and everything to do with a small number of scientists being allowed to be scientists. Life is better because we've increased food production and the stability of the food supply and logistics chain. That's not economic freedom that did that, it's science.
Now's the time to decide if we want to keep progressing though. There's a growing movement who sees a world without struggle and starvation as a threat. That's because if nobody's poor then nobody's rich. If you can't control people's access to food, shelter & healthcare then you lose a massive amount of power. Nobody's going to break their backs building pyramids or force their neighbors to at gunpoint for a slightly nicer car. Well, not in the numbers you need to build pyramids (or the 2018 equivalent that seems to be space travel).
she'd just be replaced. As long as we let a small number of people oppress us like that they'll always be plenty of them to do the oppressing. It's not that people are so awful that what she did is the norm. But since it's such a small number of people being allowed to wield so much power you don't need very many bad actors to screw the whole thing up.
Also, don't use violence. The right wing is much, much better at it since they emphasize authoritarianism in their philosophy which leads to better foot soldiers. You'll never win on violence. At best you'll get your ass kicked and at worst you'll just flip and become what you hate, with only the rhetoric left from your left wing days but none of the actions or systems. Like the Soviets and the Chinese and the North Koreans did.
and that women with enough food have healthier, smarter babies. Sex Ed and birth control are also part of it anywhere that Evangelicals don't stop it. The projects were doing quite well until the funding for the jobs programs got pulled by Reagan. Homelessness was temporary thing in decline until he shut down the mental hospitals. Nixon's war on drugs didn't help either.
See, what we have here is the result of putting people who don't believe in government (the GOP) in charge of government. It's like a vegan running a barbecue. It's not gonna end well for anybody.
and his hyperbole doesn't exactly help. But you're strawmaning. The article isn't predicting no ice in the Arctic, it's saying the same thing every scientific report does: global temps are rising by a few degrees and that will have far reaching impacts on weather, droughts and our ability to grow food.
it's got nothing to do with laziness. Most folks just aren't that capable. That was fine when we had farm jobs and later factory jobs. We've done away with most of those, and we're starting to see the effect.
That said, folks can and will amuse themselves. And given birth control they won't even breed out of control. Heck, give the birth control for free and start sex ed early and you'll have trouble getting them to have enough people to sustain a population. People breeded a lot because they needed farm hands. Take that need away and they'll control themselves.
You're spouting puritanical nonsense that got jammed in your skull when you were too young to have mental defenses against it. Look around the world at how people behave when they're under constant pressure. Poor people make consistently worse decisions and mistakes. Pressure doesn't make diamonds, it makes garbage more compact.
it would change society drastically. You could live where ever. Right now people go where the jobs are. I'm in a major city and I hate it. I'd much rather live in something about 1/3 the size where I am now. I don't care for night life, don't like traveling and hate traffic. But I'm stuck here because this is where the jobs are and I need money.
Also, lots of folks don't _want_ the poor to have options. I worked for a fast food joint in the 90s and the owner had figured out one of her managers' husband was using the insurance for life saving meds. This was before Obamacare did away with pre-existing condition denials so she was completely trapped at that job. Literally a death sentence for her husband if she ever left. As soon as the owner found out she jacked the manager's hours up to 60+/week (salaried of course). This went on until her husband eventually succumbed to his illness and she quit soon after.
The ruling class are well aware of the value of desperation and happy to exploit it.
because they're recently made homeless and are still sane enough to use a smart phone. If anything it's scarier to see somebody like that. It means people who traditionally didn't end up homeless are. There's an entire new class of people who are homeless in short spurts. 6-8 months, then they land a job and hold an apartment until something blows up in their face, then it's back to being homeless...
As for the AEI, they're a right wing think tank. Take anything they said with a block of salt suitable for cows. Yes, the upper middle class is growing, but not because of upward mobility. It's because in the current economy it's winner take all. Depending on how you run the numbers 60-80% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck (depends on if you run it as "no money", "$400 bucks to their name" or "under $1000 to their name"). Wealth is concentrating at the top. So you've got 20% of the population with basically everything, 1% with almost everything and.1% with half of everything.
This will end in one of a few ways. Either a new dark age of conservativism where the ruling class clamp down on change to maintain the status quo or another round of nasty wars when the desperate get organized by a dictator into an angry mob. That's just how these things go. Basic income and other forms of socialism are pretty much the only way out of that (well, outside of mass extinction, which thanks to climate change is on the table...).
I've been seeing this nonsense a lot lately. The right wing claim that socialism and fascism are the same thing, make a few snide comments about Venezuela (but skip over the Soviet Union since they're friends with Putin) and use their media apparatus (Fox News, CNN, even MSNBC and Politico have gotten into the act) to hammer the point home .
I keep saying this, but this is all a classic tactic devised by the Soviets and perfected by Karl Rove during the Reagan years; to wit: Whatever faults you yourself have your relentlessly accuse the other side of. So we have a GOP president who is the defacto head of the American right wing and praised Chinese President Xi for seizing power for life, we have a GOP that let the water situation in Flint, Mi happen to save a buck, and we've got the right wing to thank for our $600 billion/yr Military Industrial Complex and somehow it's the folks who want to give people healthcare that are the real oppressors....
I wish I knew what to do about it. Talk radio's a major problem. You've got millions of people who get a 60-90 minute dose of propaganda everyday. I don't know how to counter that. I'd say more education, but the right wing's figured that one out too.
On the plus side I come from a short lived family and probably got 15-20 years left tops. Less if this stress gets any worse...
that's why everything has that "flat" design. It's easy to do in CSS, which saves on bandwidth. Small sites don't care about an extra.5k of bandwidth, but they follow in the footsteps of bigger sites, so the trend spread.
So no, it wasn't psychologist that gave you buttons you can't tell are buttons. You can thank your friendly neighborhood bean counter for that.
with a butter knife since you wouldn't even need violence to stop the dog. You could literally just ignore the critter. Like you do when a crazy homeless person accosts you on the street.
It's worth pointing out because there are people who actually argue that America needs to spend $600 billion a year to defend itself from Russia, Iran and North Korea. One state that drags it's tanks home by horse at the end of wars, one that can barely feed it's people and another that can't.
Psychology majors often find employment in marketing, social engineering/networking, project management, politics, lobbying and other jobs were spending 4-8 years learning how to push somebody's buttons pays off. Many of them do a find job of manipulating techies into working long hours for low pay.
Mozilla is hurting because browsers are incredibly complex beasts and they don't have nearly as much money as they used to. As a techy you'd think you'd know this.
reserves. And we have more farm land than anyone. And two weak neighbors we can push around. And I know I shouldn't feed the trolls, but damn I'm sick of this right wing Rush Limbaugh bullshit showing up everywhere.
that's a very small part. History and Literature are the vast majority. We could do with people that knew history better, given what's happened in the last few elections or the pointless wars we keep getting dragged into for no good reason...
see here. And I doubt it went away in the 90s, but like how the US passed laws to stop racial profiling in loan applications the Japanese gov't appears to have cracked down on this particular form of discrimination.
the Netherlands is doing exactly what I proposed and doing just fine. Are they just wealthy than us? Better with money?
Also, as for Austerity, go ask Kansas how that's working out for them.
You're right about one thing, the rich will, given a chance, pit us against each other in a race to the bottom. That's why it has to be done at a national level. Europe realized that, and it's why they formed the EU. Britain's aristocracy also realized that, and it's why they spent a fortune getting their people to vote for Brexit.
single payer healthcare with medical services and bringing back mental institutions. Also legalize drugs, all drugs, and treat hard drug addiction as a medical issue like they do in the Netherlands. Finally do a federal housing guarantee. Based on the number of vacant properties homelessness shouldn't exist.
Seriously folks, we know damn well what the solution to this problem is. Of couse, while doing the above works it would also cost a _hell_ of a lot more than the paltry sums being tossed around and wouldn't boost anybody's ego...
Not Registering to vote does not prevent you from being called to Jury duty. In some states (notably Red ones) it does increase the likelihood you will be called. This is on purpose. It is another form of voter suppression.
To be clear I don't think you're the one lying, but rather you're the one being lied to.
The benefits from eliminating voter suppression outweigh the occasional ill informed voter. the ruling class will mobilize ill informed voters. I remember a commercial against net metering (the practice where if your solar rig puts power back in the grid the power company pays you for it). The power co didn't want to pay for it, so they got a law on the ballots by tricking folks into signing a dubious petition. That done they had to get it passed, but people overwhelmingly supported Net Metering. What to do?
So they ran these ads. There was a bunch of old people sitting around and talking about something _scary_. Not once did anyone say what the scary thing was. At the end there was an impassioned plea to vote yes on prop such and such. They ran it in an off election when the only old folks were voting. It passed in a land slide.
Those are the kinds of voters we get when we pick and choose who votes. You get voters that the ruling class has picked. They're not informed, they're what most call "useful idiots"...
film making has been streamlined and standardized. The documentary on Star War's EP 4's Special effects was cool because of all the tricks they had to do to make it work. Nowadays it's just "We used CG" and call it a day. Logistics are a lot better so you don't get stories like when Harrison Ford got sick and just shot the guy in Raiders to skip the fight scene.
Maybe it's better for indie films though. I don't want a ton of movies anymore. And I'm not saying it's a bad thing that movie making isn't a huge mess anymore (there are other reasons why modern movies kinda stink, e.g. having to cater to an international audience and water everything down). But it just means the commentary isn't often a good story in and of itself...
Breaking and entering to get dirt on your political rival. And no, "everybody did it" is not an excuse. Nixon had a pretty crazy disregard for the rule of law, going so far as to kick off the Drug War in order to crack down on the left wing because he knew they smoked pot. That's not a conspiracy theory, his own people came out later, admitted it and apologized for it.
I'd call this a hit piece except Google gets along just fine with the Republican majority. They supported the last few Supreme Court Nominees (albeit on the sly via various PACs) and were happy to take the tax cut.
What this is really is enemy creation. Racism is winding down as an effective vehicle for making bogymen. But any good ruling class needs a way to divide the working class. Instead of Black/White they're working on Technocrat/Blue Collar as the next point of division.
This is how the Japanese created their divides to keep the working class from organizing, BTW. They declared some professions as "bad" (unclean ones, like butcher and undertaker) and kept books of who was who based on family names. That's how you create classes without racial divides.
What annoys me is we see this pattern over and over again. The Japanese, India Caste systems, American Racial Slavery, hell the Canadians have been caught doing it with Eskimos (South Park made fun of it). You'd think the working class would catch on to the trick and stop being fooled but so far, no dice...
once again, this is just good 'ole fashion voter suppression.
For my money I want to see voting made mandatory, like Jury Duty. That would be the best way to end voter suppression. Also move voting to Saturday or Sunday and/or make it a national holiday with mandatory pay. Oh, and I don't care if you're convicted of a crime or even currently in prison. _Everyone_ gets to vote. If America has so many Ax Murders and child molesters they can swing an election maybe we should fix that first before worrying about who gets to vote...
Of course, our ruling class isn't going to allow that. Sad thing is there's a portion of Americans who really believe we should stop the "wrong" people from voting. I get the racists and why they feel that way, I even get the nutters who want to repeal the 19th amendment. But then you get regular folk who just have some vague notion of who the "wrong" people are that they can't put it in words that I can't explain. Maybe they get it from right wing talk radio, I don't know. Either way it's messed up.
if you can use the threat of life in jail to get that ex-boyfriend to take a 5 year plea deal then sure, it works that way. Not sure about the rest of the country but in the South and South West there's a lot of racism still, so it's terrifyingly easy to get a conviction. Sure, if the guy is well off he'll have a lawyer that'll shut down the circumstantial evidence but, well, the South & South West aren't well known for their well to do minority communities...
So it's virtually impossible to stop law enforcement without a separate law. What's happening is that people's relatives are putting their DNA in the database an then that's being used to narrow down the search for the culprits. In theory that's not so bad, but you're right that in practice there's a lot of room for abuse.
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and everything to do with a small number of scientists being allowed to be scientists. Life is better because we've increased food production and the stability of the food supply and logistics chain. That's not economic freedom that did that, it's science.
Now's the time to decide if we want to keep progressing though. There's a growing movement who sees a world without struggle and starvation as a threat. That's because if nobody's poor then nobody's rich. If you can't control people's access to food, shelter & healthcare then you lose a massive amount of power. Nobody's going to break their backs building pyramids or force their neighbors to at gunpoint for a slightly nicer car. Well, not in the numbers you need to build pyramids (or the 2018 equivalent that seems to be space travel).
she'd just be replaced. As long as we let a small number of people oppress us like that they'll always be plenty of them to do the oppressing. It's not that people are so awful that what she did is the norm. But since it's such a small number of people being allowed to wield so much power you don't need very many bad actors to screw the whole thing up.
Also, don't use violence. The right wing is much, much better at it since they emphasize authoritarianism in their philosophy which leads to better foot soldiers. You'll never win on violence. At best you'll get your ass kicked and at worst you'll just flip and become what you hate, with only the rhetoric left from your left wing days but none of the actions or systems. Like the Soviets and the Chinese and the North Koreans did.
and that women with enough food have healthier, smarter babies. Sex Ed and birth control are also part of it anywhere that Evangelicals don't stop it. The projects were doing quite well until the funding for the jobs programs got pulled by Reagan. Homelessness was temporary thing in decline until he shut down the mental hospitals. Nixon's war on drugs didn't help either.
See, what we have here is the result of putting people who don't believe in government (the GOP) in charge of government. It's like a vegan running a barbecue. It's not gonna end well for anybody.
and his hyperbole doesn't exactly help. But you're strawmaning. The article isn't predicting no ice in the Arctic, it's saying the same thing every scientific report does: global temps are rising by a few degrees and that will have far reaching impacts on weather, droughts and our ability to grow food.
it's got nothing to do with laziness. Most folks just aren't that capable. That was fine when we had farm jobs and later factory jobs. We've done away with most of those, and we're starting to see the effect.
That said, folks can and will amuse themselves. And given birth control they won't even breed out of control. Heck, give the birth control for free and start sex ed early and you'll have trouble getting them to have enough people to sustain a population. People breeded a lot because they needed farm hands. Take that need away and they'll control themselves.
You're spouting puritanical nonsense that got jammed in your skull when you were too young to have mental defenses against it. Look around the world at how people behave when they're under constant pressure. Poor people make consistently worse decisions and mistakes. Pressure doesn't make diamonds, it makes garbage more compact.
it would change society drastically. You could live where ever. Right now people go where the jobs are. I'm in a major city and I hate it. I'd much rather live in something about 1/3 the size where I am now. I don't care for night life, don't like traveling and hate traffic. But I'm stuck here because this is where the jobs are and I need money.
Also, lots of folks don't _want_ the poor to have options. I worked for a fast food joint in the 90s and the owner had figured out one of her managers' husband was using the insurance for life saving meds. This was before Obamacare did away with pre-existing condition denials so she was completely trapped at that job. Literally a death sentence for her husband if she ever left. As soon as the owner found out she jacked the manager's hours up to 60+/week (salaried of course). This went on until her husband eventually succumbed to his illness and she quit soon after.
The ruling class are well aware of the value of desperation and happy to exploit it.
because they're recently made homeless and are still sane enough to use a smart phone. If anything it's scarier to see somebody like that. It means people who traditionally didn't end up homeless are. There's an entire new class of people who are homeless in short spurts. 6-8 months, then they land a job and hold an apartment until something blows up in their face, then it's back to being homeless...
.1% with half of everything.
As for the AEI, they're a right wing think tank. Take anything they said with a block of salt suitable for cows. Yes, the upper middle class is growing, but not because of upward mobility. It's because in the current economy it's winner take all. Depending on how you run the numbers 60-80% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck (depends on if you run it as "no money", "$400 bucks to their name" or "under $1000 to their name"). Wealth is concentrating at the top. So you've got 20% of the population with basically everything, 1% with almost everything and
This will end in one of a few ways. Either a new dark age of conservativism where the ruling class clamp down on change to maintain the status quo or another round of nasty wars when the desperate get organized by a dictator into an angry mob. That's just how these things go. Basic income and other forms of socialism are pretty much the only way out of that (well, outside of mass extinction, which thanks to climate change is on the table...).
I've been seeing this nonsense a lot lately. The right wing claim that socialism and fascism are the same thing, make a few snide comments about Venezuela (but skip over the Soviet Union since they're friends with Putin) and use their media apparatus (Fox News, CNN, even MSNBC and Politico have gotten into the act) to hammer the point home .
I keep saying this, but this is all a classic tactic devised by the Soviets and perfected by Karl Rove during the Reagan years; to wit: Whatever faults you yourself have your relentlessly accuse the other side of. So we have a GOP president who is the defacto head of the American right wing and praised Chinese President Xi for seizing power for life, we have a GOP that let the water situation in Flint, Mi happen to save a buck, and we've got the right wing to thank for our $600 billion/yr Military Industrial Complex and somehow it's the folks who want to give people healthcare that are the real oppressors....
I wish I knew what to do about it. Talk radio's a major problem. You've got millions of people who get a 60-90 minute dose of propaganda everyday. I don't know how to counter that. I'd say more education, but the right wing's figured that one out too.
On the plus side I come from a short lived family and probably got 15-20 years left tops. Less if this stress gets any worse...
I feel compelled to post this
Seriously, are you some kind of Russian troll bot AI that just strings together crap that's meant to get a rise out of Americans?
that's why everything has that "flat" design. It's easy to do in CSS, which saves on bandwidth. Small sites don't care about an extra .5k of bandwidth, but they follow in the footsteps of bigger sites, so the trend spread.
So no, it wasn't psychologist that gave you buttons you can't tell are buttons. You can thank your friendly neighborhood bean counter for that.
with a butter knife since you wouldn't even need violence to stop the dog. You could literally just ignore the critter. Like you do when a crazy homeless person accosts you on the street.
It's worth pointing out because there are people who actually argue that America needs to spend $600 billion a year to defend itself from Russia, Iran and North Korea. One state that drags it's tanks home by horse at the end of wars, one that can barely feed it's people and another that can't.
Psychology majors often find employment in marketing, social engineering/networking, project management, politics, lobbying and other jobs were spending 4-8 years learning how to push somebody's buttons pays off. Many of them do a find job of manipulating techies into working long hours for low pay.
Mozilla is hurting because browsers are incredibly complex beasts and they don't have nearly as much money as they used to. As a techy you'd think you'd know this.
reserves. And we have more farm land than anyone. And two weak neighbors we can push around. And I know I shouldn't feed the trolls, but damn I'm sick of this right wing Rush Limbaugh bullshit showing up everywhere.
that's a very small part. History and Literature are the vast majority. We could do with people that knew history better, given what's happened in the last few elections or the pointless wars we keep getting dragged into for no good reason...
see here. And I doubt it went away in the 90s, but like how the US passed laws to stop racial profiling in loan applications the Japanese gov't appears to have cracked down on this particular form of discrimination.
the Netherlands is doing exactly what I proposed and doing just fine. Are they just wealthy than us? Better with money?
Also, as for Austerity, go ask Kansas how that's working out for them.
You're right about one thing, the rich will, given a chance, pit us against each other in a race to the bottom. That's why it has to be done at a national level. Europe realized that, and it's why they formed the EU. Britain's aristocracy also realized that, and it's why they spent a fortune getting their people to vote for Brexit.
you can't even get the angry sea bass in the shot, let alone a shark.
single payer healthcare with medical services and bringing back mental institutions. Also legalize drugs, all drugs, and treat hard drug addiction as a medical issue like they do in the Netherlands. Finally do a federal housing guarantee. Based on the number of vacant properties homelessness shouldn't exist.
Seriously folks, we know damn well what the solution to this problem is. Of couse, while doing the above works it would also cost a _hell_ of a lot more than the paltry sums being tossed around and wouldn't boost anybody's ego...
Not Registering to vote does not prevent you from being called to Jury duty. In some states (notably Red ones) it does increase the likelihood you will be called. This is on purpose. It is another form of voter suppression.
To be clear I don't think you're the one lying, but rather you're the one being lied to.
The benefits from eliminating voter suppression outweigh the occasional ill informed voter. the ruling class will mobilize ill informed voters. I remember a commercial against net metering (the practice where if your solar rig puts power back in the grid the power company pays you for it). The power co didn't want to pay for it, so they got a law on the ballots by tricking folks into signing a dubious petition. That done they had to get it passed, but people overwhelmingly supported Net Metering. What to do?
So they ran these ads. There was a bunch of old people sitting around and talking about something _scary_. Not once did anyone say what the scary thing was. At the end there was an impassioned plea to vote yes on prop such and such. They ran it in an off election when the only old folks were voting. It passed in a land slide.
Those are the kinds of voters we get when we pick and choose who votes. You get voters that the ruling class has picked. They're not informed, they're what most call "useful idiots"...
film making has been streamlined and standardized. The documentary on Star War's EP 4's Special effects was cool because of all the tricks they had to do to make it work. Nowadays it's just "We used CG" and call it a day. Logistics are a lot better so you don't get stories like when Harrison Ford got sick and just shot the guy in Raiders to skip the fight scene.
Maybe it's better for indie films though. I don't want a ton of movies anymore. And I'm not saying it's a bad thing that movie making isn't a huge mess anymore (there are other reasons why modern movies kinda stink, e.g. having to cater to an international audience and water everything down). But it just means the commentary isn't often a good story in and of itself...
that was some grade A trolling there. If you could have resisted the temptation and skipped the insult at the end you mighta got modded up.
Breaking and entering to get dirt on your political rival. And no, "everybody did it" is not an excuse. Nixon had a pretty crazy disregard for the rule of law, going so far as to kick off the Drug War in order to crack down on the left wing because he knew they smoked pot. That's not a conspiracy theory, his own people came out later, admitted it and apologized for it.
I'd call this a hit piece except Google gets along just fine with the Republican majority. They supported the last few Supreme Court Nominees (albeit on the sly via various PACs) and were happy to take the tax cut.
What this is really is enemy creation. Racism is winding down as an effective vehicle for making bogymen. But any good ruling class needs a way to divide the working class. Instead of Black/White they're working on Technocrat/Blue Collar as the next point of division.
This is how the Japanese created their divides to keep the working class from organizing, BTW. They declared some professions as "bad" (unclean ones, like butcher and undertaker) and kept books of who was who based on family names. That's how you create classes without racial divides.
What annoys me is we see this pattern over and over again. The Japanese, India Caste systems, American Racial Slavery, hell the Canadians have been caught doing it with Eskimos (South Park made fun of it). You'd think the working class would catch on to the trick and stop being fooled but so far, no dice...
once again, this is just good 'ole fashion voter suppression.
For my money I want to see voting made mandatory, like Jury Duty. That would be the best way to end voter suppression. Also move voting to Saturday or Sunday and/or make it a national holiday with mandatory pay. Oh, and I don't care if you're convicted of a crime or even currently in prison. _Everyone_ gets to vote. If America has so many Ax Murders and child molesters they can swing an election maybe we should fix that first before worrying about who gets to vote...
Of course, our ruling class isn't going to allow that. Sad thing is there's a portion of Americans who really believe we should stop the "wrong" people from voting. I get the racists and why they feel that way, I even get the nutters who want to repeal the 19th amendment. But then you get regular folk who just have some vague notion of who the "wrong" people are that they can't put it in words that I can't explain. Maybe they get it from right wing talk radio, I don't know. Either way it's messed up.
if you can use the threat of life in jail to get that ex-boyfriend to take a 5 year plea deal then sure, it works that way. Not sure about the rest of the country but in the South and South West there's a lot of racism still, so it's terrifyingly easy to get a conviction. Sure, if the guy is well off he'll have a lawyer that'll shut down the circumstantial evidence but, well, the South & South West aren't well known for their well to do minority communities...
So it's virtually impossible to stop law enforcement without a separate law. What's happening is that people's relatives are putting their DNA in the database an then that's being used to narrow down the search for the culprits. In theory that's not so bad, but you're right that in practice there's a lot of room for abuse.