"Old Spice" markets disposable razors claimed to have blades of titanium. They dull very quickly and become effectively useless about 4 times faster than steel.
Alas, in the US we are now ruled by an educated thug.
It's too easy too believe that "more educated" is the same as "better educated". The people who come out of Harvard's school for dictators do not bode well for the United States as a free nation.
As long as you ignore the difference between aggression and defense, pacifism makes perfect sense.
"Why are you coddling that murderer? Have you no concern for his victim?"
"His victim is dead; I can't do anything for him. Surely I can reform this murderer, who has been so badly treated by society."
No adult is entitled to anything he hasn't earned. If someone else is forced to pay for your food, that person is acting as your slave. You have no right to enslave someone. You have no right to obtain food or housing at another person's expense; you have no right to force a doctor to cure your ills.
If a stranger breaks into my house to steal from me, I will kill him. The "47%" deserve the same: stealing by proxy does not absolve you of guilt.
I like the idea, but I see two problems: massive fraud in assigning costs of civilian contracts to government contracts, and political outcry against tax-advantaged companies and employees. Leftists would have apoplexy.
Waste in civil programs, and civil programs acting against the country's best interest, are frequent news items if you bother looking for them. As these things are line-item expenditures and their prices can be traced to employee wages and purchases from non-governmental entities, they can be verified as non-spook waste. One of the most recent is the anti-American "sensitivity training" scandal at the USDA.
I'm not going to bother refuting your racist argument.
If I steal your life savings and use it to live without working, according to you it's OK because it's an American's money being used to help an American..
Theft is just theft, and it doesn't become non-theft if it occurs within a particular group.
Private road companies were starting to make highways prior to the Interstate system, and would have developed a good system given time and the absence of government interference. Do you honestly think private roadbuilding companies had a chance in the era of antitrust?
A private company would just build a straight line between NY and california because that would be the most profitable.
And that's why you're not the CEO of a big successful corporation.
Ever sit around a camp fire and tell ghost stories? Was there some dummy in that group who believed the stories were true? That's how religions start, and as they grow they accumulate the beliefs, right or wrong ("morality, legal codes, sanitation, health regulations, interpersonal relationships, science etc.") that were in vogue at the time, except those that annoyed the highest leaders of the religion. Religion DID NOT originate most of the rules, it just codified a lot of what was popular at the time.
The person who earns $5e6 a year is a person who can use the efforts of others 5 million dollars a year more effectively than anyone willing to work for much less. He adds at least $5e6 more value to his company than anyone else. The people he leads would produce $5e6 less if he were not at the helm, even if they worked just as hard. He, and not they, earned the money.
Do you believe that just anyone can run a company, that there's nothing special that a CEO can do to make a company successful? Do you believe that Carly Fiorina is just as good as Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard? No? Then re-evaluate what good leaders are worth.
I'd rather have US citizens be able to feed themselves
Funny that you should use those words. If you buy food with money you earned yourself, you are feeding yourself. If you eat food you grew yourself, you are feeding yourself. If you get food with an EBT card or other government handout, or from charity, you are not feeding yourself.
War is generally a losing proposition for both the winner and the loser, but the winner can sometimes hide its expenses. There are also lost opportunity costs, and the implied costs of failing to defend against aggression.
Since the popular opinion is that the US is fighting in the middle east to get cheap oil, a reminder of history is necessary. Oil production in Arab countries used to be owned by private companies, which sold their product on the global market, just as Panasonic and Tata Motors do now. Arab countries seized (stole, thieved, nationalized, it's all the same) those oil facilities made by others, and have been selling the oil for their own profit ever since. Panasonic and Tata sell their own product today, not the governments of Japan and India. The US would be morally justified to take the middle east oil wells from the Arab governments and kill anyone who tried to stop it, and return the assets to their proper owners. The US is not doing that, nor is it taking those assets for itself.
If you look around the developed world, to see what works and what doesn't work, you'll see that government-financed health care, including socialized medicine, works better than ours, and no country has come up with a free-market health care system that works.
I'm sick of this lie.
The free market system with individuals either buying their own insurance or paying directly, works marvelously, especially if doctors are freed from government regulations (and the doctor supply isn't limited by corrupt college-AMA-government collusion). When the tax code was jiggered so that insurance was paid by employers, employees saw medical care as something with no cost to them, and thus started to consume it in ever-increasing quantities. Well, the laws of supply and demand cannot be averted indefinitely, so prices rose out of proportion to countries where the government acted to limit the supply of frivolous healthcare activities.
Furthermore, the statement "no country has come up with a free-market health care system that works" is an oxymoron (emphasis added). A country does not come up with a free market system. A country sets up mechanisms for the protection of property rights, and as long as those protections are not destroyed or circumvented, a free market system develops through human action. "The country" (by which is implied "the government") does not and cannot "come up with a free-market health care system", it can only destroy one (as in the US) or prevent one from coming into existence.
In Mark Twain's autobiography he reported that in his youth his family paid their doctor $50 a year to care for the whole family, regardless of the doctor's actual costs. Corrected for inflation, that's $4000 for a family's medical expenses in today's dollars. That's a free market cost (and yes, I know that modern technology is expensive, but modern diagnostics mean less waste, so there's some cancellation of the effects of technology.)
The nation's debt and deficit are not illusions: not because it can't refuse to pay (it can) but because there are consequences for refusing to pay, such as lenders refusing to lend in the future, trade wars and military wars, etc.
In fact, one of the ways the government can zero out foreign debt is to declare war on nations to which it owes money, declare the loans void, and seize all that country's assets within the US. It would be a tragic, insane decision with no winners, which is precisely what is to be expected from the government.
What a person can withdraw from SS is directly related to what he puts in. The person on a $5e6 annual salary gets no more SS payout than a person on a $1.5e5 annual salary. SS taxes have a yearly maximum, and so do the payouts, on the very same mechanism.
I've seen economists say that you can't buy an annuity on the free market that would give you as good a return as Social Security
That's because most things sold as annuities are amazing ripoff schemes sold by insurance companies. Diversified stock market investments do better over the long term, and have the advantage of being convertible to cash in a matter of days (for emergencies).
Slashdot Mirror
"Old Spice" markets disposable razors claimed to have blades of titanium. They dull very quickly and become effectively useless about 4 times faster than steel.
I'm no fan of Kissinger, but I'd like to know: which army did he command?
Alas, in the US we are now ruled by an educated thug.
It's too easy too believe that "more educated" is the same as "better educated". The people who come out of Harvard's school for dictators do not bode well for the United States as a free nation.
Cubicles became popular starting in the 1970s, seen as an improvement over the bullpen (open office) and cheaper than individual offices.
As long as you ignore the difference between aggression and defense, pacifism makes perfect sense.
"Why are you coddling that murderer? Have you no concern for his victim?"
"His victim is dead; I can't do anything for him. Surely I can reform this murderer, who has been so badly treated by society."
No adult is entitled to anything he hasn't earned. If someone else is forced to pay for your food, that person is acting as your slave. You have no right to enslave someone. You have no right to obtain food or housing at another person's expense; you have no right to force a doctor to cure your ills.
If a stranger breaks into my house to steal from me, I will kill him. The "47%" deserve the same: stealing by proxy does not absolve you of guilt.
Are you saying there is no future whatsoever for human-piloted fighter aircraft? "F" is just part of a name.
I like the idea, but I see two problems: massive fraud in assigning costs of civilian contracts to government contracts, and political outcry against tax-advantaged companies and employees. Leftists would have apoplexy.
Do you understand why "cannon fodder" is a nasty concept?
The more a country follows free market principles, the more it prospers. It isn't necessary to go to the extreme to see the trend.
Waste in civil programs, and civil programs acting against the country's best interest, are frequent news items if you bother looking for them. As these things are line-item expenditures and their prices can be traced to employee wages and purchases from non-governmental entities, they can be verified as non-spook waste. One of the most recent is the anti-American "sensitivity training" scandal at the USDA.
I'm not going to bother refuting your racist argument.
If I steal your life savings and use it to live without working, according to you it's OK because it's an American's money being used to help an American..
Theft is just theft, and it doesn't become non-theft if it occurs within a particular group.
Profit margins: Boeing 4%, Lockheed-Martin 4%, Northrop-Grumman 8%, dividends 3%, 4%, 3% respectively. Try again, your lie was caught this time.
And that's why you're not the CEO of a big successful corporation.
The money spent on something other than defense does no good for the man killed in an invasion.
Hey lazy guy, did you ever consider filling a pothole yourself?
MOST libertarians and conservatives object to the expenditures in the first place, it's only natural that they are pissed off at having to pay for it.
Ever sit around a camp fire and tell ghost stories? Was there some dummy in that group who believed the stories were true? That's how religions start, and as they grow they accumulate the beliefs, right or wrong ("morality, legal codes, sanitation, health regulations, interpersonal relationships, science etc.") that were in vogue at the time, except those that annoyed the highest leaders of the religion. Religion DID NOT originate most of the rules, it just codified a lot of what was popular at the time.
The person who earns $5e6 a year is a person who can use the efforts of others 5 million dollars a year more effectively than anyone willing to work for much less. He adds at least $5e6 more value to his company than anyone else. The people he leads would produce $5e6 less if he were not at the helm, even if they worked just as hard. He, and not they, earned the money.
Do you believe that just anyone can run a company, that there's nothing special that a CEO can do to make a company successful? Do you believe that Carly Fiorina is just as good as Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard? No? Then re-evaluate what good leaders are worth.
Funny that you should use those words. If you buy food with money you earned yourself, you are feeding yourself. If you eat food you grew yourself, you are feeding yourself. If you get food with an EBT card or other government handout, or from charity, you are not feeding yourself.
War is generally a losing proposition for both the winner and the loser, but the winner can sometimes hide its expenses. There are also lost opportunity costs, and the implied costs of failing to defend against aggression.
Since the popular opinion is that the US is fighting in the middle east to get cheap oil, a reminder of history is necessary. Oil production in Arab countries used to be owned by private companies, which sold their product on the global market, just as Panasonic and Tata Motors do now. Arab countries seized (stole, thieved, nationalized, it's all the same) those oil facilities made by others, and have been selling the oil for their own profit ever since. Panasonic and Tata sell their own product today, not the governments of Japan and India. The US would be morally justified to take the middle east oil wells from the Arab governments and kill anyone who tried to stop it, and return the assets to their proper owners. The US is not doing that, nor is it taking those assets for itself.
I'm sick of this lie.
The free market system with individuals either buying their own insurance or paying directly, works marvelously, especially if doctors are freed from government regulations (and the doctor supply isn't limited by corrupt college-AMA-government collusion). When the tax code was jiggered so that insurance was paid by employers, employees saw medical care as something with no cost to them, and thus started to consume it in ever-increasing quantities. Well, the laws of supply and demand cannot be averted indefinitely, so prices rose out of proportion to countries where the government acted to limit the supply of frivolous healthcare activities.
Furthermore, the statement "no country has come up with a free-market health care system that works" is an oxymoron (emphasis added). A country does not come up with a free market system. A country sets up mechanisms for the protection of property rights, and as long as those protections are not destroyed or circumvented, a free market system develops through human action. "The country" (by which is implied "the government") does not and cannot "come up with a free-market health care system", it can only destroy one (as in the US) or prevent one from coming into existence.
In Mark Twain's autobiography he reported that in his youth his family paid their doctor $50 a year to care for the whole family, regardless of the doctor's actual costs. Corrected for inflation, that's $4000 for a family's medical expenses in today's dollars. That's a free market cost (and yes, I know that modern technology is expensive, but modern diagnostics mean less waste, so there's some cancellation of the effects of technology.)
The nation's debt and deficit are not illusions: not because it can't refuse to pay (it can) but because there are consequences for refusing to pay, such as lenders refusing to lend in the future, trade wars and military wars, etc.
In fact, one of the ways the government can zero out foreign debt is to declare war on nations to which it owes money, declare the loans void, and seize all that country's assets within the US. It would be a tragic, insane decision with no winners, which is precisely what is to be expected from the government.
What a person can withdraw from SS is directly related to what he puts in. The person on a $5e6 annual salary gets no more SS payout than a person on a $1.5e5 annual salary. SS taxes have a yearly maximum, and so do the payouts, on the very same mechanism.
That's because most things sold as annuities are amazing ripoff schemes sold by insurance companies. Diversified stock market investments do better over the long term, and have the advantage of being convertible to cash in a matter of days (for emergencies).