This one can be refuted from Adam Smith's own writing- he wrote that a tyranny of the Merchant (and the lack of prosperity for everybody else) was the obvious conclusion to an unregulated market.
That freedom of religion and expression are required in a just society?
And Voltaire's Candid preached against freedom of religion and expression- claiming that they lead to irrational optimism.
So no- Voltaire and Smith did not support what you think they supported.
We endanger ourselves to years of extremists terrorising us if we stay in Iraq. Something tells me that if we didn't go in to begin with, we'd be in a worse position after a generation or two of no consequences to committing terrorist acts.
Did you mean to imply that Iraq was our ONLY choice in fighting the war on terror? Couldn't we have invaded Saudi Arabia instead? Or Pakistan? Or Iran? What if we had gone another way, exiled all non-citizen moslems and stopped buying oil from the middle east while pulling out our troops to bring them home to defend the United States?
There were many other options- we didn't need to go to Iraq.
Oddly enough I wasn't thinking about that- I was just trying to comment on my own meandering experience in the area.
But it's a darn good example of the process, isn't it? And just like I posted in that other thread you don't have to make stuff up to get the point across- Everything I said was true. I even ended up getting $400 for my $800 medical bill paid- as a fine for the guy that hit me. I still have the scar over my left eye- though it's usually hidden by an eyebrow- and I plan on showing it to my grandchildren as a warning about the careless use of freedom of speech.
Insanity has always been a legal defense in court- one would have to go to court to prove it though after the fact, and/or have a doctor attest to it beforehand. But since a woman is highly unlikely to give herself an abortion- I doubt it would be that big of a problem.
The question becomes, do we lose the baby, or do we lose mother *and* child do to a sucicide? It's back to triage- save the patient that it is possible to save.
What did them rebounding have to do with Americas prosperity during that time period?
Without money from OUR taxes, they wouldn't have been able to rebuild at all (well, they would have, it just would have taken them a lot longer). Money from our taxes went to orders to our factories, for material needed for rebuilding and survival needs while they were rebuilding. Those orders to our factories created jobs- which created the middle class. As the middle class got more affluent, they ordered stuff of their own from our factories- which created more jobs. Eventually, two things stopped the cycle- Kennedy cutting taxes & Johnson raising them to fight the "War on Poverty" in a way which created NO new jobs (and in fact paid people to be unemployed, a major mistake), and the rebuilding of Europe and Japan being completed at which point they started competing with us instead of buying from us.
Bush had the opportunity for a similar destroy-the-rest-of-the-world-and-sell-to-them-to- rebuild way out of our current recession- and flubbed the first part so badly that we may not recover (a second recession is about to hit instead- I predict about 2-3 weeks after the election).
The problem is that the "middle class" keep getting redefined upwards. You can't just say it's the middle third of incomes and then complain because 33% remains 33% fifty years later! My father was middle class. I am considerably better off than he was. Yet I am still middle class. I might actually be able to retire before I'm sixty. He couldn't retire until he was seventy.
And your children won't be able to retire at all- because Social Security will no longer be available (heck- I've already recieved my letter informing me that I deserve 77% of my final salary at retirment age, but that they estimate they will be able to fund 0% of that amount). The system is broken.
The poor in my home town during my youth lived in barrios. It seems to me that all the ships are rising together. Destitution has all but vanished in this society. That is a good thing.
Come to Oregon, I'll be happy to show you where we keep our poor- in a cardboard village known as "Dignity Village". And it's got a waiting list. Destitution is alive and well in the United States today- don't believe the lies.
Trickle-down doesn't work very well, but it still works a damned sight better than the hand-me-down economics the statists want.
For my generation, trickle down has caused nothing other than layoffs and a lower standard of living, with repeated recessions blamed on the "business cycle" the suspicously happen whenever trickle down economics is tried (and have since 1895).
Why do you bother typing so much if you won't even pay a little attention to the posts you're responding to? (I'm reminded of Karl Rove's fondness for willfully misunderstanding Kerry to attack him on positions he doesn't even hold)
As I PLAINLY stated [slashdot.org], classifying mental health as a medical risk that can justify abortion is excessively fuzzy.
And yet- that's exactly what they do in Europe- it's either too fuzzy of a standard, or too legalistic.
You may think it's moral, but it is 100% illegal.
So it's legal to let both patients die rather than save the one you can?
Yes, I'm quite familiar with his influential career. There have been no large-scale serious shrapnel casualties suffered by US troops since the pullout from Vietnam.
I can even think of one on US soil- the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing had plenty of shrapnel wounds from flying bits of mortar and Ryder Truck, even among the ATF- but I suppose that wouldn't be US Troops, would it?
Today, most people defined as "poor" (in the lowest quintile according to census data), and more than one color TV and two cars in the garage.
Care to tell the hundreds of thousands of homeless that? If a person earning less than $18,000/year (the federal poverty rate) can afford those items, you can bet they weren't gotten legally or new.
So today's poor == the middle class at the end of the "Golden Years."
Not by a long shot- the middle class at the end of the golden years could afford those things new- and I've yet to meet a homeless person who can afford EITHER.
The protestors were lucky the police weren't firing grenade launchers.
I protested the first Gulf War in Klamath Falls, and while the police weren't out in force, pro-Bush (I) protesters were there with shotguns- and the next night I skipped the protest to do homework only to hear my roommate's watercolor peace sign pulled off the door. When I opened the door, I got a ring in my eye and 7 stiches.
No it grew because during the war we were the only party whos factories went unbombed. As inductrial sites in England were destroyed we built to meet their capacity. After the war no nation had our capacity and that had everything to do with geography. Japan started doning major damage to the US auto industry long before the regan taxcuts.
And how did Japan and England and Germany afford that rebuilding? As I remember, it was entirely with GRANTS from the US Government- that is, the 95% tax money.
And which of those regions was heavily industrialized before the war?
Australia was- they contributed almost as much to the war in the Pacific as we did. However, they didn't contribute to the rebuilding of Japan. I say it's because they didn't have the tax base to do it with.
And what else is quite common in Europe? Legal abortion.
Yes- under strict regulation that keeps the deaths of women down to only 252% of pregnancy- less than 3 in 10,000. That's the whole point- saving life.
Correct. Overly simplistic laws cause unfairness. And "Abortion is murder, unless it's self-defense" is a simplistic standard.
I thought you were arguing that it was too fuzzy of a standard...which is it?
Saving lives by preventing (or "controlling") a risky birth. Birth control.
And I'd argue for limiting birth control too- to a risky birth situation.
Completely wrong. Jane Roe's health was in no way endangered by her pregnancy. If it had been, then she could've gotten an abortion easily, without the need for the lawsuit.
Not in Texas in 1973 she couldn't- and read the majority opinion of SCOTUS sometime- it clearly states that the states have the right to regulate when abortion is riskier than birth.
Yes, that's "triage" alright. Which just confirms my suspicion that you had NO IDEA what you typed earlier. You said a doctor could KILL one man to TAKE HIS ORGANS and give them TO ANOTHER.
I see no difference between the two morally- when one patient is less likely to survive than the other, it's perfectly legal to remove life support from the one (killing him) to give organs to the other.
Apparently you didn't mean to say that, but you did. (Here's the clause again, for reference: "a doctor is allowed to let one patient die, so that they can take an aorta graft")
LET one patient die- I didn't say take a gun out and murder him.
Aortic grafting techniques were not available to emergency physicians until after the Vietnam war concluded. (They had been used as an experimental technique by occasional specialists, but not in urgent situations).
Actually- in urgent situations they were used in Korea- but you said that there have been NO major battles, and that's false.
Post-Vietnam, the USA military has not engaged in any large battles- if you define "battle" as a two-sided conflict, instead of a turkey-shoot like some of the 800:1 ratio engagements of ODS.
The turkey shoot even creates triage situations- if only from friendly fire incidents. And yes, I'd consider any battle where the combined casualties were greater than 100 to be a major battle.
(There have been occasional incidents where large numbers of US troops have been killed/wounded in a short time, but those were based on a large explosion or airplane crash, which unlike small arms fire, are unlikely to produce treatable cardiac damage)
Ever hear of Shrapnel?
I read that journal. It is based on a completely different definition of "surrender" than used in the English language. (Hint: Although the USA didn't win in Vietnam, they didn't surrender either)
True enough- and today we're still having problems with Vietnam and North Korea, both of which are well on their way to having nuclear arsenals.
Excellent point. It is logical that, as government becomes larger and larger, the people still will have no say in government. The only solution is to minimize the government. We can't keep both big business and big government under close watch, but if we minimize one, we can watch the other.
That's certainly one strategy. Here's an alternate strategy (that basically accomplishes the same thing): eliminate the HUMAN element in governance. Make being a career politician illegal, and replace all the beurucrats with expert system Artificial Intelligences. Eliminate ALL of the pay structure for governmnet- and draft the few people left that you need for duty. Make the citizen the ultimate authority. Eliminate business altogether- if you can't make it yourself or get it from the AIs, you don't need it.
By minimizing government, we will take away their supporter and level the field for the rest of us.
And they're going to let you do that exactly why?
The only way to return the power structure to the people is to minimize it. We cannot legislate corporations into good behavior. If we try we will only increase the size of government and the big corporations will once again find a way to buy it out.
Depends on how you do it- but I'm not suggesting legislation, I'm suggesting violent revolution.
If our government hadn't backed the banking industry in the Civil War (under the guise of freeing slaves) the people would have kept their authority over the government. Without government (and banking) backing to legitimize their pillaging, the corporations would have been kept in check through natural means by the workers and consumers. This is a 150 year old problem to which the only solution is: The 9th and 10th Amendments. Minimize government, keep it in its place. Let the people wrangle with the corporations on a fair field.
And yet even with the 9th and 10th ammendments- it happened anyway. No- the basic structure is broken- it needs replacing. I'm with the Arizona Free Republicans on that one.
I agree completely. It's also not going to be accomplished by giving the government more authority over the corporations. You've pointed out quite well that corporations and perfectly capable of buying control of the government. The only real solution is to put the government back in its proper minimal role and let the people wage their natural struggle against market driven greed on a fair field.
I would put it to you that a "middle class" person today is exponentially better off than a middle-class person of Ike's two terms, or for that matter during the LBJ years.
You could- but overall you'd be wrong (where individual family annecdotes may vary, at the end of that 15 years, most families had a color TV and two cars in the garage).
My parents were middle-class in the 60s, and I thank God that I don't have to live the way they did back then.
And yet, your children and grandchildren ARE living the way they did back then- your generation has soaked up so many resources that mine is floundering.
You can only say things got worse if you keep raising the definition for poverty to the point where people who eat well, wear reasonably new clothes, drive cars, and own climate-controlled homes, and can even afford a few modest luxuries without government assistance are considered "poor."
I'm relatively upper middle class- and I can't afford to eat well, my last time I could afford new clothes was 1999, and my grandparents owned more cars than I will ever dream of owning. My house IS climate controlled- but I've been unable to afford to turn on the gas since 2001, I've been chopping wood instead, and it was 1999 the last time the air conditioner was even WORKING. You're living in a dream world if you think anybody earning less than $22/hr can afford ANY of what you think the middle class has.
Also, as was pointed out elsewhere, the growth of the post-WW II era had everything to do with the fact that we were the only player in the game. The rest of the industrialized world had been bombed nearly into the stone age, and American manufacturing was needed for almost everything.
And that's a fallacy because it was American tax money that was PAYING for almost everything- like you all say the rest of the industrialized world had been bombed nearly into the stone age, they didn't have money to pay for any of the rebuilding.
Because during that 20 years Europe and Japan had nearly no manufacturing capacity. They had to rebuild from the ground up.
They also had no economy- and it was that 95% tax rate that paid for the rebuilding of Europe and Japan. Without that 95% tax rate, it would have been 100 years before Europe and Japan would have begun importing from the United States. They were utterly destroyed- the money printed by their former governments was worthless paper while the people were starving.
And do you think this boom had more to do with the tax structure? or the fact the rest of the worlds manufacturing capacity was devistated in ww2 while ours grew at an astounding rate?
Ours grew at an astounding rate because the government had the money to invest in buying up the output- which we gave away free to the countries we were trying to rebuild. We wouldn't have had the money to do that if it wasn't for the top tax rate- and the opportunity to get middle class jobs wouldn't have been there without our government doing the buying. Europe and Japan were devistated- but they were devistated economically as well (and what is this about the whole world? Southern Africa, Australia, and South America were barely touched- and thier industrial systems were quite robust- yet they didn't see the expansion we did).
The manufacturing (and not IT) base leaving has nothing to do with tax structure it has to do with lower prices and increasing capacity overseas.
Yes and no- the base leaving has to do with lower prices and increasing capacity overseas. But if our federal government had the extra money to invest into R&D by going back to the tax structure of the 1950s, we'd also have a slew of new technologies to move our workforce into. As the old saying goes: They copied everything they could, but they couldn't copy my mind- so I left them plotting and schemeing, a year and a half behind.
The real problem isn't that these jobs are going overseas; they were bound to eventually. The real problem is that our government is now the slave to short term business interests, instead of being the driver of long term research and development of the type that built the Internet.
True enough- but there's a middle ground between the two, and that's what we'll have to figure out how to compete with. The company that goes overseas but doesn't invest in redundancy will go out of business- as will the company who stays here when it's competitors go overseas.
Near as I can tell, the Grimes Labor Equalization Surcharge is the only propsal I've seen so far that has a whelk's chance in a supernova of working. (What's a whelk? And what does it have to do with a supernova? It doesn't matter because it doesn't stand a chance in one.)
And yet, argueably the golden age of the middle class was the Eisenhower years- when the top tax rate was 95%. The economy GREW under Eisenhower- which if you believe the Reaganites (including the President himself, when he was Presidnet of the Screen Actor's Guild he testified before Congress on the subject) should have been impossible. And yet it happened. The 1980s did NOT see an expansion of the middle class- and neither has any other time period since 1895 when trickle down economics has been tried.
Maybe you don't realize that government has had a direct hand in guiding and regulating the industries that have collapsed over the past 40 years?
Other way around, dude- thanks to campaign contributions and lobbyists, during the last 40 years or so it's been the corporations and industries shaping government. The people haven't had a say in how government is run for 40 years now.
One might say that the collapse was inevitable with the upper echelons of both groups milking the entire system dry.
I'd agree with that, however- but make no mistake- corporations are the source of the money that has stolen our governmnet from being of, by, and for the people, to being of, by, and for the corporations.
Maybe you're unfamiliar with the term collusion?
I'm familiar with it- but maybe you don't understand how it came about- it was the power grab by the Roosevelt administration, followed by WWII, that gave the corporations the extra money they needed to effectively reverse the power structure of the United States.
The only answer is to minimize the government and let the people deal with the corporations. If our government would quit backing the corps with our own tax money, we'd have more resources available to stage an effective strike.
If it wasn't for the corporations- we'd have that smaller government.
Private industry can't take money from your paycheck by fiat.
Yes they can- that's what the cheap labor movement is all about, taking money out of American paychecks by forcing us to compete with third world workers and economies.
I'm for the separation of corporation and state- but it's not going to be accomplished by cutting the taxes of the corporations and shifting costs on to our children.
Umm there was no federal income tax until the last century. So if by forfathers you mean the past 90 years then yes they paid a higher rate but government became too addicted to spending where it should not and thus rates for the lower and middle class raised. But the nation ran just fine for more than 100 years w/out a federal income tax..
My grandparents (note the quote from the article) were alive and economically active in the 1950s- and are no longer. As for the hundred years previous- sure it ran just fine if by just fine you mean a major run on the banks every 20 years and a collapse of the economy bringing major deflation every 5-10 years. The real boom time for the middle class, in all of the history of the United States, was from 1947-1965. My suggestion is that we return to the tax structure of that time.
Yeah, but with modern redundant communications and IP protocol, the link going down is very rare if you design it properly (For instance- both your home office and the datacenter should have triple-redundancy power backups using different technologies, you should both have satellite, fiber, copper, and wifi connections to separate backbones, and you should have at least some staff on 24x7 in the data center). Basically, anything short of a nuclear device turning your datacenter into ground zero can be engineered around- and even that can be engineered around by having a second datacenter in Hydrabad. All of this redundancy will be CHEAPER than having a single data center in the United States, thanks to standard of living differences.
That's what we're facing in competition- still sure we can beat it on price and efficiency?
Not making them up? How can you launch ANY srike when there are no signs yet without making SOMETHING up?
By pointing out what happened in the last election, of course. Election fraud usually doesn't show up until the last minute- so what this manual is trying to do is get people to notice the fraud, by publicizing the sort of fraud that usually happens.
Perhaps "Make stuff up" vs. "emphasise what happened in the past (since there's nothing happening now)" is different, but please don't try to say that this manual isn't going to lead to some pretty big misperceptions about whether voter intimidation is happening. This is politics meeting group psychology, and not in a good way.
Any misperceptions are bound to only hit the people who are predisposed to be stupid to begin with- If you're too stupid to actually listen to everything somebody has to say, it isn't a lie, you're just being stupid.
The companies will NEVER pay for training- they didn't with my generation of programmers, and they won't with the current generation. They leave it up to the programmers to find a way to pay for training themselves. The cheap labor movement has no funds for training, never has, and never will.
Slashdot Mirror
That free markets increase prosperity?
This one can be refuted from Adam Smith's own writing- he wrote that a tyranny of the Merchant (and the lack of prosperity for everybody else) was the obvious conclusion to an unregulated market.
That freedom of religion and expression are required in a just society?
And Voltaire's Candid preached against freedom of religion and expression- claiming that they lead to irrational optimism.
So no- Voltaire and Smith did not support what you think they supported.
We endanger ourselves to years of extremists terrorising us if we stay in Iraq. Something tells me that if we didn't go in to begin with, we'd be in a worse position after a generation or two of no consequences to committing terrorist acts.
Did you mean to imply that Iraq was our ONLY choice in fighting the war on terror? Couldn't we have invaded Saudi Arabia instead? Or Pakistan? Or Iran? What if we had gone another way, exiled all non-citizen moslems and stopped buying oil from the middle east while pulling out our troops to bring them home to defend the United States?
There were many other options- we didn't need to go to Iraq.
Oddly enough I wasn't thinking about that- I was just trying to comment on my own meandering experience in the area.
But it's a darn good example of the process, isn't it? And just like I posted in that other thread you don't have to make stuff up to get the point across- Everything I said was true. I even ended up getting $400 for my $800 medical bill paid- as a fine for the guy that hit me. I still have the scar over my left eye- though it's usually hidden by an eyebrow- and I plan on showing it to my grandchildren as a warning about the careless use of freedom of speech.
Really? Was this a data center, a call center? (Print anything- a print shop? A newspaper?)
I just pulled Chicago out of thin air- really!
Insanity has always been a legal defense in court- one would have to go to court to prove it though after the fact, and/or have a doctor attest to it beforehand. But since a woman is highly unlikely to give herself an abortion- I doubt it would be that big of a problem.
The question becomes, do we lose the baby, or do we lose mother *and* child do to a sucicide? It's back to triage- save the patient that it is possible to save.
I would have said that John Edwards was R2D2 to Kerry's C3PO....certainly would have gotten the verbosity right.
What did them rebounding have to do with Americas prosperity during that time period?
- rebuild way out of our current recession- and flubbed the first part so badly that we may not recover (a second recession is about to hit instead- I predict about 2-3 weeks after the election).
Without money from OUR taxes, they wouldn't have been able to rebuild at all (well, they would have, it just would have taken them a lot longer). Money from our taxes went to orders to our factories, for material needed for rebuilding and survival needs while they were rebuilding. Those orders to our factories created jobs- which created the middle class. As the middle class got more affluent, they ordered stuff of their own from our factories- which created more jobs. Eventually, two things stopped the cycle- Kennedy cutting taxes & Johnson raising them to fight the "War on Poverty" in a way which created NO new jobs (and in fact paid people to be unemployed, a major mistake), and the rebuilding of Europe and Japan being completed at which point they started competing with us instead of buying from us.
Bush had the opportunity for a similar destroy-the-rest-of-the-world-and-sell-to-them-to
The problem is that the "middle class" keep getting redefined upwards. You can't just say it's the middle third of incomes and then complain because 33% remains 33% fifty years later! My father was middle class. I am considerably better off than he was. Yet I am still middle class. I might actually be able to retire before I'm sixty. He couldn't retire until he was seventy.
And your children won't be able to retire at all- because Social Security will no longer be available (heck- I've already recieved my letter informing me that I deserve 77% of my final salary at retirment age, but that they estimate they will be able to fund 0% of that amount). The system is broken.
The poor in my home town during my youth lived in barrios. It seems to me that all the ships are rising together. Destitution has all but vanished in this society. That is a good thing.
Come to Oregon, I'll be happy to show you where we keep our poor- in a cardboard village known as "Dignity Village". And it's got a waiting list. Destitution is alive and well in the United States today- don't believe the lies.
Trickle-down doesn't work very well, but it still works a damned sight better than the hand-me-down economics the statists want.
For my generation, trickle down has caused nothing other than layoffs and a lower standard of living, with repeated recessions blamed on the "business cycle" the suspicously happen whenever trickle down economics is tried (and have since 1895).
Why do you bother typing so much if you won't even pay a little attention to the posts you're responding to? (I'm reminded of Karl Rove's fondness for willfully misunderstanding Kerry to attack him on positions he doesn't even hold) As I PLAINLY stated [slashdot.org], classifying mental health as a medical risk that can justify abortion is excessively fuzzy.
And yet- that's exactly what they do in Europe- it's either too fuzzy of a standard, or too legalistic.
You may think it's moral, but it is 100% illegal.
So it's legal to let both patients die rather than save the one you can?
Yes, I'm quite familiar with his influential career. There have been no large-scale serious shrapnel casualties suffered by US troops since the pullout from Vietnam.
I can even think of one on US soil- the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing had plenty of shrapnel wounds from flying bits of mortar and Ryder Truck, even among the ATF- but I suppose that wouldn't be US Troops, would it?
Today, most people defined as "poor" (in the lowest quintile according to census data), and more than one color TV and two cars in the garage.
Care to tell the hundreds of thousands of homeless that? If a person earning less than $18,000/year (the federal poverty rate) can afford those items, you can bet they weren't gotten legally or new.
So today's poor == the middle class at the end of the "Golden Years."
Not by a long shot- the middle class at the end of the golden years could afford those things new- and I've yet to meet a homeless person who can afford EITHER.
The protestors were lucky the police weren't firing grenade launchers.
I protested the first Gulf War in Klamath Falls, and while the police weren't out in force, pro-Bush (I) protesters were there with shotguns- and the next night I skipped the protest to do homework only to hear my roommate's watercolor peace sign pulled off the door. When I opened the door, I got a ring in my eye and 7 stiches.
No it grew because during the war we were the only party whos factories went unbombed. As inductrial sites in England were destroyed we built to meet their capacity. After the war no nation had our capacity and that had everything to do with geography. Japan started doning major damage to the US auto industry long before the regan taxcuts.
And how did Japan and England and Germany afford that rebuilding? As I remember, it was entirely with GRANTS from the US Government- that is, the 95% tax money.
And which of those regions was heavily industrialized before the war?
Australia was- they contributed almost as much to the war in the Pacific as we did. However, they didn't contribute to the rebuilding of Japan. I say it's because they didn't have the tax base to do it with.
And what else is quite common in Europe? Legal abortion.
Yes- under strict regulation that keeps the deaths of women down to only 252% of pregnancy- less than 3 in 10,000. That's the whole point- saving life.
Correct. Overly simplistic laws cause unfairness. And "Abortion is murder, unless it's self-defense" is a simplistic standard.
I thought you were arguing that it was too fuzzy of a standard...which is it?
Saving lives by preventing (or "controlling") a risky birth. Birth control.
And I'd argue for limiting birth control too- to a risky birth situation.
Completely wrong. Jane Roe's health was in no way endangered by her pregnancy. If it had been, then she could've gotten an abortion easily, without the need for the lawsuit.
Not in Texas in 1973 she couldn't- and read the majority opinion of SCOTUS sometime- it clearly states that the states have the right to regulate when abortion is riskier than birth.
Yes, that's "triage" alright. Which just confirms my suspicion that you had NO IDEA what you typed earlier. You said a doctor could KILL one man to TAKE HIS ORGANS and give them TO ANOTHER.
I see no difference between the two morally- when one patient is less likely to survive than the other, it's perfectly legal to remove life support from the one (killing him) to give organs to the other.
Apparently you didn't mean to say that, but you did. (Here's the clause again, for reference: "a doctor is allowed to let one patient die, so that they can take an aorta graft")
LET one patient die- I didn't say take a gun out and murder him.
Aortic grafting techniques were not available to emergency physicians until after the Vietnam war concluded. (They had been used as an experimental technique by occasional specialists, but not in urgent situations).
Actually- in urgent situations they were used in Korea- but you said that there have been NO major battles, and that's false.
Post-Vietnam, the USA military has not engaged in any large battles- if you define "battle" as a two-sided conflict, instead of a turkey-shoot like some of the 800:1 ratio engagements of ODS.
The turkey shoot even creates triage situations- if only from friendly fire incidents. And yes, I'd consider any battle where the combined casualties were greater than 100 to be a major battle.
(There have been occasional incidents where large numbers of US troops have been killed/wounded in a short time, but those were based on a large explosion or airplane crash, which unlike small arms fire, are unlikely to produce treatable cardiac damage)
Ever hear of Shrapnel?
I read that journal. It is based on a completely different definition of "surrender" than used in the English language. (Hint: Although the USA didn't win in Vietnam, they didn't surrender either)
True enough- and today we're still having problems with Vietnam and North Korea, both of which are well on their way to having nuclear arsenals.
Excellent point. It is logical that, as government becomes larger and larger, the people still will have no say in government. The only solution is to minimize the government. We can't keep both big business and big government under close watch, but if we minimize one, we can watch the other.
That's certainly one strategy. Here's an alternate strategy (that basically accomplishes the same thing): eliminate the HUMAN element in governance. Make being a career politician illegal, and replace all the beurucrats with expert system Artificial Intelligences. Eliminate ALL of the pay structure for governmnet- and draft the few people left that you need for duty. Make the citizen the ultimate authority. Eliminate business altogether- if you can't make it yourself or get it from the AIs, you don't need it.
By minimizing government, we will take away their supporter and level the field for the rest of us.
And they're going to let you do that exactly why?
The only way to return the power structure to the people is to minimize it. We cannot legislate corporations into good behavior. If we try we will only increase the size of government and the big corporations will once again find a way to buy it out.
Depends on how you do it- but I'm not suggesting legislation, I'm suggesting violent revolution.
If our government hadn't backed the banking industry in the Civil War (under the guise of freeing slaves) the people would have kept their authority over the government. Without government (and banking) backing to legitimize their pillaging, the corporations would have been kept in check through natural means by the workers and consumers. This is a 150 year old problem to which the only solution is: The 9th and 10th Amendments. Minimize government, keep it in its place. Let the people wrangle with the corporations on a fair field.
And yet even with the 9th and 10th ammendments- it happened anyway. No- the basic structure is broken- it needs replacing. I'm with the Arizona Free Republicans on that one.
I agree completely. It's also not going to be accomplished by giving the government more authority over the corporations. You've pointed out quite well that corporations and perfectly capable of buying control of the government. The only real solution is to put the government back in its proper minimal role and let the people wage their natural struggle against market driven greed on a fair field.
The key word there is FAIR....
I would put it to you that a "middle class" person today is exponentially better off than a middle-class person of Ike's two terms, or for that matter during the LBJ years.
You could- but overall you'd be wrong (where individual family annecdotes may vary, at the end of that 15 years, most families had a color TV and two cars in the garage).
My parents were middle-class in the 60s, and I thank God that I don't have to live the way they did back then.
And yet, your children and grandchildren ARE living the way they did back then- your generation has soaked up so many resources that mine is floundering.
You can only say things got worse if you keep raising the definition for poverty to the point where people who eat well, wear reasonably new clothes, drive cars, and own climate-controlled homes, and can even afford a few modest luxuries without government assistance are considered "poor."
I'm relatively upper middle class- and I can't afford to eat well, my last time I could afford new clothes was 1999, and my grandparents owned more cars than I will ever dream of owning. My house IS climate controlled- but I've been unable to afford to turn on the gas since 2001, I've been chopping wood instead, and it was 1999 the last time the air conditioner was even WORKING. You're living in a dream world if you think anybody earning less than $22/hr can afford ANY of what you think the middle class has.
Also, as was pointed out elsewhere, the growth of the post-WW II era had everything to do with the fact that we were the only player in the game. The rest of the industrialized world had been bombed nearly into the stone age, and American manufacturing was needed for almost everything.
And that's a fallacy because it was American tax money that was PAYING for almost everything- like you all say the rest of the industrialized world had been bombed nearly into the stone age, they didn't have money to pay for any of the rebuilding.
Because during that 20 years Europe and Japan had nearly no manufacturing capacity. They had to rebuild from the ground up.
They also had no economy- and it was that 95% tax rate that paid for the rebuilding of Europe and Japan. Without that 95% tax rate, it would have been 100 years before Europe and Japan would have begun importing from the United States. They were utterly destroyed- the money printed by their former governments was worthless paper while the people were starving.
And do you think this boom had more to do with the tax structure? or the fact the rest of the worlds manufacturing capacity was devistated in ww2 while ours grew at an astounding rate?
Ours grew at an astounding rate because the government had the money to invest in buying up the output- which we gave away free to the countries we were trying to rebuild. We wouldn't have had the money to do that if it wasn't for the top tax rate- and the opportunity to get middle class jobs wouldn't have been there without our government doing the buying. Europe and Japan were devistated- but they were devistated economically as well (and what is this about the whole world? Southern Africa, Australia, and South America were barely touched- and thier industrial systems were quite robust- yet they didn't see the expansion we did).
The manufacturing (and not IT) base leaving has nothing to do with tax structure it has to do with lower prices and increasing capacity overseas.
Yes and no- the base leaving has to do with lower prices and increasing capacity overseas. But if our federal government had the extra money to invest into R&D by going back to the tax structure of the 1950s, we'd also have a slew of new technologies to move our workforce into. As the old saying goes: They copied everything they could, but they couldn't copy my mind- so I left them plotting and schemeing, a year and a half behind.
The real problem isn't that these jobs are going overseas; they were bound to eventually. The real problem is that our government is now the slave to short term business interests, instead of being the driver of long term research and development of the type that built the Internet.
True enough- but there's a middle ground between the two, and that's what we'll have to figure out how to compete with. The company that goes overseas but doesn't invest in redundancy will go out of business- as will the company who stays here when it's competitors go overseas.
Near as I can tell, the Grimes Labor Equalization Surcharge is the only propsal I've seen so far that has a whelk's chance in a supernova of working. (What's a whelk? And what does it have to do with a supernova? It doesn't matter because it doesn't stand a chance in one.)
And yet, argueably the golden age of the middle class was the Eisenhower years- when the top tax rate was 95%. The economy GREW under Eisenhower- which if you believe the Reaganites (including the President himself, when he was Presidnet of the Screen Actor's Guild he testified before Congress on the subject) should have been impossible. And yet it happened. The 1980s did NOT see an expansion of the middle class- and neither has any other time period since 1895 when trickle down economics has been tried.
Maybe you don't realize that government has had a direct hand in guiding and regulating the industries that have collapsed over the past 40 years?
Other way around, dude- thanks to campaign contributions and lobbyists, during the last 40 years or so it's been the corporations and industries shaping government. The people haven't had a say in how government is run for 40 years now.
One might say that the collapse was inevitable with the upper echelons of both groups milking the entire system dry.
I'd agree with that, however- but make no mistake- corporations are the source of the money that has stolen our governmnet from being of, by, and for the people, to being of, by, and for the corporations.
Maybe you're unfamiliar with the term collusion?
I'm familiar with it- but maybe you don't understand how it came about- it was the power grab by the Roosevelt administration, followed by WWII, that gave the corporations the extra money they needed to effectively reverse the power structure of the United States.
The only answer is to minimize the government and let the people deal with the corporations. If our government would quit backing the corps with our own tax money, we'd have more resources available to stage an effective strike.
If it wasn't for the corporations- we'd have that smaller government.
Private industry can't take money from your paycheck by fiat.
Yes they can- that's what the cheap labor movement is all about, taking money out of American paychecks by forcing us to compete with third world workers and economies.
I'm for the separation of corporation and state- but it's not going to be accomplished by cutting the taxes of the corporations and shifting costs on to our children.
Umm there was no federal income tax until the last century. So if by forfathers you mean the past 90 years then yes they paid a higher rate but government became too addicted to spending where it should not and thus rates for the lower and middle class raised. But the nation ran just fine for more than 100 years w/out a federal income tax..
My grandparents (note the quote from the article) were alive and economically active in the 1950s- and are no longer. As for the hundred years previous- sure it ran just fine if by just fine you mean a major run on the banks every 20 years and a collapse of the economy bringing major deflation every 5-10 years. The real boom time for the middle class, in all of the history of the United States, was from 1947-1965. My suggestion is that we return to the tax structure of that time.
Yeah, but with modern redundant communications and IP protocol, the link going down is very rare if you design it properly (For instance- both your home office and the datacenter should have triple-redundancy power backups using different technologies, you should both have satellite, fiber, copper, and wifi connections to separate backbones, and you should have at least some staff on 24x7 in the data center). Basically, anything short of a nuclear device turning your datacenter into ground zero can be engineered around- and even that can be engineered around by having a second datacenter in Hydrabad. All of this redundancy will be CHEAPER than having a single data center in the United States, thanks to standard of living differences.
That's what we're facing in competition- still sure we can beat it on price and efficiency?
Not making them up? How can you launch ANY srike when there are no signs yet without making SOMETHING up?
By pointing out what happened in the last election, of course. Election fraud usually doesn't show up until the last minute- so what this manual is trying to do is get people to notice the fraud, by publicizing the sort of fraud that usually happens.
Perhaps "Make stuff up" vs. "emphasise what happened in the past (since there's nothing happening now)" is different, but please don't try to say that this manual isn't going to lead to some pretty big misperceptions about whether voter intimidation is happening. This is politics meeting group psychology, and not in a good way.
Any misperceptions are bound to only hit the people who are predisposed to be stupid to begin with- If you're too stupid to actually listen to everything somebody has to say, it isn't a lie, you're just being stupid.
The companies will NEVER pay for training- they didn't with my generation of programmers, and they won't with the current generation. They leave it up to the programmers to find a way to pay for training themselves. The cheap labor movement has no funds for training, never has, and never will.