You're so deadly afraid someone might take your shiny new penny that you would first turn society into a hellhole for your children to live in.
I'll teach my children to take care of themselves and their family. I'll teach my children the value of true charity and giving and the difference between those things and reliance and dependence on government. I'll teach my children that the proper role of government is to protect the rights of individuals, and not to redistribute wealth or even to "take care of us" as that is our job and not theirs. I'll teach my children that throughout history when governments have decided that it is their role to "take care of us" that nothing but disaster followed.
If you want to call that a hellhole, that's up to you.
We the People know that govt is supposed to look out for us, so we vote in our best interests. Money is a psychological tool that serves us, we don't serve it. Economics is like a religion with the high priests (bankers, economists) preaching the need for human sacrifice to appease their great god Mammon. Their predictions don't come true, their axioms are flawed, their equations fail to take into account externalities such as innovation, which is where the real focus needs to be. Govt should provide a basic income, and encourage the native spirit of creativity and inventiveness in each of us with challenges.
Yeah, government should just take from the people who do that creativity and inventiveness and give it to those who don't bother to in the form of a "basic income". Meh.
Sex sells. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt sell. Providing a "solution" to fear, uncertainty, and doubt sells.
Combine all 3 and it's the politician's re-election trifecta.
I'm going to guess it's this, plus the one/two punch of being able to look like you're doing something (as opposed to actually fixing a problem) and who will step up and defend these "offenders" by pointing out the silliness of it all? Makes it pretty easy to institute more and more controls that can easily be expanded later.
How long after useful privately owned computers were in homes did it take for the first ISPs to show up? A couple of years?
I'd put it at more like seven years. I definitely had a PC by 1986, and the first private ISP to make it onto the scene around here was about 1992. Before that, you had to be or know a university student, etc., to get on the internet, and the rest of us made do with BBSes.
I suppose that depends on how you define things. Given for most of the period between 1986 - 1990 (around the time of AOL, CompuServe and such) most people didn't even know what the internet was or even that it existed. I know I was able to use telnet to connect from a couple of BBSes to other BBSes around the 1989 time frame, maybe as early as 1988. Point being, by the time there was interest in such connections they were coming online for people. That is how it would make sense, no?
Back in the early 90's I worked for a short time in a corporate 'machine room' and was appalled at the level of professionalism displayed by managers.
One day while I was performing 'health checks' in the machine room, I witnessed a black manager and a white manager having an argument so out of control that they were screaming obscenities at each other like a couple of cheap whores scrapping over a street corner.
It was the most disgusting scene I have ever witnessed in a professional environment.... and yet... none of the other IT grunts even batted an eye. This was SOP for the management team.
I told my boss to get stuffed over the sadistic management culture, and was invited to leave. They tried to block my unemployment benefits, on grounds of open insurrection, but were ordered to pay in full after a lengthy investigation of their toxic employment culture.
After talking to a lot of grunt level IT drones over the years I conclude that this is an industry-wide culture phenomenon.
The plural of anecdote is not data. I'll be sure to let the non-white employees where I work, a sizable number to be sure, know that IT is super racist and clearly they don't exist. Since being so super racist they couldn't have been hired. So, whose experience represents the true situation?
How dare you not do things with government assistance!
WTF are you talking about? Do you not understand that "USN" means "United States Navy?" If that's not government assistance, I don't know what is.
I believe one would normally call that "service" vice whatever you want to call it when the government pays for a 2 to 4 year party in college. I suppose if you don't want to call it "service" you'd have to call it at least working experience. In any case, I'm sure you didn't mean to compare partying at a college for a few years to time in the military so we'll just leave it at that, yes?:)
So you're trying to say that the only reason many employers are requiring degrees (or often experience levels) is to keep the black man down? Really? That's the reason?
Do not attribute to malice what can adequately be attributed to stupidity. Instead of some "keep certain minorities down" it seems far more likely that a trend got started where it might have made sense and then propagated, in the way of trends, on to areas where it makes less and less sense. Companies, or more likely HR departments, probably keep doing it for the same reasons they put out job requirements with insane lists of qualifications. Failure to research or think. Plus, possible company policies that a position over level X in the company requires a degree of level Y. A requirement that probably also got there in the same manner, a trend got started.
Your armchair conjecture does not hold up to scrutiny. The matter has actually been studied. Start with "Griggs v. Duke Power: Implications for College Credentialing" by O'Keefe and Vedder.
I'm going to reject your appeal to authority on the grounds of direct experience and simple logic. Nearly ever job, IT industry, I've ever held had one of these more or less bogus requirements. Nearly every IT position I've ever seen advertised above help desk, and often even them, have them. If what you're asserting is true then 95% - 99% of the entire IT industry in the US is deeply racist. The fact that someone, or even multiple someones, has studied something doesn't automatically make their conclusions correct. I would obviously allow that my sample size is by definition limited but given the prevalence of these types of requirements I cannot believe "racism" can anywhere nearly adequately explain them.
Do not attribute to malice what can adequately be attributed to stupidity.
Could it be possible that employers are seeking to "keep the black man down" out of stupidity, and not malice?
Perhaps, but that presumes that such an attitude isn't also a form of stupidity. That said, while not denying that racism exists I find it hard to believe that it is as wide spread and deep rooted in so many places as the bogus degree requirements would indicate. Thus, I reject the so called logic that such requirements could even largely be based on the idea of keeping minorities out of those jobs.
Nah supply and demand is broken. When you need a degree to get a job, and you need a job to live, then the demand side skyrockets.
Bzzt wrong. You can get a lower paying job, but without the overhead of a loan you can get a secure job with higher take home pay. Don't get me wrong. I did not say don't get an education. I said don't get a degree. Get self taught, then an apprenticeship, then a recognized certification, and then apply for better jobs.
My path was USN in advanced electronics. My basic was self taught. Challenged the basic portion and skipped it. This is documented. Skipped some levels in the advanced courses too. I immediately found employment out of the Navy during the recession of the 1980's. Work for skilled and trained people was there, especially for those employers looking for lower cost employees.
I later picked up my ISCET certification. I now work in engineering in the semiconductor industry in R&D. Degree is still missing. I don't care.
Hush you! Don't you know this is/.!! How dare you not do things with government assistance!! How dare you not follow the group think of needing a degree to work anywhere but McDonald's!!
I say this as a person making pretty good money in IT with no degree. Excluding certain fields I've long been convinced that university degrees are for suckers and not everyone should go and in fact most people shouldn't. No one should feel bad simply because they don't have a degree.
#1 - Federal loan guarantees do play a part. #2 - Showing that your college is "exclusive" by charging far more than community or state colleges plays a role, too. #3 - Exploiting the parental desire to pay more for "exclusive" colleges (especially in the US South on the part of racist white parents wanting to get their kids out of the "colleges where those niggers go"). #4 - Private universities generally charge ALL students what would often be an "out of state" rate: going out-of-state to a State College will run you on average $18k/year while private universities charge, in-state or out-of-state, an average of $25k.
Now, take a look at that figure. Take 20% off of the $25k - to account for state funding - and what do you have? $20k. Subtract another 10% to account for the lower pay of employees in state institutions as opposed to private and - guess what - now you see where the $18k out-of-state figure fits.
The math works. The reason tuition charged to students skyrocketed is because of cuts in state funding to state institutions that had to be made up in tuition hikes.
Or they could just not continuously hire administrators or just cut back on them? Nice dig on the US South there. I'm sure those parents don't want better educations for those kids and just want to get their kids into all white schools. The reason tuition has been going through the roof is far more likely due to inefficiencies in the system and an unwillingness to cut unnecessary expenses when funding was reduced. The schools want to maintain legions of administrators and programs 10 people take.
Get rid of the social stigma attached to being non-degreed, get rid of the bogus requirement to have a degree, any degree, in order to 'succeed' (heh - and THAT's defining success as 'marginally above the poverty line and insured so that medical expenses are less likely to bankrupt you'), and we'll talk.
Until then this will continue.
We were put on this track by Griggs v. Duke Power Company. That decision banned employment tests because those tests were shown to discriminate against certain minorities. Without the test to filter out the applicants, employers sought for some other filter... and settled on the college degree, because the certain minorities tended to not have degrees. Full explanation here. The rest is history.
We'll only get out of this rut when we, as a society, find the will to say "Some groups of people have different abilities than others, and employers know this, so let them test and hire as they wish." Then we can drop the degree as a proxy test for whiteness, and stop wasting so many millions of manyears sending our youth through college.
So you're trying to say that the only reason many employers are requiring degrees (or often experience levels) is to keep the black man down? Really? That's the reason?
Do not attribute to malice what can adequately be attributed to stupidity. Instead of some "keep certain minorities down" it seems far more likely that a trend got started where it might have made sense and then propagated, in the way of trends, on to areas where it makes less and less sense. Companies, or more likely HR departments, probably keep doing it for the same reasons they put out job requirements with insane lists of qualifications. Failure to research or think. Plus, possible company policies that a position over level X in the company requires a degree of level Y. A requirement that probably also got there in the same manner, a trend got started.
Nah supply and demand is broken. When you need a degree to get a job, and you need a job to live, then the demand side skyrockets.
"With that kind of thinking, someone else needs to stop these kinds of people. They wont stop themselves. She should never been able to get those loans in the first place"
Ah. So that she would most likely not have any chance to rise above the poverty line. Check. That'll fix the economy! When there is no discretionary pay left after food and shelter, it doesn't matter how cheap things get when imported from other economies after all - the market for anything is essentially zero.
Get rid of the social stigma attached to being non-degreed, get rid of the bogus requirement to have a degree, any degree, in order to 'succeed' (heh - and THAT's defining success as 'marginally above the poverty line and insured so that medical expenses are less likely to bankrupt you'), and we'll talk.
Until then this will continue.
You're right about the bogus "requirements" for degrees. I do have to wonder what impact the practically "free" money of federal financing has had on tuition levels. After all, when you can just tell people "if you can't afford our prices, don't worry! the fed.gov will give you the money!" there's little incentive to lower prices or have competition. Why bother when everyone can just get loans and pile up that student debt!
Side note, I don't honestly have much sympathy for the people who piled on the student debt for a degree in underwater basket weaving (or a similarly useless field) and then go out bitching they can't find a job in their field and want to welch on the debt.
There was no semiconductor and computer system market until the defense department made one by financing research and buying the output. Ever heard of Fairchild semiconductor? They are one of the foundations of the the semiconductor industry and held most of the early patents on semiconductors. They wouldn't have existed without government paying for the research and buying their early products. HP, Apple and the rest came later.
You can keep dreaming your fantasy that Rockefeller was a altruistic philanthropist if you want but you really should do some actual reading on the subject.
Like all corporations, the automobile companies lobbied government at all levels to build infrastructure that was too expensive for them to build but which would make their products more desirable to purchase. That's the way the system works. Without government investment, their business would be quite different. Perhaps they would have invested more in floating cars that could cross rivers without bridges.
Because lord knows without the Fed.gov no one would ever have bothered to build computers (and all base technologies) and it is only through the guiding light that is the government that such miracles could be wrought.
Do you really believe that no one would have bothered coming up with semiconductors and all that if there hadn't been a fed.gov market for it? Really? And I don't think he said anything about Rockefeller making things cheap because he was an awesome guy, just that he was obsessed with efficiency.
This is the same stupid argument the libertarians always use. If private industry would have done it then why didn't they? I'd rather have something sooner rather than later. Who knows how much longer it would have taken for private industry to invent the internet on its own; 10, 20 years?
Because the computers capable of really using the Internet didn't really exist? How long after useful privately owned computers were in homes did it take for the first ISPs to show up? A couple of years? You could argue they wouldn't have shown up if the government hadn't put in ARPAnet and such in the first place, but that presumes that no one outside of the government was thinking of how awesome it would be to connect all the computers together or have high speed communications. I'm pretty sure such systems have been a staple of Sci-Fi for decades and it seems logical people would have tried to make those systems with or without the Fed.gov.
This would the same UN that had bloody Libya, Iran and Syria, among other bastions of freedom, on their Commission on Human Rights (now the Human Rights Council).
If we want those countries to respect human rights it is better to involve them in the process rather than just preaching at them. At the very least it forces them to consider the issues and form a diplomatic position on them.
Sometimes you have to work with the bad guys. We tried to stop the IRA by force for decades and failed, but once they were involved with the peace process and subsequent democracy they quickly came round and ended up working with their sworn enemies.
You're right that engagement is generally preferable to unremitting hostility. However, that works where you're going to be negotiating and coming to common ground as opposed to handing over voting, and possibly controlling, interest to something that said powers are incredibly hostile to. Would we want China having a significant, or any, say in what should or should not be filtered online?
The US is not a signatory to various important UN conventions on human rights. This means that while the US government might make a nominal effort to protect the free speech of it's own citizens, it has no obligation to protect the rights of the other 96% of the worlds population - and consequently, it makes no discernable effort to do so.
We (the 96%) consequently don't intend to entrust ourselves to such an organisation - better for it to be left to no-one, or otherwise the UN, who will, at least recognise my inherent rights and make some effort to uphold them. The US government does not, and would simply rollover and screw me if requested to do so by the Chinese or the Russians.
This would the same UN that had bloody Libya, Iran and Syria, among other bastions of freedom, on their Commission on Human Rights (now the Human Rights Council). You really think turning over the keys to the kingdom to that bunch of morons is a good idea? Really?
And if you really think the US would just do whatever China or Russia wanted with the Internet just because they asked I want some of what you're smoking.
Tablets don't have to be a fad. But Windows may yet kill the perception of tablets as useful, in the public's eyes, and then we'd be back to only Apple fanbois carrying tablets. Which would be ok, I guess, except for those of us who need an SD card slot. Or a USB port. Or a replaceable battery. Or Flash support. Or a form factor smaller than 10". Sorry, I meant to stop at SD card, but I always get carried away. Parenthetically, do we know if Apple has shown any signs of relaxing any of these restrictions now that Jobs is gone? Just wondering'.
You know, every one of these "features" you want could be found on every tablet computer manufactured before the advent of the iPad. The problem is, no one bought them or cared about them, because they all sucked.
If Apple were crazy enough to turn the iPad 3 into the potpourri of features you wanted, it would looked exactly like the Wintel abominations that have failed so miserably in the marketplace - and be no more successful.
Or the Asus Transformer... or Acer Iconia... or Toshiba Thrive...
The features that are being asked for are in no way exclusive to those wintel tablets of yesteryear. They are however totally absent from any iDevice. The iPad is designed to cater to a set of buyers for which form is king and to hell with function. It is a device which is adequate as a content consumption device. In that role it does well. It is not what I would call innovative or groundbreaking no matter how many units it sells.
I'm saddened by the fact that society has somehow gotten to the point where the "logic" of "he has more so we can steal it from him!" some how is both morally and ethically justifiable.
Taxes have never been voluntary, and the wealthy person benefits from the stability that comes from not having a huge number of desperate, homeless, starving people. I don't think anything has qualitatively changed in your lifetime; it's just the numbers.
Hell, why stop at 50%? By your so called logic we surely can justify taking 95% of what they earn. They can afford it, right?
Funny you should say that. In the history of the federal income tax, the top marginal income tax bracket peaked at 86.45%, according to this history of top rates in wikipedia. It was over 70% from 1936 to 1971. I don't know the full brackets to say exactly what rate someone who makes more than that would pay on his/her overall income, but I expect people who make twice that ended up paying more than 50%, and society didn't fail. One could argue that this created the most prosperous time in our nation's history.
I'm not advocating rates this high. I'm just saying that it's worth investing in the poor for many reasons. fwiw, if I were to single-handedly set the federal income tax code, I might do something vey simple: your rate would be log(income/(people * per-person poverty level)) / log(c), capped at 0% on one side and m% on the other, with c and m chosen every year based on inflation-adjusted amounts of a 20-year exponentially weighted moving average of what it would take for 1% of people to hit the cap and the government to have no deficit or surplus. And I'd have sufficient social services for the poor to become not so poor if they're willing to work. Call it communism if you want, but there'd still be rich people, and it's not fundamentally different from how we've done things for generations.
Saying that taxes have never been voluntary neither addresses nor changes what I said. Presuming that a person who is "wealthy" benefits doesn't make it morally correct to force them to give up their money/time/property at higher and higher rates simply because "they can afford it." You are correct that federal income taxes have been even higher in the past but that doesn't make it right then or now. I somehow very much doubt that taxing the hell out of "the rich" gave us those prosperous times.
"Investing in the poor" has been the rallying cry for ever expanding government and ever expanding pubic debt for the last 100 years. How has that worked out for us? Have the poor been raised up? Surely after 100 years of social programs, welfare, public education the poor are now well off, right? Oh, they aren't? More people are on public assistance than every before and there are no signs of that changing?
There is nothing wrong with a belief that helping your fellow man is good. There is nothing wrong with actually helping them. It becomes wrong when you put a gun, figuratively or literally, to a person's head and tell them they will give up their time, money and a portion of their life to do what you, in the form of the government, want them to do or we take you to jail or refusing that shoot you.
Explain to me how it is moral for the government to do what would be immoral for you individually to do. If we have a government of delegated powers, then how can you delegate a power you yourself do not have?
With nearly 50% of the US paying no federal income tax, they have no problem asking for "more". Want to be 'fair'? Get rid of the EIC -- or at least prevent it from giving back MORE money that was originally paid by the recipient.
Now that's what I call class warfare. And so unlike raising taxes on people who can afford them, it is indeed rotten economics.
Have you looked at the actual table? For a single person, the Earned Income Tax Credit isn't available if (s)he earns more than $13,460. That's comparable to the US Census Poverty Threshold of $11,344 (for a person younger than 65). If not for the Earned Income Tax Credit, people who have an income might actually starve, go homeless, etc. So when I say this is class warfare, it is only because it could actually kill the working poor.
In contrast, the wealthy really can afford it without noticing. There was an interesting New York Times article on this recently, which linked to this Citizens for Tax Justice fact sheet. If you read through it, you'll see that the revenue from increasing the tax rate on the top 1% by income would be similar to that of raising it on the bottom 60% by the same percentage. I assure you, there will be enough left over to provide basic necessities of life! (In fact, I'm not in the top 1%, but I certainly could pay more taxes without great hardship. It might mean it'd take me longer to afford a house, but I'm not exactly homeless in my 2-bedroom rented townhouse.)
If you're not swayed by arguments such as "don't kill people with taxes", then consider no taxes on poor people an investment. If they have all of a home, healthy food on the table, adequate medical care, a quality education, and available jobs, it's reasonable to believe that many of them will go on to become middle-class tax-payers: enough so to pay back your investment with far more than the nominal 1% tax rate you're suggesting. In fact, by effectively selling too soon, you're virtually guaranteeing you'll throw away what you put in with that government-provided K12 education and the like.
I'm saddened by the fact that society has somehow gotten to the point where the "logic" of "he has more so we can steal it from him!" some how is both morally and ethically justifiable. Hell, why stop at 50%? By your so called logic we surely can justify taking 95% of what they earn. They can afford it, right?
I believe the idea was at least to take away with is basically wealth redistribution at gun point. EIC is basically that. Take from everyone else, at gunpoint by way of threat of jail, and give it to someone else. Apparently if you do that as an individual, armed robbery, it is viewed as morally wrong. If you do it with the power of government then suddenly what was wrong is now right. How exactly can it be right for "all of us", in the form of the government, to forcibly take money from one party and give it to another when it would be wrong for any individual in that group to do so? How does the super class of "government" gain powers that the individual does not have?
And yet those 50% that pay nothing in taxes control 2% of the wealth. Fair huh?
Surely you realize that the 50% the person above is referring to is the bottom 50%+ of people in this country who effectively pay zero federal and often zero state income tax, right? They weren't referring to the mythical super rich who pay no taxes.
You're too dim to understand the difference between non-profit and capitalism.
Non-profit means all of the people involved in the work still get paid. The doctors get paid. The nurses. The hospitals. The people who administer payment from the single payer system even get paid.
What DOESN'T exist is MORE MONEY/COSTS being taken out for people who do not actually do the work. These are the stockholders to insurance companies.
I'm glad you gave me the opportunity to explain this to you so now you understand.
I do stem cell research for a living. I am paid a WAGE not a PROFIT, for my work; and if I were to produce something patentable, I would be able to be well paid based on negotiations between me, the patent owner, and the firms that purchase the product. Compensation and Wage are NOT profit.
Okay genius.. where do you think the money to pay those "wages that are not profit" comes from? Magic unicorns? It comes from the profits the entity makes that employs you. The real difference between "profit" and "non-profit" is the level of margins between costs and income. A theoretical attempts to keep them in balance whereas a for profit entity attempts to bring in more money than goes out.
Do you also think you're some how morally superior those people who work for a profit instead of a "wage"? As to stock holders not doing any work in the classic sense you're somewhat correct. However, where do you think the money they use to invest comes from? The same magic Unicorn that your wages came from? Or did it in fact come from the work they did either in their primary jobs or as investment brokers? There is no such thing as a free lunch, or anything else, so that money came from somewhere and had to be produced by providing a valuable service or product to someone else.
I'm so sick and fucking tired of the Communist bashing that goes on even to this damn day in the US. Communism hasn't failed mankind, mankind has always failed Communism. The true question is whether or not a society will mature enough that it's people do not constantly want to posses more of whatever goddamn thing they see than their neighbor. As long as there is that one selfish dickface that just has to hoard bread, or money, or whatever else he gets his hands on, Communism fails. It depends on people acting honorably.
I have faith in humanity that eventually we will get to that point, but I'm not gonna sit here and say it will never happen as a justification for my own greed. We get enough of that as it is. Enough with the Randian bullshit. Just say "I want more than your neighbor because fuck him" and be honest with yourself and others. At least we'll know who not to piss on when they're on fire...
Yeah, Communism is so awesome that to make it work some 60+ million have been killed to bring it about. Yeah, awesome. Communism inevitably requires a strong central government to force people to give up what they earn "for the common good". First with guilt, and second with the gun. Give what you have for the common good, or we shoot you, purge you. Communism is the belief that if only we could make people better then there will be this utopia. It is childish and immature. To believe in it is to believe in unicorns. It is the faith of fools. Call me flame bait if you like but history has proven this for year after blood soaked year.
I earn what I earn for my family and myself. If I choose to help my fellow man that's my choice. To take it from me is fundamentally wrong and immoral. And yes, if I decide not to help my fellow man that's my choice to and who the hell are you or anyone else to take it from me?
Maybe they shouldn't be pissing off all of their employees all at once? If you did something to make all of your employees very mad all at once what do you expect to happen, everyone to go home and cry themselves to sleep?
Verizon is at least 50% to blame for the destruction of their equipment.
Verizon is responsible for the actions of a bunch of union thugs? Do you blame rape victims and robbery victims for being in the wrong place too?
Are you equating Verizon to a rape victim? That's a bit of a stretch don't you think?
No, I'm saying blaming the victim seems silly regardless of who the victim is. A victim is not responsible for the actions of the the person or group who victimized them.
Maybe they shouldn't be pissing off all of their employees all at once? If you did something to make all of your employees very mad all at once what do you expect to happen, everyone to go home and cry themselves to sleep?
Verizon is at least 50% to blame for the destruction of their equipment.
Verizon is responsible for the actions of a bunch of union thugs? Do you blame rape victims and robbery victims for being in the wrong place too?
"Equal" and "Equitable" are not the same thing. My now-disappeared former reply to GP:
An equitable society is one with the same rules for all.
No. It may be one definition of an equal society, but it is not equitable. Equal is everyone getting the same pair of shoes. Equitable is everyone getting shoes that fit them well. We must take into account our past policies and the structures they have set up that hold certain classes of people back. Unless we actively dismantle those structures (and in some cases that means targeting certain classes of people for opportunity) we will never become equitable.
For example, take construction. There has been such a long history of discrimination in contracting and hiring that the good old boys networks doesn't have a lot of black folk in it. If we continue to let contracts the same way and we continue to use the same relationships to hire workers, we will continue to discriminate simply because the disadvantaged people aren't in the network. Thus we have training programs targeted at women and minority workers, goals for hiring DBE contractors, etc. It works pretty well once it's enforced. The enforcement part is the trick, though. Most places don't bother.
I can't help but think that a lot of what you've said in this thread could be reworded as: "Racism is bad, unless it is directed in a particular direction and used to 'correct' previous wrongs."
Racism is bad. Period. Full Stop. to choose a worker or give a promotion or a contract to person A because they are race A and not because they are the best fit for the promotion/contract/job is wrong. Always. To say otherwise is to say that racism in on direction is okay and that in another direction it is not okay. If I choose to hire someone because they are white, even when there are non-white applicants which are just as good if not better, that's racist and bad. If I choose to hire a black/asian/whatever for the same reasons that is supposed to be good?
I understand what you're saying about structural advantages for people in category X and so therefore we should promote category Y even if they aren't necessarily as qualified as X because that will address those structural advantages and/or disadvantages. Personal, I say that's garbage and were I to find out someone hired/promoted/whatever me simply to fill a bloody quota or because they felt sorry for me I'd be bloody insulted and pissed off.
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You're so deadly afraid someone might take your shiny new penny that you would first turn society into a hellhole for your children to live in.
I'll teach my children to take care of themselves and their family. I'll teach my children the value of true charity and giving and the difference between those things and reliance and dependence on government. I'll teach my children that the proper role of government is to protect the rights of individuals, and not to redistribute wealth or even to "take care of us" as that is our job and not theirs. I'll teach my children that throughout history when governments have decided that it is their role to "take care of us" that nothing but disaster followed.
If you want to call that a hellhole, that's up to you.
We the People know that govt is supposed to look out for us, so we vote in our best interests. Money is a psychological tool that serves us, we don't serve it. Economics is like a religion with the high priests (bankers, economists) preaching the need for human sacrifice to appease their great god Mammon. Their predictions don't come true, their axioms are flawed, their equations fail to take into account externalities such as innovation, which is where the real focus needs to be. Govt should provide a basic income, and encourage the native spirit of creativity and inventiveness in each of us with challenges.
Yeah, government should just take from the people who do that creativity and inventiveness and give it to those who don't bother to in the form of a "basic income". Meh.
Sex sells.
Fear, uncertainty, and doubt sell.
Providing a "solution" to fear, uncertainty, and doubt sells.
Combine all 3 and it's the politician's re-election trifecta.
I'm going to guess it's this, plus the one/two punch of being able to look like you're doing something (as opposed to actually fixing a problem) and who will step up and defend these "offenders" by pointing out the silliness of it all? Makes it pretty easy to institute more and more controls that can easily be expanded later.
How long after useful privately owned computers were in homes did it take for the first ISPs to show up? A couple of years?
I'd put it at more like seven years. I definitely had a PC by 1986, and the first private ISP to make it onto the scene around here was about 1992. Before that, you had to be or know a university student, etc., to get on the internet, and the rest of us made do with BBSes.
I suppose that depends on how you define things. Given for most of the period between 1986 - 1990 (around the time of AOL, CompuServe and such) most people didn't even know what the internet was or even that it existed. I know I was able to use telnet to connect from a couple of BBSes to other BBSes around the 1989 time frame, maybe as early as 1988. Point being, by the time there was interest in such connections they were coming online for people. That is how it would make sense, no?
Back in the early 90's I worked for a short time in a corporate 'machine room' and was appalled at the level of professionalism displayed by managers.
One day while I was performing 'health checks' in the machine room, I witnessed a black manager and a white manager having an argument so out of control that they were screaming obscenities at each other like a couple of cheap whores scrapping over a street corner.
It was the most disgusting scene I have ever witnessed in a professional environment.... and yet... none of the other IT grunts even batted an eye. This was SOP for the management team.
I told my boss to get stuffed over the sadistic management culture, and was invited to leave.
They tried to block my unemployment benefits, on grounds of open insurrection, but were ordered to pay in full after a lengthy investigation of their toxic employment culture.
After talking to a lot of grunt level IT drones over the years I conclude that this is an industry-wide culture phenomenon.
The plural of anecdote is not data. I'll be sure to let the non-white employees where I work, a sizable number to be sure, know that IT is super racist and clearly they don't exist. Since being so super racist they couldn't have been hired. So, whose experience represents the true situation?
WTF are you talking about? Do you not understand that "USN" means "United States Navy?" If that's not government assistance, I don't know what is.
I believe one would normally call that "service" vice whatever you want to call it when the government pays for a 2 to 4 year party in college. I suppose if you don't want to call it "service" you'd have to call it at least working experience. In any case, I'm sure you didn't mean to compare partying at a college for a few years to time in the military so we'll just leave it at that, yes? :)
So you're trying to say that the only reason many employers are requiring degrees (or often experience levels) is to keep the black man down? Really? That's the reason?
Do not attribute to malice what can adequately be attributed to stupidity. Instead of some "keep certain minorities down" it seems far more likely that a trend got started where it might have made sense and then propagated, in the way of trends, on to areas where it makes less and less sense. Companies, or more likely HR departments, probably keep doing it for the same reasons they put out job requirements with insane lists of qualifications. Failure to research or think. Plus, possible company policies that a position over level X in the company requires a degree of level Y. A requirement that probably also got there in the same manner, a trend got started.
Your armchair conjecture does not hold up to scrutiny. The matter has actually been studied. Start with "Griggs v. Duke Power: Implications for College Credentialing" by O'Keefe and Vedder.
I'm going to reject your appeal to authority on the grounds of direct experience and simple logic. Nearly ever job, IT industry, I've ever held had one of these more or less bogus requirements. Nearly every IT position I've ever seen advertised above help desk, and often even them, have them. If what you're asserting is true then 95% - 99% of the entire IT industry in the US is deeply racist. The fact that someone, or even multiple someones, has studied something doesn't automatically make their conclusions correct. I would obviously allow that my sample size is by definition limited but given the prevalence of these types of requirements I cannot believe "racism" can anywhere nearly adequately explain them.
Do not attribute to malice what can adequately be attributed to stupidity.
Could it be possible that employers are seeking to "keep the black man down" out of stupidity, and not malice?
Perhaps, but that presumes that such an attitude isn't also a form of stupidity. That said, while not denying that racism exists I find it hard to believe that it is as wide spread and deep rooted in so many places as the bogus degree requirements would indicate. Thus, I reject the so called logic that such requirements could even largely be based on the idea of keeping minorities out of those jobs.
Nah supply and demand is broken. When you need a degree to get a job, and you need a job to live, then the demand side skyrockets.
Bzzt wrong. You can get a lower paying job, but without the overhead of a loan you can get a secure job with higher take home pay. Don't get me wrong. I did not say don't get an education. I said don't get a degree. Get self taught, then an apprenticeship, then a recognized certification, and then apply for better jobs.
My path was USN in advanced electronics. My basic was self taught. Challenged the basic portion and skipped it. This is documented. Skipped some levels in the advanced courses too. I immediately found employment out of the Navy during the recession of the 1980's. Work for skilled and trained people was there, especially for those employers looking for lower cost employees.
I later picked up my ISCET certification. I now work in engineering in the semiconductor industry in R&D. Degree is still missing. I don't care.
Hush you! Don't you know this is /.!! How dare you not do things with government assistance!! How dare you not follow the group think of needing a degree to work anywhere but McDonald's!!
I say this as a person making pretty good money in IT with no degree. Excluding certain fields I've long been convinced that university degrees are for suckers and not everyone should go and in fact most people shouldn't. No one should feel bad simply because they don't have a degree.
#1 - Federal loan guarantees do play a part.
#2 - Showing that your college is "exclusive" by charging far more than community or state colleges plays a role, too.
#3 - Exploiting the parental desire to pay more for "exclusive" colleges (especially in the US South on the part of racist white parents wanting to get their kids out of the "colleges where those niggers go").
#4 - Private universities generally charge ALL students what would often be an "out of state" rate: going out-of-state to a State College will run you on average $18k/year while private universities charge, in-state or out-of-state, an average of $25k.
Now, take a look at that figure.
Take 20% off of the $25k - to account for state funding - and what do you have? $20k. Subtract another 10% to account for the lower pay of employees in state institutions as opposed to private and - guess what - now you see where the $18k out-of-state figure fits.
The math works. The reason tuition charged to students skyrocketed is because of cuts in state funding to state institutions that had to be made up in tuition hikes.
Or they could just not continuously hire administrators or just cut back on them? Nice dig on the US South there. I'm sure those parents don't want better educations for those kids and just want to get their kids into all white schools. The reason tuition has been going through the roof is far more likely due to inefficiencies in the system and an unwillingness to cut unnecessary expenses when funding was reduced. The schools want to maintain legions of administrators and programs 10 people take.
Get rid of the social stigma attached to being non-degreed, get rid of the bogus requirement to have a degree, any degree, in order to 'succeed' (heh - and THAT's defining success as 'marginally above the poverty line and insured so that medical expenses are less likely to bankrupt you'), and we'll talk.
Until then this will continue.
We were put on this track by Griggs v. Duke Power Company. That decision banned employment tests because those tests were shown to discriminate against certain minorities. Without the test to filter out the applicants, employers sought for some other filter... and settled on the college degree, because the certain minorities tended to not have degrees. Full explanation here. The rest is history.
We'll only get out of this rut when we, as a society, find the will to say "Some groups of people have different abilities than others, and employers know this, so let them test and hire as they wish." Then we can drop the degree as a proxy test for whiteness, and stop wasting so many millions of manyears sending our youth through college.
So you're trying to say that the only reason many employers are requiring degrees (or often experience levels) is to keep the black man down? Really? That's the reason?
Do not attribute to malice what can adequately be attributed to stupidity. Instead of some "keep certain minorities down" it seems far more likely that a trend got started where it might have made sense and then propagated, in the way of trends, on to areas where it makes less and less sense. Companies, or more likely HR departments, probably keep doing it for the same reasons they put out job requirements with insane lists of qualifications. Failure to research or think. Plus, possible company policies that a position over level X in the company requires a degree of level Y. A requirement that probably also got there in the same manner, a trend got started.
Nah supply and demand is broken. When you need a degree to get a job, and you need a job to live, then the demand side skyrockets.
"With that kind of thinking, someone else needs to stop these kinds of people. They wont stop themselves. She should never been able to get those loans in the first place"
Ah. So that she would most likely not have any chance to rise above the poverty line. Check. That'll fix the economy! When there is no discretionary pay left after food and shelter, it doesn't matter how cheap things get when imported from other economies after all - the market for anything is essentially zero.
Get rid of the social stigma attached to being non-degreed, get rid of the bogus requirement to have a degree, any degree, in order to 'succeed' (heh - and THAT's defining success as 'marginally above the poverty line and insured so that medical expenses are less likely to bankrupt you'), and we'll talk.
Until then this will continue.
You're right about the bogus "requirements" for degrees. I do have to wonder what impact the practically "free" money of federal financing has had on tuition levels. After all, when you can just tell people "if you can't afford our prices, don't worry! the fed.gov will give you the money!" there's little incentive to lower prices or have competition. Why bother when everyone can just get loans and pile up that student debt!
Side note, I don't honestly have much sympathy for the people who piled on the student debt for a degree in underwater basket weaving (or a similarly useless field) and then go out bitching they can't find a job in their field and want to welch on the debt.
There was no semiconductor and computer system market until the defense department made one by financing research and buying the output. Ever heard of Fairchild semiconductor? They are one of the foundations of the the semiconductor industry and held most of the early patents on semiconductors. They wouldn't have existed without government paying for the research and buying their early products. HP, Apple and the rest came later.
You can keep dreaming your fantasy that Rockefeller was a altruistic philanthropist if you want but you really should do some actual reading on the subject.
Like all corporations, the automobile companies lobbied government at all levels to build infrastructure that was too expensive for them to build but which would make their products more desirable to purchase. That's the way the system works. Without government investment, their business would be quite different. Perhaps they would have invested more in floating cars that could cross rivers without bridges.
Because lord knows without the Fed.gov no one would ever have bothered to build computers (and all base technologies) and it is only through the guiding light that is the government that such miracles could be wrought.
Do you really believe that no one would have bothered coming up with semiconductors and all that if there hadn't been a fed.gov market for it? Really? And I don't think he said anything about Rockefeller making things cheap because he was an awesome guy, just that he was obsessed with efficiency.
This is the same stupid argument the libertarians always use. If private industry would have done it then why didn't they? I'd rather have something sooner rather than later. Who knows how much longer it would have taken for private industry to invent the internet on its own; 10, 20 years?
Because the computers capable of really using the Internet didn't really exist? How long after useful privately owned computers were in homes did it take for the first ISPs to show up? A couple of years? You could argue they wouldn't have shown up if the government hadn't put in ARPAnet and such in the first place, but that presumes that no one outside of the government was thinking of how awesome it would be to connect all the computers together or have high speed communications. I'm pretty sure such systems have been a staple of Sci-Fi for decades and it seems logical people would have tried to make those systems with or without the Fed.gov.
This would the same UN that had bloody Libya, Iran and Syria, among other bastions of freedom, on their Commission on Human Rights (now the Human Rights Council).
If we want those countries to respect human rights it is better to involve them in the process rather than just preaching at them. At the very least it forces them to consider the issues and form a diplomatic position on them.
Sometimes you have to work with the bad guys. We tried to stop the IRA by force for decades and failed, but once they were involved with the peace process and subsequent democracy they quickly came round and ended up working with their sworn enemies.
You're right that engagement is generally preferable to unremitting hostility. However, that works where you're going to be negotiating and coming to common ground as opposed to handing over voting, and possibly controlling, interest to something that said powers are incredibly hostile to. Would we want China having a significant, or any, say in what should or should not be filtered online?
The US is not a signatory to various important UN conventions on human rights. This means that while the US government might make a nominal effort to protect the free speech of it's own citizens, it has no obligation to protect the rights of the other 96% of the worlds population - and consequently, it makes no discernable effort to do so.
We (the 96%) consequently don't intend to entrust ourselves to such an organisation - better for it to be left to no-one, or otherwise the UN, who will, at least recognise my inherent rights and make some effort to uphold them. The US government does not, and would simply rollover and screw me if requested to do so by the Chinese or the Russians.
This would the same UN that had bloody Libya, Iran and Syria, among other bastions of freedom, on their Commission on Human Rights (now the Human Rights Council). You really think turning over the keys to the kingdom to that bunch of morons is a good idea? Really?
And if you really think the US would just do whatever China or Russia wanted with the Internet just because they asked I want some of what you're smoking.
You know, every one of these "features" you want could be found on every tablet computer manufactured before the advent of the iPad. The problem is, no one bought them or cared about them, because they all sucked.
If Apple were crazy enough to turn the iPad 3 into the potpourri of features you wanted, it would looked exactly like the Wintel abominations that have failed so miserably in the marketplace - and be no more successful.
Or the Asus Transformer... or Acer Iconia... or Toshiba Thrive...
The features that are being asked for are in no way exclusive to those wintel tablets of yesteryear. They are however totally absent from any iDevice. The iPad is designed to cater to a set of buyers for which form is king and to hell with function. It is a device which is adequate as a content consumption device. In that role it does well. It is not what I would call innovative or groundbreaking no matter how many units it sells.
Taxes have never been voluntary, and the wealthy person benefits from the stability that comes from not having a huge number of desperate, homeless, starving people. I don't think anything has qualitatively changed in your lifetime; it's just the numbers.
Funny you should say that. In the history of the federal income tax, the top marginal income tax bracket peaked at 86.45%, according to this history of top rates in wikipedia. It was over 70% from 1936 to 1971. I don't know the full brackets to say exactly what rate someone who makes more than that would pay on his/her overall income, but I expect people who make twice that ended up paying more than 50%, and society didn't fail. One could argue that this created the most prosperous time in our nation's history.
I'm not advocating rates this high. I'm just saying that it's worth investing in the poor for many reasons. fwiw, if I were to single-handedly set the federal income tax code, I might do something vey simple: your rate would be log(income/(people * per-person poverty level)) / log(c), capped at 0% on one side and m% on the other, with c and m chosen every year based on inflation-adjusted amounts of a 20-year exponentially weighted moving average of what it would take for 1% of people to hit the cap and the government to have no deficit or surplus. And I'd have sufficient social services for the poor to become not so poor if they're willing to work. Call it communism if you want, but there'd still be rich people, and it's not fundamentally different from how we've done things for generations.
Saying that taxes have never been voluntary neither addresses nor changes what I said. Presuming that a person who is "wealthy" benefits doesn't make it morally correct to force them to give up their money/time/property at higher and higher rates simply because "they can afford it." You are correct that federal income taxes have been even higher in the past but that doesn't make it right then or now. I somehow very much doubt that taxing the hell out of "the rich" gave us those prosperous times.
"Investing in the poor" has been the rallying cry for ever expanding government and ever expanding pubic debt for the last 100 years. How has that worked out for us? Have the poor been raised up? Surely after 100 years of social programs, welfare, public education the poor are now well off, right? Oh, they aren't? More people are on public assistance than every before and there are no signs of that changing?
There is nothing wrong with a belief that helping your fellow man is good. There is nothing wrong with actually helping them. It becomes wrong when you put a gun, figuratively or literally, to a person's head and tell them they will give up their time, money and a portion of their life to do what you, in the form of the government, want them to do or we take you to jail or refusing that shoot you.
Explain to me how it is moral for the government to do what would be immoral for you individually to do. If we have a government of delegated powers, then how can you delegate a power you yourself do not have?
Now that's what I call class warfare. And so unlike raising taxes on people who can afford them, it is indeed rotten economics.
Have you looked at the actual table? For a single person, the Earned Income Tax Credit isn't available if (s)he earns more than $13,460. That's comparable to the US Census Poverty Threshold of $11,344 (for a person younger than 65). If not for the Earned Income Tax Credit, people who have an income might actually starve, go homeless, etc. So when I say this is class warfare, it is only because it could actually kill the working poor.
In contrast, the wealthy really can afford it without noticing. There was an interesting New York Times article on this recently, which linked to this Citizens for Tax Justice fact sheet. If you read through it, you'll see that the revenue from increasing the tax rate on the top 1% by income would be similar to that of raising it on the bottom 60% by the same percentage. I assure you, there will be enough left over to provide basic necessities of life! (In fact, I'm not in the top 1%, but I certainly could pay more taxes without great hardship. It might mean it'd take me longer to afford a house, but I'm not exactly homeless in my 2-bedroom rented townhouse.)
If you're not swayed by arguments such as "don't kill people with taxes", then consider no taxes on poor people an investment. If they have all of a home, healthy food on the table, adequate medical care, a quality education, and available jobs, it's reasonable to believe that many of them will go on to become middle-class tax-payers: enough so to pay back your investment with far more than the nominal 1% tax rate you're suggesting. In fact, by effectively selling too soon, you're virtually guaranteeing you'll throw away what you put in with that government-provided K12 education and the like.
I'm saddened by the fact that society has somehow gotten to the point where the "logic" of "he has more so we can steal it from him!" some how is both morally and ethically justifiable. Hell, why stop at 50%? By your so called logic we surely can justify taking 95% of what they earn. They can afford it, right?
I believe the idea was at least to take away with is basically wealth redistribution at gun point. EIC is basically that. Take from everyone else, at gunpoint by way of threat of jail, and give it to someone else. Apparently if you do that as an individual, armed robbery, it is viewed as morally wrong. If you do it with the power of government then suddenly what was wrong is now right. How exactly can it be right for "all of us", in the form of the government, to forcibly take money from one party and give it to another when it would be wrong for any individual in that group to do so? How does the super class of "government" gain powers that the individual does not have?
And yet those 50% that pay nothing in taxes control 2% of the wealth. Fair huh?
Surely you realize that the 50% the person above is referring to is the bottom 50%+ of people in this country who effectively pay zero federal and often zero state income tax, right? They weren't referring to the mythical super rich who pay no taxes.
You're too dim to understand the difference between non-profit and capitalism.
Non-profit means all of the people involved in the work still get paid. The doctors get paid. The nurses. The hospitals. The people who administer payment from the single payer system even get paid.
What DOESN'T exist is MORE MONEY/COSTS being taken out for people who do not actually do the work. These are the stockholders to insurance companies.
I'm glad you gave me the opportunity to explain this to you so now you understand.
I do stem cell research for a living. I am paid a WAGE not a PROFIT, for my work; and if I were to produce something patentable, I would be able to be well paid based on negotiations between me, the patent owner, and the firms that purchase the product. Compensation and Wage are NOT profit.
Okay genius.. where do you think the money to pay those "wages that are not profit" comes from? Magic unicorns? It comes from the profits the entity makes that employs you. The real difference between "profit" and "non-profit" is the level of margins between costs and income. A theoretical attempts to keep them in balance whereas a for profit entity attempts to bring in more money than goes out.
Do you also think you're some how morally superior those people who work for a profit instead of a "wage"? As to stock holders not doing any work in the classic sense you're somewhat correct. However, where do you think the money they use to invest comes from? The same magic Unicorn that your wages came from? Or did it in fact come from the work they did either in their primary jobs or as investment brokers? There is no such thing as a free lunch, or anything else, so that money came from somewhere and had to be produced by providing a valuable service or product to someone else.
I wish I could mod you up right now...
I'm so sick and fucking tired of the Communist bashing that goes on even to this damn day in the US. Communism hasn't failed mankind, mankind has always failed Communism. The true question is whether or not a society will mature enough that it's people do not constantly want to posses more of whatever goddamn thing they see than their neighbor. As long as there is that one selfish dickface that just has to hoard bread, or money, or whatever else he gets his hands on, Communism fails. It depends on people acting honorably.
I have faith in humanity that eventually we will get to that point, but I'm not gonna sit here and say it will never happen as a justification for my own greed. We get enough of that as it is. Enough with the Randian bullshit. Just say "I want more than your neighbor because fuck him" and be honest with yourself and others. At least we'll know who not to piss on when they're on fire...
Yeah, Communism is so awesome that to make it work some 60+ million have been killed to bring it about. Yeah, awesome. Communism inevitably requires a strong central government to force people to give up what they earn "for the common good". First with guilt, and second with the gun. Give what you have for the common good, or we shoot you, purge you. Communism is the belief that if only we could make people better then there will be this utopia. It is childish and immature. To believe in it is to believe in unicorns. It is the faith of fools. Call me flame bait if you like but history has proven this for year after blood soaked year.
I earn what I earn for my family and myself. If I choose to help my fellow man that's my choice. To take it from me is fundamentally wrong and immoral. And yes, if I decide not to help my fellow man that's my choice to and who the hell are you or anyone else to take it from me?
Maybe they shouldn't be pissing off all of their employees all at once? If you did something to make all of your employees very mad all at once what do you expect to happen, everyone to go home and cry themselves to sleep?
Verizon is at least 50% to blame for the destruction of their equipment.
Verizon is responsible for the actions of a bunch of union thugs? Do you blame rape victims and robbery victims for being in the wrong place too?
Are you equating Verizon to a rape victim? That's a bit of a stretch don't you think?
No, I'm saying blaming the victim seems silly regardless of who the victim is. A victim is not responsible for the actions of the the person or group who victimized them.
Maybe they shouldn't be pissing off all of their employees all at once? If you did something to make all of your employees very mad all at once what do you expect to happen, everyone to go home and cry themselves to sleep?
Verizon is at least 50% to blame for the destruction of their equipment.
Verizon is responsible for the actions of a bunch of union thugs? Do you blame rape victims and robbery victims for being in the wrong place too?
"Equal" and "Equitable" are not the same thing. My now-disappeared former reply to GP:
An equitable society is one with the same rules for all.
No. It may be one definition of an equal society, but it is not equitable. Equal is everyone getting the same pair of shoes. Equitable is everyone getting shoes that fit them well. We must take into account our past policies and the structures they have set up that hold certain classes of people back. Unless we actively dismantle those structures (and in some cases that means targeting certain classes of people for opportunity) we will never become equitable.
For example, take construction. There has been such a long history of discrimination in contracting and hiring that the good old boys networks doesn't have a lot of black folk in it. If we continue to let contracts the same way and we continue to use the same relationships to hire workers, we will continue to discriminate simply because the disadvantaged people aren't in the network. Thus we have training programs targeted at women and minority workers, goals for hiring DBE contractors, etc. It works pretty well once it's enforced. The enforcement part is the trick, though. Most places don't bother.
I can't help but think that a lot of what you've said in this thread could be reworded as: "Racism is bad, unless it is directed in a particular direction and used to 'correct' previous wrongs."
Racism is bad. Period. Full Stop. to choose a worker or give a promotion or a contract to person A because they are race A and not because they are the best fit for the promotion/contract/job is wrong. Always. To say otherwise is to say that racism in on direction is okay and that in another direction it is not okay. If I choose to hire someone because they are white, even when there are non-white applicants which are just as good if not better, that's racist and bad. If I choose to hire a black/asian/whatever for the same reasons that is supposed to be good?
I understand what you're saying about structural advantages for people in category X and so therefore we should promote category Y even if they aren't necessarily as qualified as X because that will address those structural advantages and/or disadvantages. Personal, I say that's garbage and were I to find out someone hired/promoted/whatever me simply to fill a bloody quota or because they felt sorry for me I'd be bloody insulted and pissed off.