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User: ChrisMaple

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  1. Re:Suzie can vote. Suzie can get a pitchfork. on Fast-Food CEO Invests In Machines Because Regulation Makes Them Cheaper Than Employees (yahoo.com) · · Score: 1

    To retain the same profit percentage, companies do, and must, pass along more that 100% of cost increases.

    Consider a company making widgets that sell for $100 each, that have a total cost (labor, materials, overhead, whatever) of $90. Their profit margin is 10%, not healthy, but adequate for a stable company in a stable industry.
    Now consider that same company, heavily taxed and working under regulations that drastically impair efficiency, all of whose suppliers are heavily taxed and regulated, and all of the supplier's suppliers are heavily taxed and regulated, and so on ad infinitum. Assume the total cost to build a widget is now $990, and if the increase of $900 is passed along the widget's selling price will be $1000. The profit margin is now 1%, which indicates a company in trouble, unworthy of investment and a likely candidate for a hostile takeover.
    To return the profit margin to 10%, the new price must be $1100, an increase of $1000 when expenses "only" went up by $900.

    Ignoring facts of this sort is part of the reason that politicians and faux economists think that their destructive policies do no harm.

    In the early 20th century, populists and faux economists were telling people that the national debt was no problem because "we owe it to ourselves" (a multiple lie). Don't accept such foolishness.

  2. Re:That's called Detroit, offshoring, capital flig on Fast-Food CEO Invests In Machines Because Regulation Makes Them Cheaper Than Employees (yahoo.com) · · Score: 1

    WHY must people work?

    Why must I give up my property at gunpoint to someone claiming to act for those who refuse to work?
    In the final analysis, those are the only two choices.

  3. Re:Suzie can vote. Suzie can get a pitchfork. on Fast-Food CEO Invests In Machines Because Regulation Makes Them Cheaper Than Employees (yahoo.com) · · Score: 1

    The average profit margin for the S&P 500 is below 8%. What do you think is going to happen if a 20% surtax is added onto sales? How long is a manufacturer going to stay in business losing 12% on every sale - until it realizes it's losing money, until it can't pay its bills, or until its creditors sue it into bankruptcy and out of existence?

  4. Re:Suzie can vote. Suzie can get a pitchfork. on Fast-Food CEO Invests In Machines Because Regulation Makes Them Cheaper Than Employees (yahoo.com) · · Score: 1

    "Large masses of people who are hungry and desperate" are caused, now as always, by government preventing people from performing the harmless actions they want to.

  5. Re:Suzie can vote. Suzie can get a pitchfork. on Fast-Food CEO Invests In Machines Because Regulation Makes Them Cheaper Than Employees (yahoo.com) · · Score: 1

    You are suffering from a failure of imagination.

  6. Re:If this was an American high school... on Israeli 10th-Grader Discovers Elegant Geometry Theorem · · Score: 1

    Despite Gates’ and others’ assurances that the Common Core reform was “state-led,” the former director of the Race to the Top competitive grant program, and outgoing U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s chief of staff, recently admitted the federal government had “forced” full support for adoption of the Common Core standards from each state by requiring its governor, chief state school officer, and head of the state board of education to sign off on the grant application.

    Common Core is also a deceptive trap, a lure to escape Bush's destructive "No Child Left Behind". From the frying pan to the fire.

  7. Re:If this was an American high school... on Israeli 10th-Grader Discovers Elegant Geometry Theorem · · Score: 1

    Common Core has actually done the impossible: It is being adopted as a One True Standard to gauge a student's understanding, based on a set of concepts, rather than a district's particular placement test...

    You seem to think that's a good thing.

  8. Re:Who was it? on Study Finds 3 Laws Could Reduce Firearm Deaths By 90% (meta.com) · · Score: 1

    Drug laws, like the Prohibition laws, came about because tightasses think they have the right to tell me and you what to do. High prices and drug crime resulted as the inevitable unintended consequences.

  9. Re:Who was it? on Study Finds 3 Laws Could Reduce Firearm Deaths By 90% (meta.com) · · Score: 1

    Bullets are easily within the ability range of the average home craftsman.

    More properly, a cartridge consists of bullet, casing, propellant, rim, and primer. Making your own primer would be tricky, as would be the casing and rim. Bullets and propellant are fairly easy, and final assembly of well made parts is trivial and done routinely by gun hobbyists to save money.

    Overtax ammunition and you drive the industry underground. Prices go up, quality goes down, and accidents due to firearm malfunction and home shop explosions greatly increase. Not a good plan.

  10. Re:Yeah, um, not so much on Study Finds 3 Laws Could Reduce Firearm Deaths By 90% (meta.com) · · Score: 1

    climate science

    Oxymoron.

  11. Re:Yeah, um, not so much on Study Finds 3 Laws Could Reduce Firearm Deaths By 90% (meta.com) · · Score: 1

    The "simple acts of momentary carelessness" the GP mentioned are failing to detour around a school zone. Do you know the location of every school in every town you pass through, and the limits of its associated no-gun zone? I thought not.

  12. Re:Yeah, um, not so much on Study Finds 3 Laws Could Reduce Firearm Deaths By 90% (meta.com) · · Score: 1

    New York's reduced handgun homicide rate is due to the general national trend and the greatly increased policing initiated by Giuliani in 1994. With the iniquitous fool de Blasio in office, expect to see the trend stall and possibly reverse.

  13. Re:Yeah, um, not so much on Study Finds 3 Laws Could Reduce Firearm Deaths By 90% (meta.com) · · Score: 1

    Not a straw man argument, because the availability of any cheap firearms would make one the preferred purchase of anybody who wants to buy a firearm and who is unable to purchase an expensive one.

  14. Re:Yeah, um, not so much on Study Finds 3 Laws Could Reduce Firearm Deaths By 90% (meta.com) · · Score: 1

    By that standard pretty much everything the US has ever done is racist, because almost everything the US has ever done was specifically designed in such a way as to make slavery possible.

    Historically, slavery based on race is relatively rare. Generally it came about as the result of a war, either nation or tribe based. In modern times, slavery tends to be based on tribe, religion, or whatever person is vulnerable enough to be grabbed.

    ...black Majorities of South Carolina and Mississippi somehow managed to lose elections with universal suffrage to pro-Jim Crow white minorities? Could not have happened if the Feds had seized all privately owned firearms in those states after the Civil War.

    Guns owned by government organizations are not "privately owned firearms". The southern governments were white (as were nearly all educated southern people). Racist government officials and guns in government hands were what kept race-based voting restrictions in place, much more than guns in private possession.
    "No guns in private hands" does not stop arson, hanging, and other forms of murder and intimidation.

  15. Re:Yeah, um, not so much on Study Finds 3 Laws Could Reduce Firearm Deaths By 90% (meta.com) · · Score: 1

    All governments and societies have already failed and continue to fail, so your argument is null.

  16. Re:speaking of black boxes... on Obama: Government Can't Let Smartphones Be 'Black Boxes' (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 1

    The President sets the tone of government, proposes legislation, and has veto power over legislation he doesn't like (subject to override). Without Obama or someone like him, we wouldn't have the monstrosity that is Obamacare.

    A president provides a role model, and disgraces like Bill Clinton and Obama hasten the nation's collapse and undermine any chance of instilling character into the youth. A good president inspires people to better behavior and gives breathing room for bottom-up changes to have an effect.

  17. Re:speaking of black boxes... on Obama: Government Can't Let Smartphones Be 'Black Boxes' (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 1

    Bernie is for all practical purposes a Fabianist - someone who wants to bring about communism slowly. His "equal right for blacks" work, though important to him, is going to be mostly window dressing to those he appoints. In his colossal .ignorance of economics he will impoverish the country while empowering thuggish unions. He'll continue the leftish weakening and undermining of the US military because he can't understand that Russia, China, Cuba, et. al. are not our bosom buddies.

  18. Many cities own electric power companies. Users pay by consumption, not by house or by individual as a tax might be. It's still a public utility, partly by convention and partly because it's widely available and almost a necessity.

    From wikipedia: A public utility (usually just utility) is an organization that maintains the infrastructure for a public service (often also providing a service using that infrastructure). Public utilities are subject to forms of public control and regulation ranging from local community-based groups to statewide government monopolies.

  19. Somebody who is apparently talking to nobody is a warning sign that the talker is mentally unhinged and possibly dangerous. Combine that with being in a place where you can't escape, like a railroad car, and fear is a natural response.

    Another example of a loud talker to empty space is an angry drunk. Again, fear is a reasonable response.

  20. There are a number of related reasons. Cell phones are half duplex, thus you have to keep talking loud so that background noise on the other side doesn't cause your voice to break up. Cell phones don't have a good ear seal. The microphone of a cell phone isn't near your mouth, so the signal/noise ratio is inferior to an old-style phone and you have to talk louder to overcome the background noise on your side..

  21. The jammer is wrong, but the vast majority of other users are annoying someone. Heavy cellphone use is creepy.

  22. If someone calls in the middle of the night, it's an emergency.

    Long before cell phones, I received a 3 AM call that a family member had died. She wouldn't have been any more or less dead at 8 AM. Nobody was better off for the call being made at 3 AM.

  23. There's nothing unique about fundamentalists among the various Christian groups editing the Bible to fit their preferences. Roman Catholicism removes "Thou shall make no graven images" from the Ten Commandments so that they can have St. Christopher doodads and other such stuff.

  24. Re:Eminent Domain on Apple Might Be Forced to Hand Over iOS Source Code to the FBI (theguardian.com) · · Score: 2

    Good idea. I figure about $120 billion, half of Apple's annual revenue. Cost to average citizen, $400, so not such a good idea.

  25. Re:handing over the code. on Apple Might Be Forced to Hand Over iOS Source Code to the FBI (theguardian.com) · · Score: 1

    Make the code available inside a locked, shielded, guarded room inside Apple headquarters. FBI coders can read and modify the code, and apply it to the single phone in question. Nothing leaves the room except the coders and the metadata of the phone the FBI claims it wants.