but there's billionaires out there that are looking forward to that dystopia because they'll be on top. They're powerful. Real powerful. I'm not sure how much we can do against them.
it was bullshit then, it's bullshit now. It's not hard to close the loop holes. We know how. We did it in the 50s and it was a hell of a lot easier to hide money then. We also had a 90% tax bracket and the highest growth in history. Plus there's a limit to what you can raise prices to before people stop buying. Even for food/shelter. And (if you're not afraid of the big bogie man that is Socialism) there's plenty to gov't can do to control prices and encourage positive behavior.
Your source is full of it. It's just more self serving garbage. The CBO is far from untouchable and they've been staffed full of Goldmen Sachs people since the 90s (thanks Clinton).
Being rich isn't about selling things, it's about owning them. Past a certain threshold wealth isn't about nice cars and houses. It's about power. The power to make people do what you want. Do you thick Melania married Trump for his winning personality? The rich might have fewer zeros in their bank accounts but they'll have more of what really matters: control. Control of your access to food, shelter, education and transportation. You'll do as they say or you'll starve in the streets. And if you rebel the ones that don't will gun you down with superior weapons, tactics and training. Just like how a malnourished serf couldn't stand up to a well fed Knight in armor.
Was talking about this with my brother and he brought up the best Upton Sinclare qoute of all time:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
You'll always have footage go missing and cams get shut off because it's part of the system. The public is complacent in the whole thing. So a higher up comes along and tells the techies to make the footage disappear and it does. Period. And we all look the other way when a black guy in a poor neighborhood gets shot and 3-5 officers have a camera malfunction instead of demanding they all get fired for not maintaining their equipment. Hell, even when they do get fired they just move to another precinct...
I'm reminded of long haul truckers. I couldn't figure out how they cheated their books with GPSes and electronic logs. The answer: They only spot check individual logs of individual drivers and they warn the driver being checked before hand. My buddy hated it because he never cheated a log so his driver manager made sure he was always the one to get checked. He eventually gave up the line of work because he couldn't find a way to do it without cheating and he's the paranoid type.
This is the same damn thing. We don't need more tech. We need to use the tech we already have.
First you take away my buttons and give me stupid touch screens (ensuring my phone is useless as an MP3 player on my bike w/o a bluetooth dongle to add back the missing buttons). Now you're even taking those away?
This sorta junk _kinda_ works on expensive phones. But eventually it trickles down to the cheap sub $200 phones I buy and well, doesn't work. Just give me a damn 2 cent button already.
Verizon just announced something like this where it was an introductory rate and they jack it up to $170 or so in year 2. I'm wondering if this is the same. If not I'm paying about $135 for 3 lines (technically 4 but the 4th line is unused) and 3gb/mo so I'd be game.
and quick. Mostly cheap. There were so many recently out of work people who still have cars from when they had jobs that Uber didn't have trouble finding employees.
The reason they might be doomed is they're subsidizing those rides with investment capital. OTOH they might be like Amazon, e.g. allowed by investors to operate at a loss with the expectation of massive profits when they clear up their legal troubles (allowing them to pay much, much less than minimum wage while paying no benefits whatsoever) and finish crushing/buying out any competition.
namely that what they're doing (treating employees as contractors) is patently illegal. It's a minor miracle they haven't been shut down like several other "It's Uber for X" services when the governments demanded they pay minimum wage, benefits and various mandatory insurances.
Uber's legal risk is monumental. I'm not sure if it's luck or connections that have kept them going but you can't just do what Uber's doing because what they're doing is not legal...
and you just got baited into feeding the trolls...
The anti-Trump crowd over hear considers Trump & Mao to be cut from the same cloth. All just a bunch of dictators (in Trump's case a nascent one, at least right now...).
and your guns are useless against a modern military. Don't kid yourself. You and your ar-15 don't stand a chance even if you set it to full auto. Hell, we didn't even win the revolutionary war. France stepped in with the supplies and also tried up England. You need to focus on keeping things from getting to that point. If it ever gets there it'll be too late.
That said, while I'm not opposed to more gun control I understand there are millions of Americans with a strong emotional attachment to guns. Guns are a community for them as well as a symbol of strength. That's not going to change. As a lefty I'll happily drop the gun issue if I could get folks on the right to help fix the systemic problems (poverty, lack of health services, no social safety net) that result in all these mass shootings. Yeah, I still have some issue with the widespread availability of guns (I've know people with temporary depression who've blown their heads off; it's too easy to kill yourself with a gun) but ultimately I'm a progressive and will take the best route to progress.
still pretty good. And still better than if the person has a gun.
As for it 'not being wrong' well, that doesn't make it bullshit. You're side stepping my point, which is that guns make it _too_ easy to kill people. You can do it on a whim. Just point, pull trigger, done. Bullets travel in a span of time you can't even measure without special equipment or techniques.
You're right about the wishful thinking part though. Wishful thinking never gets you _anything_. Including a reduction in gun deaths. It takes action. Australia took action. The banned just about everything and, well, what do you know. Gun deaths plummeted and they haven't had a mass shooting since the ban.
Bans work, but America has a gun culture that means a ban is political suicide. So I'd settle for more root cause work. Social programs to eliminate poverty and address mental illness. But I can't even get those. So we're back to wishful thinking. Thanks. Thanks a lot.
but it does make me question the easy availability of guns. The trouble with guns is they make it easy and oh so quick to make a snap judgement that changes everything. It's a big problem for the suicidal and hell, this guy just basically committed suicide. His life is more or less over. He might not die in prison, but he'll be pushing 60 when he gets out.
your odds of surviving a knife attack are orders of magnitude better than surviving a shooting.
You might think that folks getting shot is a price to pay for the freedom to own fire arms. I'm not gonna bother arguing that point yay or nay (and I wish the left would drop it, it's a losing issue). But the phrase "Guns don't kill people" is verifiable bullshit. It bothers me that a sentiment so obviously wrong can get so much traction with the American people.
and a buddy of mine who's a prolific ebay seller has had dozens. As long as you insure it they pay out within a few weeks (which is better than average for any kind of insurance).
If I ship my kid a $50 dvd and it goes missing I don't care if the post office finds it. I get my money from the insurance and buy another copy. The last thing I want is the post office spending millions of dollars tracking packages full of easily replaceable crap.
It's just standard biz practice. All things being equal if it costs $100 to find something you lost and that something's worth $50 you lose $50 bucks looking for it. Unless it has something beyond it's intrinsic value or it's value is unnaturally high (like it was here) then there's no point. Like I said, I don't care if my kid's DVD goes missing as long as it gets replaced.
Gettos aren't "nice little teapots of dependence" (you're right about the misery part though). They're examples of what systemic poverty does to people.
Katrina was exactly what happens when there isn't an organized response to a large scale disaster. It happened because Bush/Cheney diverted resources meant for disaster preparedness to the war in Iraq (and by extension their own pockets).
Folks don't get depressed by dependency. If they did Paul Ryan (who's family's fortune was made paving roads for the government) would be suicidal. People get depressed by constant set backs in their lives caused by the one step forward, two back that is the high cost of being poor.
I'd like to say you're just somebody who never experienced real hardship in lift by I know better. Even folks who experience hardship soon forget it unless their characters are among the best (FDR comes to mind. Liz Warren & Sanders, Alan Grayson, Robert Reich).
Don't kid yourself. You're not being compassionate or decent. At best you're making yourself feel better and at worst you're twisting the knife in the guts of the poor.
but a large part of any economy is going to be construction, maintenance/repair, cooking, cleaning, etc. Those folks are probably not surfing the web. And I'll remind you the fellow who touched all this off by dying from overwork was a cook in a steak house.
when all those folks in the Data Center get the same idea you have. Most won't be very good at it. A few will. They'll try mighty hard since in most places if you don't work, you don't eat...
is packed with right wing idealogs like Thomas who couldn't give a nun's left bollock (yes, I meant to write that, think about it) about rule of law. And wasn't that my whole point and look I've gone cross eye now >--...
and the judge saw right through it. What worries me is if we keep putting folks like Trump in charge of the Executive and he stacks the courts with folks who will ignore the rule of law. They're already forming a new court to get around the more liberal ones that run out of California...
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but there's billionaires out there that are looking forward to that dystopia because they'll be on top. They're powerful. Real powerful. I'm not sure how much we can do against them.
it was bullshit then, it's bullshit now. It's not hard to close the loop holes. We know how. We did it in the 50s and it was a hell of a lot easier to hide money then. We also had a 90% tax bracket and the highest growth in history. Plus there's a limit to what you can raise prices to before people stop buying. Even for food/shelter. And (if you're not afraid of the big bogie man that is Socialism) there's plenty to gov't can do to control prices and encourage positive behavior.
Your source is full of it. It's just more self serving garbage. The CBO is far from untouchable and they've been staffed full of Goldmen Sachs people since the 90s (thanks Clinton).
Being rich isn't about selling things, it's about owning them. Past a certain threshold wealth isn't about nice cars and houses. It's about power. The power to make people do what you want. Do you thick Melania married Trump for his winning personality? The rich might have fewer zeros in their bank accounts but they'll have more of what really matters: control. Control of your access to food, shelter, education and transportation. You'll do as they say or you'll starve in the streets. And if you rebel the ones that don't will gun you down with superior weapons, tactics and training. Just like how a malnourished serf couldn't stand up to a well fed Knight in armor.
Was talking about this with my brother and he brought up the best Upton Sinclare qoute of all time:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
You'll always have footage go missing and cams get shut off because it's part of the system. The public is complacent in the whole thing. So a higher up comes along and tells the techies to make the footage disappear and it does. Period. And we all look the other way when a black guy in a poor neighborhood gets shot and 3-5 officers have a camera malfunction instead of demanding they all get fired for not maintaining their equipment. Hell, even when they do get fired they just move to another precinct...
I'm reminded of long haul truckers. I couldn't figure out how they cheated their books with GPSes and electronic logs. The answer: They only spot check individual logs of individual drivers and they warn the driver being checked before hand. My buddy hated it because he never cheated a log so his driver manager made sure he was always the one to get checked. He eventually gave up the line of work because he couldn't find a way to do it without cheating and he's the paranoid type.
This is the same damn thing. We don't need more tech. We need to use the tech we already have.
if that were true, how would they have gotten the patents in the first place?
before your next eye exam? Ok, maybe not in the UK, be seriously. I don't have to prove I can still drive until I'm in my mid 60s...
eating subway. Lots of folks can't handle processed soy protein.
My kid's in college. Can she use this in another city/state than me or is it gonna pop up and say "Sorry, no way Jose".
First you take away my buttons and give me stupid touch screens (ensuring my phone is useless as an MP3 player on my bike w/o a bluetooth dongle to add back the missing buttons). Now you're even taking those away?
This sorta junk _kinda_ works on expensive phones. But eventually it trickles down to the cheap sub $200 phones I buy and well, doesn't work. Just give me a damn 2 cent button already.
Verizon just announced something like this where it was an introductory rate and they jack it up to $170 or so in year 2. I'm wondering if this is the same. If not I'm paying about $135 for 3 lines (technically 4 but the 4th line is unused) and 3gb/mo so I'd be game.
and quick. Mostly cheap. There were so many recently out of work people who still have cars from when they had jobs that Uber didn't have trouble finding employees.
The reason they might be doomed is they're subsidizing those rides with investment capital. OTOH they might be like Amazon, e.g. allowed by investors to operate at a loss with the expectation of massive profits when they clear up their legal troubles (allowing them to pay much, much less than minimum wage while paying no benefits whatsoever) and finish crushing/buying out any competition.
namely that what they're doing (treating employees as contractors) is patently illegal. It's a minor miracle they haven't been shut down like several other "It's Uber for X" services when the governments demanded they pay minimum wage, benefits and various mandatory insurances.
Uber's legal risk is monumental. I'm not sure if it's luck or connections that have kept them going but you can't just do what Uber's doing because what they're doing is not legal...
and you just got baited into feeding the trolls...
The anti-Trump crowd over hear considers Trump & Mao to be cut from the same cloth. All just a bunch of dictators (in Trump's case a nascent one, at least right now...).
and your guns are useless against a modern military. Don't kid yourself. You and your ar-15 don't stand a chance even if you set it to full auto. Hell, we didn't even win the revolutionary war. France stepped in with the supplies and also tried up England. You need to focus on keeping things from getting to that point. If it ever gets there it'll be too late.
That said, while I'm not opposed to more gun control I understand there are millions of Americans with a strong emotional attachment to guns. Guns are a community for them as well as a symbol of strength. That's not going to change. As a lefty I'll happily drop the gun issue if I could get folks on the right to help fix the systemic problems (poverty, lack of health services, no social safety net) that result in all these mass shootings. Yeah, I still have some issue with the widespread availability of guns (I've know people with temporary depression who've blown their heads off; it's too easy to kill yourself with a gun) but ultimately I'm a progressive and will take the best route to progress.
sorry, meant to write "Doesn't mean it's not bullshit". Long night and I'm feeding trolls...
still pretty good. And still better than if the person has a gun.
As for it 'not being wrong' well, that doesn't make it bullshit. You're side stepping my point, which is that guns make it _too_ easy to kill people. You can do it on a whim. Just point, pull trigger, done. Bullets travel in a span of time you can't even measure without special equipment or techniques.
You're right about the wishful thinking part though. Wishful thinking never gets you _anything_. Including a reduction in gun deaths. It takes action. Australia took action. The banned just about everything and, well, what do you know. Gun deaths plummeted and they haven't had a mass shooting since the ban.
Bans work, but America has a gun culture that means a ban is political suicide. So I'd settle for more root cause work. Social programs to eliminate poverty and address mental illness. But I can't even get those. So we're back to wishful thinking. Thanks. Thanks a lot.
but it does make me question the easy availability of guns. The trouble with guns is they make it easy and oh so quick to make a snap judgement that changes everything. It's a big problem for the suicidal and hell, this guy just basically committed suicide. His life is more or less over. He might not die in prison, but he'll be pushing 60 when he gets out.
your odds of surviving a knife attack are orders of magnitude better than surviving a shooting.
You might think that folks getting shot is a price to pay for the freedom to own fire arms. I'm not gonna bother arguing that point yay or nay (and I wish the left would drop it, it's a losing issue). But the phrase "Guns don't kill people" is verifiable bullshit. It bothers me that a sentiment so obviously wrong can get so much traction with the American people.
and a buddy of mine who's a prolific ebay seller has had dozens. As long as you insure it they pay out within a few weeks (which is better than average for any kind of insurance).
If I ship my kid a $50 dvd and it goes missing I don't care if the post office finds it. I get my money from the insurance and buy another copy. The last thing I want is the post office spending millions of dollars tracking packages full of easily replaceable crap.
It's just standard biz practice. All things being equal if it costs $100 to find something you lost and that something's worth $50 you lose $50 bucks looking for it. Unless it has something beyond it's intrinsic value or it's value is unnaturally high (like it was here) then there's no point. Like I said, I don't care if my kid's DVD goes missing as long as it gets replaced.
talking about.
Gettos aren't "nice little teapots of dependence" (you're right about the misery part though). They're examples of what systemic poverty does to people.
Katrina was exactly what happens when there isn't an organized response to a large scale disaster. It happened because Bush/Cheney diverted resources meant for disaster preparedness to the war in Iraq (and by extension their own pockets).
Folks don't get depressed by dependency. If they did Paul Ryan (who's family's fortune was made paving roads for the government) would be suicidal. People get depressed by constant set backs in their lives caused by the one step forward, two back that is the high cost of being poor.
I'd like to say you're just somebody who never experienced real hardship in lift by I know better. Even folks who experience hardship soon forget it unless their characters are among the best (FDR comes to mind. Liz Warren & Sanders, Alan Grayson, Robert Reich).
Don't kid yourself. You're not being compassionate or decent. At best you're making yourself feel better and at worst you're twisting the knife in the guts of the poor.
but a large part of any economy is going to be construction, maintenance/repair, cooking, cleaning, etc. Those folks are probably not surfing the web. And I'll remind you the fellow who touched all this off by dying from overwork was a cook in a steak house.
when all those folks in the Data Center get the same idea you have. Most won't be very good at it. A few will. They'll try mighty hard since in most places if you don't work, you don't eat...
'nuff said.
is packed with right wing idealogs like Thomas who couldn't give a nun's left bollock (yes, I meant to write that, think about it) about rule of law. And wasn't that my whole point and look I've gone cross eye now >--...
and the judge saw right through it. What worries me is if we keep putting folks like Trump in charge of the Executive and he stacks the courts with folks who will ignore the rule of law. They're already forming a new court to get around the more liberal ones that run out of California...