By telco's you're probably referring to ISP's, and their roles would be inherently limited compared to the services themselves. Remember that much of today's web traffic (and other traffic in general) tends to be encrypted these days. There's very little information that they could glean from the ISP in such cases. Yes, they can assist in various ways (e.g. what websites they talk to, and plaintext data) but in either case that still sits at the provider level.
Some people think its all about wire tapping, but tapping e.g. an OC3072 link would yield such poor signal to noise (as in most of the data is completely uninteresting - and further you have very limited options as far as storing and processing in real-time) that it's just not worth doing. Again, that's assuming that nothing is even encrypted. The ISP, or telco as you put it, doesn't have access to the encrypted data - all they do is deliver it from point a to point b.
But I don't really need to explain that - just look at the leaked prism slides, they explain it just as I stated it.
I think that's what he means: IP addresses are part of that phone book you speak of. For example, my IP address is the phone number to the WAN interface of my layer 3 switch.
This sounds like a giant solution looking for a problem.
Really, what exactly is it that ICANN is doing wrong that warrants changing ownership? As far as I'm aware, everybody who needs assigned names and numbers is receiving them fairly. ICANN is doing its job fine. We change things so that it somehow does it better?
What's better than what we currently have? Something that leaves an easier potential for police states to have a greater say in who gets what names and numbers?
Another thing to add that the "lameness filter" wouldn't let me post in that post:
Prism appears to operate at the provider level, which means that so long as you actually have a functioning network, even if it is a censored one, you aren't going to harm prism in any way. So long as e.g. google, microsoft, and facebook provide access to the NSA, prism can do its magic. I think Russia knows this, but they're hoping to be able to catch the attention of politicians equally as ignorant as US politicians.
AC post below this one suggests that Snowden was paid to do this for example - it's nonsense, and I really hope this doesn't detract from the work he is doing in the eye of the otherwise uneducated public.
While you can decentralize DNS, you cannot decentralize IP address assignments.
DNS is just kind of a starting point for stupid US politicians because they don't realize that what ultimately matters is being able to access the IP, so they frequently target DNS for filters in their stupid proposed laws (e.g. sopa.) However after their attempts at DNS based filters fail, they'll eventually get the clue that they've been barking up the wrong tree, and then you'll be back where you started, only this time a return to the late 90's where all kinds of people would snap up whatever domain name they could with the intention of doing nothing other than parking on it with the intent of selling it for millions. That, and snatching up domain names when somebody doesn't catch their expiration, and then holding them for ransom. No, the current system where DNS has accountability against that kind of thing is preferred, in my opinion.
Chinese, Iranian, Russian, and Pakistani politicians have already realized that blocking DNS is ultimately fucking useless and do their blocking by either BGP route poisoning or massive IP blacklists. Russia wants control of ICANN so that this becomes easier for that consortium; namely they get to say who gets what IP addresses, which makes their filters much easier to establish and maintain.
It is rather sad just how technologically illiterate our politicians are compared to theirs, but on the upside it currently works in our favor, and indeed the world's favor, because their technological ineptitude leaves them unable to figure out how to censor proper, and for that reason alone I think it is probably better that the US Department of Commerce holds the keys as they do, unless something changes.
As for NSA spying, this can and will happen regardless of who holds the keys to ICANN, and regardless of whether the internet is censored. Snowden is NOT at any fault here - not by a long shot.
That doesn't make any sense. In fact, it's just wrong. The tor exit node can see all of your plaintext traffic, so that just adds yet another potential source of eavesdropping.
Staying inside of the tor network however basically guarantees anonymity. You think the DEA hasn't tried to shut down the silk road already? Or what about lolita city? Drugs and child pornography are the two biggest things the US government wants dead, and as of yet they've been completely unable to stop either of those, meanwhile both of them operate completely in the open inside of the tor network.
I find it strange to hear about network equipment dieing after only a year. I've had the same WNR3500L for four years now, and added an Asus RT-N16 two years ago because I needed a second AP to provide for more coverage when I moved into a larger house. Both still work great, and I haven't had to baby them or anything.
Unless by "here" you mean there is some kind of California thing where power outages damage equipment? I'm in Phoenix Arizona - we use nuclear and hydro (largest nuclear plant in the US in fact) and our grid is pretty stable and cheap. In fact IIRC California buys 25% of their electrons from us. It's too bad California won't ever consider nuclear, it could probably solve some of their problems.
Depends on what you mean by unscathed. It won't cost him anything (people are donating all kinds of money to his legal defense) and it is already forgone that he won't do any jail time. However he will continue to have his name dragged in the mud by the media for some time to come if the NAACP does this.
This is wrong on so many levels in either case. The justice system found him not guilty, and under the spirit of the constitution its time to let him continue his life as best he can now. Sadly, people like Zimmerman and the Duke Lacrosse players who are innocent never live normal lives again, thanks to groups like the NAACP.
A SWAT team maybe, but not regular cops. They usually carry around a 38 special or a glock or something, maybe a shotgun in their trunk. It's pretty easy to get a hold of more deadly weaponry than that. Even if not, there isn't much work involved for even an amateur gunsmith to convert legal firearms into tactical weapons.
The physical evidence and witness testimony pretty clearly indicated that Zimmerman stopped following him, returned to his car, and Martin chose to return back to Zimmerman to start a fight instead of continuing home where he was already headed.
Being followed by somebody doesn't entitle you to turn around and slam their head into concrete repeatedly, especially after they stop following you, otherwise mall cops would have one hell of a dangerous job. That's ultimately what it came down to.
Professional liar? Ok, which part did I lie about? I cited sources for everything except that second to the last paragraph, which was only because searching slashdot articles is very time consuming. Here you go:
That is the real terrorism in this country. It flies completely off of Janet Napolitano's fucking radar though. Instead she's focused on Alex Jones and the rest of his loudmouth looney bin gang, who while annoying as fuck, haven't actually hurt anybody.
More than that. I'd say Napolitano is probably the least knowledgeable person about terrorism in the Obama cabinet, which is just fucking sad.
She repeatedly claims there is no violence along the US/Mexico border, even though Arizona happens to be the kidnapping capital of the world, and people as far north as Chandler, AZ have been beheaded by Cartel members.
None of these "threats" ever actually panned out. Not a single one. The worse that happened is some idiot or two made a comment (e.g. talk about assassinating the president) but no physical violence ever surfaced.
Ironically most actual "acts" of domestic terror have been committed by left wing groups, usually environmentalists and/or animal rights groups, but including the mass shooters, nearly all of which considered themselves to be left wing:
I remember a few years back there was an article on slashdot about how medical researchers had to stop their work due to eco terrorism being so bad, with one researcher who was studying Parkinson's by manipulating rat neurons, and some group threatened to Molotov cocktail his family, so he quit.
Napolitano has never made a single mention of anything like that, not even once. Al Qaeda threats are probably 1% of actual terrorism that happens in the US, and the so called "right wing" threat practically doesn't even exist. But to her, those are the top priority.
And Britain certainly made the right decision in doing that. Especially with regard to the Euro...having multiple countries with highly varying work ethics, laws, and spending habits all under one central bank was just asking for trouble, and trouble is exactly what they're in right now.
While I abhor the whole NSA spying thing, I don't think it is unreasonable to request a crew/passenger manifest for incoming flights. I don't see a problem with knowing who is coming over just prior to them actually doing so.
Suppose there were only 10 bitcoins in the world all sequentially numbered, and I owned number 2 and 5. If I want to pay Paul a bitcoin, I tell everybody on the bitcoin peer network that I am giving him coin 2. Everybody now knows he has coin 2. Unless he tells everybody that he is giving away 2, your CPU can't interject and say "guess what guys, I have 2", I don't care if it was invented by god and jesus combined.
If you think you can, put up or shut up: Show us the math.
Strike the many and replace with most. However, currently the amount of health care they provide varies significantly, and to what employees actually get it. Obamacare sets more rigid standards though.
For example in the retail and restaurant space. At a place like e.g. best buy or walmart most of the employees work on the sales floor and their health insurance is meh if not non-existent. The change in law here would require that they suddenly have most of them reduce to part time (generally speaking, a reduction from 40 hours a week to 35 hours a week) in order to maintain the status quo, which they'd undoubtedly prefer to do since chances are they can't afford to suddenly increase the hell out of their labor costs (remember: the health care costs go into payroll) in this economy as would be required by the law (especially best buy who is very financially troubled as it is - I guarantee you they can't afford this.) Suddenly these employees now make less money, and therefore have less to spend. Meanwhile their health probably hasn't changed, so "unhealthy employees" doesn't figure into any of the math here.
Keep in mind, we're not going to see an unemployment increase on the scale that France saw when they made their change, because this isn't a nationwide across all industries and pay levels change like what France did. But it does impact a large segment of the population nonetheless, and so in my opinion it will have a measurable change on unemployment, and not in a good way. And while it is just my opinion, I am certain of it. If something doesn't bend, it'll break. And as I mentioned earlier, Obamacare sets more rigid standards, for better or for worse.
To be honest, the rest of the world was bending over to kiss Obama's ass when he was elected, as if he was their savior as well. I still remember that quite well.
Something that strikes me as odd is half of all homosexual black men in the US have HIV. I mean think about that - for every 100 black gay men you see, about 50 of them have HIV. Nobody really understands why either, because apparently they don't behave any riskier than any other HIV demographic.
No, I would say job loss is a certainty. Absolute certainty. It is already known that many employers are going to reduce full time positions to part time for much of their work. This WILL increase unemployment due to what economists refer to as the lump of labor. The demand for labor isn't constant, and we've already seen that when you forcibly reduce working hours across the board, it increases unemployment, even if nobody gets fired.
For a real world example: France fell for the lump of labor fallacy, which is that they believed that if they forced everybody to work only 35 hours a week, then employers would hire more people to fill in those missing hours. Instead what happened is unemployment increased, and has never since recovered. The natural unemployment rate is usually supposed to be about 5%, except in the case of France where it is about 7%, which is largely because of their laws. Contrast to that of say Korea where people tend to work longer hours, their natural unemployment rate seems to be about 3%.
I'm not ideologically opposed to Obamacare per se, in fact I myself want and need affordable health care due to my kidney disease. However I don't think Obamacare is a viable solution. Everything I said above is my own opinion based on my existing knowledge of economics - to my knowledge it isn't a common talking point you're going to find on a conservative blog or talk show somewhere.
I do know this: The conservative talking point about our health care being top notch, it is correct. The best specialty surgeons/hospitals for almost every major category of health care are right here in America. The best cancer center is in Texas, the best Neurosurgery center is in Tucson, AZ...cardiology, liver, oh so many others...all here in the US. It very often happens that somebody in England for example ends up being shipped here to the US to have some lifesaving operation done, with England's NHS footing the bill, because the kind of care they need simply isn't available there. I don't want to see that change. So obviously, our existing privatized system does have its advantages. The trick is figuring out how to make those advantages more affordable.
Those are just arbitrary talking points you're throwing out there.
How do we define what middle class is? If you define it by wealth, then today's poor are wealthier than yesterday's middle class, so the middle class has expanded and continues to expand. If you're defining middle class as being a certain income point, then you're just talking about money while ignoring wealth entirely.
If your definition is the later: So some numbers on a spreadsheet changed; what's the big deal?
And what gains are you talking about here? Wealth or money? The wealth is going everywhere, not to the top percent.
Here's some more arbitrary numbers for you:
- Less than 1% of New York participated in occupy wall street, and less than 1% of the population goes around chanting "We're the 99%!" And why all of this animosity towards the "1%ers" (implying 1%er in a derogatory sense)? Why not the 2.25% or the 3.14159%?
- If you make more than $40,000 per year, you are in the top 1% of the worlds highest income earners. If you make more than that, congratulations, you're one of the despised 1%ers...oooh no, can't be one of THEM now can we? They oppress the people.
Seriously, the world is only as crappy as you think it is, and I don't think we live in a crappy age at all.
Actually the unprocessed stuff is cheaper, the processed stuff just tastes better and takes far less time to obtain.
I was just recently diagnosed stage 4 chronic kidney disease (due to IgA nephropathy) and I have to control the fuck out of my diet (potassium, phosphorus, protein, and sodium need to be very tightly controlled) so I pretty much have to cook my own meals. Processed foods are out of the question because they are high in sodium.
I've actually found out that I've been spending less than $3 per meal since I've been cooking my own food. Used to be I would often buy fast food (del taco, etc) and I would pay $7 for a lunch.
Also off topic but on the note of rich taking advantage of the poor:
Through my ordeal with kidney disease I've realized just how backwards our priorities are when it comes to how people think the poor get taken advantage of. I'm in need of a kidney transplant, and I found out that for somebody to donate a kidney to me will cost them anywhere between $800 and $2,000 on average, possibly more due to lost wages (donating a kidney is hell, it requires preparation time and it's also not a simple overnight stay at a hospital,) and I'm legally not allowed to compensate them for that. Alternatively I could go on dialysis in the future which averages about $100,000 per year for the rest of my life. Surveys say people would sell their kidneys for about $25,000. I don't know why we can't just allow the government to buy kidneys for that (DO NOT PERMIT PRIVATE SALES,) it would be a hell of a lot cheaper than dialysis, the quality of life of the recipient is much better, and whoever sells their kidney is happy because they get money. But no, we can't, because that is taking advantage of the poor. Instead people suffer needlessly and we pay up the ass for medicare; what a forward society we are.
Women can already make similar deals selling their eggs, which happens to be far more dangerous than donating kidneys, yet nobody complains about that one.
The problem with your argument is that you confuse wealth and money. Pay attention to what you're saying: First you're talk about wages, then in the same sentence you talk about wealthy and poor, as if they're one in the same. Those are two different things. Wage converts to wealth, but it doesn't define wealth. Wealth is material goods, money is simply a medium of exchange. In the period you are referring to, even if wage goes down, wealth still increases. (Which by the way, I don't think wage has gone down - just looking at raw inflation doesn't tell the whole story about the actual value of money.)
I'm guessing you subscribe to Keynesian theory? Most people who don't favor increased market freedom do even though they don't realize it. But, even Keynesians agree with what I just said above. (They mainly differ in how much they think the government should control things - which includes protectionism.)
I honestly don't know how anybody anywhere could possibly argue that the poor are even poorer now than they used to be. The material goods we have access to at the prices we pay for them is far far better compared to just 30 years ago. Let's take a look at a few examples:
An Apple 2 computer cost $1,200 in 1980, which if you look at raw inflation translates to $3,600 today. At that price today, you can buy two very high end gaming rigs with large screen monitors to go with them. The poor though might instead spend $300 on a laptop on sale at walmart that will still be leagues ahead of that apple 2, so basically one tenth the price, or if he was still in 1980 only with today's wealth, he would have paid $100 for something far better than that Apple 2.
And you're telling me with a straight face that he's poorer today.
Look at video games - used to be a copy of Mario cost you $60, and now a copy of Starcraft 2 cost you $50 brand new. That copy of Mario today would be about $120. If you took starcraft 2 back to the 80's, it would be $23.
And again, you're telling me with a straight face that this poor person is now poorer today.
In order for your assertion to hold true when you look at things from the perspective of purchasing power, the poor would have to be bringing in less than half of the wages that they are bringing in today than they were in the 80's, and that isn't even remotely true. The divide of riches in terms of money may be growing slightly, but the divide between low wealth and high wealth certainly is not, it's very much shrinking.
Slashdot Mirror
By telco's you're probably referring to ISP's, and their roles would be inherently limited compared to the services themselves. Remember that much of today's web traffic (and other traffic in general) tends to be encrypted these days. There's very little information that they could glean from the ISP in such cases. Yes, they can assist in various ways (e.g. what websites they talk to, and plaintext data) but in either case that still sits at the provider level.
Some people think its all about wire tapping, but tapping e.g. an OC3072 link would yield such poor signal to noise (as in most of the data is completely uninteresting - and further you have very limited options as far as storing and processing in real-time) that it's just not worth doing. Again, that's assuming that nothing is even encrypted. The ISP, or telco as you put it, doesn't have access to the encrypted data - all they do is deliver it from point a to point b.
But I don't really need to explain that - just look at the leaked prism slides, they explain it just as I stated it.
I think that's what he means: IP addresses are part of that phone book you speak of. For example, my IP address is the phone number to the WAN interface of my layer 3 switch.
This sounds like a giant solution looking for a problem.
Really, what exactly is it that ICANN is doing wrong that warrants changing ownership? As far as I'm aware, everybody who needs assigned names and numbers is receiving them fairly. ICANN is doing its job fine. We change things so that it somehow does it better?
What's better than what we currently have? Something that leaves an easier potential for police states to have a greater say in who gets what names and numbers?
Another thing to add that the "lameness filter" wouldn't let me post in that post:
Prism appears to operate at the provider level, which means that so long as you actually have a functioning network, even if it is a censored one, you aren't going to harm prism in any way. So long as e.g. google, microsoft, and facebook provide access to the NSA, prism can do its magic. I think Russia knows this, but they're hoping to be able to catch the attention of politicians equally as ignorant as US politicians.
AC post below this one suggests that Snowden was paid to do this for example - it's nonsense, and I really hope this doesn't detract from the work he is doing in the eye of the otherwise uneducated public.
While you can decentralize DNS, you cannot decentralize IP address assignments.
DNS is just kind of a starting point for stupid US politicians because they don't realize that what ultimately matters is being able to access the IP, so they frequently target DNS for filters in their stupid proposed laws (e.g. sopa.) However after their attempts at DNS based filters fail, they'll eventually get the clue that they've been barking up the wrong tree, and then you'll be back where you started, only this time a return to the late 90's where all kinds of people would snap up whatever domain name they could with the intention of doing nothing other than parking on it with the intent of selling it for millions. That, and snatching up domain names when somebody doesn't catch their expiration, and then holding them for ransom. No, the current system where DNS has accountability against that kind of thing is preferred, in my opinion.
Chinese, Iranian, Russian, and Pakistani politicians have already realized that blocking DNS is ultimately fucking useless and do their blocking by either BGP route poisoning or massive IP blacklists. Russia wants control of ICANN so that this becomes easier for that consortium; namely they get to say who gets what IP addresses, which makes their filters much easier to establish and maintain.
It is rather sad just how technologically illiterate our politicians are compared to theirs, but on the upside it currently works in our favor, and indeed the world's favor, because their technological ineptitude leaves them unable to figure out how to censor proper, and for that reason alone I think it is probably better that the US Department of Commerce holds the keys as they do, unless something changes.
As for NSA spying, this can and will happen regardless of who holds the keys to ICANN, and regardless of whether the internet is censored. Snowden is NOT at any fault here - not by a long shot.
That doesn't make any sense. In fact, it's just wrong. The tor exit node can see all of your plaintext traffic, so that just adds yet another potential source of eavesdropping.
Staying inside of the tor network however basically guarantees anonymity. You think the DEA hasn't tried to shut down the silk road already? Or what about lolita city? Drugs and child pornography are the two biggest things the US government wants dead, and as of yet they've been completely unable to stop either of those, meanwhile both of them operate completely in the open inside of the tor network.
That and hijacking something on a rail doesn't provide as many options for mayhem as something with free movement.
Where's "here"?
I find it strange to hear about network equipment dieing after only a year. I've had the same WNR3500L for four years now, and added an Asus RT-N16 two years ago because I needed a second AP to provide for more coverage when I moved into a larger house. Both still work great, and I haven't had to baby them or anything.
Unless by "here" you mean there is some kind of California thing where power outages damage equipment? I'm in Phoenix Arizona - we use nuclear and hydro (largest nuclear plant in the US in fact) and our grid is pretty stable and cheap. In fact IIRC California buys 25% of their electrons from us. It's too bad California won't ever consider nuclear, it could probably solve some of their problems.
Depends on what you mean by unscathed. It won't cost him anything (people are donating all kinds of money to his legal defense) and it is already forgone that he won't do any jail time. However he will continue to have his name dragged in the mud by the media for some time to come if the NAACP does this.
This is wrong on so many levels in either case. The justice system found him not guilty, and under the spirit of the constitution its time to let him continue his life as best he can now. Sadly, people like Zimmerman and the Duke Lacrosse players who are innocent never live normal lives again, thanks to groups like the NAACP.
A SWAT team maybe, but not regular cops. They usually carry around a 38 special or a glock or something, maybe a shotgun in their trunk. It's pretty easy to get a hold of more deadly weaponry than that. Even if not, there isn't much work involved for even an amateur gunsmith to convert legal firearms into tactical weapons.
The physical evidence and witness testimony pretty clearly indicated that Zimmerman stopped following him, returned to his car, and Martin chose to return back to Zimmerman to start a fight instead of continuing home where he was already headed.
Being followed by somebody doesn't entitle you to turn around and slam their head into concrete repeatedly, especially after they stop following you, otherwise mall cops would have one hell of a dangerous job. That's ultimately what it came down to.
Ah, deep apologies :)
Professional liar? Ok, which part did I lie about? I cited sources for everything except that second to the last paragraph, which was only because searching slashdot articles is very time consuming. Here you go:
http://slashdot.org/story/06/08/26/2242248/neuroscientist-halts-research-to-stop-extremists
Here's another one for good measure:
http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/05/28/2124231/eco-anarchists-targeting-nuclear-and-nanotech-workers
That is the real terrorism in this country. It flies completely off of Janet Napolitano's fucking radar though. Instead she's focused on Alex Jones and the rest of his loudmouth looney bin gang, who while annoying as fuck, haven't actually hurt anybody.
You were saying?
More than that. I'd say Napolitano is probably the least knowledgeable person about terrorism in the Obama cabinet, which is just fucking sad.
She repeatedly claims there is no violence along the US/Mexico border, even though Arizona happens to be the kidnapping capital of the world, and people as far north as Chandler, AZ have been beheaded by Cartel members.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=6848672&page=1#.UeBPe23aW2U
I remember it was her who made it sound like right wing groups were ready to storm the nation:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/15/extremism.report/
None of these "threats" ever actually panned out. Not a single one. The worse that happened is some idiot or two made a comment (e.g. talk about assassinating the president) but no physical violence ever surfaced.
Ironically most actual "acts" of domestic terror have been committed by left wing groups, usually environmentalists and/or animal rights groups, but including the mass shooters, nearly all of which considered themselves to be left wing:
http://archive.adl.org/learn/ext_us/ecoterrorism.asp
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ba6_1345149941
I remember a few years back there was an article on slashdot about how medical researchers had to stop their work due to eco terrorism being so bad, with one researcher who was studying Parkinson's by manipulating rat neurons, and some group threatened to Molotov cocktail his family, so he quit.
Napolitano has never made a single mention of anything like that, not even once. Al Qaeda threats are probably 1% of actual terrorism that happens in the US, and the so called "right wing" threat practically doesn't even exist. But to her, those are the top priority.
And Britain certainly made the right decision in doing that. Especially with regard to the Euro...having multiple countries with highly varying work ethics, laws, and spending habits all under one central bank was just asking for trouble, and trouble is exactly what they're in right now.
While I abhor the whole NSA spying thing, I don't think it is unreasonable to request a crew/passenger manifest for incoming flights. I don't see a problem with knowing who is coming over just prior to them actually doing so.
No, you can't.
Suppose there were only 10 bitcoins in the world all sequentially numbered, and I owned number 2 and 5. If I want to pay Paul a bitcoin, I tell everybody on the bitcoin peer network that I am giving him coin 2. Everybody now knows he has coin 2. Unless he tells everybody that he is giving away 2, your CPU can't interject and say "guess what guys, I have 2", I don't care if it was invented by god and jesus combined.
If you think you can, put up or shut up: Show us the math.
Ironically the US is one of very few countries in the world with no data retention laws, which means US based VPN providers are generally safer.
Strike the many and replace with most. However, currently the amount of health care they provide varies significantly, and to what employees actually get it. Obamacare sets more rigid standards though.
For example in the retail and restaurant space. At a place like e.g. best buy or walmart most of the employees work on the sales floor and their health insurance is meh if not non-existent. The change in law here would require that they suddenly have most of them reduce to part time (generally speaking, a reduction from 40 hours a week to 35 hours a week) in order to maintain the status quo, which they'd undoubtedly prefer to do since chances are they can't afford to suddenly increase the hell out of their labor costs (remember: the health care costs go into payroll) in this economy as would be required by the law (especially best buy who is very financially troubled as it is - I guarantee you they can't afford this.) Suddenly these employees now make less money, and therefore have less to spend. Meanwhile their health probably hasn't changed, so "unhealthy employees" doesn't figure into any of the math here.
Keep in mind, we're not going to see an unemployment increase on the scale that France saw when they made their change, because this isn't a nationwide across all industries and pay levels change like what France did. But it does impact a large segment of the population nonetheless, and so in my opinion it will have a measurable change on unemployment, and not in a good way. And while it is just my opinion, I am certain of it. If something doesn't bend, it'll break. And as I mentioned earlier, Obamacare sets more rigid standards, for better or for worse.
To be honest, the rest of the world was bending over to kiss Obama's ass when he was elected, as if he was their savior as well. I still remember that quite well.
Something that strikes me as odd is half of all homosexual black men in the US have HIV. I mean think about that - for every 100 black gay men you see, about 50 of them have HIV. Nobody really understands why either, because apparently they don't behave any riskier than any other HIV demographic.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/31/gay-black-men-hiv-rates-m_n_3368144.html
No, I would say job loss is a certainty. Absolute certainty. It is already known that many employers are going to reduce full time positions to part time for much of their work. This WILL increase unemployment due to what economists refer to as the lump of labor. The demand for labor isn't constant, and we've already seen that when you forcibly reduce working hours across the board, it increases unemployment, even if nobody gets fired.
For a real world example: France fell for the lump of labor fallacy, which is that they believed that if they forced everybody to work only 35 hours a week, then employers would hire more people to fill in those missing hours. Instead what happened is unemployment increased, and has never since recovered. The natural unemployment rate is usually supposed to be about 5%, except in the case of France where it is about 7%, which is largely because of their laws. Contrast to that of say Korea where people tend to work longer hours, their natural unemployment rate seems to be about 3%.
More on the lump of labor fallacy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
I'm not ideologically opposed to Obamacare per se, in fact I myself want and need affordable health care due to my kidney disease. However I don't think Obamacare is a viable solution. Everything I said above is my own opinion based on my existing knowledge of economics - to my knowledge it isn't a common talking point you're going to find on a conservative blog or talk show somewhere.
I do know this: The conservative talking point about our health care being top notch, it is correct. The best specialty surgeons/hospitals for almost every major category of health care are right here in America. The best cancer center is in Texas, the best Neurosurgery center is in Tucson, AZ...cardiology, liver, oh so many others...all here in the US. It very often happens that somebody in England for example ends up being shipped here to the US to have some lifesaving operation done, with England's NHS footing the bill, because the kind of care they need simply isn't available there. I don't want to see that change. So obviously, our existing privatized system does have its advantages. The trick is figuring out how to make those advantages more affordable.
Those are just arbitrary talking points you're throwing out there.
How do we define what middle class is? If you define it by wealth, then today's poor are wealthier than yesterday's middle class, so the middle class has expanded and continues to expand. If you're defining middle class as being a certain income point, then you're just talking about money while ignoring wealth entirely.
If your definition is the later: So some numbers on a spreadsheet changed; what's the big deal?
And what gains are you talking about here? Wealth or money? The wealth is going everywhere, not to the top percent.
Here's some more arbitrary numbers for you:
- Less than 1% of New York participated in occupy wall street, and less than 1% of the population goes around chanting "We're the 99%!" And why all of this animosity towards the "1%ers" (implying 1%er in a derogatory sense)? Why not the 2.25% or the 3.14159%?
- If you make more than $40,000 per year, you are in the top 1% of the worlds highest income earners. If you make more than that, congratulations, you're one of the despised 1%ers...oooh no, can't be one of THEM now can we? They oppress the people.
Seriously, the world is only as crappy as you think it is, and I don't think we live in a crappy age at all.
Actually the unprocessed stuff is cheaper, the processed stuff just tastes better and takes far less time to obtain.
I was just recently diagnosed stage 4 chronic kidney disease (due to IgA nephropathy) and I have to control the fuck out of my diet (potassium, phosphorus, protein, and sodium need to be very tightly controlled) so I pretty much have to cook my own meals. Processed foods are out of the question because they are high in sodium.
I've actually found out that I've been spending less than $3 per meal since I've been cooking my own food. Used to be I would often buy fast food (del taco, etc) and I would pay $7 for a lunch.
Also off topic but on the note of rich taking advantage of the poor:
Through my ordeal with kidney disease I've realized just how backwards our priorities are when it comes to how people think the poor get taken advantage of. I'm in need of a kidney transplant, and I found out that for somebody to donate a kidney to me will cost them anywhere between $800 and $2,000 on average, possibly more due to lost wages (donating a kidney is hell, it requires preparation time and it's also not a simple overnight stay at a hospital,) and I'm legally not allowed to compensate them for that. Alternatively I could go on dialysis in the future which averages about $100,000 per year for the rest of my life. Surveys say people would sell their kidneys for about $25,000. I don't know why we can't just allow the government to buy kidneys for that (DO NOT PERMIT PRIVATE SALES,) it would be a hell of a lot cheaper than dialysis, the quality of life of the recipient is much better, and whoever sells their kidney is happy because they get money. But no, we can't, because that is taking advantage of the poor. Instead people suffer needlessly and we pay up the ass for medicare; what a forward society we are.
Women can already make similar deals selling their eggs, which happens to be far more dangerous than donating kidneys, yet nobody complains about that one.
The problem with your argument is that you confuse wealth and money. Pay attention to what you're saying: First you're talk about wages, then in the same sentence you talk about wealthy and poor, as if they're one in the same. Those are two different things. Wage converts to wealth, but it doesn't define wealth. Wealth is material goods, money is simply a medium of exchange. In the period you are referring to, even if wage goes down, wealth still increases. (Which by the way, I don't think wage has gone down - just looking at raw inflation doesn't tell the whole story about the actual value of money.)
I'm guessing you subscribe to Keynesian theory? Most people who don't favor increased market freedom do even though they don't realize it. But, even Keynesians agree with what I just said above. (They mainly differ in how much they think the government should control things - which includes protectionism.)
I honestly don't know how anybody anywhere could possibly argue that the poor are even poorer now than they used to be. The material goods we have access to at the prices we pay for them is far far better compared to just 30 years ago. Let's take a look at a few examples:
An Apple 2 computer cost $1,200 in 1980, which if you look at raw inflation translates to $3,600 today. At that price today, you can buy two very high end gaming rigs with large screen monitors to go with them. The poor though might instead spend $300 on a laptop on sale at walmart that will still be leagues ahead of that apple 2, so basically one tenth the price, or if he was still in 1980 only with today's wealth, he would have paid $100 for something far better than that Apple 2.
And you're telling me with a straight face that he's poorer today.
Look at video games - used to be a copy of Mario cost you $60, and now a copy of Starcraft 2 cost you $50 brand new. That copy of Mario today would be about $120. If you took starcraft 2 back to the 80's, it would be $23.
And again, you're telling me with a straight face that this poor person is now poorer today.
In order for your assertion to hold true when you look at things from the perspective of purchasing power, the poor would have to be bringing in less than half of the wages that they are bringing in today than they were in the 80's, and that isn't even remotely true. The divide of riches in terms of money may be growing slightly, but the divide between low wealth and high wealth certainly is not, it's very much shrinking.