Not quote right. Some states and localities have sales tax some states have "use tax" they are not the same. In the case of a sales tax, the sale is taxed, in the case of a use tax the receipt is taxed. You cannot be required to pay a sales tax on a purchase made across state lines by anyone but the feds, it would violate interstate commerce. You can be required to pay a use tax to your own state or municipality.
Imagine what the USA would be today if the southern states had been allowed to succeed.
That is really really hard because a lot of political events took place in the mean time that would have been markedly different without the "southerns."
I don't think the institution of slavery in north America had a lot of legs left in it. Keeping and operating a slave labor force ( of the brutal sort practiced in the US ) comes with it a lot of problems. Technology and changing mores were sure to bring about its natural end in the next 25 - 50 years the way I look at it. So that leaves us with a Northern US that is deprived of a lot of agricultural wealth, and Confederacy that is minimally industrialized. Keep in mind the US probably would have maintained control of the coasts and water ways, they had the navel might and not being able to bring trade goods up the Mississippi would have been major economic hardship for them. Its likely the South therefore would have struggled mightly with transportation issues. Until later 19th century tech could make them a real power again.
That leaves us with a US that may or may not have decided to stick their fingers into WWI. Which probably completely and utterly changes all future politics this side of the Atlantic and might mean that most of Europe would be German speaking. It very possible there would still be a somewhat powerful monarchy in parts...Russia might still be Tsarist... No idea really.
FB is all about interaction and clicks. So 1) is out right a way. If you make people afraid their accounts get locked because they decided to share something they have not exhaustively researched. They will stop sharing anything, but photos of their own dog and cat.
2) This one *might* be doable but it won't really work. If you don't put teeth on it people will just click thru and not think anymore of it. You can't put teeth on it because it will drive people away from the site.
3) I don't know if you have noticed but FB share price and a lot of what they talk about at share holder meetings are "active users." That is what advertisers care about, and by extension investors. Kicking the worst trouble makers off the site who make it toxic is probably necessary, but that is going have to be reserved for a few serial offenders.
4) Oh that's brilliant incentive third parties to continue to support alternative logon methods so that they don't cut off facebook users who did something stupid 10 years ago as teenagers. Sure that help keep FB where they want to be in the middle of every web request.
Crimea - Is pretty clearly a Russian territory right now. I'd go a head and update your maps if you have not yet done so.
They conquered it and parts of Georgia fairly recently. There does not seem to be much chance of anyone 'freeing it' anytime soon.
I admittedly don't know what things are like there on the ground. My understanding is most people in Crimea want to be part of Russia. The Ukraine does not seem to have the wherewithal to re-take it anytime soon. I don't think they will be pulled into NATO until they release their claims upon it because clearly the existing NATO members have no appetite for an armed conflict with Russia over the peninsula.
1) Russia physically controls it 2) 1 is likely to stay that way 3) The locals voted to join Russia so ostensibly they want to remain and the governing bodies there are loyal to Moscow
Based on pretty similar logic I conclude Crimea is part of Russia. I for one am okay with that. Its not might fight. I understand how some Ukrainians might feel differently; just as some Palestinians might; but facts don't have feelings.
Its hard not to read posts like the grand parents and think anything other than anti-zionism/anti-semitism and or rabid anti-Trump hysteria is behind it. The whole Jerusalem embassy thing is crazy to be upset over. Its simply a recognition of facts.
1) Israel is a sovereign nation. 2) Israel physically controls Jerusalem 3) Israel says Jerusalem is its capital and has government offices etc there. 4) The PLO has zero chance of occupying and controlling Jerusalem now or in the forseable future. 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = Yes Jerusalem is the capital of Israel; disagreeing with that is just maintaining a silly fiction. 5) Arafat and Abbas have been offered almost everything they want in the past and walked away; they don't want peace; their idea of negotiating is demanding everything while continuing to sow hatred and encourage terrorism toward Israel and its people. 6) The peace "process" won't be hurt by this. Current Israeli politics are no where near putting Jerusalem on the barging table again ( even if it has been there in the past ). We have been trying to help negotiate a peace for 40 years! The previous "process" was not working, you can't undermine a process that is already hopeless! 7) Half the Senators who went on the Sunday shows to criticize the move VOTED FOR IT. Literally NOTHING of substance has changed in the past 25 years as far PLO/Israeli peace situation except domestic political sentiment; Muslims have somehow been advanced in the victim hierarchy ahead of jews.
Maybe the GP is upset about the NATO comments Trump made. Hmm well lets see he got a commitment form our EU allies to actually hold up their end of the bargain and make the defense investments the treaty requires. Oh how terrible.
Maybe the GP is upset with Trump's China rhetoric. Hmm well its had little impact on US-China relations that I can see, maybe its engendered a little more cooperation regarding DPRK from them as an olive branch maybe they are just seeing the light on the hazards of letting the Kims keeping developing nukes. Who even knows? - I guarantee you nobody at the State Department; not Trump appointees or career diplomats.
Maybe the GP is upset about all the territory ISIS has lost?
Maybe the GP is upset about the fact that the Saudis are actually reforming their terror sponsoring ways?
Face it Trump FP policy has been at WORST a wash. At best he has actually made some minor progress advancing American's interests; something the last two administrations both failed at almost entirely.
FB is useful for two things, Photo sharing which you mention. It its sorta fun to see people react and comment to holiday photos and photos from sporting events etc. The other thing is event announcements and automated RSVP processing. Its a nice way to keep track of how many people are coming to your BBQ.
Insist on buildable sourcecode, thoroughly review what the code does and what else it tries to interact with.
That's all well and good but to be perfectly honest a large complex software project is often as difficult to audit for back doors and deliberate weakness in cryptography etc as it would be to write. Honestly its probably smarter to do what you suggest to the degree you can but buy from sources you have more reason to trust.
We probably should have more and resit waiving buy American provisions where the military and intelligence community is concerned.
Its really ridiculous. This entire thing came out of a desperate attempt to 1) Excuse / Rationalize Hillary's (the worst candidate of all time) ability to defeat Trump ( the second worst candidate of all time ), 2) Remove a lawfully elected president because he won't go along with some of what the entrenched public service sector / military industrial complex wants.
The military industrial complex is NOT a conspiracy theory. Its a reality the President and former General Eisenhower warned us about. Its not men in dank rooms with cigars in K street, and expensive dinners in DCs finer eateries. Is there a conspiracy to remove Trump; Yes! That is not a secret half the democratic caucus is broadcasting their intents to impeach him. Their big donors are all on board. The military industrial complex folks probably wanted Jeb! or someone like him, after that they wanted Clinton who is every bit as a big a hawk.
I don't think there is a conspiracy to hang Trump with Russia, just a lot of collective wishful thinking and tolerance for congressional / special prosecutor fishing expeditions when its not their guy on the receiving end of the unfair treatment. I don't even think they cynically trying to push this Russia stuff to ensure the public buys into what they know is going to be a flimsy excuse to impeach a president. I think its cognitive dissonance on their own parts. They know what Muller is doing is wrong and bad for the republic. They want to believe they are good people, while still supporting it, though so they convince themselves Russia is the bogey man and existential threat of the 60 - mid 80s. The reality is Russia is a has been, they simply don't have the economic influence the USSR did. They have a legacy military influence in their own back yard that an impotent EU can't counter but that is it.
Did they try to influence our election probably...Lots of foreign nationals did so frigging what? Do they thinking sewing a mess of political fractiousness and distrust among Americans weakens us? You bet. So all these "Russia Truthers" are playing into their hand; not that I think it really matter any way. Its just funny because Trump ( and I say this as a supporter ) is a conspiracy nutter, has turned 48% of the country into conspiracy nutters.
I can cite a bunch of examples where liberal atheists have run done things that run counter to their espoused ideologies too. "We need to spend more money on public housing just not in my neighborhood", comes up a lot.
People find reasons to justify what they know is bad and or hypocritical behavior. That isn't uniq to Christians or any other group. At least we can say Christianity explicitly teaches you should try not to do that. Of course a lot of people still fail in their attempt or fail to really make the attempt.
Dude, the poor guy can still drive a Toyota or even a moped. I think that was the point he was trying to make.
I agree but the analogy still does not really work.
After all we can't all date Jennifer Lawrence; but there is probably some lonely fat chick that would let you bang her. In these sense women are very much like cars. Just about every guy would like to take a Lambo or J-law for that matter out for a ride once. You don't necessarily want to own it though, you don't want to protect it from others who might find it desirable enough they attempt to steal it often, and your don't want the upkeep. At various stages in your life that Toyota and/or the girl next door are more appealing options.
The larger point is society more or less satisfies the demand for autos. Auto makers find ways to produce less expensive autos for people that could otherwise not afford them, sometimes that ends up meaning a moped.
By contrast we cannot simply produce more women, without resulting in a more or less equal number of additional men therefore not doing much to fill the demand gap. We also cannot produce women of progressively inferior quality until the become affordable to the poorer male members of these societies where women are not permitted self sufficiency.
Christianity evolved past the violence of the Crusades
A few things to consider about the Crusades.
Firstly they were largely a response to be cut off from "the holy land." Now I grant you perhaps a response of the wrong scale and done for faulty political ambitions trying to win favor with Rome etc, but on a very fundamental level the Crusades were a response to Islamic aggression and territorial encroachment! This is in direct contrast to Islam where Koran commands them to spread the faith by the sword.
Second, the Crusades were about ethno-politics and not Christianity specifically. Contemporaries parsed the Bible and found implicit justifications and excuses for their political, military and territorial ambitions but again that was reading things into the text. This stands in contrast with the Koran which specifically calls Muslims to the Jihad (holy war).
Third, and partly circling back to the first point about winning favor with Rome, the Pope more or less ordered the Crusades. The Pope may have suggested they were God's will and Roman Catholics do believe the Pope speaks for/is divinely inspired by God; however Roman Catholics were not the only Christian group at the time, and certainly are not the only group now. Different Christian groups have a wide variety of viewpoints about the authority of the Pope, ranging form "he is God's vicar on earth" to "he is some guy who wears a funny hat." This is quite a lot like Islam where there are a number of sects with different interpretations of at least some elements of the faith. We certainly cannot say "all Christians" supported the crusades, at the time and certainly not in hindsight today.
There is and will be a greater instance of suicide and you won't hear about it because the China worshiping socialist left wing media in this country won't criticize Chinese society and the government their certainly won't let their own media talk about it.
In fairness to the Mormons, they'd been on the receiving end of a lot of violence in their earliest days; before they became somewhat militarized out west. After been run out of multiple original settlements its somewhat understandable they would choose to arm themselves and deal with likely malevolent outsiders and people encroaching on their territory violently. It might also be argued the polygamy, which was also not present in the beginnings of the movement was a borne out of need to rapidly increase their numbers, so they could ward off attacks.
Here in the US though to some degree you could do that. Most people get a menu of investment vehicles to choose from in 401k programs offered by employers. You can't say put 10k in Blockchain Inc, but you can say put 5% in GoldmanSucks High-tech fund. Which you can discover the makeup of, if you ask.
Usually there will be 10 or 20 other funds to allocate to, like bond funds, municipal bond funds, real-estate holdings, domestic equity, foreign capital, than stuff by size, blue chips, growth, small cap, and finally some target date offerings. So you have some influence. You can also roll a 401k into an IRA; if you don't like the investment vehicles your company offers.
If you are doing an IRA (individual retirement account) you can put just about any investment you want in it so long as its managed on your behalf by a licenses securities broker. You can invest in precious metals, individual stocks, individual bonds, mutual funds, index funds, even a simple Certificate of Deposit at a bank. So you certainly can put your tax deferred retirement savings into 'Long Blockchain' here in the states if that is what you want to do.
Not really paradoxical. The answer is automation will increase productivity to the point where most people don't need to work 40+ hours a week to generate enough wealth to enable them to consume as much as they need, and as much as a lot of people even want to.
The only problem is we have a lot of antiquated rules that say stuff like 32+ hours is a full time employee and those are the ones who get benefits. We have a tiny as compared to what it should be individual insurance market because of a bunch of antiquated tax rules that were created which prompted business to compensate people with insurance policies instead of large enough paychecks to just go get their own coverage... We have antiquated ideas and value judgements that term anyone not working full time to be a slacker...
Really the answer is pretty simple. We just need to move to flat taxes and let everyone know you can be a decent human being and only work 16 hours a week.
This is only unpopular because the media with their 90% left leaning coverage is working overtime to make it so.
Keep in mind the Individual Mandate does not go away until 2019. So nobody is really going to loose coverage this year. That is in there to force some action on fixing 0bamacare, which everyone knows is quite broken in that its not controlling costs; and has not actually met its coverage objectives.
This is real money for most of the middle class, who actually votes. The members of the middle close that actually could lose as a result of this live in bright blue places with very high local taxes they will no longer be able to deduct all of; those were not going to sending Republicans to the senate, or turning up any electoral college votes anyway. Meanwhile struggling communities in fly over country keep more money in their pockets and don't subside 3% on the coasts.
The reality is November is still almost a year off! You can't keep peoples' anti-trump everything he does is bad ferver going for another full year unless something bad actually happens. Right now middle America is watching their 401ks grow, seeing real progress being made against ISIS on the news, and getting a little extra walking around money. When Regan did it, the result was a GOP sweep! I don't think that will happen this time; but by Nov 2018, the "Blue wave" is going to be puddle. Sure the Democrats will pick up a few seats in the house for largely demographic reasons; that the GOP has failed and is still failing to deal with; but there inst going to be any land slide.
No I can't be bothered and its not because I am lazy or asshole thank you very much. It has everything to do with the changing economy. Most retails stores are empty most of the time so that have cut everything to skeleton crews; at least if you are in a smallish town of 20K or so. There will two employees on duty at your local Staples for example.
Normally this is fine, you are the only one in the store! However like a lot of us I tend to want to shop say before Christmas when literally everyone else does! Because these places no longer have a deep bench of people to call up, that are trained and ready to work they run about their usual staff level. Service is awful.
The day after your retirement party do you plan to buy a boat and head out to sea?
If you are not doing something like that I would not worry about giving more than a couple months notice. Which really is enough time to put together an orderly transition/success; if you take some personal steps on your own to document things and fix up anyone old problems before you make your plans public.
If they really need you and you are not going anywhere right away, they can always bring you back on to do a little 1099 work for a few weeks.
Given them YEARS notice on the other hand just allows time for shenanigans like pushing you out to get the transition over on their terms rather than yours maybe before you are ready. Worse I have seen crappy companies let people go before making eligibility for 30 year bonuses / increased pensions etc. That sorta thing may or may not apply to you but why invite trouble if it does. At 60 you are not quite ready to take SS but might really have trouble finding another gig, taking SS early can have major financial draw backs; is another thing worth considering.
Really a couple months notice is plenty fair to all and makes sure you go when the time is right for you.
Years and Years ago there was an IBM Super Bowl ad.
The actor works his way thru a store stuffing items into his leather coat. You are made to assume he shoplifting. He than walks strait out the door and we are somehow informed he has paid for everything, some RFID scanner has identified him and all the items he has taken and will send him the bill.
Obviously there are all kinds of huge privacy problems with that. It was the 90's though and the general public was not yet even remotely cognizant of what privacy threats were coming in the Internet age.
I don't know how to solve all the inherent privacy problems, implementing something like that; it is however a shopping experience I would *want*. Being able to just walk into a place pickup whatever I want / need; stuff it into my pocket if that is the most convenient thing to do with it and walk out entirely friction free is the sort of thing that would get me back into a brick and mortar store; in lots of cases.
I am thinking things like books, office supplies, small tools and things I buy online today, I might go pickup in person if picking up is all I had to do! Just working my way thru isles at Walmart or marching around the shopping complex without breaking stride to stand in lines, while 10 people a head of me figure out if they need to swipe or chip, write checks etc...would be great.
Well that's what happens when you have a pure fiat currency rather than a gold standard. Deflation would have kept wages tied to productivity even without wage growth, but we knocked out one leg of table and just figured we'd get lucky forever balancing on the remaining two.
People all over the world accept bitcoin, so it has a much broader base of support than any state sanctioned currency, and is also immune to the inevitable gaffes all states make.
What are you smoking and can I get some! People all over the world accept USD, Eur, and Yen. USD probably being the most widely accepted. I can assure you the number of people who will accept bitcoin for a given transaction is immeasurably small compared to the number of people would would accept dollars!
The desert car repair shop might take a $50 bill but it's worth might be somewhat uncertain and so the change offered the customer would be uncertain even if the car technician looked up some current product prices. He might make out if dollars go up after the exchange or lose if the dollar goes down.
Why he recalls that $50 used to cover his grocery bill every week a decade ago but its nearly $70 today. He buys about the same basket and he and is wife eat about the same about as they did then...Than there is the gold necklace she insists she simply must have for the holiday. Why the price in the window at the jewlery story seems to change every week.
There isn't anything terribly deficient about gold, as a currency that the dollar does not also suffer from. If gold has a problem is because its not sufficiently widely distributed. Thank government confiscation for that!
This IMO is bitcoins biggest problem. To few people control to much of the total money supply.
Slashdot Mirror
Not quote right. Some states and localities have sales tax some states have "use tax" they are not the same. In the case of a sales tax, the sale is taxed, in the case of a use tax the receipt is taxed. You cannot be required to pay a sales tax on a purchase made across state lines by anyone but the feds, it would violate interstate commerce. You can be required to pay a use tax to your own state or municipality.
Imagine what the USA would be today if the southern states had been allowed to succeed.
That is really really hard because a lot of political events took place in the mean time that would have been markedly different without the "southerns."
I don't think the institution of slavery in north America had a lot of legs left in it. Keeping and operating a slave labor force ( of the brutal sort practiced in the US ) comes with it a lot of problems. Technology and changing mores were sure to bring about its natural end in the next 25 - 50 years the way I look at it. So that leaves us with a Northern US that is deprived of a lot of agricultural wealth, and Confederacy that is minimally industrialized. Keep in mind the US probably would have maintained control of the coasts and water ways, they had the navel might and not being able to bring trade goods up the Mississippi would have been major economic hardship for them. Its likely the South therefore would have struggled mightly with transportation issues. Until later 19th century tech could make them a real power again.
That leaves us with a US that may or may not have decided to stick their fingers into WWI. Which probably completely and utterly changes all future politics this side of the Atlantic and might mean that most of Europe would be German speaking. It very possible there would still be a somewhat powerful monarchy in parts...Russia might still be Tsarist... No idea really.
FB is all about interaction and clicks. So 1) is out right a way. If you make people afraid their accounts get locked because they decided to share something they have not exhaustively researched. They will stop sharing anything, but photos of their own dog and cat.
2) This one *might* be doable but it won't really work. If you don't put teeth on it people will just click thru and not think anymore of it. You can't put teeth on it because it will drive people away from the site.
3) I don't know if you have noticed but FB share price and a lot of what they talk about at share holder meetings are "active users." That is what advertisers care about, and by extension investors. Kicking the worst trouble makers off the site who make it toxic is probably necessary, but that is going have to be reserved for a few serial offenders.
4) Oh that's brilliant incentive third parties to continue to support alternative logon methods so that they don't cut off facebook users who did something stupid 10 years ago as teenagers. Sure that help keep FB where they want to be in the middle of every web request.
Crimea - Is pretty clearly a Russian territory right now. I'd go a head and update your maps if you have not yet done so.
They conquered it and parts of Georgia fairly recently. There does not seem to be much chance of anyone 'freeing it' anytime soon.
I admittedly don't know what things are like there on the ground. My understanding is most people in Crimea want to be part of Russia. The Ukraine does not seem to have the wherewithal to re-take it anytime soon. I don't think they will be pulled into NATO until they release their claims upon it because clearly the existing NATO members have no appetite for an armed conflict with Russia over the peninsula.
1) Russia physically controls it
2) 1 is likely to stay that way
3) The locals voted to join Russia so ostensibly they want to remain and the governing bodies there are loyal to Moscow
Based on pretty similar logic I conclude Crimea is part of Russia. I for one am okay with that. Its not might fight. I understand how some Ukrainians might feel differently; just as some Palestinians might; but facts don't have feelings.
Its hard not to read posts like the grand parents and think anything other than anti-zionism/anti-semitism and or rabid anti-Trump hysteria is behind it. The whole Jerusalem embassy thing is crazy to be upset over.
Its simply a recognition of facts.
1) Israel is a sovereign nation.
2) Israel physically controls Jerusalem
3) Israel says Jerusalem is its capital and has government offices etc there.
4) The PLO has zero chance of occupying and controlling Jerusalem now or in the forseable future.
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = Yes Jerusalem is the capital of Israel; disagreeing with that is just maintaining a silly fiction.
5) Arafat and Abbas have been offered almost everything they want in the past and walked away; they don't want peace; their idea of negotiating is demanding everything while continuing to sow hatred and encourage terrorism toward Israel and its people.
6) The peace "process" won't be hurt by this. Current Israeli politics are no where near putting Jerusalem on the barging table again ( even if it has been there in the past ). We have been trying to help negotiate a peace for 40 years! The previous "process" was not working, you can't undermine a process that is already hopeless!
7) Half the Senators who went on the Sunday shows to criticize the move VOTED FOR IT. Literally NOTHING of substance has changed in the past 25 years as far PLO/Israeli peace situation except domestic political sentiment; Muslims have somehow been advanced in the victim hierarchy ahead of jews.
Maybe the GP is upset about the NATO comments Trump made. Hmm well lets see he got a commitment form our EU allies to actually hold up their end of the bargain and make the defense investments the treaty requires. Oh how terrible.
Maybe the GP is upset with Trump's China rhetoric. Hmm well its had little impact on US-China relations that I can see, maybe its engendered a little more cooperation regarding DPRK from them as an olive branch maybe they are just seeing the light on the hazards of letting the Kims keeping developing nukes. Who even knows? - I guarantee you nobody at the State Department; not Trump appointees or career diplomats.
Maybe the GP is upset about all the territory ISIS has lost?
Maybe the GP is upset about the fact that the Saudis are actually reforming their terror sponsoring ways?
Face it Trump FP policy has been at WORST a wash. At best he has actually made some minor progress advancing American's interests; something the last two administrations both failed at almost entirely.
I think Mark is more concerned Congress might decided social media needs 'regulating.'
FB is useful for two things, Photo sharing which you mention. It its sorta fun to see people react and comment to holiday photos and photos from sporting events etc. The other thing is event announcements and automated RSVP processing. Its a nice way to keep track of how many people are coming to your BBQ.
Insist on buildable sourcecode, thoroughly review what the code does and what else it tries to interact with.
That's all well and good but to be perfectly honest a large complex software project is often as difficult to audit for back doors and deliberate weakness in cryptography etc as it would be to write. Honestly its probably smarter to do what you suggest to the degree you can but buy from sources you have more reason to trust.
We probably should have more and resit waiving buy American provisions where the military and intelligence community is concerned.
Its really ridiculous. This entire thing came out of a desperate attempt to 1) Excuse / Rationalize Hillary's (the worst candidate of all time) ability to defeat Trump ( the second worst candidate of all time ), 2) Remove a lawfully elected president because he won't go along with some of what the entrenched public service sector / military industrial complex wants.
The military industrial complex is NOT a conspiracy theory. Its a reality the President and former General Eisenhower warned us about. Its not men in dank rooms with cigars in K street, and expensive dinners in DCs finer eateries. Is there a conspiracy to remove Trump; Yes! That is not a secret half the democratic caucus is broadcasting their intents to impeach him. Their big donors are all on board. The military industrial complex folks probably wanted Jeb! or someone like him, after that they wanted Clinton who is every bit as a big a hawk.
I don't think there is a conspiracy to hang Trump with Russia, just a lot of collective wishful thinking and tolerance for congressional / special prosecutor fishing expeditions when its not their guy on the receiving end of the unfair treatment. I don't even think they cynically trying to push this Russia stuff to ensure the public buys into what they know is going to be a flimsy excuse to impeach a president. I think its cognitive dissonance on their own parts. They know what Muller is doing is wrong and bad for the republic. They want to believe they are good people, while still supporting it, though so they convince themselves Russia is the bogey man and existential threat of the 60 - mid 80s. The reality is Russia is a has been, they simply don't have the economic influence the USSR did. They have a legacy military influence in their own back yard that an impotent EU can't counter but that is it.
Did they try to influence our election probably...Lots of foreign nationals did so frigging what? Do they thinking sewing a mess of political fractiousness and distrust among Americans weakens us? You bet. So all these "Russia Truthers" are playing into their hand; not that I think it really matter any way. Its just funny because Trump ( and I say this as a supporter ) is a conspiracy nutter, has turned 48% of the country into conspiracy nutters.
I can cite a bunch of examples where liberal atheists have run done things that run counter to their espoused ideologies too. "We need to spend more money on public housing just not in my neighborhood", comes up a lot.
People find reasons to justify what they know is bad and or hypocritical behavior. That isn't uniq to Christians or any other group. At least we can say Christianity explicitly teaches you should try not to do that. Of course a lot of people still fail in their attempt or fail to really make the attempt.
Dude, the poor guy can still drive a Toyota or even a moped. I think that was the point he was trying to make.
I agree but the analogy still does not really work.
After all we can't all date Jennifer Lawrence; but there is probably some lonely fat chick that would let you bang her. In these sense women are very much like cars. Just about every guy would like to take a Lambo or J-law for that matter out for a ride once. You don't necessarily want to own it though, you don't want to protect it from others who might find it desirable enough they attempt to steal it often, and your don't want the upkeep. At various stages in your life that Toyota and/or the girl next door are more appealing options.
The larger point is society more or less satisfies the demand for autos. Auto makers find ways to produce less expensive autos for people that could otherwise not afford them, sometimes that ends up meaning a moped.
By contrast we cannot simply produce more women, without resulting in a more or less equal number of additional men therefore not doing much to fill the demand gap. We also cannot produce women of progressively inferior quality until the become affordable to the poorer male members of these societies where women are not permitted self sufficiency.
Christianity evolved past the violence of the Crusades
A few things to consider about the Crusades.
Firstly they were largely a response to be cut off from "the holy land." Now I grant you perhaps a response of the wrong scale and done for faulty political ambitions trying to win favor with Rome etc, but on a very fundamental level the Crusades were a response to Islamic aggression and territorial encroachment! This is in direct contrast to Islam where Koran commands them to spread the faith by the sword.
Second, the Crusades were about ethno-politics and not Christianity specifically. Contemporaries parsed the Bible and found implicit justifications and excuses for their political, military and territorial ambitions but again that was reading things into the text. This stands in contrast with the Koran which specifically calls Muslims to the Jihad (holy war).
Third, and partly circling back to the first point about winning favor with Rome, the Pope more or less ordered the Crusades. The Pope may have suggested they were God's will and Roman Catholics do believe the Pope speaks for/is divinely inspired by God; however Roman Catholics were not the only Christian group at the time, and certainly are not the only group now. Different Christian groups have a wide variety of viewpoints about the authority of the Pope, ranging form "he is God's vicar on earth" to "he is some guy who wears a funny hat." This is quite a lot like Islam where there are a number of sects with different interpretations of at least some elements of the faith. We certainly cannot say "all Christians" supported the crusades, at the time and certainly not in hindsight today.
There is and will be a greater instance of suicide and you won't hear about it because the China worshiping socialist left wing media in this country won't criticize Chinese society and the government their certainly won't let their own media talk about it.
In fairness to the Mormons, they'd been on the receiving end of a lot of violence in their earliest days; before they became somewhat militarized out west. After been run out of multiple original settlements its somewhat understandable they would choose to arm themselves and deal with likely malevolent outsiders and people encroaching on their territory violently. It might also be argued the polygamy, which was also not present in the beginnings of the movement was a borne out of need to rapidly increase their numbers, so they could ward off attacks.
Here in the US though to some degree you could do that. Most people get a menu of investment vehicles to choose from in 401k programs offered by employers. You can't say put 10k in Blockchain Inc, but you can say put 5% in GoldmanSucks High-tech fund. Which you can discover the makeup of, if you ask.
Usually there will be 10 or 20 other funds to allocate to, like bond funds, municipal bond funds, real-estate holdings, domestic equity, foreign capital, than stuff by size, blue chips, growth, small cap, and finally some target date offerings. So you have some influence. You can also roll a 401k into an IRA; if you don't like the investment vehicles your company offers.
If you are doing an IRA (individual retirement account) you can put just about any investment you want in it so long as its managed on your behalf by a licenses securities broker. You can invest in precious metals, individual stocks, individual bonds, mutual funds, index funds, even a simple Certificate of Deposit at a bank. So you certainly can put your tax deferred retirement savings into 'Long Blockchain' here in the states if that is what you want to do.
15% own stocks DIRECTLY. Much much larger percentages of the public have mutual fund holdings, often in IRAs or 401ks.
That 15% number is talking point for people with a political agenda, and has little relationship with reality.
Note I am not saying the 401K and IRA schemes are models of good public policy just that its not true only 15% of Americans 'own' stocks.
Not really paradoxical. The answer is automation will increase productivity to the point where most people don't need to work 40+ hours a week to generate enough wealth to enable them to consume as much as they need, and as much as a lot of people even want to.
The only problem is we have a lot of antiquated rules that say stuff like 32+ hours is a full time employee and those are the ones who get benefits. We have a tiny as compared to what it should be individual insurance market because of a bunch of antiquated tax rules that were created which prompted business to compensate people with insurance policies instead of large enough paychecks to just go get their own coverage... We have antiquated ideas and value judgements that term anyone not working full time to be a slacker...
Really the answer is pretty simple. We just need to move to flat taxes and let everyone know you can be a decent human being and only work 16 hours a week.
This is only unpopular because the media with their 90% left leaning coverage is working overtime to make it so.
Keep in mind the Individual Mandate does not go away until 2019. So nobody is really going to loose coverage this year. That is in there to force some action on fixing 0bamacare, which everyone knows is quite broken in that its not controlling costs; and has not actually met its coverage objectives.
This is real money for most of the middle class, who actually votes. The members of the middle close that actually could lose as a result of this live in bright blue places with very high local taxes they will no longer be able to deduct all of; those were not going to sending Republicans to the senate, or turning up any electoral college votes anyway. Meanwhile struggling communities in fly over country keep more money in their pockets and don't subside 3% on the coasts.
The reality is November is still almost a year off! You can't keep peoples' anti-trump everything he does is bad ferver going for another full year unless something bad actually happens. Right now middle America is watching their 401ks grow, seeing real progress being made against ISIS on the news, and getting a little extra walking around money. When Regan did it, the result was a GOP sweep! I don't think that will happen this time; but by Nov 2018, the "Blue wave" is going to be puddle. Sure the Democrats will pick up a few seats in the house for largely demographic reasons; that the GOP has failed and is still failing to deal with; but there inst going to be any land slide.
No I can't be bothered and its not because I am lazy or asshole thank you very much. It has everything to do with the changing economy. Most retails stores are empty most of the time so that have cut everything to skeleton crews; at least if you are in a smallish town of 20K or so. There will two employees on duty at your local Staples for example.
Normally this is fine, you are the only one in the store! However like a lot of us I tend to want to shop say before Christmas when literally everyone else does! Because these places no longer have a deep bench of people to call up, that are trained and ready to work they run about their usual staff level. Service is awful.
YES! As a US citizen I absolutely want to know if you over stayed a visa, even if we are catching you on the way home!
Its solid grounds for NOT extending another visa to you!
The day after your retirement party do you plan to buy a boat and head out to sea?
If you are not doing something like that I would not worry about giving more than a couple months notice.
Which really is enough time to put together an orderly transition/success; if you take some personal steps on your own to document things and fix up anyone old problems before you make your plans public.
If they really need you and you are not going anywhere right away, they can always bring you back on to do a little 1099 work for a few weeks.
Given them YEARS notice on the other hand just allows time for shenanigans like pushing you out to get the transition over on their terms rather than yours maybe before you are ready. Worse I have seen crappy companies let people go before making eligibility for 30 year bonuses / increased pensions etc. That sorta thing may or may not apply to you but why invite trouble if it does. At 60 you are not quite ready to take SS but might really have trouble finding another gig, taking SS early can have major financial draw backs; is another thing worth considering.
Really a couple months notice is plenty fair to all and makes sure you go when the time is right for you.
Years and Years ago there was an IBM Super Bowl ad.
The actor works his way thru a store stuffing items into his leather coat. You are made to assume he shoplifting. He than walks strait out the door and we are somehow informed he has paid for everything, some RFID scanner has identified him and all the items he has taken and will send him the bill.
Obviously there are all kinds of huge privacy problems with that. It was the 90's though and the general public was not yet even remotely cognizant of what privacy threats were coming in the Internet age.
I don't know how to solve all the inherent privacy problems, implementing something like that; it is however a shopping experience I would *want*. Being able to just walk into a place pickup whatever I want / need; stuff it into my pocket if that is the most convenient thing to do with it and walk out entirely friction free is the sort of thing that would get me back into a brick and mortar store; in lots of cases.
I am thinking things like books, office supplies, small tools and things I buy online today, I might go pickup in person if picking up is all I had to do! Just working my way thru isles at Walmart or marching around the shopping complex without breaking stride to stand in lines, while 10 people a head of me figure out if they need to swipe or chip, write checks etc...would be great.
Well that's what happens when you have a pure fiat currency rather than a gold standard. Deflation would have kept wages tied to productivity even without wage growth, but we knocked out one leg of table and just figured we'd get lucky forever balancing on the remaining two.
People all over the world accept bitcoin, so it has a much broader base of support than any state sanctioned currency, and is also immune to the inevitable gaffes all states make.
What are you smoking and can I get some! People all over the world accept USD, Eur, and Yen. USD probably being the most widely accepted. I can assure you the number of people who will accept bitcoin for a given transaction is immeasurably small compared to the number of people would would accept dollars!
The desert car repair shop might take a $50 bill but it's worth might be somewhat uncertain and so the change offered the customer would be uncertain even if the car technician looked up some current product prices. He might make out if dollars go up after the exchange or lose if the dollar goes down.
Why he recalls that $50 used to cover his grocery bill every week a decade ago but its nearly $70 today. He buys about the same basket and he and is wife eat about the same about as they did then...Than there is the gold necklace she insists she simply must have for the holiday. Why the price in the window at the jewlery story seems to change every week.
There isn't anything terribly deficient about gold, as a currency that the dollar does not also suffer from. If gold has a problem is because its not sufficiently widely distributed. Thank government confiscation for that!
This IMO is bitcoins biggest problem. To few people control to much of the total money supply.