Not necessarily. This is always the argument used by anti-taxers.. "I could have spent that money" blah blah.. ignoring the benefit that they get from the tax revenue. Everyone assumes that they get zero benefit from taxes, then they bitch when taxes are cut and services go out the door with them.
Actually I'm willing to admit I get some useful services out of my tax money. The worthless services outnumber the good though. I take a look at the latest Federal Transportation bill with 6,000 pork barel projects, including a bridge in Alaska that no one wants, and I have to say there are better things to spend my money on. Then I look at my local news and find out that after using my tax money to build a road our local transportation officials want to turn the thing into a toll road so they can charge me more. If a private company want to fund a toll road, great. But to double tax me like that is offensive.
The gas tax has morphed from 3 cents per gallon in 1956 to 18.4 cents today. Far from being a user fee for road travelers, the Highway Trust Fund pays for museums, bus stops, bike trails, and mass-transit boondoggles all over the country. Why don't we repair our bridges before building hiking trails?
Actually pothole repair probably would have been on McGreevey's platform in New Jersey, if he had run for re-election. There was a lot of publicity around pothole repair in the 03-04 winter. In places where roads are pretty much maxed out, repairing roads is an issue.
As a local issue, potholes can be winner. But as a federal issue it isn't sexy. Even locally it's a big snore unless it's a major problem. And why has it become a major problem? Because it wasn't worth fixing the problems until they became major. So until things are so bad that everyone's complaining politicians will spend that money on new projects, not on infrastructure.
But, what's your point? Gas taxes should be cut and the transportation system goes to shit?
How about a moratorium on new projects until some of the infrastructure is repaired? How about a removal of pork from appropriation bills? Cut my gas taxes and the government has less to waste. The're already lettting things go to shit, this just prevents them from fiddling while the city burns.
This article points out that you're comparing apples to oranges too:
But profits can't be judged by dollar amounts alone. What counts is the percentage of revenues those profits represent. "Our numbers are huge because the scale of our industry is huge," Exxon CEO Lee Raymond tried, probably in vain, to explain during last week's big Senate hearing on oil company profits. Exxon's profits last quarter amounted to 9.8 cents for every dollar of sales. Is that obscene? Well, it was more profitable than Shell (which netted 7.8 cents of each dollar of revenue) or Chevron (6.6 cents) or BP (4.6 cents). But compared to Coca-Cola (21.2 cents), Bank of America (28.3 cents), or Microsoft (33.2 cents), it was nothing to write home about.
Oil companies invest billions. getting a billion (or even 100 billion) isn't that much. The government, on the other hand has "made" $2.2 trillion on gas taxes. Thats money you and I could have spent elsewhere.
The government doesn't have enough to maintain roads? That's because the so called transportation money goes elsewhere - even money spent on transportation is more likely to go to new projects as that gets better visibility. Repairing roads isn't sexy and it doesn't get you votes.
I suppose it comes down to the whole "slippery slope" idea. First you take my sandwitch, then my Thanksgiving turkey, then my kitchen, then my house.... Where does it end? To a certain degree that's already ocurring - most people think the government has a "right" to the money they take from us.
No you don't. You have to ignore the fact that your applicant is from Africa. This is how America behaves, and it works much better than the french system.
It may work better but it's not perfect. There are people who feel that certain people get hired because of their skin, and enough of this happens to keep them validated. I remember working with one incompetent person and being told that he couldn't be fired because they were afraid of a lawsuit. There needs to be a middle ground.
Now I agree that America's solution is better than France's. Or at least more fair. But you are denying me my freedom of choice in order to preserve someone else right to employment. I don't think one right should be abrogated for the other. At least in theory.
Ideally we should grow as a society until the point that race based considerations never ocur to us. Then the laws will be unnecessary and no one's rights are denied in favor of another's.
I can give you two answers with decent justification for both.
Yes, the government is supposed to be nondiscrimanatory - "Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité" is the motto of France after all. The fact that the French government has let this continue as long as it has is shameful.
No. I have the right to hire who I want right? At least if it's my company, and if someone delegates that responsibility to me, then they feel I can properly represent their wishes. And if I don't like you for any reason, shouldn't I have a right? If I had to choose between two equally competent white people and I picked the one I liked over the guy who rubbed me wrong it wouldn't be discrimination. But if the guy was black....
To be honest some sort of mix of the two is probably the best, but I don't think there can ever be a perfect solution.
A lot are native born French from imigran parent/grandparents. They were brought in originally for the low end jobs that the citizens thought themselves above (sounds like the Mexican/central american invasion here in the U.S.). They stayed and had kids that became more and more alienated from the culture. And lets admit it - there are certain elements who delibrately encouraged that alienation for their own purposes.
First off unemployment only counts the employable, not children and elderly. So the 50% means 50% of those who could work, not 50% of the entire population.
Okay they don't have to live on the streets, they live in self imposed ghettos instead. I don't consider that ideal either.
Well theres a debate about whether property is a natural law of not. Glenn Roberts points out that Jefferson was heavily influenced by John Locke:
It was Locke who wrote that under the law of nature, every man has "a power not only to preserve his property--that is, his life, liberty and estate, against the injuries and attempts of other men, but to judge of and punish the breaches of that law in others." Life and liberty, as well as owned land, were all considered property in Locke's view, and his text spells out very clearly the concept of natural property rights entitled to all men.
Origianlly the Declaration of Independence said "Life, Liberty and the ownership of property". They changed it before they sent it out. Property rights are strengthened in the 4th and 5th amendments, although courts have have a mockery out of them.
Amen. At a certain point it all comes down to personal responsibility. The state cannot be responsible for you choosing to screw up you life. To a certain extent (child protective services comes to mind) it will try to keep you from screwing up your kids, but there's a lot you can do within the framework of the law.
I thought it had to do with two kids trying to hide out in an electrical substation and their subsequent electrocution? Isn't this a type of suicide through stupidity? The fact that they were hiding from the police is of lesser importance. The police didn't kill them. The police didn't make them hide where they did. All the police were trying to do was crack down on the rampant drug trade. (mind you drugs should be legal, but that's another subject altogether)
The deaths are an excuse, just as Rodney King was an excuse.
How is it that certain minorities feel that to succed at school means you're betraying your culture? In America the black accuse acedimic achievers of being "oreos" (black on the outside, white on the inside). In Germany, the Turkish imigrants thought schooling wasted time you could be helping out the family. In France the arabs don't study... And then they complain that they can't get ahead!
Equality of oportunity does not mean equality of outcome.
Where did this come from? France has some serious labor laws that doesn't allow child labor/12 hour days. Shoot they have a mandatory 35 hour work week. They make it so dificult to fire someone that no one wants to hire anyone - if you make a mistake there's very little remedy.
Part of it is that certain people in their community "encourage" them not to assimilate. That's the whole problem with multi-culturalism. If you don't assimilate, you don't get the same advanatages as the mainstream. Look, it's fine to be proud of your own culture and roots, but if it prevents you from working in the "normal" society then you're going to be segregated. It's like certain elements of black culture claiming that doing well at school is "acting white". You think those kids who remain "authentic" to their race are going to be employable?
I don't disagree. I merely said that one can understand the frustration. However, certain forces are taking advantage of that frustration and turning it to their own purpposes. Do you really think there's be a violent uprising if it wasn't being preached to the discontented youth that this is the only thing they can do?
But lets also realize this - this has been going on at a low level for a long time now - cars have been burnt every night for years. Just never as much as now. The French government has chosen to ignore it until now. Letting a sore fester is a good way to get blood poisoning.
Actually, from what I've read, unemployment is more like 50%. Add to it that there is little or no represntation of the north african imigrant in the upper echelons of government, and it's understandable why there's dissatisfaction.
This is a very good article on some of the reasons behind the rioting: A French War of the Worlds
The author has lived in France for several decades and this is what he says:
In a nation that insists immigrants accept the monolithic secular French culture, a great divide has grown. Part of it is the insular nature of Islamic North African culture. But much of it is that "French" France still rejects its North African countrymen.
They don't get good jobs or decent financial opportunities. Their unemployment rate is often as high as 50%. There isn't a single Frenchman or Frenchwoman of North African origin (or black, for that matter) in the cabinet, and only a handful hold any position of rank in the civil and commercial bureaucracy. There are virtually no black or Arab anchors on French TV, or North African cultural presence in the theater or cinema.
This has further angered the Muslim population, driving it deeper into its own ghetto mentality and to communal violence. When I first came to France 50 years ago, North African immigrants spoke Maghreb Arabic, but their French-born children proudly spoke French. Today, the beurs, the young French-born generation of North Africans, talk to each other in Arabic.
Crud, I'd have to look - I saw a program on the discovery chanel that talked about them. Here we go: this link has some info. As for the AmerInd islands, I'm not sure if they have anything to do with the floating island - I just remember being enamored with the idea of creating my own island when I was a kid... Here's some info on those.
Actually, there are some islands in the South Pacific that were built - archeologists don't know how the primative civilizations carted the huge stones out to build the islands.
There was an American Indian tribe that built individual island in a lake. They''s weave a large mat or reeds and pile dirt on them. The dirt would sift through the reeds and eventually an island would form.
Technology is not the answer to every problem. Remember all those silly computer labs back in high schools in the '80s? Did anyone get any real educational value out of them?
I met my husband thanks to one of them - I was running the school's BBS and he was hacking it!
Slashdot Mirror
They are so cute! I want one!!!!
Phew, I feel better now.
What were they hauling? I have a friend who drives a refrigerated semi and he has to run the engine to keep the cargo frozen.
Actually I'm willing to admit I get some useful services out of my tax money. The worthless services outnumber the good though. I take a look at the latest Federal Transportation bill with 6,000 pork barel projects, including a bridge in Alaska that no one wants, and I have to say there are better things to spend my money on. Then I look at my local news and find out that after using my tax money to build a road our local transportation officials want to turn the thing into a toll road so they can charge me more. If a private company want to fund a toll road, great. But to double tax me like that is offensive.
If we eliminated just some of the government waste we could do so much more. The American Society of Civil Engineers give our nation's infrastructure a failing grade. And yet money is poured into new projects. Acording to the citizens against government waste:
The gas tax has morphed from 3 cents per gallon in 1956 to 18.4 cents today. Far from being a user fee for road travelers, the Highway Trust Fund pays for museums, bus stops, bike trails, and mass-transit boondoggles all over the country. Why don't we repair our bridges before building hiking trails?
Actually pothole repair probably would have been on McGreevey's platform in New Jersey, if he had run for re-election. There was a lot of publicity around pothole repair in the 03-04 winter. In places where roads are pretty much maxed out, repairing roads is an issue. As a local issue, potholes can be winner. But as a federal issue it isn't sexy. Even locally it's a big snore unless it's a major problem. And why has it become a major problem? Because it wasn't worth fixing the problems until they became major. So until things are so bad that everyone's complaining politicians will spend that money on new projects, not on infrastructure.
But, what's your point? Gas taxes should be cut and the transportation system goes to shit?
How about a moratorium on new projects until some of the infrastructure is repaired? How about a removal of pork from appropriation bills? Cut my gas taxes and the government has less to waste. The're already lettting things go to shit, this just prevents them from fiddling while the city burns.
But profits can't be judged by dollar amounts alone. What counts is the percentage of revenues those profits represent. "Our numbers are huge because the scale of our industry is huge," Exxon CEO Lee Raymond tried, probably in vain, to explain during last week's big Senate hearing on oil company profits. Exxon's profits last quarter amounted to 9.8 cents for every dollar of sales. Is that obscene? Well, it was more profitable than Shell (which netted 7.8 cents of each dollar of revenue) or Chevron (6.6 cents) or BP (4.6 cents). But compared to Coca-Cola (21.2 cents), Bank of America (28.3 cents), or Microsoft (33.2 cents), it was nothing to write home about.
Oil companies invest billions. getting a billion (or even 100 billion) isn't that much. The government, on the other hand has "made" $2.2 trillion on gas taxes. Thats money you and I could have spent elsewhere.
The government doesn't have enough to maintain roads? That's because the so called transportation money goes elsewhere - even money spent on transportation is more likely to go to new projects as that gets better visibility. Repairing roads isn't sexy and it doesn't get you votes.
Is the tax we pay per gallon of gas. The U.S. government has made more money on gas taxes than the oil companies have, even with "windfall profits".
I suppose it comes down to the whole "slippery slope" idea. First you take my sandwitch, then my Thanksgiving turkey, then my kitchen, then my house.... Where does it end? To a certain degree that's already ocurring - most people think the government has a "right" to the money they take from us.
It may work better but it's not perfect. There are people who feel that certain people get hired because of their skin, and enough of this happens to keep them validated. I remember working with one incompetent person and being told that he couldn't be fired because they were afraid of a lawsuit. There needs to be a middle ground.
Now I agree that America's solution is better than France's. Or at least more fair. But you are denying me my freedom of choice in order to preserve someone else right to employment. I don't think one right should be abrogated for the other. At least in theory.
Ideally we should grow as a society until the point that race based considerations never ocur to us. Then the laws will be unnecessary and no one's rights are denied in favor of another's.
Yes, the government is supposed to be nondiscrimanatory - "Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité" is the motto of France after all. The fact that the French government has let this continue as long as it has is shameful.
No. I have the right to hire who I want right? At least if it's my company, and if someone delegates that responsibility to me, then they feel I can properly represent their wishes. And if I don't like you for any reason, shouldn't I have a right? If I had to choose between two equally competent white people and I picked the one I liked over the guy who rubbed me wrong it wouldn't be discrimination. But if the guy was black....
To be honest some sort of mix of the two is probably the best, but I don't think there can ever be a perfect solution.
A lot are native born French from imigran parent/grandparents. They were brought in originally for the low end jobs that the citizens thought themselves above (sounds like the Mexican/central american invasion here in the U.S.). They stayed and had kids that became more and more alienated from the culture. And lets admit it - there are certain elements who delibrately encouraged that alienation for their own purposes.
Okay they don't have to live on the streets, they live in self imposed ghettos instead. I don't consider that ideal either.
It was Locke who wrote that under the law of nature, every man has "a power not only to preserve his property--that is, his life, liberty and estate, against the injuries and attempts of other men, but to judge of and punish the breaches of that law in others." Life and liberty, as well as owned land, were all considered property in Locke's view, and his text spells out very clearly the concept of natural property rights entitled to all men.
Additional information can be found:
William McGurn's essay on the Declaration
Origianlly the Declaration of Independence said "Life, Liberty and the ownership of property". They changed it before they sent it out. Property rights are strengthened in the 4th and 5th amendments, although courts have have a mockery out of them.
Amen. At a certain point it all comes down to personal responsibility. The state cannot be responsible for you choosing to screw up you life. To a certain extent (child protective services comes to mind) it will try to keep you from screwing up your kids, but there's a lot you can do within the framework of the law.
The deaths are an excuse, just as Rodney King was an excuse.
Equality of oportunity does not mean equality of outcome.
Where did this come from? France has some serious labor laws that doesn't allow child labor/12 hour days. Shoot they have a mandatory 35 hour work week. They make it so dificult to fire someone that no one wants to hire anyone - if you make a mistake there's very little remedy.
Part of it is that certain people in their community "encourage" them not to assimilate. That's the whole problem with multi-culturalism. If you don't assimilate, you don't get the same advanatages as the mainstream. Look, it's fine to be proud of your own culture and roots, but if it prevents you from working in the "normal" society then you're going to be segregated. It's like certain elements of black culture claiming that doing well at school is "acting white". You think those kids who remain "authentic" to their race are going to be employable?
But lets also realize this - this has been going on at a low level for a long time now - cars have been burnt every night for years. Just never as much as now. The French government has chosen to ignore it until now. Letting a sore fester is a good way to get blood poisoning.
Actually, from what I've read, unemployment is more like 50%. Add to it that there is little or no represntation of the north african imigrant in the upper echelons of government, and it's understandable why there's dissatisfaction.
A French War of the Worlds
The author has lived in France for several decades and this is what he says:
In a nation that insists immigrants accept the monolithic secular French culture, a great divide has grown. Part of it is the insular nature of Islamic North African culture. But much of it is that "French" France still rejects its North African countrymen.
They don't get good jobs or decent financial opportunities. Their unemployment rate is often as high as 50%. There isn't a single Frenchman or Frenchwoman of North African origin (or black, for that matter) in the cabinet, and only a handful hold any position of rank in the civil and commercial bureaucracy. There are virtually no black or Arab anchors on French TV, or North African cultural presence in the theater or cinema.
This has further angered the Muslim population, driving it deeper into its own ghetto mentality and to communal violence. When I first came to France 50 years ago, North African immigrants spoke Maghreb Arabic, but their French-born children proudly spoke French. Today, the beurs, the young French-born generation of North Africans, talk to each other in Arabic.
Crud, I'd have to look - I saw a program on the discovery chanel that talked about them. Here we go: this link has some info. As for the AmerInd islands, I'm not sure if they have anything to do with the floating island - I just remember being enamored with the idea of creating my own island when I was a kid... Here's some info on those.
There was an American Indian tribe that built individual island in a lake. They''s weave a large mat or reeds and pile dirt on them. The dirt would sift through the reeds and eventually an island would form.
"There are plenty of services where you can download music and movies legally. This is not one of them." Yikes!
I met my husband thanks to one of them - I was running the school's BBS and he was hacking it!
The environmentalists have sued to shutdown windfarms. Again, there is a fringe movement that is against anything positive to humans .