Forgive me if this sounds rude, but if you'd missed the point by any wider margin you might have gone full circle and hit it:P (Stay with me on this, I'm going somewhere).
First off, you're not giving people money to write, you're giving them money to provide a base-line standard of living, which in turn gives them the opportunity to write (or go to law school, or invent cold fusion, or anyone of a million things better than working 60 hours a week at McDonald's). The point of basic income isn't to replace the rewards for a useful job. It's to ensure that the struggle for existence doesn't snuff out our best and brightest. You know, we sent physicists to the trenches in WWI, right?
And to paraphrase, The problem with Capitalism is it's broken. It can't deal with a society where there's only 10 or 20 hours of work a week to go around except for maybe a top 5% of creators. Most people, if you ask them, agree that we're not going to let that other 95% die in the gutter. So, to ask a serious question: what do you propose for a solution that ISN'T socialism? I've got a lot of right wing friends who, when confronted with this reality either come up with something crazy (like returning to an agrarian society ala the Amish) or end up with Socialism is everything but name (e.g., missing the point by so wide a margin they go full circle and hit it).
Not exactly. The idea with basic income is that you're guaranteed enough money to be comfortable (food, shelter, medical care). This frees you up to take risks (like writing for a living), because you're not risking starvation if you spend a few years writing full time. You see some of this in Canada, where socialized medicine has allowed several writers to work part time for enough to support themselves. In American you can't do that because part timers don't get medical benefits....
To contrast the Universities, you can't get funding unless you've got a proven track record; e.g. it's already your full time job (I'm aware there are exceptions, they are exceptions nonetheless). You can't generally transition from, say, full time accountant to full time writer that way. They won't give you the funding because, hey, you're an accountant, not a writer. Now, get a few successful books under your belt and you'll get grants, but we're not talking about the lucky few that manage to make it; we're talking about the thousands that didn't...
Bu.. Bu.. Socialism! Seriously, good luck with that. I'd love to have it, and maybe it would work in Europe, but Americans have a deeply ingrained notion that if you didn't 'work' for it, it's not yours (funny how that goes out the window when we're talking inheritance & trust funds, but double think's strong in this country...).
You're right it's a small number (about 1/20th of a percent); that's small enough to chalk up to regular attrition. I think the point is it happened in one day. The stat we'd want to see is average transfers in a day. That's how you'd know if this was BAU or something to watch. The article does suggest this looks like an accelerating trend though.
He probably just hasn't used it in a while. The first several releases really were unusable. I've got a friend who uses it regularity on Windows. It works find now, and has some snazzy graphics to boot. I'm still a dyed in the wool Firefox users (I'm an add-on author for Pete's sake), but for what it's worth Safari is faster than Firefox, not that it matters much on modern hardware.
that people skilled in math tend to retain those skills in old age? Same goes for any science (since you can't get away from Math if you're doing real science; heck, even social science needs complex statistical analysis).
You still need a warrant if the surveillance is directed at an individual. And if it's just patrolling, how is that any different than a cop walking his beat?
the trouble is because they're smaller people want to pay less. Odd thing really, since it used to be the other way around:). But then again there's also the perception of less functionality. Whatever. But I think it was Sony that made the point that netbooks are bad for the industry. They drive down the value / price and profit margin of regular laptops. Dell's big enough they compete with themselves. My guess would be they were finding that cheap netbooks were cannibalizing the sale of more expensive laptops. Especially the high end ones with longer battery life...
I'd agree with you if Marriage was simply a religious our thought construct without any legal or financial ramifications. But that's not the case. Marriage is defined in our legal system as a certain type of contract between two individuals. There are many practical effects to Marriage; insurance, divorce proceedings, child visitation rights, etc. The argument goes that the Gays can have something like Marriage but that's not Marriage. The trouble with that is that in law small differences in wording make big differences. If you give them Marriage w/o the legal effect it's not Marriage. If you pass a law that says Gay unions are just like Marriage, well, you've just legalized Gay Marriage.
What defines 'Gay' doesn't matter. What matters is that two consenting adults are allowed to enter into a free contract that is recognized as having certain legal advantages and obligations; and are allowed to do so so long as positive harm to society cannot be show. This is not a fundamental human condition; it's just requiring that the law apply equally to all.
Now, if you're argument is based on the fact that homosexual Marriage is inherently harmful to society, then you've got something there. Your freedom ends where other people's freedom begins. We don't let cousins marry because their offspring would have deformities due to inbreeding. There is positive harm to society and the child by allowing that. We also do not allow Polygamy, because allowing one man to monopolize the pool of available women creates a dangerously unstable society (e.g. lots of men with no prospects for a mate running around angry and violent). I don't want to start of this debate, I'm just trying to point out that if you're a libertarian you need a different argument against homosexual Marriage besides 'State's rights'.
Right, but certain laws are not legal in any state because they violate what we consider core tenets of a just society. Freedom of speech and the right to bear arms are the Republican's favorites. Freedom from discrimination is the Dems. Those are core ideological concepts for how a just society is governed. What the grandparent was getting at is that Ron Paul espouses a core ideology that is built around personal freedom, but refuses to back that up with policy. He can still be a constitutionalist and be consistent with this ideology. All he has to do is start lobbying for an amendment to make gay marriage a right. But he's not doing that, and so his position is ideologically inconsistent.
that Ron Paul's being put forward as the candidate for personal freedom, but that his stance on several issues isn't consistent with the ideology of personal freedom so long as you're not infringing on others. If personal freedom is a core tenet of his ideology it stands to reason he would apply it at a Federal level; because it's a basic principle he would found government on. You wouldn't leave such things up to the States, any more than you would leave them up to individual counties. e.g. If you start breaking down your core principles of governing and saying that you can leave them up to a smaller body of gov't (States instead of Federal), where does it end? Couldn't separate laws apply depending on what part of the city you live in? But even the code of Hammurabi required the law apply equally to everyone.
So to summarize: If you can't count on Ron Paul to apply what he touts as his basic principles of gov't at the national level, then what business does he have running the national gov't?
what good is knowing about it if you can't do anything about it? Congress has an approval rate of 9%, and they still get elected. You're completely missing the point with your suggestion, which is that these people are our ruling class. You are not free. They own you.
The correct solution is to only allow individuals to donate, and then cap the donations at a reasonable amount. If everyone has the same opportunity to express your view with money, then you have real free speech. Also, you only get to donate to an election you can vote in. No donations if you can't legally vote. Corporations can't vote, so they don't get to donate. Period. Problem solved.
since the definition of XSS is ridiculously broad. It took me a while to wrap my head around it when a was starting out because when you're looking up how to avoid XSS attacks on your page you come across some books that talk about preventing code injection on your forums and others talking about code running the the wrong security context.
for how much removed they are from the system. The owners that is, not necessarily the managers, but the owners set the policies and tones. Adam Smith lived in a time when it was safe to assume the capitalists would live near the means of production and thus suffer the consequences of their actions. He didn't see satellite communications coming. For what it's worth Karl Marx talked about this; e.g. how capital owners would be insulated by pitting labor in one economy against another; but all anyone can remember about him is that a bunch of dictatorships borrowed his books for rhetoric...
and realized how silly it was, since it sounds like I'm contradicting myself. What I mean is, instead of trying to introduce a programmer to HTML5 (which the Internet does all by itself), introduce people to programming with HTML5 + JavaScript, especially kids. The hard part about learning programming is it can be weeks until you're doing anything really cool. With HTML, you can sorta cut to the case. I'd like to see beginning programming taught more as problem solving with logic then syntax. That's sorta been the goal since basic, but I don't think we've ever really realized it.
there's tonnes of great tutorials online for the major new HTML5 stuff. OTOH, I'd like to see some programming books for HTML5/JavaScript that are bent towards beginners. You can do a lot of cool stuff quick with HTML5 that takes weeks to learn with Java (or months with C/C++).
Nowadays very little of the top 1%'s money is what you and I think of as 'income'. Most of their wealth comes from investments with either low taxes or shifted off shore. When they need actual money, they use a very simple scheme: they borrow at below market (remember that 7.7 trillion they just got), skim whatever they need off the top and then use the rest to buy enough treasury bonds and/or misc investments to pay the loan back w/o cost. If this sounds too complicated a scheme to work, you've got to remember these are people without a real job. The only thing they do is shift money around for their own personal benefit. Parasites really.
Anyway, The reason the bottom 99%'s income tax has dropped is because we've just plain got less to take. There are more and more people who earn so little they don't pay income tax. That said, they pay a LOT of other taxes. Warren Buffet has remarked more than once that, as a percentage of his (real) income, his secretary pays more than him.
Now, 10 years go by. He's still earning 23K/year. But it costs twice as much to put gas in his 10 year old car, his rent's up 50%, He pays 50% more for groceries and utilities are up 20%. He goes to his boss for a raise. But his boss can't afford that cause he needs all that money to create jobs. Never mind that his boss is sitting on 4 trillion in assets and he's running the factory with 50% less workers thanks to automation. So now Sam
earns $23K/year
spends $36K/year
and he's falling further and further behind. He'd like to go get a better job, but he gave the best years of his life to this company, and he's past his prime. Nobody'll hire him...
I don't want to loan uncle Sam more money. I want him to earn a Living Wage.
You see, the trouble with your narrative is it's too simple. It sounds great, because it's so simple, but that's not really what's going on in the American economy.
Slashdot Mirror
Forgive me if this sounds rude, but if you'd missed the point by any wider margin you might have gone full circle and hit it :P (Stay with me on this, I'm going somewhere).
First off, you're not giving people money to write, you're giving them money to provide a base-line standard of living, which in turn gives them the opportunity to write (or go to law school, or invent cold fusion, or anyone of a million things better than working 60 hours a week at McDonald's). The point of basic income isn't to replace the rewards for a useful job. It's to ensure that the struggle for existence doesn't snuff out our best and brightest. You know, we sent physicists to the trenches in WWI, right?
And to paraphrase, The problem with Capitalism is it's broken. It can't deal with a society where there's only 10 or 20 hours of work a week to go around except for maybe a top 5% of creators. Most people, if you ask them, agree that we're not going to let that other 95% die in the gutter. So, to ask a serious question: what do you propose for a solution that ISN'T socialism? I've got a lot of right wing friends who, when confronted with this reality either come up with something crazy (like returning to an agrarian society ala the Amish) or end up with Socialism is everything but name (e.g., missing the point by so wide a margin they go full circle and hit it).
Not exactly. The idea with basic income is that you're guaranteed enough money to be comfortable (food, shelter, medical care). This frees you up to take risks (like writing for a living), because you're not risking starvation if you spend a few years writing full time. You see some of this in Canada, where socialized medicine has allowed several writers to work part time for enough to support themselves. In American you can't do that because part timers don't get medical benefits....
To contrast the Universities, you can't get funding unless you've got a proven track record; e.g. it's already your full time job (I'm aware there are exceptions, they are exceptions nonetheless). You can't generally transition from, say, full time accountant to full time writer that way. They won't give you the funding because, hey, you're an accountant, not a writer. Now, get a few successful books under your belt and you'll get grants, but we're not talking about the lucky few that manage to make it; we're talking about the thousands that didn't...
most Americans are perfectly willing to throw away everything for the sake of that non-existent potential :(... Witness our tax system.
Bu.. Bu.. Socialism! Seriously, good luck with that. I'd love to have it, and maybe it would work in Europe, but Americans have a deeply ingrained notion that if you didn't 'work' for it, it's not yours (funny how that goes out the window when we're talking inheritance & trust funds, but double think's strong in this country...).
You're right it's a small number (about 1/20th of a percent); that's small enough to chalk up to regular attrition. I think the point is it happened in one day. The stat we'd want to see is average transfers in a day. That's how you'd know if this was BAU or something to watch. The article does suggest this looks like an accelerating trend though.
He probably just hasn't used it in a while. The first several releases really were unusable. I've got a friend who uses it regularity on Windows. It works find now, and has some snazzy graphics to boot. I'm still a dyed in the wool Firefox users (I'm an add-on author for Pete's sake), but for what it's worth Safari is faster than Firefox, not that it matters much on modern hardware.
Not everyone knows what they want in life. One man's greasy sales rep is another man's consultant.
It was ROT26.
that people skilled in math tend to retain those skills in old age? Same goes for any science (since you can't get away from Math if you're doing real science; heck, even social science needs complex statistical analysis).
You still need a warrant if the surveillance is directed at an individual. And if it's just patrolling, how is that any different than a cop walking his beat?
the trouble is because they're smaller people want to pay less. Odd thing really, since it used to be the other way around :). But then again there's also the perception of less functionality. Whatever. But I think it was Sony that made the point that netbooks are bad for the industry. They drive down the value / price and profit margin of regular laptops. Dell's big enough they compete with themselves. My guess would be they were finding that cheap netbooks were cannibalizing the sale of more expensive laptops. Especially the high end ones with longer battery life...
I'd agree with you if Marriage was simply a religious our thought construct without any legal or financial ramifications. But that's not the case. Marriage is defined in our legal system as a certain type of contract between two individuals. There are many practical effects to Marriage; insurance, divorce proceedings, child visitation rights, etc. The argument goes that the Gays can have something like Marriage but that's not Marriage. The trouble with that is that in law small differences in wording make big differences. If you give them Marriage w/o the legal effect it's not Marriage. If you pass a law that says Gay unions are just like Marriage, well, you've just legalized Gay Marriage.
What defines 'Gay' doesn't matter. What matters is that two consenting adults are allowed to enter into a free contract that is recognized as having certain legal advantages and obligations; and are allowed to do so so long as positive harm to society cannot be show. This is not a fundamental human condition; it's just requiring that the law apply equally to all.
Now, if you're argument is based on the fact that homosexual Marriage is inherently harmful to society, then you've got something there. Your freedom ends where other people's freedom begins. We don't let cousins marry because their offspring would have deformities due to inbreeding. There is positive harm to society and the child by allowing that. We also do not allow Polygamy, because allowing one man to monopolize the pool of available women creates a dangerously unstable society (e.g. lots of men with no prospects for a mate running around angry and violent). I don't want to start of this debate, I'm just trying to point out that if you're a libertarian you need a different argument against homosexual Marriage besides 'State's rights'.
Right, but certain laws are not legal in any state because they violate what we consider core tenets of a just society. Freedom of speech and the right to bear arms are the Republican's favorites. Freedom from discrimination is the Dems. Those are core ideological concepts for how a just society is governed. What the grandparent was getting at is that Ron Paul espouses a core ideology that is built around personal freedom, but refuses to back that up with policy. He can still be a constitutionalist and be consistent with this ideology. All he has to do is start lobbying for an amendment to make gay marriage a right. But he's not doing that, and so his position is ideologically inconsistent.
that Ron Paul's being put forward as the candidate for personal freedom, but that his stance on several issues isn't consistent with the ideology of personal freedom so long as you're not infringing on others. If personal freedom is a core tenet of his ideology it stands to reason he would apply it at a Federal level; because it's a basic principle he would found government on. You wouldn't leave such things up to the States, any more than you would leave them up to individual counties. e.g. If you start breaking down your core principles of governing and saying that you can leave them up to a smaller body of gov't (States instead of Federal), where does it end? Couldn't separate laws apply depending on what part of the city you live in? But even the code of Hammurabi required the law apply equally to everyone.
So to summarize: If you can't count on Ron Paul to apply what he touts as his basic principles of gov't at the national level, then what business does he have running the national gov't?
Sounds like a cool way to write a Sci-Fi story.
what good is knowing about it if you can't do anything about it? Congress has an approval rate of 9%, and they still get elected. You're completely missing the point with your suggestion, which is that these people are our ruling class. You are not free. They own you.
The correct solution is to only allow individuals to donate, and then cap the donations at a reasonable amount. If everyone has the same opportunity to express your view with money, then you have real free speech. Also, you only get to donate to an election you can vote in. No donations if you can't legally vote. Corporations can't vote, so they don't get to donate. Period. Problem solved.
with the same set of motor skills you annotate a book...
and the only cure is More Programming Languages!
since the definition of XSS is ridiculously broad. It took me a while to wrap my head around it when a was starting out because when you're looking up how to avoid XSS attacks on your page you come across some books that talk about preventing code injection on your forums and others talking about code running the the wrong security context.
for how much removed they are from the system. The owners that is, not necessarily the managers, but the owners set the policies and tones. Adam Smith lived in a time when it was safe to assume the capitalists would live near the means of production and thus suffer the consequences of their actions. He didn't see satellite communications coming. For what it's worth Karl Marx talked about this; e.g. how capital owners would be insulated by pitting labor in one economy against another; but all anyone can remember about him is that a bunch of dictatorships borrowed his books for rhetoric...
and realized how silly it was, since it sounds like I'm contradicting myself. What I mean is, instead of trying to introduce a programmer to HTML5 (which the Internet does all by itself), introduce people to programming with HTML5 + JavaScript, especially kids. The hard part about learning programming is it can be weeks until you're doing anything really cool. With HTML, you can sorta cut to the case. I'd like to see beginning programming taught more as problem solving with logic then syntax. That's sorta been the goal since basic, but I don't think we've ever really realized it.
there's tonnes of great tutorials online for the major new HTML5 stuff. OTOH, I'd like to see some programming books for HTML5/JavaScript that are bent towards beginners. You can do a lot of cool stuff quick with HTML5 that takes weeks to learn with Java (or months with C/C++).
Nowadays very little of the top 1%'s money is what you and I think of as 'income'. Most of their wealth comes from investments with either low taxes or shifted off shore. When they need actual money, they use a very simple scheme: they borrow at below market (remember that 7.7 trillion they just got), skim whatever they need off the top and then use the rest to buy enough treasury bonds and/or misc investments to pay the loan back w/o cost. If this sounds too complicated a scheme to work, you've got to remember these are people without a real job. The only thing they do is shift money around for their own personal benefit. Parasites really.
Anyway, The reason the bottom 99%'s income tax has dropped is because we've just plain got less to take. There are more and more people who earn so little they don't pay income tax. That said, they pay a LOT of other taxes. Warren Buffet has remarked more than once that, as a percentage of his (real) income, his secretary pays more than him.
Just because this nonsense got modded 5+
Ok, same analogy
Look at my uncle Sam.
He earns $23K/year
He spends $23K/year
He's doing just fine.
Now, 10 years go by. He's still earning 23K/year. But it costs twice as much to put gas in his 10 year old car, his rent's up 50%, He pays 50% more for groceries and utilities are up 20%. He goes to his boss for a raise. But his boss can't afford that cause he needs all that money to create jobs. Never mind that his boss is sitting on 4 trillion in assets and he's running the factory with 50% less workers thanks to automation. So now Sam
earns $23K/year
spends $36K/year
and he's falling further and further behind. He'd like to go get a better job, but he gave the best years of his life to this company, and he's past his prime. Nobody'll hire him...
I don't want to loan uncle Sam more money. I want him to earn a Living Wage.
You see, the trouble with your narrative is it's too simple. It sounds great, because it's so simple, but that's not really what's going on in the American economy.
I wonder if you could download / install apps that way. There are some cool Android games out there, but I don't have an Android.