I don't know anything about that. Does the father have a say right now?
That said, I was only saying that the mother should be able to have an abortion at any time. But the baby isn't in the father's body, is it? Why should he be able to force her through the pregnancy (I don't think he should be able to)? If the father wanted a child, then I think that's just too bad for him.
So long and the short, you believe the father has no rights whatsoever to the child that is half his? Interesting...
how many mm is my 5/8" head bolt? how many meters are between my 16" on center wall studs? Why would all my roughly 1 mile apart main streets now be stuck at 2.4ish km? to me, there is just far to much that is dependent on imperial measurements that getting people to think in them is not going to happen.
More to the point, aside from compatibility with the rest of the world (may or may not be overrated depending on situation), what does it really get us?
This also hits, in a round about way, on why I'll never understand the "Metric is superior because it is more accurate!" thing.
The sole advantage for metric, for regular people and day to day use, is unit convertibility. Even that is only an advantage for the case you gave. That in the end is why there is no push from the public, and in general counter push, in switching. It gains them next to nothing and costs them plenty. So why do it?
If they can safely remove the baby without killing it, then I think they should go that route. If they can't, then continue with the abortion. I don't care how developed it is. If the mother wants it gone, then I think she should have the option to get rid of it.
I'll risk the flame... The father has no say in that decision?
Science isn't a god, it's knowledge combined a method for increasing knowledge. Believers try to claim that it's a god, so that they can oppose it the way they oppose competitors for whatever god they adhere to.
I imagine the poster meant that as Science the Infallible and all Knowing. I generally coming down on the side of Science. However, there is an annoying group of people who will cling to given theories with near religious fervor and believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that theirs is The One True Truth even after evidence comes up which may disprove it. I would say that is what he poster meant.
Odd, you seem to be the one all emotional about it. I wouldn't care less what happens to the iOS universe, or its relative position in life, if Apple would be kind of enough not to try and bolster themselves via lawsuits. As to all my anecdotal statements, I never said anything about iPad users seeing and loving my TF. It wasn't even in what you quoted.
Your statements about concerning who the competition is, saying that Apple will always be number one because they aren't competing against 'Android' but all these other companies, seems highly disingenuous as it always is when it is pulled out. We don't speak of Apple vs HP vs Dell vs Whatever for the same reason we don't speak of Apple vs HTC vs ASUS vs Whatever. It doesn't matter. You can say to yourself that it isn't iOS vs Android and believe it all you like. Belief doesn't make it true.:)
As an aside, that's a nice be of elitism there towards the end.
Seriously, the odds of that happening (asskicking on epic scale) are similar to the odds of Linux becoming the dominant desktop OS.
I'm sure they're similar to the odds of IE ever losing its marketshare too, no?
The iPad/iPhone are nice, but they are not magic. They have gotten by so far on a combination of fanbois, expert marketing and a lack of serious competition. The thing we must all remember is the real tablet space is only a year and a half old which is far too early to be anointing any once and forever kings.
It's cool though. Keep believing in the infallibility of Lord Jobs (PBUH).
Well yes, blessedly you're quite right. I was merely drawing a distinction between _must_ edit and the current situation of _may_ edit for finer control and such.
Do you really think business students represent mainstream users? There are iPad docks, but you're talking about one with a battery and USB ports, turning the tablet into a netbook. People don't want that. They don't want the old, clunky computer designs anymore, and they don't want to deal with a mess of cables. Mice and keyboards are wireless now. Hell, even iOS devices can sync wirelessly.
There's just this fundamental disconnect between what techies want and what the rest of the world wants. Techies want more ports, more specs, more everything. The rest of the world wants reduced complexity, not more of it.
Please, put down the crack pipe and step away from the kool-aid. When I'm out in town using my Transformer the first thing people assume is it is a netbook. Then I take it apart and after they pick up their jaws they're asking what is it and where can they get one.
Whereas not everyone wants it, there sure as hell are a lot of people who do and not just the implied "techno geeks" you're thinking of. Lots of iPad users see it and do wish they had such a dock.
You're just going to have to get used to the idea that while the iPad 2/3/whatever is nice, the ass kicking that is about to be handed to Apple outside their core fanboi base is going to be absolutely Epic.
Sure, and just as with smartphones, "All Android Phones" will be bigger in the market than the mere iPhone. But look at any individual manufacturer, and that "All Android Phone" share is sliced into so many tiny pieces that Apple dwarfs them. Same with the iPad - Android tablets together may take over 50% of the market... but no individual Android tablet is going to have more than 5%.
This is +5 Insightful? Who cares about an individual comparison like that? What difference does it make? In the end, the only valid comparison is total market share of the platform. In the mobile space Android dwarfs iOS and will continue to do so. In the tablet space the same is about to happen. It doesn't matter whether or not the ASUS Transformer or any other individual tablet has greater than 50%, or any other number, of the market. Android does.
The only purpose of comparing it the way you are doing is to make the absolute ass kicking that is about to be handed out not seem as bad.
When was the last time you had to edit a config file or login script to play a sound on start up? KDE has done it, and been configurable via GUI, for years. Surely Gnome is the same.
I plug in a monitor to my OpenSUSE box, it says "Hey, new monitor! Shall we config?"
The days of edit config files for every little thing and constantly fighting the system are over.
Why are you constantly calling him a pedophile? Or is that a lame attempt to discredit him?
No, I'm pretty sure the abject poverty of the country plus the thousands (at the least) of dead from hunger and such do that all by themselves. You know what the best thing Kim Jong il did was? Die.
Instead, IF this were to even happen, and I thought trickle down economics died when Reagan's body finally followed his brain, then what would REALLY happen is that the 1% become 0.9%.
Average income, ever heard of it? Well, average income is the total of all income divivded by the number of people with an income. The more people have a high income, the more people need to make a low income to compensate.
If you got 10 people and they average an income of 1000 then the total is 10.000. But if one of them makes 10.000, then the average is still a 1000 as long as the others make zero.
Now, do a fun lookup. Research the average wage in the US and look up how much say a Bill Gates make. Then realize how many people are begging on the street so Bill Gate can be so rich.
That is how the whole 1% vs 99% works. And more people becoming millionaires doesn't do anything but make far more people poor.
Without resorting to what are basically number games, explain to me precisely how Bill Gates being rich automatically makes someone else poor. Do you believe that there is this fixed pool of wealth and that the only way for me to have more is for you to have less?
To answer your unstated rhetorical question concerning how many people are begging on the street so Bill Gates can be rich: The answer is zero. Not a single person is begging on the streets so a rich person can be rich.
It's time to make the switch to better speed, performance and reliability.
SSDs will remain the toys of those who want large e-penises (replace with organ of choice) and those few who really "need" the speed until the price comes down to something less than gold pressed diamonds.
Not to say they're worthless. Just vastly overpriced and overrated for the vast majority of people.
That is how things were supposed to be in the first place, no?:)
Yes, and we see how that worked out.
Returning to that would require either a revolution or a constitutional convention by all the states, and I don't see how we wouldn't get right back to where we are now very quickly given the size of the country and the needs of a modern nation; it's not like we can go back to 1800 and have a government with no Federal agencies to handle things like aviation, communications, etc.
Sitting aside the question of how we would get back there for a moment, why is the only solution to those things and others a virtually all powerful and practically unaccountable Federal government?
The problem is with interstate commerce. I know libertarians love to blast that part of the Constitution, but it does serve an important purpose. For example, maybe Mississippi decides they want absolutely no environmental protections. Corporations will move their factories there, and start dumping their toxic wastes into the river. Only now the people in New Orleans have to suffer for their neighbors choices. If the states were each independent countries, that sort of thing would lead to serious border conflicts, sanctions, and maybe even war. Instead we have the federal government to unite us and pass nationwide standards. We're already in a race to the bottom with third world nations. The last thing we need is to start a race to the bottom between ourselves.
Or how about immigration? What if Tennessee decides that they want to let in all comers? Do we build a wall around the state, station guards at every border crossing?
Or the FCC? As nice as it might be to have different radio standards in Philly, Newark, NYC, and Stamford, the laws of physics don't allow it.
Entitlements might be better left to the state, but it would be a bureaucratic nightmare tracking people's moves across the nation (so that someone doesn't spend most of their life in a low tax state and retire in a high entitlement state).
There are some cases where we would be better off giving the states more control, but in many ways the old federal model simply can't work in the modern world.
There are some things that are probably handled on a national level for the sake of uniformity and to be able to efficiently conduct business. However, with the current system and the one you advocate continuing we end up with a largely unresponsive and exceptionally powerful central government running every last facet of life with one size fits all solutions to everything.
Once you start down the path of the Feds regulating everything under the guise of "Interstate Commerce" then you've handed the Federal government a blank check to do whatever the hell they want. After all, what doesn't touch on "commerce" on some level?
Would there be risks to returning to the previous model? Probably. Are those risks worth peeling back the power of government to something that is manageable and controllable? Absolutely. It isn't as if the solution to every problem is "central government".
The "true red-blooded patriots" can think whatever they want, but all their willpower isn't going to overcome basic economics. If the economy collapses, no amount of patriotism or talk of "united we stand!" is going to make it better. Heck, we even have "red-blooded patriots" in many states doing things that are pretty close to outright rebellion against the nation and federal government: many states have passed laws forbidding themselves to follow the Real ID Act, Montana passed a law saying they can make machine guns if they want, stamped "Made in Montana", as long as they aren't sold out-of-state, plainly in direct opposition to BATFE policy, Arizona and the federal government are suing each other over immigration enforcement, etc. It seems like the "red-blooded" ones are the ones itching the most to cause division (not that I disagree with causing division; obviously with these and many other issues, Americans in many regions simply can't agree on anything, so I think it's better to simply break apart so that they don't have to agree).
Or we could return to the Federal model the US is actually based on instead of this rule from Washington thing we're doing now. Return the States to their rightful place and make the national government small as it should be. Then people can move to the State that best reflects their view of the world. That is how things were supposed to be in the first place, no?:)
I'll bite... and exactly what would you advocate to "fix the distribution of wealth in this country"? Wholesale theft and armed robbery (but we'll call it taxes and execute it through the government so it'll be okay)?
So you're clearly someone who believes there should be no taxes at all.
How are you planning to finance even a basic and useless Government that does nothing more than provide an army and court system ?
I fail to see how this is even remotely Insightful as it is made up of primarily a huge assumption. I said nothing about all taxes being theft. If you read carefully you may realize that the taxes I was speaking of are those designed with the goal of "wealth redistribution" in mind. If you think that I believe taxes designed to take from one group and give to another at the preference and discretion of government is theft then you're right.
The only legitimate justification of taxes are to pay for legitimate functions of a proper limited government. It should not be the role of government to see that you are fed, clothed and housed. Nor is it the proper role of government to decide, by way of wealth redistribution, that someone is too rich and we must take from them and give to someone else.
Lump capital gains with income, eliminate corporate taxes, end exemptions above 2x median income, add tax brackets based on multiples of the median wage with say 99% above 10,000x median wage, eliminate death tax loopholes, recognize total compensation (e.g. use of jets, houses, cars) as income, institute similar rules on multi-nationals that would like to do business in the US
Wholesale theft and armed robbery (but we'll call it taxes and execute it through the government so it'll be okay)?
If you're one of those people who doesn't recognize a social contract.. we'll tax your departure. Or if your wealth is that important, renounce your citizenship, never return, and take all your money.
I recognize a difference between legitimate taxes, those used entirely or primarily for the purposes of providing service to the nation at large, and those which I would to classify as theft, those primarily designed either merely to redistribute wealth or to benefit one segment of the nation at the intentional expense of another.
That said, the problem with some of your suggestions, but not all of them, is that it seems that most of them are more designed to redistribute wealth than pay for the legitimate operation of the government. Additionally, I cannot fathom why anyone would want to give such a wasteful entity as the government even more money and power.
There are a lot of things wrong with this. First off, for those people whose info gets stolen, they are out money until the banks go through the process of reimbursing them. With the numbers of people that would be affected by this, that could take a while. So, people will be short of cash at a time when they need it most: the holidays.
This is a brilliant plan if they can actually pull it off at a high enough scale. This forces people to NOT spend for the holidays. Big banks (Visa gets a cut everytime you use your credit card!) and retailers like Walmart take a hit.
Yeah, screw those people working at walmart who get laid off when walmart takes a hit. Because they shouldn't have been working for the Evil WalMart anyway, right?
No, you're factually and provably wrong. I suspect that you know this, and are lying in hopes of scaring members of the middle class away from any policies that might fix the distribution of wealth in this country.
The bottom 80% of Americans, a group that includes both the poor and the middle class, owns just 7% of the wealth in the country. Redistributing that 7% evenly among the 250 million people that make up the bottom 80% won't do a damn thing.
I'll bite... and exactly what would you advocate to "fix the distribution of wealth in this country"? Wholesale theft and armed robbery (but we'll call it taxes and execute it through the government so it'll be okay)?
Yes, but we never had a globalised information economy before. I can see the argument that getting the best of the non-U.S. citizens in the same place, having them work intensively on startups, and having access to Silicon Valley investors and resources, would potentially work. Think of it as Y Combinator for people who can't get a visa. Their estimated low price point is $1200/person/month; at that price there are investors who would be willing to finance small startup teams in exchange for equity. Let's say total cost is $2k/person/month, that's $18k for 3 people for 3 months, which is equal to the average amount that Y Combinator invests in their "3 month move to California" development program. And for the top graduates from Africa, India, China etc. this would look like a good opportunity given the huge potential rewards at the end.
The real question here, is whether proximity to Silicon Valley offers any real advantage to startups anymore? This place will be competing against startup accelerators in India and elsewhere, so why would a top Indian graduate choose to use this accelerator rather than one based in India?
Yes, but here's the thing I don't get. Nearly the entire set of people who cannot get a B-2 visa (here for business) probably cannot get a B-1 visa either (same base requirements.) That set also includes nearly everyone from India/China/NotEurope who have problems getting any kind of visa. Thus, they'll get to the boat and be stuck there. The entire contention that a B1 visa is easy to get is also false as most of the world can easily be divided into two groups. Those who can easily get visas (and often don't need them in the first place as they are probably from countries who are part of the VWP) and those who cannot get a visa under practically any circumstance that doesn't involve corporate sponsorship or marriage/family.
In short, the very group who would be served by this en devour wouldn't likely be able to ever come ashore. That being the case, what the hell do they do when they have to bring the ship in for one thing or another? Toss everyone over the side or risk mass deportation?
Yeah, no one can think for themselves at all, right?
Some people surely can, but that doesn't mean that you are one of them. Dismissing other people's thoughts and desires as the bleating of sheeple is not a good thing at all, as it is a very short step from there to not treating them like people at all. Instead, the right thing to do is to consider whether what you think they should want is actually a good thing for them to want after all. (Unless you're going to high-handedly get rid of all Reality TV, in which case I'm all for it!)
Wow, where did you get all of that? People can want whatever they like and that's fine. The person that prompted the line was implying that the Congress was voting a particular way on particular issues ignoring what the people at large wanted. The absence of large scale protests, or in some cases large scale protests against those ideals, when those ideals go down in flames is a fair indication I'm correct, no?
Do they have a word for "government by lobbyists?"
We have a representative democracy on paper, but when the rubber hits the road, how does congress vote on the really important matters? Most of the country wants better healthcare but congress won't vote on it. We need better gun laws but congress won't vote on it. Wall Street needs more oversight but... you get the idea.
There are two possibilities... one is that we have government by lobbyists.. or two.. what you say the majority of the country wants isn't what it wants. You say most of the country wants better healthcare, but what you seem to really mean is you think most of the country wants government run health care and I'm nearly certain that isn't true. You say we need better gun laws, but who is this we you're speaking of? Anti-rights people, that would be you it seems, have been losing that battle for a long time now with no end in sight. Apparently the majority of people don't want that either.
So, is the Congress merely acting at the behest of corporations, or maybe in some cases they really are voting what their constituents want. Since they vote, and corporations don't, who would you listen to?
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I don't know anything about that. Does the father have a say right now?
That said, I was only saying that the mother should be able to have an abortion at any time. But the baby isn't in the father's body, is it? Why should he be able to force her through the pregnancy (I don't think he should be able to)? If the father wanted a child, then I think that's just too bad for him.
So long and the short, you believe the father has no rights whatsoever to the child that is half his? Interesting...
how many mm is my 5/8" head bolt? how many meters are between my 16" on center wall studs? Why would all my roughly 1 mile apart main streets now be stuck at 2.4ish km? to me, there is just far to much that is dependent on imperial measurements that getting people to think in them is not going to happen.
More to the point, aside from compatibility with the rest of the world (may or may not be overrated depending on situation), what does it really get us?
This also hits, in a round about way, on why I'll never understand the "Metric is superior because it is more accurate!" thing.
The sole advantage for metric, for regular people and day to day use, is unit convertibility. Even that is only an advantage for the case you gave. That in the end is why there is no push from the public, and in general counter push, in switching. It gains them next to nothing and costs them plenty. So why do it?
If they can safely remove the baby without killing it, then I think they should go that route. If they can't, then continue with the abortion. I don't care how developed it is. If the mother wants it gone, then I think she should have the option to get rid of it.
I'll risk the flame... The father has no say in that decision?
their God, Science
Science isn't a god, it's knowledge combined a method for increasing knowledge. Believers try to claim that it's a god, so that they can oppose it the way they oppose competitors for whatever god they adhere to.
I imagine the poster meant that as Science the Infallible and all Knowing. I generally coming down on the side of Science. However, there is an annoying group of people who will cling to given theories with near religious fervor and believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that theirs is The One True Truth even after evidence comes up which may disprove it. I would say that is what he poster meant.
Odd, you seem to be the one all emotional about it. I wouldn't care less what happens to the iOS universe, or its relative position in life, if Apple would be kind of enough not to try and bolster themselves via lawsuits. As to all my anecdotal statements, I never said anything about iPad users seeing and loving my TF. It wasn't even in what you quoted.
Your statements about concerning who the competition is, saying that Apple will always be number one because they aren't competing against 'Android' but all these other companies, seems highly disingenuous as it always is when it is pulled out. We don't speak of Apple vs HP vs Dell vs Whatever for the same reason we don't speak of Apple vs HTC vs ASUS vs Whatever. It doesn't matter. You can say to yourself that it isn't iOS vs Android and believe it all you like. Belief doesn't make it true. :)
As an aside, that's a nice be of elitism there towards the end.
Seriously, the odds of that happening (asskicking on epic scale) are similar to the odds of Linux becoming the dominant desktop OS.
I'm sure they're similar to the odds of IE ever losing its marketshare too, no?
The iPad/iPhone are nice, but they are not magic. They have gotten by so far on a combination of fanbois, expert marketing and a lack of serious competition. The thing we must all remember is the real tablet space is only a year and a half old which is far too early to be anointing any once and forever kings.
It's cool though. Keep believing in the infallibility of Lord Jobs (PBUH).
Well yes, blessedly you're quite right. I was merely drawing a distinction between _must_ edit and the current situation of _may_ edit for finer control and such.
Do you really think business students represent mainstream users? There are iPad docks, but you're talking about one with a battery and USB ports, turning the tablet into a netbook. People don't want that. They don't want the old, clunky computer designs anymore, and they don't want to deal with a mess of cables. Mice and keyboards are wireless now. Hell, even iOS devices can sync wirelessly.
There's just this fundamental disconnect between what techies want and what the rest of the world wants. Techies want more ports, more specs, more everything. The rest of the world wants reduced complexity, not more of it.
Please, put down the crack pipe and step away from the kool-aid. When I'm out in town using my Transformer the first thing people assume is it is a netbook. Then I take it apart and after they pick up their jaws they're asking what is it and where can they get one.
Whereas not everyone wants it, there sure as hell are a lot of people who do and not just the implied "techno geeks" you're thinking of. Lots of iPad users see it and do wish they had such a dock.
You're just going to have to get used to the idea that while the iPad 2/3/whatever is nice, the ass kicking that is about to be handed to Apple outside their core fanboi base is going to be absolutely Epic.
Sure, and just as with smartphones, "All Android Phones" will be bigger in the market than the mere iPhone. But look at any individual manufacturer, and that "All Android Phone" share is sliced into so many tiny pieces that Apple dwarfs them. Same with the iPad - Android tablets together may take over 50% of the market... but no individual Android tablet is going to have more than 5%.
This is +5 Insightful? Who cares about an individual comparison like that? What difference does it make? In the end, the only valid comparison is total market share of the platform. In the mobile space Android dwarfs iOS and will continue to do so. In the tablet space the same is about to happen. It doesn't matter whether or not the ASUS Transformer or any other individual tablet has greater than 50%, or any other number, of the market. Android does.
The only purpose of comparing it the way you are doing is to make the absolute ass kicking that is about to be handed out not seem as bad.
When was the last time you had to edit a config file or login script to play a sound on start up? KDE has done it, and been configurable via GUI, for years. Surely Gnome is the same.
I plug in a monitor to my OpenSUSE box, it says "Hey, new monitor! Shall we config?"
The days of edit config files for every little thing and constantly fighting the system are over.
Why are you constantly calling him a pedophile? Or is that a lame attempt to discredit him?
No, I'm pretty sure the abject poverty of the country plus the thousands (at the least) of dead from hunger and such do that all by themselves. You know what the best thing Kim Jong il did was? Die.
Instead, IF this were to even happen, and I thought trickle down economics died when Reagan's body finally followed his brain, then what would REALLY happen is that the 1% become 0.9%.
Average income, ever heard of it? Well, average income is the total of all income divivded by the number of people with an income. The more people have a high income, the more people need to make a low income to compensate.
If you got 10 people and they average an income of 1000 then the total is 10.000. But if one of them makes 10.000, then the average is still a 1000 as long as the others make zero.
Now, do a fun lookup. Research the average wage in the US and look up how much say a Bill Gates make. Then realize how many people are begging on the street so Bill Gate can be so rich.
That is how the whole 1% vs 99% works. And more people becoming millionaires doesn't do anything but make far more people poor.
Without resorting to what are basically number games, explain to me precisely how Bill Gates being rich automatically makes someone else poor. Do you believe that there is this fixed pool of wealth and that the only way for me to have more is for you to have less?
To answer your unstated rhetorical question concerning how many people are begging on the street so Bill Gates can be rich: The answer is zero. Not a single person is begging on the streets so a rich person can be rich.
It's time to make the switch to better speed, performance and reliability.
SSDs will remain the toys of those who want large e-penises (replace with organ of choice) and those few who really "need" the speed until the price comes down to something less than gold pressed diamonds.
Not to say they're worthless. Just vastly overpriced and overrated for the vast majority of people.
That is how things were supposed to be in the first place, no? :)
Yes, and we see how that worked out.
Returning to that would require either a revolution or a constitutional convention by all the states, and I don't see how we wouldn't get right back to where we are now very quickly given the size of the country and the needs of a modern nation; it's not like we can go back to 1800 and have a government with no Federal agencies to handle things like aviation, communications, etc.
Sitting aside the question of how we would get back there for a moment, why is the only solution to those things and others a virtually all powerful and practically unaccountable Federal government?
The problem is with interstate commerce. I know libertarians love to blast that part of the Constitution, but it does serve an important purpose. For example, maybe Mississippi decides they want absolutely no environmental protections. Corporations will move their factories there, and start dumping their toxic wastes into the river. Only now the people in New Orleans have to suffer for their neighbors choices. If the states were each independent countries, that sort of thing would lead to serious border conflicts, sanctions, and maybe even war. Instead we have the federal government to unite us and pass nationwide standards. We're already in a race to the bottom with third world nations. The last thing we need is to start a race to the bottom between ourselves.
Or how about immigration? What if Tennessee decides that they want to let in all comers? Do we build a wall around the state, station guards at every border crossing?
Or the FCC? As nice as it might be to have different radio standards in Philly, Newark, NYC, and Stamford, the laws of physics don't allow it.
Entitlements might be better left to the state, but it would be a bureaucratic nightmare tracking people's moves across the nation (so that someone doesn't spend most of their life in a low tax state and retire in a high entitlement state).
There are some cases where we would be better off giving the states more control, but in many ways the old federal model simply can't work in the modern world.
There are some things that are probably handled on a national level for the sake of uniformity and to be able to efficiently conduct business. However, with the current system and the one you advocate continuing we end up with a largely unresponsive and exceptionally powerful central government running every last facet of life with one size fits all solutions to everything.
Once you start down the path of the Feds regulating everything under the guise of "Interstate Commerce" then you've handed the Federal government a blank check to do whatever the hell they want. After all, what doesn't touch on "commerce" on some level?
Would there be risks to returning to the previous model? Probably. Are those risks worth peeling back the power of government to something that is manageable and controllable? Absolutely. It isn't as if the solution to every problem is "central government".
The "true red-blooded patriots" can think whatever they want, but all their willpower isn't going to overcome basic economics. If the economy collapses, no amount of patriotism or talk of "united we stand!" is going to make it better. Heck, we even have "red-blooded patriots" in many states doing things that are pretty close to outright rebellion against the nation and federal government: many states have passed laws forbidding themselves to follow the Real ID Act, Montana passed a law saying they can make machine guns if they want, stamped "Made in Montana", as long as they aren't sold out-of-state, plainly in direct opposition to BATFE policy, Arizona and the federal government are suing each other over immigration enforcement, etc. It seems like the "red-blooded" ones are the ones itching the most to cause division (not that I disagree with causing division; obviously with these and many other issues, Americans in many regions simply can't agree on anything, so I think it's better to simply break apart so that they don't have to agree).
Or we could return to the Federal model the US is actually based on instead of this rule from Washington thing we're doing now. Return the States to their rightful place and make the national government small as it should be. Then people can move to the State that best reflects their view of the world. That is how things were supposed to be in the first place, no? :)
So you're clearly someone who believes there should be no taxes at all.
How are you planning to finance even a basic and useless Government that does nothing more than provide an army and court system ?
I fail to see how this is even remotely Insightful as it is made up of primarily a huge assumption. I said nothing about all taxes being theft. If you read carefully you may realize that the taxes I was speaking of are those designed with the goal of "wealth redistribution" in mind. If you think that I believe taxes designed to take from one group and give to another at the preference and discretion of government is theft then you're right.
The only legitimate justification of taxes are to pay for legitimate functions of a proper limited government. It should not be the role of government to see that you are fed, clothed and housed. Nor is it the proper role of government to decide, by way of wealth redistribution, that someone is too rich and we must take from them and give to someone else.
Lump capital gains with income, eliminate corporate taxes, end exemptions above 2x median income, add tax brackets based on multiples of the median wage with say 99% above 10,000x median wage, eliminate death tax loopholes, recognize total compensation (e.g. use of jets, houses, cars) as income, institute similar rules on multi-nationals that would like to do business in the US
Wholesale theft and armed robbery (but we'll call it taxes and execute it through the government so it'll be okay)?
If you're one of those people who doesn't recognize a social contract .. we'll tax your departure. Or if your wealth is that important, renounce your citizenship, never return, and take all your money.
I recognize a difference between legitimate taxes, those used entirely or primarily for the purposes of providing service to the nation at large, and those which I would to classify as theft, those primarily designed either merely to redistribute wealth or to benefit one segment of the nation at the intentional expense of another.
That said, the problem with some of your suggestions, but not all of them, is that it seems that most of them are more designed to redistribute wealth than pay for the legitimate operation of the government. Additionally, I cannot fathom why anyone would want to give such a wasteful entity as the government even more money and power.
There are a lot of things wrong with this. First off, for those people whose info gets stolen, they are out money until the banks go through the process of reimbursing them. With the numbers of people that would be affected by this, that could take a while. So, people will be short of cash at a time when they need it most: the holidays.
This is a brilliant plan if they can actually pull it off at a high enough scale. This forces people to NOT spend for the holidays. Big banks (Visa gets a cut everytime you use your credit card!) and retailers like Walmart take a hit.
Yeah, screw those people working at walmart who get laid off when walmart takes a hit. Because they shouldn't have been working for the Evil WalMart anyway, right?
No, you're factually and provably wrong. I suspect that you know this, and are lying in hopes of scaring members of the middle class away from any policies that might fix the distribution of wealth in this country.
The bottom 80% of Americans, a group that includes both the poor and the middle class, owns just 7% of the wealth in the country. Redistributing that 7% evenly among the 250 million people that make up the bottom 80% won't do a damn thing.
I'll bite... and exactly what would you advocate to "fix the distribution of wealth in this country"? Wholesale theft and armed robbery (but we'll call it taxes and execute it through the government so it'll be okay)?
Yes, but we never had a globalised information economy before. I can see the argument that getting the best of the non-U.S. citizens in the same place, having them work intensively on startups, and having access to Silicon Valley investors and resources, would potentially work. Think of it as Y Combinator for people who can't get a visa. Their estimated low price point is $1200/person/month; at that price there are investors who would be willing to finance small startup teams in exchange for equity. Let's say total cost is $2k/person/month, that's $18k for 3 people for 3 months, which is equal to the average amount that Y Combinator invests in their "3 month move to California" development program. And for the top graduates from Africa, India, China etc. this would look like a good opportunity given the huge potential rewards at the end.
The real question here, is whether proximity to Silicon Valley offers any real advantage to startups anymore? This place will be competing against startup accelerators in India and elsewhere, so why would a top Indian graduate choose to use this accelerator rather than one based in India?
Yes, but here's the thing I don't get. Nearly the entire set of people who cannot get a B-2 visa (here for business) probably cannot get a B-1 visa either (same base requirements.) That set also includes nearly everyone from India/China/NotEurope who have problems getting any kind of visa. Thus, they'll get to the boat and be stuck there. The entire contention that a B1 visa is easy to get is also false as most of the world can easily be divided into two groups. Those who can easily get visas (and often don't need them in the first place as they are probably from countries who are part of the VWP) and those who cannot get a visa under practically any circumstance that doesn't involve corporate sponsorship or marriage/family.
In short, the very group who would be served by this en devour wouldn't likely be able to ever come ashore. That being the case, what the hell do they do when they have to bring the ship in for one thing or another? Toss everyone over the side or risk mass deportation?
Yeah, no one can think for themselves at all, right?
Some people surely can, but that doesn't mean that you are one of them. Dismissing other people's thoughts and desires as the bleating of sheeple is not a good thing at all, as it is a very short step from there to not treating them like people at all. Instead, the right thing to do is to consider whether what you think they should want is actually a good thing for them to want after all. (Unless you're going to high-handedly get rid of all Reality TV, in which case I'm all for it!)
Wow, where did you get all of that? People can want whatever they like and that's fine. The person that prompted the line was implying that the Congress was voting a particular way on particular issues ignoring what the people at large wanted. The absence of large scale protests, or in some cases large scale protests against those ideals, when those ideals go down in flames is a fair indication I'm correct, no?
The people want what they're told to want. That's why the airwaves are full of "paid messages" from all sorts of interests.
Yeah, no one can think for themselves at all, right?
Do they have a word for "government by lobbyists?"
We have a representative democracy on paper, but when the rubber hits the road, how does congress vote on the really important matters? Most of the country wants better healthcare but congress won't vote on it. We need better gun laws but congress won't vote on it. Wall Street needs more oversight but... you get the idea.
There are two possibilities... one is that we have government by lobbyists.. or two.. what you say the majority of the country wants isn't what it wants. You say most of the country wants better healthcare, but what you seem to really mean is you think most of the country wants government run health care and I'm nearly certain that isn't true. You say we need better gun laws, but who is this we you're speaking of? Anti-rights people, that would be you it seems, have been losing that battle for a long time now with no end in sight. Apparently the majority of people don't want that either.
So, is the Congress merely acting at the behest of corporations, or maybe in some cases they really are voting what their constituents want. Since they vote, and corporations don't, who would you listen to?