Does that make you feel like we've accomplished something?
I'm less confused about your posts, and you might end up with a better way to describe your politics. If that's not progress, what is?
What the level is has no bearing whatsoever on whether my suggestion is valid.
Not directly, no. But if it's going to be a useful suggestion, it has to be possible to pick the level at some point, and I don't think it is possible to do that fairly. There will always be externalities (both positive and negative) left out, that can't be measured, and that can't be measured in dollar terms.
My "doubling the cost of a car in order to get 1% more fuel efficiency" comment was just pointing out that sometimes letting an externality go may cost society less than trying to fix it. Which goes back to my main point - I don't think there's a good answer to the quesitions "How much damage does this do?" and "What's it worth to fix this?", because it eventually ends up being based on guesswork, assumption and opinion, not just facts.
it's possible to reduce the externalities on your own
The harmful thing here is smoking. The externality is a measure of its harm to society
So rather than taxing all cars the same, you would carefully differentiate between the ones that cause a lot of harm and the ones that cause less, but don't think the differences between courteous and negligent smoker deserve the same careful thought. That makes it seem like you just want to tax smoking and encourage hybrid cars, regardless of any other consideration, like the actual externalities that individuals produce. That's why I used the word 'rationalization' - it starts to sound like an excuse to punish some behaviors and reward others, regardless of the actual harm done.
The comment about national usage meant that we need only too look at current natinoal usage and where we want national usage to be, and calculate the tax such that market forces would push usage to the desired level. It is Economics 101.
The "where we want national usage to be" part makes it much clearer. In this case, the question is "What should the national usage be?", and that's a tough question to answer. Answers would range from "none at all" to "a bit less than now" to "as much as they're willing to pay for". To complete your argument, you need to actually set that amount (or give a way to set it), and have a good justification for why that level is better than all of the others that have been suggested.
There was an article a few weeks ago here about someone who calculated whether it was better economically to purchase a hybrid vehicle. The results were that it was not. So, even with our tax credit here in the US, we still have things structured to favor the vehicle that does more damage to society.
Cars that cost a lot hurt society, too. In this case, you have to balance the damage of pollution, waste, etc with the damage of people not being able to afford to drive, purchase other things, etc. I just don't think anyone is wise enough to make that kind of decision. At some point, where you're doubling the cost of a car in order to get 1% more fuel efficiency, even the stongest environmentaist has to say it isn't worth it.
That's not how insurance agencies work. (If it were, most smokers and anyone else at high risk wouldn't be able to afford insurance.)
First, I would like a cite for that, because that seems a bit off. Second, smokers usually die younger then nonsmokers, saving the cost of hip replacements, corneal transplants, and long term care while they struggle with dementia - so I don't think the added costs for smoking are that much higher over a lifetime. Third, even if it doesn't work that way now, it could work that way, and that's my point - it's possible to reduce the externalities on your own.
So in effect, you are taxing smoking itself, not the externalities.
Correct.
So it sounds like externalities are just a rationalization for the tax, not the real reason. Otherwise you'd just suggest fines for smoking in public and similar legislation that puts the focus on the externalities, rather than an activity that might cause them.
If Libertarians truly do believe that imposition of taxes on items with negative externalities is immoral, that would be one area where the party and I strongly disagree.
Yes, that's why I don't think you're a libertarian (big or small 'L').
Yes, several times, that's why I'm replying to you. You want to tax the wasteful use of gasoline, I wanted to know what counted as wasteful. Your reply was impenetrably vague.
Please look into how insurance agencies work.
Some don't ask if you smoke, but mine does (as do many others). They will quite clearly tell you that smokers pay higher premiums to cover their increased risk. In this case, other people's health care costs are not affected by the extra risk smoking carries.
And this was my whole point - it is possible for a smoker to eliminate (or vastly reduce) any negative externalities he might create. Your proposed tax treats all smokers the same, whether the damage they do is minimal or severe. So in effect, you are tasing smoking itself, not the externalities.
The Wikipedia article claims this is an imposition of morality. That is ridiculous.... I find it difficult to see how I am a liberal and you are a Libertarian.
I'm not a libertarian. However, my own views have more in common with libertarianism than any other major political philosophy and I know quite a few libertarians personally. All of them are clearly and strongly against any signifigant gun control, laws based on wasteful use (luxury taxes, etc), and taxes or prohibitions on alcohol, tobacco and drugs.
If you read a long post on the virtues of a free market that ended with the poster stating that he was a communist, wouldn't you be confused?
We don't have to look anywhere but national usage. Base the per-unit tax on that, and impose it nationally.
Ummm, what? The tax on a gallon of gas is related to the national usage by ??? - I think you're missing something.
I don't know anyone who pays all their health care costs. You don't have insurance?
Paying insurance is taking responsibility for your own health care. I was just trying to avoid the "smokers use more Medicare" diversionary argument.
Libertarians also believe in leveraging market forces rather than big government. I should know, because I am one.
The opening paragraphs of Wikipedia's article on libertarianism states that they specifically oppose the policies you are advocating. These are opposites:
Libertarians are also against... taxing alcohol and tobacco.
I'm talking about taxing activities that clearly cause harm to society, like smoking.
Just to be clear: Libertarians support freedom, thus the name. In modern societies, economic freedom leads to free market capitalism. You believe that the government should alter the market in order to promote ends that it chooses, such as "values". Therefore you don't support a free market, but a heavily state managed market, which makes you a liberal (or more accurately, a progressive), not a libertarian.
So we should not tax the rich to save the poor who build things that only the rich purchase? Please.
Not quite, I'm just pointing out that any tax hurts some poor people in some way, so "It hurts poor people" isn't enough of an argument.
Gasoline's negative externality can be quantified -- its price inflation due to wasteful use, easily; and its harm to the environment, with a little more trouble.
And I strongly disagree. What counts as wasteful? SUVs, V6 cars, trips to the movies and mowing the lawn aren't really necessities. And what will releasing a kilo of NO2 cost me?
I'm talking about taxing activities that clearly cause harm to society, like smoking.
How does smoking in my own home (where I live alone) hurt anyone else (especially if I pay my own health care costs)?
It's almost like you feel that the government shouldn't force it's anti-murder, anti-theft, etc. values on people. That actually is government's job.
Short answer: Libertarians, people who believe in natural rights, and I all feel that there's a vast difference between murdering someone or stealing a wallet and not wearing a helmet while bicycling or driving a big car.
Government spending creates economic growth mroe than any tax cut. Yes its blasphemous to say in today's conservative environment but its taught in any economic course.
Keynesian economics is only one school, usually more acceptied in academic and liberal circles. But the government multiplier effect is far from a proven fact, and there are a several other competing schools.
What we are doing now is spending but cutting revenue via tax cuts. It can't go on forever. Sales taxes are not fair and called regressive. Liek the opposite of progressive they hurt the poor more than the rich. A pack of cigarettes costs someone poor alot more money than someone rich.
Are you responding to my post, or someone elses?
Putting money in stocks doesn't work. Reaganomics tried this and failed. Money needs to move. The more money moves the more people are willing to spend which inflated the GDP balloon (economists like this analogy). Foreign investments deflate our GDP balloon and cause a leakage. This makes downturns hit alot harder and make growth come alot slower.
science is a belief system (with, at its core, axioms every bit as unprovable as any other philosophy)
Being sick and being well are both just states of health, but the only reason to ignore the massive differences between the two is so that you can pretend that there is no difference at all.
The whole "science isn't a belief system" schtick annoys me every bit as much as fundamentalist Atheists who think their assertion that there is no god or gods is somehow less axiomatic than, thus superior to, other people's assertions that there is definitely, may be, or may not be a god or gods.
Know-it-alls bug me too, but if you seem to be talking about burden of proof, and in that case, you are completely wrong.
So far, embryonic adult stem cells have been successful, while embryonic stem cells have not. This is true, but it doesn't matter! There is a chance that embryonic stem cells could treat a disease that adult ones can't, and as long as that chance exists, your points are irrelevant.
Now who's captain regressive? You really think that FLAT TAX is progressive?... Poor people are buying things with very low elasticities; necessities.... That is why the flat tax is dumb. And that is why it is absolutely regressive. It's the same problem with sales taxes. Sales taxes are flat taxes.
That's why every flat tax scheme I've ever heard of has fairly large, standard deductions. You only pay the flat tax on income over a certain amount, and that makes it very progressive, unlike sales taxes. A poor person making less than N pays no tax at all, while someone making much more than N pays tax on almost all of his income. You can't just ignore the deductions in order to make it look regressive.
It reflects the view that the poor should be taxed less. Why? Because rich people are spending their money on yachts. Poor people are spending their money on bread.
Which sounds great, unless you're a poor person who builds yachts for a living - where do you get your bread money if your industry shrinks due to taxation?
These items are negative externalities, and should be taxed equal to that loss to society.
The hard part is agreeing on what's a negative exterality and what the loss is.
Want to have a gun? Fine, but you have to pay for the harm to society your gun purchase causes (even if you're a fine citizen, your ownership causes harm unless you never re-sell it, have it stolen, etc.)
On the other hand, gun ownership decreases crime rates, so it's a positive externality! Which is exactly my point, people can't even agree on which externalities are positive or negative, let alone exactly how much.
Taxes differ because values differ.
And that's why I (and most likely the libertarian GP) would be against it. It isn't the governments job to push "values" on us, and even if it was, who's values? That's how Jim Crow laws, "separate but equal" legislation and regulations censoring birth control information got started - people thought they had the right to use the government to impose their values on others.
And what line of work are you in? Help a young man pick a career!
In general rich people spend a lower percentage of their income than people who's income is closer to their needs.
Your 440K doesn't disappear, does it? It gets invested (businesses spend it, helping to create more jobs) or saved in a bank (more people take out loans and spend the money). In any case, saving more in a country with a negative savings rate is a good thing.
There would also be a disincentive to buy new goods since only they would be taxed. This would decimate manufacturing jobs since there would be less demand for new goods until old goods started to wear out.
Yard sales and recycling have the same effect.
This is a poorly thought out plan which would have enourmous unforseen consequences.
I'm not in favor of Fairtax type plans, but I don't think it's quite as poorly thought out as you seem to believe.
So why should a person take a 30% loss on investment in the US when they can invest overseas with out any penalty? Simple answer, they shouldn't.
Every tax scheme damages the economy, so while you are completely correct, you aren't saying anything surprising. What you need to show is that it is more damaging than other schemes, such as the one we currently use.
Am I going to go read HR25 or books by your favorite market analysist? No, because for everyone you can find that says "FairTax" is good, I can find another that says the opposite.
Well, if I wanted uninformed opionions about economics, I'd be discussing things on slashdot. Oh, wait...
There are 130-ish channels available on UHF and VHS. To broadcast over all 130-ish at 5000 watts would require a million watts or more of constant power, plus an antenna, not including the service to his house and all the other goodies.
Only because of the FCC, duh.
By only looking at his first sentence, you missed the point of dada21's post - that jamming even part of the spectrum takes a lot of power. No matter what you position on the issue, the channels (area of the spectrum) still existed before the FCC existed (which was the point of my post).
He he he, good one. Like the FCC created the ability to broadcast on certain frequencies...
No, the FCC keeps people from broadcasting on whichever frequency they feel like. You have no idea what the situation was like before they showed up.
Yeah, I was a little crass in the way I made my point, but I really do have a good idea of what things were like before the FCC.
Yep, and whatever scheme was just implemented will get the credit. It couldn't possibly be due to changing demographics, a cultural shift, a good economy, increased abortion, higher social mobility, more effective charity/welfare programs, improved mental health care or something we just don't know about.
I don't mean to sound harsh, but in something as complex as sociology, a single statistic is almost worse than no data at all.
What you fail to realize is that they did see through your sarcasm and moderated it as flamebait because that's exactly what is it. A bait for flamewars.
As far as I can tell, it was amusing sarcasm, not flamebait. If you want to change my mind, you're going to need to back it up.
Besides, I take it you wouldn't have a problem if the government were enforcing some other-than-christian values, right? Because we all know that the occupation of Iraq is bad bad bad, but that the one of Tibet is good good good. Shooting that scumbag in Genova was bad bad bad but driving tanks over students in Tien An Men square was good good good. Down with them!
So you can go on a crazy rant about unrelated things, good for you.
They own their own body, to start with. The GP was suggesting that because you own you body, you have the right to make noises with it.
More to the point, you always have freedom of speech, the press and assembly, even if you can't talk, don't own a press and have no friends to assemble with.
accept that there are some things that you can no longer do
I define a man/woman on what they can do. It is the right thing to do
And was just pointing out that you can't just ignore the things you can't do without bad things happening. In your example, an employer may dance around the question, but they still check to see if they can do it, and a response of "I can't" should never be ignored.
If the eye is in fact designed, why does it suffer from the imperfection of the blind spot?
These are called design constraints. They are found in just about every design activity you can think of.
Every design has constraints, but none of them require the optic nerve to go where it does. Squid eyes, for example, have no blind spot, can see in very dim light, are more sensitive to color differences than ours and move the lens rather than bending it (preventing focusing problems, like the ones that lead to reading glasses) - and have no known major downside.
From a ways back: Okay here's one for you: explain the eye. It either works or it doesn't. There is no evolutionary intermediate form that would function so how could it have evolved?
I really don't understand how you could say "It either works or it doesn't". There's a huge, obvious groups of people that have partly working vision:
People that need corrective lenses or lasik surgery
People that need cornea transplants
People that use glacoma medication
People with macular degeneration and other diseases
Even if they eventually go blind (it doesn't work), they go from normal sight (it works) through a period of slowly degrading vision (it partly works). If vision was always all-or-nothing, we wouldn't have "needs corrective lenses" on driver's licenses or have distinctions between "legally blind" and "completely blind".
As for intermediate stages, any vision is better than no vision. Just knowing which way the sun or moon is helps with navigation, and freezing when a shadow falls on you can help you avoid predators - and neither one of these uses even requires a real eye.
I define a man/woman on what they can do. It is the right thing to do.
No, it's the feel-good thing to do. Happy thoughts will keep you optimistic, which is fine in its proper place, but ignoring reality leads to more pain. Try talking to the woman who wouldn't accept that she was going blind and kept driving - until she drove off the road and ended up killing her daughter. Accepting that you can't do some things is part of the process of getting on with your life.
Because I cannot reliablily sell you drinks that you won't die from, have I materilly changed my product, and breeched my contract? If I have no legal obligation, would it be good PR for me to work out a solution or give you your $60?
In order: Yes, no, yes. You may have a legal obligation to inform me of the change (which seems reasonable), and it may be good PR to give me back my money, but there's no legal obligation to do so. Unless, of course, you knew about my allergy ahead of time and this was a way to defraud me, the discount card says "peanut free", or something else like that.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm less confused about your posts, and you might end up with a better way to describe your politics. If that's not progress, what is?
What the level is has no bearing whatsoever on whether my suggestion is valid.
Not directly, no. But if it's going to be a useful suggestion, it has to be possible to pick the level at some point, and I don't think it is possible to do that fairly. There will always be externalities (both positive and negative) left out, that can't be measured, and that can't be measured in dollar terms.
My "doubling the cost of a car in order to get 1% more fuel efficiency" comment was just pointing out that sometimes letting an externality go may cost society less than trying to fix it. Which goes back to my main point - I don't think there's a good answer to the quesitions "How much damage does this do?" and "What's it worth to fix this?", because it eventually ends up being based on guesswork, assumption and opinion, not just facts.
The harmful thing here is smoking. The externality is a measure of its harm to society
So rather than taxing all cars the same, you would carefully differentiate between the ones that cause a lot of harm and the ones that cause less, but don't think the differences between courteous and negligent smoker deserve the same careful thought. That makes it seem like you just want to tax smoking and encourage hybrid cars, regardless of any other consideration, like the actual externalities that individuals produce. That's why I used the word 'rationalization' - it starts to sound like an excuse to punish some behaviors and reward others, regardless of the actual harm done.
The "where we want national usage to be" part makes it much clearer. In this case, the question is "What should the national usage be?", and that's a tough question to answer. Answers would range from "none at all" to "a bit less than now" to "as much as they're willing to pay for". To complete your argument, you need to actually set that amount (or give a way to set it), and have a good justification for why that level is better than all of the others that have been suggested.
There was an article a few weeks ago here about someone who calculated whether it was better economically to purchase a hybrid vehicle. The results were that it was not. So, even with our tax credit here in the US, we still have things structured to favor the vehicle that does more damage to society.
Cars that cost a lot hurt society, too. In this case, you have to balance the damage of pollution, waste, etc with the damage of people not being able to afford to drive, purchase other things, etc. I just don't think anyone is wise enough to make that kind of decision. At some point, where you're doubling the cost of a car in order to get 1% more fuel efficiency, even the stongest environmentaist has to say it isn't worth it.
That's not how insurance agencies work. (If it were, most smokers and anyone else at high risk wouldn't be able to afford insurance.)
First, I would like a cite for that, because that seems a bit off. Second, smokers usually die younger then nonsmokers, saving the cost of hip replacements, corneal transplants, and long term care while they struggle with dementia - so I don't think the added costs for smoking are that much higher over a lifetime. Third, even if it doesn't work that way now, it could work that way, and that's my point - it's possible to reduce the externalities on your own.
Correct.
So it sounds like externalities are just a rationalization for the tax, not the real reason. Otherwise you'd just suggest fines for smoking in public and similar legislation that puts the focus on the externalities, rather than an activity that might cause them.
If Libertarians truly do believe that imposition of taxes on items with negative externalities is immoral, that would be one area where the party and I strongly disagree.
Yes, that's why I don't think you're a libertarian (big or small 'L').
Yes, several times, that's why I'm replying to you. You want to tax the wasteful use of gasoline, I wanted to know what counted as wasteful. Your reply was impenetrably vague.
Please look into how insurance agencies work.
Some don't ask if you smoke, but mine does (as do many others). They will quite clearly tell you that smokers pay higher premiums to cover their increased risk. In this case, other people's health care costs are not affected by the extra risk smoking carries.
And this was my whole point - it is possible for a smoker to eliminate (or vastly reduce) any negative externalities he might create. Your proposed tax treats all smokers the same, whether the damage they do is minimal or severe. So in effect, you are tasing smoking itself, not the externalities.
The Wikipedia article claims this is an imposition of morality. That is ridiculous. ... I find it difficult to see how I am a liberal and you are a Libertarian.
I'm not a libertarian. However, my own views have more in common with libertarianism than any other major political philosophy and I know quite a few libertarians personally. All of them are clearly and strongly against any signifigant gun control, laws based on wasteful use (luxury taxes, etc), and taxes or prohibitions on alcohol, tobacco and drugs.
If you read a long post on the virtues of a free market that ended with the poster stating that he was a communist, wouldn't you be confused?
Ummm, what? The tax on a gallon of gas is related to the national usage by ??? - I think you're missing something.
I don't know anyone who pays all their health care costs. You don't have insurance?
Paying insurance is taking responsibility for your own health care. I was just trying to avoid the "smokers use more Medicare" diversionary argument.
Libertarians also believe in leveraging market forces rather than big government. I should know, because I am one.
The opening paragraphs of Wikipedia's article on libertarianism states that they specifically oppose the policies you are advocating. These are opposites:
Libertarians are also against ... taxing alcohol and tobacco.
I'm talking about taxing activities that clearly cause harm to society, like smoking.
Just to be clear: Libertarians support freedom, thus the name. In modern societies, economic freedom leads to free market capitalism. You believe that the government should alter the market in order to promote ends that it chooses, such as "values". Therefore you don't support a free market, but a heavily state managed market, which makes you a liberal (or more accurately, a progressive), not a libertarian.
He got modded down because he completely missed the point of the post he was replying to.
Not quite, I'm just pointing out that any tax hurts some poor people in some way, so "It hurts poor people" isn't enough of an argument.
Gasoline's negative externality can be quantified -- its price inflation due to wasteful use, easily; and its harm to the environment, with a little more trouble.
And I strongly disagree. What counts as wasteful? SUVs, V6 cars, trips to the movies and mowing the lawn aren't really necessities. And what will releasing a kilo of NO2 cost me?
I'm talking about taxing activities that clearly cause harm to society, like smoking.
How does smoking in my own home (where I live alone) hurt anyone else (especially if I pay my own health care costs)?
It's almost like you feel that the government shouldn't force it's anti-murder, anti-theft, etc. values on people. That actually is government's job.
Short answer: Libertarians, people who believe in natural rights, and I all feel that there's a vast difference between murdering someone or stealing a wallet and not wearing a helmet while bicycling or driving a big car.
Keynesian economics is only one school, usually more acceptied in academic and liberal circles. But the government multiplier effect is far from a proven fact, and there are a several other competing schools.
What we are doing now is spending but cutting revenue via tax cuts. It can't go on forever. Sales taxes are not fair and called regressive. Liek the opposite of progressive they hurt the poor more than the rich. A pack of cigarettes costs someone poor alot more money than someone rich.
Are you responding to my post, or someone elses?
Putting money in stocks doesn't work. Reaganomics tried this and failed. Money needs to move. The more money moves the more people are willing to spend which inflated the GDP balloon (economists like this analogy). Foreign investments deflate our GDP balloon and cause a leakage. This makes downturns hit alot harder and make growth come alot slower.
I think you're confused
Being sick and being well are both just states of health, but the only reason to ignore the massive differences between the two is so that you can pretend that there is no difference at all.
The whole "science isn't a belief system" schtick annoys me every bit as much as fundamentalist Atheists who think their assertion that there is no god or gods is somehow less axiomatic than, thus superior to, other people's assertions that there is definitely, may be, or may not be a god or gods.
Know-it-alls bug me too, but if you seem to be talking about burden of proof, and in that case, you are completely wrong.
So far, embryonic adult stem cells have been successful, while embryonic stem cells have not. This is true, but it doesn't matter! There is a chance that embryonic stem cells could treat a disease that adult ones can't, and as long as that chance exists, your points are irrelevant.
That's why every flat tax scheme I've ever heard of has fairly large, standard deductions. You only pay the flat tax on income over a certain amount, and that makes it very progressive, unlike sales taxes. A poor person making less than N pays no tax at all, while someone making much more than N pays tax on almost all of his income. You can't just ignore the deductions in order to make it look regressive.
It reflects the view that the poor should be taxed less. Why? Because rich people are spending their money on yachts. Poor people are spending their money on bread.
Which sounds great, unless you're a poor person who builds yachts for a living - where do you get your bread money if your industry shrinks due to taxation?
These items are negative externalities, and should be taxed equal to that loss to society.
The hard part is agreeing on what's a negative exterality and what the loss is.
Want to have a gun? Fine, but you have to pay for the harm to society your gun purchase causes (even if you're a fine citizen, your ownership causes harm unless you never re-sell it, have it stolen, etc.)
On the other hand, gun ownership decreases crime rates, so it's a positive externality! Which is exactly my point, people can't even agree on which externalities are positive or negative, let alone exactly how much.
Taxes differ because values differ.
And that's why I (and most likely the libertarian GP) would be against it. It isn't the governments job to push "values" on us, and even if it was, who's values? That's how Jim Crow laws, "separate but equal" legislation and regulations censoring birth control information got started - people thought they had the right to use the government to impose their values on others.
And what line of work are you in? Help a young man pick a career!
In general rich people spend a lower percentage of their income than people who's income is closer to their needs.
Your 440K doesn't disappear, does it? It gets invested (businesses spend it, helping to create more jobs) or saved in a bank (more people take out loans and spend the money). In any case, saving more in a country with a negative savings rate is a good thing.
There would also be a disincentive to buy new goods since only they would be taxed. This would decimate manufacturing jobs since there would be less demand for new goods until old goods started to wear out.
Yard sales and recycling have the same effect.
This is a poorly thought out plan which would have enourmous unforseen consequences.
I'm not in favor of Fairtax type plans, but I don't think it's quite as poorly thought out as you seem to believe.
Hyperinflation is the quickest and surest way to destroy an economy.
Every tax scheme damages the economy, so while you are completely correct, you aren't saying anything surprising. What you need to show is that it is more damaging than other schemes, such as the one we currently use.
Am I going to go read HR25 or books by your favorite market analysist? No, because for everyone you can find that says "FairTax" is good, I can find another that says the opposite.
Well, if I wanted uninformed opionions about economics, I'd be discussing things on slashdot. Oh, wait...
Only because of the FCC, duh.
By only looking at his first sentence, you missed the point of dada21's post - that jamming even part of the spectrum takes a lot of power. No matter what you position on the issue, the channels (area of the spectrum) still existed before the FCC existed (which was the point of my post).
No, the FCC keeps people from broadcasting on whichever frequency they feel like. You have no idea what the situation was like before they showed up.
Yeah, I was a little crass in the way I made my point, but I really do have a good idea of what things were like before the FCC.
Yep, and whatever scheme was just implemented will get the credit. It couldn't possibly be due to changing demographics, a cultural shift, a good economy, increased abortion, higher social mobility, more effective charity/welfare programs, improved mental health care or something we just don't know about.
I don't mean to sound harsh, but in something as complex as sociology, a single statistic is almost worse than no data at all.
As far as I can tell, it was amusing sarcasm, not flamebait. If you want to change my mind, you're going to need to back it up.
Besides, I take it you wouldn't have a problem if the government were enforcing some other-than-christian values, right? Because we all know that the occupation of Iraq is bad bad bad, but that the one of Tibet is good good good. Shooting that scumbag in Genova was bad bad bad but driving tanks over students in Tien An Men square was good good good. Down with them!
So you can go on a crazy rant about unrelated things, good for you.
Nicely done. [nt]
More to the point, you always have freedom of speech, the press and assembly, even if you can't talk, don't own a press and have no friends to assemble with.
Amen, brother!
He he he, good one. Like the FCC created the ability to broadcast on certain frequencies...
Oh, wait. You were serious. That's even funnier!
I define a man/woman on what they can do. It is the right thing to do
And was just pointing out that you can't just ignore the things you can't do without bad things happening. In your example, an employer may dance around the question, but they still check to see if they can do it, and a response of "I can't" should never be ignored.
These are called design constraints. They are found in just about every design activity you can think of.
Every design has constraints, but none of them require the optic nerve to go where it does. Squid eyes, for example, have no blind spot, can see in very dim light, are more sensitive to color differences than ours and move the lens rather than bending it (preventing focusing problems, like the ones that lead to reading glasses) - and have no known major downside.
From a ways back: Okay here's one for you: explain the eye. It either works or it doesn't. There is no evolutionary intermediate form that would function so how could it have evolved?
I really don't understand how you could say "It either works or it doesn't". There's a huge, obvious groups of people that have partly working vision:
People that need corrective lenses or lasik surgery
People that need cornea transplants
People that use glacoma medication
People with macular degeneration and other diseases
Even if they eventually go blind (it doesn't work), they go from normal sight (it works) through a period of slowly degrading vision (it partly works). If vision was always all-or-nothing, we wouldn't have "needs corrective lenses" on driver's licenses or have distinctions between "legally blind" and "completely blind".
As for intermediate stages, any vision is better than no vision. Just knowing which way the sun or moon is helps with navigation, and freezing when a shadow falls on you can help you avoid predators - and neither one of these uses even requires a real eye.
Oh, wait, he was serious. Make that +1 Scary.
No, it's the feel-good thing to do. Happy thoughts will keep you optimistic, which is fine in its proper place, but ignoring reality leads to more pain. Try talking to the woman who wouldn't accept that she was going blind and kept driving - until she drove off the road and ended up killing her daughter. Accepting that you can't do some things is part of the process of getting on with your life.
There are the same people who have to accept
Exactly.
In order: Yes, no, yes. You may have a legal obligation to inform me of the change (which seems reasonable), and it may be good PR to give me back my money, but there's no legal obligation to do so. Unless, of course, you knew about my allergy ahead of time and this was a way to defraud me, the discount card says "peanut free", or something else like that.