To understand the magnitude of this problem, the authors note one solution that includes all the following: âoeraise income taxes by 17 percent, raise payroll taxes by 24 percent, cut federal purchases by 26 percent, and cut Social Security and Medicare benefits by 11 percent.â
The argument that we need to pay more taxes and keep giving more away to entitlements belies the facts that we've given away so many tax breaks to big companies and billionaires that the only way the Feds can keep things afloat is to borrow massively and tax the middle class out of existence.
It's a choice. Since we lack the political will to curb the spending in any meaningful way - and we do certainly lack that will - we need to up the taxes. It's just math.
The middle class is not being taxed out of existence, it is being job and wage-decreased "out of existence".
I genuinely believe that the middle class is a myth invented by politicians. It simply doesn't exist. There are those in power and those who are not. Unless those who are not in power are made to suffer, the system will collapse under its own weight.
More taxes does not increase lifestyle. You can't take money from one pocket and then give it to another pocket and end up with more than you started with.
That's not even remotely what I said. Here's some code, maybe that will grok...
If (ContinueLifestyle)
then (If (IncreaseTaxes)
then (Survive)
else (CrashAndBurn))
else (Chaos)
Nobody said money moves magically, and in fact I'm advocating the opposite. We know what our bills are and what they will be when we pass all the laws we think we want. So pay the bills. It's that easy.
Fact of the matter is, our tax rates are too low to cover our preferred lifestyle. Full stop.
So if we'd like to continue living in the manner we're accustomed, taxes absolutely positively have to go up. And the pain of that needs to be allowed to flow down from the top to the lower class just as it has throughout the millennia, without monetary meddling.
Anything short of this will result in the eventual collapse of the system. There's simply no way around it.
And that's the thing that bothers me about the Blue Team and their 'denier' slander they love to toss around. If you think we can keep on spending the way we have been and rely on the rich to bail us out, you're as guilty of magical thinking as the 'climate deniers'. You'll take your preferred scientific paper as gospel needed to change the world, sure no problem. But math? Nah, we don't need to believe in that heresy!
At least the Red Team is just greedy. That's easy to understand, and easy to anticipate.
True, but then there aren't enough jobs for them all to take. So in this economy, perhaps the loss of, e.g. 10,000 wouldn't hurt matters much. And genuinely it might lessen the burden of the schools, etc.
It's still cold as hell, but analytically, I don't think the government profits by keeping people alive.
It may actually be in the government's own financial interest to do so, especially if such technologies actually do reduce deaths and injuries from firearms.
I don't know which government you're referring to, but the United States profits from deaths and injuries. Cold to say it, but they do. Inheritance taxes are significant. The medical system is rife with taxation at every level. In a world where there are fewer deaths and injuries, the government almost certainly loses money.
There are a lot of accidental deaths due to children getting hold of guns... that alone gives the government a moral imperative to support smart guns already.
Except governments don't have any moral imperative to protect children, unless granted one by the voters.
Relative to the economy, there's still a fixed amount of currency the people will tolerate. Fed releases more dollars, each one is worth less, automatically. It takes a short time for people to realize it, but that time span is getting shorter and shorter as the currency's power is less and less.
The point still stands. Only so many paychecks will result in adequate groceries and gas.
"But two months in, after a brief breakup, he put her hands around her neck and threatened her life, Sarah said."
This is psychological abuse, as written. If he had tried to strangle her, he would have done more than 'put his hands around her neck'. It was a threat.
"On New Yearâ(TM)s Eve of 2008, Sarahâ(TM)s partner passed out in their car after an argument over the gratuity on their bar tab. She tried to help him up the stairs but when he came-to he began throwing her, repeatedly shoving her to the ground, and finally kicking her into a wall before passing out again."
Dude was passed out. Dude did not want help going up the stairs. She probably could have left his ass on the lawn. I'm not saying this isn't physical, but a drunk-to-the-point-of-blackout person isn't the hardest to avoid. There's something missing from this part of the story.
After she woke up in the hospital, she appears not to have reached out to the police, who would have been required to investigate, by law.
"She narrowly avoided being struck by a car when her partner shoved her into oncoming traffic after becoming angry with her for interacting with men at a gay bar."
Dude's a shover, for sure. Probably a royal asshole, and some flavor of monster.
He is not, however, the best case around which to write a story. Many, many, many women have things a lot worse.
It takes a certain type of person to fall into a trap like this.
Not that that means she doesn't need help, or anything of that sort. But if she was savvy she would have noticed that the guy was living a double life. If she was smart she wouldn't have tried to commit suicide with Ibuprofen of all things. Thankfully for her, she survived.
Not only that, but if my wife didn't come home from work at her usual time - without calling me - I would be pretty upset. We'd all be sitting at the dinner table, wondering if she was okay, and I'd damn sure call. If she was 'out with friends' without telling me her plans beforehand, I'd be pissed.
Whether or not this has any bearing on "Sarah's" situation I can't say. But the article didn't make me feel very sorry for her.
Who am I that I can 'attempt to muddle'? Further why do you care what I think about it? These questions are hypothetical, as an exercise in critical thinking.
That said, the goals here are pretty identical - modify the nationality of the country through means other than democracy. Yanukovich WAS legally elected, right? Could you imagine the 49% who voted against Obama conducting an uprising because they didn't care for his policies?
Ever hear of the Bay of Pigs?
I wonder also, if we will eventually see NATO missile batteries in the Ukraine. Time will tell, of course.
Also your claim that foreign powers can only be held accountable if they desire to actually annex territory isn't valid. I don't recall Al-Qaeda 'annexing' the twin towers, for example.
Try again, if you'd like, but without the bias, please.
Note how the Ukrainian unrest to oust Viktor Yanukovych was a natural popular uprising, but the pro-Russian backlash absolutely must be a Russian Psy-Op.
So when part of Ukraine does what the US wants, it was all them and they should be free to determine their own future.
But when part of Ukraine does something the US does not want, saber rattling and sanctions to punish the vile Russian puppeteers are in order.
A public skilled in critical thinking would be suspicious:
1) Is it possible the situation in Ukraine is too complex for sound bytes in the 24 hour news cycle?
2) Is it possible that neither 'uprising' is directly influenced by an outside government?
3) Is it possible that BOTH 'uprisings' are directly influenced by outside governments?
But alas, we just take what we're fed and move on without adding any effort whatsoever.
When solar competes on a level playing field with fossil fuels, it's cheaper.
Google disagrees. Unless of course you're requesting we back-charge coal producers for waste, as some of the articles in search do.
To that request, I'd point you to the above rebuttal. You're trying to make coal more expensive so it compares cost-wise to solar. That's great for the privileged who can afford higher prices. Not so great for the poor and eldery. For the same reasons as above.
So, you want to make the poor poorer to advocate your preferred power generation methods, and you don't see the folly in that position.
The utilities hate this requirement, for obvious reasons. A report by the Edison Electric Institute, the lobbying arm of the power industry, says this kind of law will put âoea squeeze on profitability,â and warns that if state incentives are not rolled back, âoeit may be too late to repair the utility business model.â
Since thatâ(TM)s an unsympathetic argument, the utilities have devised another: Solar expansion, they claim, will actually hurt consumers. The Arizona Public Service Company, the stateâ(TM)s largest utility, funneled large sums through a Koch operative to a nonprofit group that ran an ad claiming net metering would hurt older people on fixed incomes by raising electric rates. "
Anything that impacts the business model will impact the bottom line, period. So you may be affluent and savvy enough to add homebrew solar to your own property. What about those who cannot? Since they are beholden to the monopoly, they WILL be made to suffer for your advantage. This is called 'an economy', and is widely believed (outside of the Blue Team) to exist.
So you're essentially saying "If it means the projects and nursing homes either pay through the nose or go dark, GOOD."
But because you have your blue-tinted glasses on, you can't see that coal companies and power plants operate FOR PROFIT. Without the profit - hell, without 'enough' profit - they'll simply stop. And you can't force them to provide your neighbors power without covering their costs. Just look at Russia post communism to see what THAT looks like.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a good article on it - http://www.forbes.com/sites/re...
To understand the magnitude of this problem, the authors note one solution that includes all the following: âoeraise income taxes by 17 percent, raise payroll taxes by 24 percent, cut federal purchases by 26 percent, and cut Social Security and Medicare benefits by 11 percent.â
The argument that we need to pay more taxes and keep giving more away to entitlements belies the facts that we've given away so many tax breaks to big companies and billionaires that the only way the Feds can keep things afloat is to borrow massively and tax the middle class out of existence.
It's a choice. Since we lack the political will to curb the spending in any meaningful way - and we do certainly lack that will - we need to up the taxes. It's just math.
The middle class is not being taxed out of existence, it is being job and wage-decreased "out of existence".
I genuinely believe that the middle class is a myth invented by politicians. It simply doesn't exist. There are those in power and those who are not. Unless those who are not in power are made to suffer, the system will collapse under its own weight.
It's blindingly simple.
More taxes does not increase lifestyle. You can't take money from one pocket and then give it to another pocket and end up with more than you started with.
That's not even remotely what I said. Here's some code, maybe that will grok...
If (ContinueLifestyle)
then (If (IncreaseTaxes)
then (Survive)
else (CrashAndBurn))
else (Chaos)
Nobody said money moves magically, and in fact I'm advocating the opposite. We know what our bills are and what they will be when we pass all the laws we think we want. So pay the bills. It's that easy.
Fact of the matter is, our tax rates are too low to cover our preferred lifestyle. Full stop.
So if we'd like to continue living in the manner we're accustomed, taxes absolutely positively have to go up. And the pain of that needs to be allowed to flow down from the top to the lower class just as it has throughout the millennia, without monetary meddling.
Anything short of this will result in the eventual collapse of the system. There's simply no way around it.
And that's the thing that bothers me about the Blue Team and their 'denier' slander they love to toss around. If you think we can keep on spending the way we have been and rely on the rich to bail us out, you're as guilty of magical thinking as the 'climate deniers'. You'll take your preferred scientific paper as gospel needed to change the world, sure no problem. But math? Nah, we don't need to believe in that heresy!
At least the Red Team is just greedy. That's easy to understand, and easy to anticipate.
So in rebuttal to my point that the government is not financially motivated to keep people alive, your insightful response is "they don't care"?
Again, thanks, I guess.
The human race managed just fine before language as well. Had it not, we'd not be here.
Still though, the discussion is about today.
True, but then there aren't enough jobs for them all to take. So in this economy, perhaps the loss of, e.g. 10,000 wouldn't hurt matters much. And genuinely it might lessen the burden of the schools, etc.
It's still cold as hell, but analytically, I don't think the government profits by keeping people alive.
Excluded middle, much?
I said it is income. You said it isn't all their income.
Thanks for contributing, I guess?
It may actually be in the government's own financial interest to do so, especially if such technologies actually do reduce deaths and injuries from firearms.
I don't know which government you're referring to, but the United States profits from deaths and injuries. Cold to say it, but they do. Inheritance taxes are significant. The medical system is rife with taxation at every level. In a world where there are fewer deaths and injuries, the government almost certainly loses money.
There are a lot of accidental deaths due to children getting hold of guns... that alone gives the government a moral imperative to support smart guns already.
Except governments don't have any moral imperative to protect children, unless granted one by the voters.
Hell, if it wouldn't be for the cars, we could have single lane roads that would last 50 years for everything.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
Educate yourself. Then come back and explain how we handle shipping lanes using exclusively bikes.
Sorry, but I just can't stand it when people let an 'us-vs-them' mentality say something completely moronic.
Modern roads are built to handle trucks, because we'd die without them.
Have you seen the names they put on stars these days?
Those poor, poor animals...
Relative to the economy, there's still a fixed amount of currency the people will tolerate. Fed releases more dollars, each one is worth less, automatically. It takes a short time for people to realize it, but that time span is getting shorter and shorter as the currency's power is less and less.
The point still stands. Only so many paychecks will result in adequate groceries and gas.
There is not a fixed number of jobs in the economy.
But there are a fixed number of dollars in the economy. And a fixed number of human resource staff able to review resumes, etc, etc, etc.
While there's no empirical limit, there's certainly a functional one.
Actually, I did read the piece. It reads like so:
"But two months in, after a brief breakup, he put her hands around her neck and threatened her life, Sarah said."
This is psychological abuse, as written. If he had tried to strangle her, he would have done more than 'put his hands around her neck'. It was a threat.
"On New Yearâ(TM)s Eve of 2008, Sarahâ(TM)s partner passed out in their car after an argument over the gratuity on their bar tab. She tried to help him up the stairs but when he came-to he began throwing her, repeatedly shoving her to the ground, and finally kicking her into a wall before passing out again."
Dude was passed out. Dude did not want help going up the stairs. She probably could have left his ass on the lawn. I'm not saying this isn't physical, but a drunk-to-the-point-of-blackout person isn't the hardest to avoid. There's something missing from this part of the story.
After she woke up in the hospital, she appears not to have reached out to the police, who would have been required to investigate, by law.
"She narrowly avoided being struck by a car when her partner shoved her into oncoming traffic after becoming angry with her for interacting with men at a gay bar."
Dude's a shover, for sure. Probably a royal asshole, and some flavor of monster.
He is not, however, the best case around which to write a story. Many, many, many women have things a lot worse.
Honestly, I think it may be as simple as this:
It takes a certain type of person to fall into a trap like this.
Not that that means she doesn't need help, or anything of that sort. But if she was savvy she would have noticed that the guy was living a double life. If she was smart she wouldn't have tried to commit suicide with Ibuprofen of all things. Thankfully for her, she survived.
Not only that, but if my wife didn't come home from work at her usual time - without calling me - I would be pretty upset. We'd all be sitting at the dinner table, wondering if she was okay, and I'd damn sure call. If she was 'out with friends' without telling me her plans beforehand, I'd be pissed.
Whether or not this has any bearing on "Sarah's" situation I can't say. But the article didn't make me feel very sorry for her.
worldp@sswordday14
That way you can remember it until next year!
Now here is an example of press that you won't find in the US:
http://www.theguardian.com/com...
Who am I that I can 'attempt to muddle'? Further why do you care what I think about it? These questions are hypothetical, as an exercise in critical thinking.
That said, the goals here are pretty identical - modify the nationality of the country through means other than democracy. Yanukovich WAS legally elected, right? Could you imagine the 49% who voted against Obama conducting an uprising because they didn't care for his policies?
Ever hear of the Bay of Pigs?
I wonder also, if we will eventually see NATO missile batteries in the Ukraine. Time will tell, of course.
Funny, I don't feel 'reduced'.
Where in your post did you refute my point that the American media is likewise biased and the American public is equally happy to consume it?
Because to me it seemed like you launched immediately into 'technicalities and semantics' all on your own.
Flying the wrong flag is not treason anywhere else in the world. So right off the bat you've lost most of the persuasive power you may have had.
Educate yourself - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
Also your claim that foreign powers can only be held accountable if they desire to actually annex territory isn't valid. I don't recall Al-Qaeda 'annexing' the twin towers, for example.
Try again, if you'd like, but without the bias, please.
The American public does the exact same thing.
Note how the Ukrainian unrest to oust Viktor Yanukovych was a natural popular uprising, but the pro-Russian backlash absolutely must be a Russian Psy-Op.
So when part of Ukraine does what the US wants, it was all them and they should be free to determine their own future.
But when part of Ukraine does something the US does not want, saber rattling and sanctions to punish the vile Russian puppeteers are in order.
A public skilled in critical thinking would be suspicious:
1) Is it possible the situation in Ukraine is too complex for sound bytes in the 24 hour news cycle?
2) Is it possible that neither 'uprising' is directly influenced by an outside government?
3) Is it possible that BOTH 'uprisings' are directly influenced by outside governments?
But alas, we just take what we're fed and move on without adding any effort whatsoever.
Since you may not have understood, let me be clear:
There is no more money to be had.
This is true for specific social tiers, but it is also true for most governments around the globe.
We could just as easily invent and then waive a magic wand as raise the costs of fundamental services like power.
Clearer?
When solar competes on a level playing field with fossil fuels, it's cheaper.
Google disagrees. Unless of course you're requesting we back-charge coal producers for waste, as some of the articles in search do.
To that request, I'd point you to the above rebuttal. You're trying to make coal more expensive so it compares cost-wise to solar. That's great for the privileged who can afford higher prices. Not so great for the poor and eldery. For the same reasons as above.
So, you want to make the poor poorer to advocate your preferred power generation methods, and you don't see the folly in that position.
RTFA -
The utilities hate this requirement, for obvious reasons. A report by the Edison Electric Institute, the lobbying arm of the power industry, says this kind of law will put âoea squeeze on profitability,â and warns that if state incentives are not rolled back, âoeit may be too late to repair the utility business model.â
Since thatâ(TM)s an unsympathetic argument, the utilities have devised another: Solar expansion, they claim, will actually hurt consumers. The Arizona Public Service Company, the stateâ(TM)s largest utility, funneled large sums through a Koch operative to a nonprofit group that ran an ad claiming net metering would hurt older people on fixed incomes by raising electric rates. "
Anything that impacts the business model will impact the bottom line, period. So you may be affluent and savvy enough to add homebrew solar to your own property. What about those who cannot? Since they are beholden to the monopoly, they WILL be made to suffer for your advantage. This is called 'an economy', and is widely believed (outside of the Blue Team) to exist.
So you're essentially saying "If it means the projects and nursing homes either pay through the nose or go dark, GOOD."
But because you have your blue-tinted glasses on, you can't see that coal companies and power plants operate FOR PROFIT. Without the profit - hell, without 'enough' profit - they'll simply stop. And you can't force them to provide your neighbors power without covering their costs. Just look at Russia post communism to see what THAT looks like.