly settle Mars.
A lunar colony does have two big things in its favor, it's only a few days shipping distance from Earth. And economically, it's that and a few seconds delay from Earth. There's a more economically, one can do on the Moon that's not going to be similarly feasible on Mars.
Does a murderer cause a victim's death or trigger it? The victim would have died "at some time in the future as a natural" death.
That analogy would work, if the murderer does something relatively subtle that wouldn't normally kill a person, but takes advantage of a condition that would kill the person anyway. I don't know, maybe give a person with a serious heart condition a fright or put them in a situation where they have to exert themselves.
You're already wrong because workers DO do that now, since most workers ARE replaceable and cogs. Walmart is subsidized by the taxpayer and shows their employees how they can collect food stamps and other government assistance programs.
Duh, Walmart employing poor people and helping them get government assistance is precisely the sort of thing we want to subsidize. Also keep in mind that it costs Walmart some to provide that service.
But I don't see that as being relevant to my point. In the absence of an official minimum wage, Walmart isn't going to get free labor.
And that minimum wage will reach the "homeless starvation" wage in our lifetimes. Well, mine anyway, you may be extra old with that extra white attitude. Taxi and truck drivers are being replaced by robots and there isn't a new sector being created that they can migrate to, free training or not.
Unless, of course, you're wrong, then it won't. I'll just note that I have already mentioned that the rest of the world is getting wealthier. It's not going to take many decades before most of the world's population enjoys developed world status. At that point, there won't be starvation wages, instead there will be a growing demand for labor just like there was in the first few decades of the 20th Century in the US.
The realists, the pro trader AND pro basic income crowd is simply saying let's not let Walmart and other mega corps benefit disproportionately through regulatory capture at the expense of small businesses who can't afford to hire the legal, tax and accounting staff.
Any actual realists would know that this isn't a real problem now. The benefit of social programs are not benefits for employers who have to pay for them in higher taxes. And there's plenty of other regulation that's enabling these mega corps, which doesn't get touched by basic income.
Quantum mechanics?
X ray imaging of the human body, better model of the atom and chemical reactions, and the cathode ray tube.
Relativity?
Radio communications, fission/fusion power, and part of the theory of the photoelectric effect (justification for why photon energy is proportional to frequency of the photon). It also explains why things seem to propagate no faster than the speed of light in vacuum.
Newtonian gravitation?
More accurate cannon fire and good explanation of the motion of the planets, including practical applications such as time keeping. For example, the moons of Jupiter can be used to tell time to within an hour or so (due to speed of light propagation delay).
There's been a lot of basic research with no apparent near future applications.
And I showed how each of the examples you gave did have near future application.
Works can't supply free labor and tax cuts indefinitely. They'll starve.
Why is that even considered a problem? Workers don't do that now. Are workers going to forget how to negotiate or job hop, if Big Brother isn't carefully guiding them? Even in a completely free job market, there would be an effective minimum wage below which employers simply won't get workers.
I was responding to a false either-or often put forth when it comes to resources which contrasts the current-limited vs the unrealistic-unlimited.
Ok, I was responding in the first place to a post which characterized any attempt to discern utility of potential research as based on false premises. Plus, as my more recent post indicates, I don't believe funding for research is "severely limited" either. Our societies have been creating scientists at a far greater rate than funding has been increasing. The high competitivity and difficulty of obtaining funding is a natural consequence of that.
There are some benefits of the current science-as-profit-sector culture, but there is also mounting evidence that this culture might be hurting both science and humanity more than helps.
I think rather the problem is that there's too much public funding. Science-as-profit is self funding. But why fund your own research (or get a rich patron) when governments have taken over the niche?
My somewhat educated intuition leans toward the theory that scientists try to justify funding in terms of material return. Perhaps we do ourselves, and humanity, a disservice in the long run.
What other way is scientifically valid to justify science than some variation of material return? If scientists had to eat their own dog food and justify their work by the same methods and ideals they conduct research by, what would remain?
Workers supply what employers demand. You need an approach that is reasonably balanced IMHO not something that heavily favors one side. .
Workaholics aren't necessarily more productive than people who just do the job and get on with life.
But they frequently are more productive.
I've seen them in action.
I have too.
The fact that "most estimates conclude that the deal had a modest but positive impact on U.S. GDP of less than 0.5 percent" (from your link) is largely irrelevant when most people do not get to see the benefits. Indeed, median American income has been shrinking since the late 1990s (when adjusted for inflation) even while the mean has increased.
The obvious rebuttal is "Compared to what?" There is this mythology that the US's economic conditions of the 1950s and 1960s would continue, if only the US stopped trading with the rest of the world (or at least imposed punitive tariffs on goods and services from the poor parts of the world).
But back in 1950 after the end of the Second World War, aside from the US and a handful of other countries, no one was developed world. Europe was a vast mess and the rest of the world was as poor as it was going to get.
Trade changed that. Trade with the US was a key factor in helping keep western Europe and Japan free of the communist menace. And the US benefited as well with a golden age of expansion in STEM fields and industry.
Since then, we've seen a huge improvement globally. I don't know how some people can rationalize away the signs of growing prosperity (things like road networks where dirt roads existed before, for example). But it's turned out to be quite easy for some to not see the benefits.
And that brings me to your quote. Just because people "don't see the benefits" doesn't mean that the benefits don't exist. I see several really large warning signs from recent history that should encourage us to resist such unthinking protectionism.
First, the US went from benefiting hugely from trade in the 1950s and 1960s to its current state. What changed? Some would say "greed" as if corporations had suddenly invented the idea back then. The obvious answer though is that the rest of the world got a lot better and a lot more competitive with respect to the US.
Second, despite a lot of claims to the contrary, the US continues to enjoy strong labor protections, social safety nets, etc. These just haven't turned out to be very useful when the problem is labor competition with the rest of the world.
Third, while a number of countries have used selective protectionism to build economic powerhouses, labor always sacrifices in those cases.There is no historical example where some country put up tariffs or stronger defenses against competition, gave their labor all sorts of advantages and privileges, and ended up doing better for it than the outside world. If you're behind economically, then labor has to take a haircut.
Fourth, there's a lot of labor or socialism-friendly economic fantasies out there that are treated as fact, such as the model of demand-driven economics (which of course, completely blow off the demand from employers, a big part of real world economies) or Keynesian economics (which is basically used as a political excuse to spend public funds, no adherents bothers to save money when times are good). But where's the evidence that these things actually work? Too much of the time, it's confirmation bias with the thrashing of the moment assumed to have fixed things that would have fixed themselves anyway.
Another sort of fantasy which drives the demand-driven model is the assumption that what we want must be good for the economy. Want basic income? Must be good for the economy. Don't want to compete with darker skinned folk from other countries who work for far less than you do? NAFTA must be bad for the economy. Have large medical bills? Any public system of paying those bills for you, no matter how badly run or how harmful it'll be in the future, there's always someone who thinks it's hot stuff, economically because it paid for a relative's bill. There seems to be this huge unawareness that things we want can be bad for our society. It leads to cargo cult economics where we recall what was wonderful about economies of the past (say having the same job fo
We need to change the way people work : workaholics are as bad as lazy bums, work is becoming more and more a finite resource we need to share ...
That's just stupid. Look at improving business creation and expansion rather than making peoples' work even more worthless.
Having a roof and food should be the right of every citizen, I don't see this as entitlement, more like leveling the playing field for the poor ...
What makes it a right? Where can you exercise this right? And who's going to pay for it?
For me, the enormous problem is simply that once you no longer work for a living, you lose a great deal of power even in the presence of these supposed rights. You're beholden to the provider of the "right". They not you get to decide where you'll live. You get to vote for their political policies or risk loss of your right. And you don't have any options when not if they overextend the nation's finances and promise too much to too many people.
My view is that a basic income can work if a) the payout depends on the health of the society with higher payouts when society is doing well (perhaps a fixed rate based on GDP or income), and b) is coupled with a complete elimination of minimum wage laws.
There is a lot of room between severely limited resources and unlimited resources. Sufficient resources is doable in many cases if we had the will to invest in the future as a society instead of leaving the funding of science to profiteers.
Last I checked as a percentage of GDP (keep in mind that GDP has been increasing for everyone as well over the span of decades), research funding, including public funding, is as high as it's ever been outside of the Second World War (such things as the Manhattan Project). I can't find any support for that, but I do see solid indications that research spending has been going up over the recent past (here and here).
Maybe more money isn't going to fix a problem that wasn't due to level of funding in the first place?
I'm registered Libertarian, though if there was A PARTY THAT WAS REAL HONEST TO GOD REPUBLICAN, I would switch. The fact is, that the GOP is no longer Republican. It has been being destroyed by the Tea* that continues to run out the Republicans calling them all RINOs. Sadly, the TEA* do not have a clue that they have more in common with constitutional or even a nazi fascists party.
What a bizarre thing to write. Take away the Tea Party people and what do you have left? Big business, neo-cons, and social conservatives. And it's been much that way since shortly after the US Civil War (neo-conservativism is relatively new, but the rest has been around for a while). I don't recall your beliefs aligning with any of them, but YMMV.
A good example is plant-based pharmaceuticals; another one is new treatments using old medicines whose patents have expired. In both cases funding is deficient because the private sector won't devote significant funding to something it can't make a killing on.
Your pharmaceuticals market is different from mine. The latter, new treatments for old medicines is a huge market since it has vastly cheaper R&D and testing costs than a brand new drug target would have and they can patent the new use, of course.
As to plant-based pharmaceuticals, we have the enormous herbal medicine market. Regulation not lack of profit is what keeps that pot from boiling.