Suppose we wait until the proof is, in your eyes, definitive. Methinks it will be too late to do anything.
Wait, are we talking science or religion? This is the traditional scare tactic proof of necessity to repent.... just in case. What it conveniently sidesteps is that the corrective behavior carries a huge cost with it. Not only is it not free, it requires an almost dystopian change to society. Better be sure before taking a step like that.
What's so surprising about them speaking in terms of a "moral" obligation?
Corruption, as such, is not following the mandate of one's accepted role. For example, if a defense attorney decides to help the prosecution to put his client (a criminal) in jail, he would be corrupt even if he is doing society a favor. His accepted role is advocating for his client. Once he abandones his mandate, the whole structure of the institution becomes corrupt and untrustworthy. A scientist's station is truth-finding. If he abandons his commitment to accuracy (even a little bit) in favor of advocacy, he becomes corrupt. And his entire disciple suffers from diminished credibility as a result.
Right, if your supporters take the torch that you light and carry it to make points which you never mean to make, but which make your work seem more relevant, does that mean you have to speak out to moderate their voices? If you stay silent and let the hype grow, are you committing fraud? In the legal sense, probably not. But can you be accused of it in a rhetorical sense? If not, then that would put severe limitations on any critic using hyperbole as a rhetorical device. And it really is up to the court to draw that distinction. I mean, anyone who accused GW Bush of fraud in any editorial opposing the Iraq war, would now be liable for damages to Bush for making such a charge.
Isn't realclimate.org just his advocacy site? I've had people point to it before. It's reads like a marketing hype rather than as a scientific discussion.
Businesses start and grow when they have a product or service to sell.
Really? I need a ferrari. Why is there no business supplying me with a ferrari? Oh, is that because the amount of money I am willing to pay is below what any business can afford to charge me for it? Hmm, what is profitable and what is not is determined by cost and by price the market can pay for the product. Taxes increase costs. But, hey, let's pretend that the garbage they spew on tv is real and that other human beings exist to sprinkle fairy dust on us because we need it. You are a moron.
So you're saying that you don't have the first inkling of anything to do with business.
And this is how proved it. By starting your "argument" with the so "you are saying..." and then contributing to me something I didn't say. Let me repeat, you are a dumb fuck whose opinion carries no weight. That's how insult someone when you don't like what they say. You don't attribute to them what they haven't said. That only proves that you have no argument.
It's about time the courts had a say about whether splicing 2 times series in the graph that is presented to the general public rises to the level of fraud. He did explain in the content of the paper that the hockey stick figure was not the actual claim, but the cover and the subsequent presentation to the general public made it look the hockey stick graph was supported by data. Is that fraud? That's is not a bad question to ask in a court room.
We are. The number of food stamp recipients is at an all time high.This a direct result of attacking business. When making a choice between pursuing new additional ventures (and employing more people) or holding off, any normal person would hold off if they get nothing but trouble for running a business. Yeah, sure, you can build new and interesting things, but who the hell wants to deal with people screaming in their face and trying to denigrate their labor of love? People don't get hired to build new projects as a result. Some find other jobs. Some... end up on food stamps. You wanna put down the 1%. Ok. Misery trickles down, too.
We rarely rise to the 1/3rd figure. DARPA (responsible for the Internet inception) was part of DoD expenses. Would we have benefited from cutting that? We are not in the era of building a lot of big metal. A lot of defense expenses are related to technology research.
I was explicit in including Veterans Benefits. It is is obviously part of the military compensation package.
Not necessarily. At least, not fully. At least SOME of those who have become veterans would have become entitled to medicaid due to bad luck in life. Not to mention that military pays for veteran's education. So more of those expenses would have to be picked up by the Department of Education. It's not a clear-cut defense expense. It's a middle ground between social expenses and defense expenses.
Indexing is not spying. It's remembering what is known rather then forgetting. Spying has to have an element of discovering what is not publicly known. Indexing doesn't do that.
Wow! Way to divert attention from the problem. Clearly, I was talking about the money taken away from a business through taxation -- not about personal income tax. And you make the old dumb argument that the "rich people won't starve without their money." They don't spend it on food or on personal needs.
When taxes are increased, the capital available to the firm is reduced by the amount it has to pay in taxes. You are talking about personal income tax. I am talking about income tax on business. Every dollar that is no longer available to the firm (because it paid it in taxes) is the dollar it cannot spend on anything... including salary. Which gives two options -- reduced salaries or reduced workforce. Reducing salaries causes problems with retention of the most able workers. Some leave. This is too costly. Which means the only reasonable course of action when taxes are increased is lay offs.
Increasing taxes on highest income individuals is equally damaging because excess income is (by definition of excess) the income not spent on personal needs. The only alternative use for it is investment income. When you reduce investment income, you reduce the amount of money individual can put in businesses (again reducing the number of people who are employed).
Increasing income "later on" will not fix the harm done by taxing it away "now". This is tantamount to trying to fix digestive problems caused by starvation by feeding someone. Essential structures are destroyed by starvation. They don't rebuilt just because resources become available.
Increased healthcare costs? On what planet? Ha? Are you really gonna try to make some case that government makes healthcare affordable? Is this crap something that people are still not ashamed to say out loud? I mean just takes balls.
0 dollars of income taxes are spent on the roads. 0%. Roads are maintained with the excise tax on gasoline. Excise tax is the tax built into the price (as opposed to the sales tax which is charged after the price). So "raising taxes a few percent" comment, that started this strand of this thread, would do nothing to maintain the roads. If you still don't know what excirse taxes are, they are the reason gas has a very different price across state lines. Delivery costs are the same. The only thing that is different is how much of a cut (excision... hence "excise") the government gets. So my point stands, every dollar spent on taxes is a dollar not spent on salary.
Those are imposed by the local governments. The buses that they are complaining about are actually reducing the burden on the local governments by reducing road use and thus reducing road maintenance costs.
The comparison to 1917 can be started before the AWS movement started. Obama's slogans are almost direct translation from Russian of the slogans of Bolsheviks. Even the whole green energy movement is nothing but a bastardized "Communism is Socialism + electrification of the entire nation" that was the more repeated slogan in the Soviet Union. And, of course, the most mocked as "Socialism is Communism minus the electricity."
It's a natural extension of the world view that divides people into those who have and those who don't rather than dividing it into those who contribute and those who don't.
Specifically, how are the "technology workers" a "corrupt overclass"?
They are not. But GP wanted to take an emotional position while proving that it is a bad idea to take emotional positions. Don't ask for consistency from nihilists. They are not looking to arrive at the correct conclusion. They just want to win.
Defense+Veterans is about tied with Medicare+Medicaid for largest budget category, followed by Social Security third. Nothing else even makes it onto the radar. Lumping together ALL other discretionary spending (education, non-defense research, transportation, CDC, NASA, etc etc etc etc) still only adds up to 4th place in the budget.
17% on defense. And, yes, that's a small fraction of any nation's budget. Most governments average around 1/3 of the budget. Even if you do add in the veteran affairs, it's still only 21% (1/5th). Which is less than "Department of Health and Human Services including Medicare and Medicaid" at 24% and less than Social Security at 23%.
Defense budget is a small fraction of the federal budget. And it subsidizes a lot of scientific research. In fact, it's arguable that more scientific advances result from the defense budget than from NASA. I, personally, would rather the government paid people to do scientific research than paid people to do nothing. That is not to say that we shouldn't be helping those in dire need. It's just that given choice of alternative between some scientific research and nothing, I'll take scientific research... oh and if that also means that China wouldn't even fathom invading Taiwan and Russia wouldn't even fathom invading Europe; well, that's a pretty good icing on the cake.
No, they owned slaves because every country in the world did. It was the only way to structure society for thousands of years before manual labor could be done by machines. Progress didn't come because we became more moral. It came because we could off load the hardest work to inanimate objects. Technological progress is how the world advances. And if you disagree, why are you on slashdot?
What do you mean even a broken clock? They said Republicans. If Democrats called for reduced government powers, that would fit the "even a broken clock" saying. Democrats are the Big Government party and always have been. Republicans just play along sometimes. Republicans must be feeling like they can get what they want right now -- that would be why they made the call.
Slashdot Mirror
Suppose we wait until the proof is, in your eyes, definitive. Methinks it will be too late to do anything.
Wait, are we talking science or religion? This is the traditional scare tactic proof of necessity to repent.... just in case. What it conveniently sidesteps is that the corrective behavior carries a huge cost with it. Not only is it not free, it requires an almost dystopian change to society. Better be sure before taking a step like that.
What's so surprising about them speaking in terms of a "moral" obligation?
Corruption, as such, is not following the mandate of one's accepted role. For example, if a defense attorney decides to help the prosecution to put his client (a criminal) in jail, he would be corrupt even if he is doing society a favor. His accepted role is advocating for his client. Once he abandones his mandate, the whole structure of the institution becomes corrupt and untrustworthy. A scientist's station is truth-finding. If he abandons his commitment to accuracy (even a little bit) in favor of advocacy, he becomes corrupt. And his entire disciple suffers from diminished credibility as a result.
...denier sites...
I don't believe you when you say this (emphasis mine):
I'd love to see them.
Just saw we are clear, in my opinion, you are a liar.
Right, if your supporters take the torch that you light and carry it to make points which you never mean to make, but which make your work seem more relevant, does that mean you have to speak out to moderate their voices? If you stay silent and let the hype grow, are you committing fraud? In the legal sense, probably not. But can you be accused of it in a rhetorical sense? If not, then that would put severe limitations on any critic using hyperbole as a rhetorical device. And it really is up to the court to draw that distinction. I mean, anyone who accused GW Bush of fraud in any editorial opposing the Iraq war, would now be liable for damages to Bush for making such a charge.
Isn't realclimate.org just his advocacy site? I've had people point to it before. It's reads like a marketing hype rather than as a scientific discussion.
Businesses start and grow when they have a product or service to sell.
Really? I need a ferrari. Why is there no business supplying me with a ferrari? Oh, is that because the amount of money I am willing to pay is below what any business can afford to charge me for it? Hmm, what is profitable and what is not is determined by cost and by price the market can pay for the product. Taxes increase costs. But, hey, let's pretend that the garbage they spew on tv is real and that other human beings exist to sprinkle fairy dust on us because we need it. You are a moron.
So you're saying that you don't have the first inkling of anything to do with business.
And this is how proved it. By starting your "argument" with the so "you are saying..." and then contributing to me something I didn't say. Let me repeat, you are a dumb fuck whose opinion carries no weight. That's how insult someone when you don't like what they say. You don't attribute to them what they haven't said. That only proves that you have no argument.
It's about time the courts had a say about whether splicing 2 times series in the graph that is presented to the general public rises to the level of fraud. He did explain in the content of the paper that the hockey stick figure was not the actual claim, but the cover and the subsequent presentation to the general public made it look the hockey stick graph was supported by data. Is that fraud? That's is not a bad question to ask in a court room.
We are. The number of food stamp recipients is at an all time high.This a direct result of attacking business. When making a choice between pursuing new additional ventures (and employing more people) or holding off, any normal person would hold off if they get nothing but trouble for running a business. Yeah, sure, you can build new and interesting things, but who the hell wants to deal with people screaming in their face and trying to denigrate their labor of love? People don't get hired to build new projects as a result. Some find other jobs. Some... end up on food stamps. You wanna put down the 1%. Ok. Misery trickles down, too.
We rarely rise to the 1/3rd figure. DARPA (responsible for the Internet inception) was part of DoD expenses. Would we have benefited from cutting that? We are not in the era of building a lot of big metal. A lot of defense expenses are related to technology research.
I was explicit in including Veterans Benefits. It is is obviously part of the military compensation package.
Not necessarily. At least, not fully. At least SOME of those who have become veterans would have become entitled to medicaid due to bad luck in life. Not to mention that military pays for veteran's education. So more of those expenses would have to be picked up by the Department of Education. It's not a clear-cut defense expense. It's a middle ground between social expenses and defense expenses.
Indexing is not spying. It's remembering what is known rather then forgetting. Spying has to have an element of discovering what is not publicly known. Indexing doesn't do that.
When taxes are increased, the capital available to the firm is reduced by the amount it has to pay in taxes. You are talking about personal income tax. I am talking about income tax on business. Every dollar that is no longer available to the firm (because it paid it in taxes) is the dollar it cannot spend on anything... including salary. Which gives two options -- reduced salaries or reduced workforce. Reducing salaries causes problems with retention of the most able workers. Some leave. This is too costly. Which means the only reasonable course of action when taxes are increased is lay offs.
Increasing taxes on highest income individuals is equally damaging because excess income is (by definition of excess) the income not spent on personal needs. The only alternative use for it is investment income. When you reduce investment income, you reduce the amount of money individual can put in businesses (again reducing the number of people who are employed).
Increasing income "later on" will not fix the harm done by taxing it away "now". This is tantamount to trying to fix digestive problems caused by starvation by feeding someone. Essential structures are destroyed by starvation. They don't rebuilt just because resources become available.
Increased healthcare costs? On what planet? Ha? Are you really gonna try to make some case that government makes healthcare affordable? Is this crap something that people are still not ashamed to say out loud? I mean just takes balls.
0 dollars of income taxes are spent on the roads. 0%. Roads are maintained with the excise tax on gasoline. Excise tax is the tax built into the price (as opposed to the sales tax which is charged after the price). So "raising taxes a few percent" comment, that started this strand of this thread, would do nothing to maintain the roads. If you still don't know what excirse taxes are, they are the reason gas has a very different price across state lines. Delivery costs are the same. The only thing that is different is how much of a cut (excision... hence "excise") the government gets. So my point stands, every dollar spent on taxes is a dollar not spent on salary.
Those are imposed by the local governments. The buses that they are complaining about are actually reducing the burden on the local governments by reducing road use and thus reducing road maintenance costs.
Really? Siege is a form of warfare. Even if no shots are fired. And it's intent is to isolate and to starve the "enemy."
The comparison to 1917 can be started before the AWS movement started. Obama's slogans are almost direct translation from Russian of the slogans of Bolsheviks. Even the whole green energy movement is nothing but a bastardized "Communism is Socialism + electrification of the entire nation" that was the more repeated slogan in the Soviet Union. And, of course, the most mocked as "Socialism is Communism minus the electricity."
Every dollar paid in taxes is the dollar not paid in salary. Just saying.
It's a natural extension of the world view that divides people into those who have and those who don't rather than dividing it into those who contribute and those who don't.
http://slashdot.org/~superwiz/...
Specifically, how are the "technology workers" a "corrupt overclass"?
They are not. But GP wanted to take an emotional position while proving that it is a bad idea to take emotional positions. Don't ask for consistency from nihilists. They are not looking to arrive at the correct conclusion. They just want to win.
Defense+Veterans is about tied with Medicare+Medicaid for largest budget category, followed by Social Security third. Nothing else even makes it onto the radar. Lumping together ALL other discretionary spending (education, non-defense research, transportation, CDC, NASA, etc etc etc etc) still only adds up to 4th place in the budget.
Except it's not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2...
17% on defense. And, yes, that's a small fraction of any nation's budget. Most governments average around 1/3 of the budget. Even if you do add in the veteran affairs, it's still only 21% (1/5th). Which is less than "Department of Health and Human Services including Medicare and Medicaid" at 24% and less than Social Security at 23%.
Defense budget is a small fraction of the federal budget. And it subsidizes a lot of scientific research. In fact, it's arguable that more scientific advances result from the defense budget than from NASA. I, personally, would rather the government paid people to do scientific research than paid people to do nothing. That is not to say that we shouldn't be helping those in dire need. It's just that given choice of alternative between some scientific research and nothing, I'll take scientific research... oh and if that also means that China wouldn't even fathom invading Taiwan and Russia wouldn't even fathom invading Europe; well, that's a pretty good icing on the cake.
That's why many of them own slaves...
No, they owned slaves because every country in the world did. It was the only way to structure society for thousands of years before manual labor could be done by machines. Progress didn't come because we became more moral. It came because we could off load the hardest work to inanimate objects. Technological progress is how the world advances. And if you disagree, why are you on slashdot?
What do you mean even a broken clock? They said Republicans. If Democrats called for reduced government powers, that would fit the "even a broken clock" saying. Democrats are the Big Government party and always have been. Republicans just play along sometimes. Republicans must be feeling like they can get what they want right now -- that would be why they made the call.