I can still buy semi-automatic or automatic weapons, walk into a shopping mall and 'terrorize' hundreds of people before being taken out. No license required.
Semi-auto, sure. Automatic? No. Requires a Federal License, with accompanying background check, plus large taxes, plus ATF people keeping an eye on you.
Now, if you're a criminal...well, it's not all that hard to find one if you have the money.
By the way, the system used on Tranai (see Robert Sheckley) is pretty efficient to keep the people's opinion in mind: every public servant has a big seal hanging from the neck. Now every citizen can go to the Voting Booth at any time and press the "like" or "dislike" button by the name of any politician. If there are too many "dislike"-s, then the seal, well, undergoes a very rapid exothermic behaviour, thus making the position vacant for an eager, new and hopefully more popular politician.
I prefer the system on New Texas (H. Beam Piper), where "criticizing a practicing politician" is only illegal to the extent that he didn't deserve the level of criticism based on his public acts as a politician. Note that "criticizing a practicing politician" can be done with a machete, if a pistol is not to hand....
The Tenth Amendment doesn't prevent the federal government from giving out tuition credits
The Federal government certainly does so, anyway. In spite of the Tenth Amendment. That particular Amendment has been pretty much ignored since FDR threatened to pack the Supremes in the thirties.
Whether that's a good or bad thing is a matter for debate. Mostly, I think it's a bad thing, sometimes I think it's a good thing. In this case, I'm not terribly upset by it. Though how the Feds intend to pay for this, I'm none too certain.
the young fellows drafted into military service in world war ii could have framed their service as a form of compulsory slavery too. except what they were being compulsed into doing was to fight nazism and imperial japan, REAL threats to freedom, REAL forces of enslavement
There has been much made of the WW2 draft in this thread. A few pieces of relevant information are in order.
The draft did NOT exist in WW2 because people were not volunteering for military service in sufficient numbers. The draft existed to make sure that the services got the people they required, rather than the Navy getting too many (or too few), and the Army too few (or too many). If we had had a unified military at that time (you joined "the military", and they sent you where you were needed, whether to the Navy or Army), we would neither have needed nor have bothered with a draft.
This did NOT apply to the post-war draft, mind you. The post-war draft continued because we realized (as we had not after WW1) that the need for a powerful military had not ended with the end of hostilities. But, alas, there isn't nearly the incentive to volunteer for a peacetime Army as there was for a wartime Army. So they maintained the draft to keep the military up to strength.
Note further that the draft ended after Vietnam, and was replaced by the All-Volunteer military. Which has, in general, worked rather well for us. Though some of the more historically-minded among us see disturbing parallels between the All-Volunteer Army and the late Roman Republic legions - the beginning of a shift from a Republic to an Empire.
Where else you gonna make $40 bucks an hour in college?
Tax credit, remember? There are two kinds of tax credits available in the US system. Refundable, and non-refundable. Most tax credits are the latter type, which means they can be used to reduce your income tax burden to zero, but no further. Only refundable tax credits are worth the full value if your tax burden is less than face value of the credit.
Assuming the credit is non-refundable (as almost all of them are. The EIC (which is meant to make up for the regressive SS and Medicare taxes) is the only one I can think of off the top of my head that is refundable right now), the benefit will be less than that.
In other words, since few college students actually owe $4000 per year of income taxes, very few will end up getting the equivalent of $40 per hour.
Note that as of 2008, you have to clear ~$29,000 per year after the usual deductions before you owe $4000. Realistically, we're talking about $40,000 per year to get the nominal benefit.
You tell me. I don't see anything in the Constitution which forbids the government from giving out college tuition credits for any reason.
While I don't have a problem with the government giving out college tuition credits in exchange for whatever they want to require for same, I'd like to point out the Tenth Amendment. That's the one, by the way, that says that if a power is not specifically granted to the Federal Government by the Constitution, it's forbidden to them.
BLOCKQUOTE>This pains me to say - a couple of friends of the family have been diagnosed with cancer- one very dear to me and with limited time to live, the other a very decent man and doesn't know his chances yet.
I can't help but think that cancer is acting as a brake on the population explosion. If we cured cancer tomorrow these people who are dear to me wouldn't suffer, but we'd be even less sustainable and eventually we'd see wide spread poverty and famine. So the question becomes: If we do gather the knowledge we need to cure various forms of cancer so that those dear to us don't suffer, what are we going to do to balance things out and prevent the population from skyrocketing?
I don't have easy answers. I certainly don't like watching friends and family die, and would like to see a proper cure instead of various poisons in the form of radiation and drugs that take their toll on the person as much as the disease.
And...
To take what I wrote and suggest that I want cancer to hang around is just paranoid.
The notion that you question the notion that a cure for cancer would be an unalloyed good sounds like you consider the possibility that keeping it around might be a good thing. Which is a despicable attitude.
Looking at the stats here, nearly 10% of cancers occur under the age of 45.
Which means that 90% of cancers occur over the age of 45. Which means that GENERALLY (you DID read that in my comment, and not let hysteria take over, didn't you?) cancer is a disease that occurs past the age of reproduction.
Note also that a man's ability to impregnate a woman has little to do with population growth rate - the limiter is the number of fertile wombs, not the number of swinging dicks.
I didn't say I wanted to keep any disease around. Just that we should have a plan that means our population (and consumption) are sustainable so we don't have wide spread famine.
You suggested it quite strongly.
Note, by the way, that widespread famine is a bugaboo of the ZPG loons. There hasn't been a widespread famine in 30 years that wasn't caused by government action. India and China export food, for god's sake! And the population now is higher by 50% than it was the last time we had a significant famine.
If you want to deal with population growth (God knows why, it seems to be taking care of itself nicely in the civilized parts of the world), I suggest you work hard to raise the standard of living in the third world. Not spend your time wondering if it's really a good idea to cure cancer.
Note, by the way, my own bias. I am currently being treated for my own cancer. I have a reasonable chance of living to see 60, looks like, but not a great chance of seeing 70.
Yet I think i'm a pretty smart chap.) but I will not be procreating willingly. I want a vasectomy ASPA. I might donate sperm before hand just to balance things out, but I do not want kids.
Glad to hear you won't be procreating.
Somehow I will be meaning full to the next generation.
Somehow, I doubt it. The best way that most of us can be meaningful to the next generation is to pass on our good genes, assuming we have any. If you decide to forego that part, you may as well never have lived.
Or do you expect to be one of the handful of names that will live forever?
I can't help but think that cancer is acting as a brake on the population explosion.
Umm, no.
Cancer, in general, happens to people well past the age of reproduction. Which means it has little, if any, effect on population growth rates.
If there are diseases you'd like to keep around to prevent overpopulation, may I suggest lobbying to return Smallpox to the wild instead? Or just become a pro-AIDS activist, since the latter seems to be doing a good job of cutting into African population growth.
The first amendment seems pretty clear that congress can't make any laws restricting speech, so how could it make a law delegating authority on speech either?
The same way they make a law restricting political speech (BCRA).
Or a law restricting the sales of ugly firearms (Assault Weapon Ban).
Face it, the Congress has been making unconstitutional laws for...ummm...209 years that I know for sure, possibly 10 or 11 years longer.
They're only occasionally called on it by the Courts, alas.
A lot of you weren't in the House and Senate then.
It's the difference between being the driver and the backseat driver. Or the quarterback and the guy watching the game on TV.
There's a fundamental difference between someone sitting in Starbucks grousing and someone who knows (or thinks) that if he makes the wrong decision, people die.
Even worse, if he makes the wrong decision, people die and he gets blamed....
We could be eating fresh prime rib almost every day without worrying about ethical issues concerning the raising of animals in inhumane conditions,
I've never found myself worrying about ethical issues when eating fresh prime rib. Except for the ones involving the ancestry of the cooks who don't know what the word "rare" means when ordering prime rib....
Mainly because I (and presumably the parent) have seen a number of graphs that look like this
Ahh, because you're ignorant! I hadn't realized you didn't know that budgets were voted by the Congress, and originated in the House. Note that, as a single example, during the Reagan years, the House had a solid Democratic majority.
Hate to burst your bubbles, but the House has more to do with the budget than the President ever will. As Obama will be finding out next summer, to his dismay. All the President can do is ask nicely (and, frequently, be told, as Reagan was, that his budget was "dead on arrival").
Note further that that graph was not corrected for inflation. Which tends to increase the apparent size of deficits today, and discount older ones.
Note that this is not meant to imply that Republicans are necessarily fiscally conservative. Many of them aren't. But there isn't much evidence that Democrats are fiscally conservative as a rule, either. Pay especial attention to the budget debates in the House if you want to find out how "fiscally conservative" anyone is - it won't be pretty.
Great! Recall the troops from Afghanistan guys! The Yanks can handle it by themselves.
What? You actually think that the foreign troop contributions for Iraq and Afghanistan amount to a hill of beans? It's more a matter of looking like there's an international coalition than it's a matter of the foreign troops actually helping much at all.
Did Puerto Rico vote? American Samoa? Marshall islanders? You crazy cats have taxation without representation, have colonies without a vote. I recall that sort of nonsense stirred a revolution once before...
Every couple of years we propose that Puerto Rico either become a State or become independent. They keep insisting that they don't want to do either. Alas, you can't force people to rebel when they like things they way they are.
and I'd like to see tax rates close to 100% for people with more than, say, 10 million dollars.
This pretty much describes the pre-Kennedy tax environment. Note that Kennedy called for the largest tax cut in American history. Note that Kennedy's tax cuts pretty much helped the wealthiest Americans. Note that the economy pretty much boomed as a result. Note that tax revenues increased dramatically as well.
Note that Reagan called for the second-largest tax cut in history. With the same results.
Note finally that the wealthy paid a HIGHER portion of income taxes after the Bush tax-cut than they did in the Clinton years.
Want to bet that after the Obama tax increases on the wealthy that the wealthy end up paying a smaller fraction of the income taxes than they do now?
Well honestly what can you expect, when the last band of idiots was allowed to run up a 7 trillion dollar deficit
Definitions:
deficit: the amount that the money spent in any given year exceeds the revenues.
Debt: the total amount of money owed to creditors.
Note that you used deficit where you no doubt meant debt.
Note further that as of two months ago, the Bush administration had run up a FOUR trillion dollar debt, not seven.
Note, finally, that the national debt, as a fraction of GDP (which essentially adjusts for inflation and economic growth), is higher than it's been since Eisenhower was in office. And considerably lower than it was when Truman and Roosevelt (good Democrats both) were in office.
98 Senators voted for the Patriot Act. Only one voted against. The Republicans weren't alone in passing it.
357 Representatives voted for the Patriot Act. Only 55 voted against. Again, the Republicans weren't alone in passing it.
Note that the political climate of the time was such that if the Democrats had controlled both houses of Congress, odds are it would have been passed by similar majorities.
they have to cater to at least the fiscally conservative republicans
Whyever do you think that the Democrats are in favour of fiscal conservatism? Remember all those big deficits in the Reagan years? Those budgets were passed by a Democratic controlled Congress who declared each of Reagan's proposed budgets "dead on arrival" before they proceeded to spend like drunken sailors.
Most likely, since the Republicans have never been the monolithic bloc described by the Democrats (both Parties are pretty much the same as far as it goes - 80-90% vote with the Party, 10-20% vote against the Party when their own next reelection might be jeopardized by joining the Party), the Republican swing votes (average 3-5 per vote, a different 3-5 depending on subject, of course) will be enough to make the Senate filibuster-proof.
Given, of course, that the Democrats can keep their own people in line.
Of course, the definition of child varies from place to place, and from time to time. And it should be pointed out that a child of 15 can legally give consent to another 15 year old, but not to a 17 year old. Odd, isn't it, how it's possible to be legally competent or not depending on the date of birth of some other person?
Note that the ages above are about average for the USA. Some states allow younger children to give consent, some restrict it a bit more, some specify the acceptable age of the consentee a bit higher or lower.
Slashdot Mirror
Semi-auto, sure. Automatic? No. Requires a Federal License, with accompanying background check, plus large taxes, plus ATF people keeping an eye on you.
Now, if you're a criminal...well, it's not all that hard to find one if you have the money.
I prefer the system on New Texas (H. Beam Piper), where "criticizing a practicing politician" is only illegal to the extent that he didn't deserve the level of criticism based on his public acts as a politician. Note that "criticizing a practicing politician" can be done with a machete, if a pistol is not to hand....
The Federal government certainly does so, anyway. In spite of the Tenth Amendment. That particular Amendment has been pretty much ignored since FDR threatened to pack the Supremes in the thirties.
Whether that's a good or bad thing is a matter for debate. Mostly, I think it's a bad thing, sometimes I think it's a good thing. In this case, I'm not terribly upset by it. Though how the Feds intend to pay for this, I'm none too certain.
There has been much made of the WW2 draft in this thread. A few pieces of relevant information are in order.
The draft did NOT exist in WW2 because people were not volunteering for military service in sufficient numbers. The draft existed to make sure that the services got the people they required, rather than the Navy getting too many (or too few), and the Army too few (or too many). If we had had a unified military at that time (you joined "the military", and they sent you where you were needed, whether to the Navy or Army), we would neither have needed nor have bothered with a draft.
This did NOT apply to the post-war draft, mind you. The post-war draft continued because we realized (as we had not after WW1) that the need for a powerful military had not ended with the end of hostilities. But, alas, there isn't nearly the incentive to volunteer for a peacetime Army as there was for a wartime Army. So they maintained the draft to keep the military up to strength.
Note further that the draft ended after Vietnam, and was replaced by the All-Volunteer military. Which has, in general, worked rather well for us. Though some of the more historically-minded among us see disturbing parallels between the All-Volunteer Army and the late Roman Republic legions - the beginning of a shift from a Republic to an Empire.
Tax credit, remember? There are two kinds of tax credits available in the US system. Refundable, and non-refundable. Most tax credits are the latter type, which means they can be used to reduce your income tax burden to zero, but no further. Only refundable tax credits are worth the full value if your tax burden is less than face value of the credit.
Assuming the credit is non-refundable (as almost all of them are. The EIC (which is meant to make up for the regressive SS and Medicare taxes) is the only one I can think of off the top of my head that is refundable right now), the benefit will be less than that.
In other words, since few college students actually owe $4000 per year of income taxes, very few will end up getting the equivalent of $40 per hour.
Note that as of 2008, you have to clear ~$29,000 per year after the usual deductions before you owe $4000. Realistically, we're talking about $40,000 per year to get the nominal benefit.
While I don't have a problem with the government giving out college tuition credits in exchange for whatever they want to require for same, I'd like to point out the Tenth Amendment. That's the one, by the way, that says that if a power is not specifically granted to the Federal Government by the Constitution, it's forbidden to them.
Yeah, we need more unpaid child-labour in this country!
To Quote your original:
BLOCKQUOTE>This pains me to say - a couple of friends of the family have been diagnosed with cancer- one very dear to me and with limited time to live, the other a very decent man and doesn't know his chances yet.
I can't help but think that cancer is acting as a brake on the population explosion. If we cured cancer tomorrow these people who are dear to me wouldn't suffer, but we'd be even less sustainable and eventually we'd see wide spread poverty and famine. So the question becomes: If we do gather the knowledge we need to cure various forms of cancer so that those dear to us don't suffer, what are we going to do to balance things out and prevent the population from skyrocketing?
I don't have easy answers. I certainly don't like watching friends and family die, and would like to see a proper cure instead of various poisons in the form of radiation and drugs that take their toll on the person as much as the disease.
And...
The notion that you question the notion that a cure for cancer would be an unalloyed good sounds like you consider the possibility that keeping it around might be a good thing. Which is a despicable attitude.
Which means that 90% of cancers occur over the age of 45. Which means that GENERALLY (you DID read that in my comment, and not let hysteria take over, didn't you?) cancer is a disease that occurs past the age of reproduction.
Note also that a man's ability to impregnate a woman has little to do with population growth rate - the limiter is the number of fertile wombs, not the number of swinging dicks.
You suggested it quite strongly.
Note, by the way, that widespread famine is a bugaboo of the ZPG loons. There hasn't been a widespread famine in 30 years that wasn't caused by government action. India and China export food, for god's sake! And the population now is higher by 50% than it was the last time we had a significant famine.
If you want to deal with population growth (God knows why, it seems to be taking care of itself nicely in the civilized parts of the world), I suggest you work hard to raise the standard of living in the third world. Not spend your time wondering if it's really a good idea to cure cancer.
Note, by the way, my own bias. I am currently being treated for my own cancer. I have a reasonable chance of living to see 60, looks like, but not a great chance of seeing 70.
Glad to hear you won't be procreating.
Somehow, I doubt it. The best way that most of us can be meaningful to the next generation is to pass on our good genes, assuming we have any. If you decide to forego that part, you may as well never have lived.
Or do you expect to be one of the handful of names that will live forever?
Umm, no.
Cancer, in general, happens to people well past the age of reproduction. Which means it has little, if any, effect on population growth rates.
If there are diseases you'd like to keep around to prevent overpopulation, may I suggest lobbying to return Smallpox to the wild instead? Or just become a pro-AIDS activist, since the latter seems to be doing a good job of cutting into African population growth.
Seriously, some of you people scare me....
I've always found this to be an amusing argument. Murder is "unlawful killing" - how can "state sanctioned" be unlawful?
The same way they make a law restricting political speech (BCRA).
Or a law restricting the sales of ugly firearms (Assault Weapon Ban).
Face it, the Congress has been making unconstitutional laws for...ummm...209 years that I know for sure, possibly 10 or 11 years longer.
They're only occasionally called on it by the Courts, alas.
A lot of you weren't in the House and Senate then.
It's the difference between being the driver and the backseat driver. Or the quarterback and the guy watching the game on TV.
There's a fundamental difference between someone sitting in Starbucks grousing and someone who knows (or thinks) that if he makes the wrong decision, people die.
Even worse, if he makes the wrong decision, people die and he gets blamed....
I've never found myself worrying about ethical issues when eating fresh prime rib. Except for the ones involving the ancestry of the cooks who don't know what the word "rare" means when ordering prime rib....
Try checking the IRS figures. I go over their published numbers every year or three, just for laughs. Use Google, it works for me.
Ahh, because you're ignorant! I hadn't realized you didn't know that budgets were voted by the Congress, and originated in the House. Note that, as a single example, during the Reagan years, the House had a solid Democratic majority.
Hate to burst your bubbles, but the House has more to do with the budget than the President ever will. As Obama will be finding out next summer, to his dismay. All the President can do is ask nicely (and, frequently, be told, as Reagan was, that his budget was "dead on arrival").
Note further that that graph was not corrected for inflation. Which tends to increase the apparent size of deficits today, and discount older ones.
Note that this is not meant to imply that Republicans are necessarily fiscally conservative. Many of them aren't. But there isn't much evidence that Democrats are fiscally conservative as a rule, either. Pay especial attention to the budget debates in the House if you want to find out how "fiscally conservative" anyone is - it won't be pretty.
Unlikely in the extreme. Easy to look back and say it was terrible legislation, much harder to see in the heat of the moment.
What? You actually think that the foreign troop contributions for Iraq and Afghanistan amount to a hill of beans? It's more a matter of looking like there's an international coalition than it's a matter of the foreign troops actually helping much at all.
Every couple of years we propose that Puerto Rico either become a State or become independent. They keep insisting that they don't want to do either. Alas, you can't force people to rebel when they like things they way they are.
This pretty much describes the pre-Kennedy tax environment. Note that Kennedy called for the largest tax cut in American history. Note that Kennedy's tax cuts pretty much helped the wealthiest Americans. Note that the economy pretty much boomed as a result. Note that tax revenues increased dramatically as well.
Note that Reagan called for the second-largest tax cut in history. With the same results.
Note finally that the wealthy paid a HIGHER portion of income taxes after the Bush tax-cut than they did in the Clinton years.
Want to bet that after the Obama tax increases on the wealthy that the wealthy end up paying a smaller fraction of the income taxes than they do now?
Definitions:
deficit: the amount that the money spent in any given year exceeds the revenues.
Debt: the total amount of money owed to creditors.
Note that you used deficit where you no doubt meant debt.
Note further that as of two months ago, the Bush administration had run up a FOUR trillion dollar debt, not seven.
Note, finally, that the national debt, as a fraction of GDP (which essentially adjusts for inflation and economic growth), is higher than it's been since Eisenhower was in office. And considerably lower than it was when Truman and Roosevelt (good Democrats both) were in office.
98 Senators voted for the Patriot Act. Only one voted against. The Republicans weren't alone in passing it.
357 Representatives voted for the Patriot Act. Only 55 voted against. Again, the Republicans weren't alone in passing it.
Note that the political climate of the time was such that if the Democrats had controlled both houses of Congress, odds are it would have been passed by similar majorities.
Whyever do you think that the Democrats are in favour of fiscal conservatism? Remember all those big deficits in the Reagan years? Those budgets were passed by a Democratic controlled Congress who declared each of Reagan's proposed budgets "dead on arrival" before they proceeded to spend like drunken sailors.
Most likely, since the Republicans have never been the monolithic bloc described by the Democrats (both Parties are pretty much the same as far as it goes - 80-90% vote with the Party, 10-20% vote against the Party when their own next reelection might be jeopardized by joining the Party), the Republican swing votes (average 3-5 per vote, a different 3-5 depending on subject, of course) will be enough to make the Senate filibuster-proof.
Given, of course, that the Democrats can keep their own people in line.
Contrary to popular rumour, and "a" ending on a name isn't necessarily feminine in all societies.
Of course, the definition of child varies from place to place, and from time to time. And it should be pointed out that a child of 15 can legally give consent to another 15 year old, but not to a 17 year old. Odd, isn't it, how it's possible to be legally competent or not depending on the date of birth of some other person?
Note that the ages above are about average for the USA. Some states allow younger children to give consent, some restrict it a bit more, some specify the acceptable age of the consentee a bit higher or lower.