So does this mean you can't tell me the section of the Wolff, Zacharias, and Masterson paper that says they're comparing the "richest" and "poorest" in each category?
Sigh, it's hard having a discussion with someone who can't even look up terms. You notice the paper uses the term "wealth disparity" and references Gini coefficients. If you bothered to look up either term you'd see that both are measures of the difference in wealth between the richest and poorest. How can you have a minor in economics and not know this? We covered it in Econ 101. Seriously, where did you got to school? I want to be sure to never hire anyone from there.
As to anything else, go back to my earlier posts and actually answer the questions I asked you. Once you've done that, I'm happy to move forward on the topic in general. If nothing else it should force you to learn enough so you can actually have a moderately informed discussion on the topic.
Or would you rather just nag me about mis-placed hyphens?
You're posting on the internet. How hard is it to actually look up the terms you use or read? Why would you use the term "ad hominem" if you don't know what it means? How can you expect to understand any of a discussion of "wealth disparity" if you haven't looked up the term to see what it means in economics? This is what, the 15th post in a discussion about wealth disparity and the economy where you're arguing a position on it, and you don't even know what it is. You seem truly hopeless.
religion and creationism belong to the realm of social sciences and humanities because of the political, historical, and philosophical contexts. Ignoring the world's largest religions and their impact on humanity because one doesn't "believe" in them is ignorant and small-minded. A "World Religions" course is 100% appropriate in public schools.
There's nothing stopping schools from teaching that now, and in fact, my public school did have a portion of our world history class devoted to religions of the world, mind you it was just a brief overview. We touched on several creation myths, for example.
I'm not suggesting that science courses be taught differently but rather changing the method by which we expose school children to the world around them. Moving Creationism away from the "hard" sciences seems to be the logical compromise for dealing with the faith versus science argument.
Except teaching creation myths and the modern creationist movement are completely different. The former is educational, if unscientific. The latter is simply an attack on certain parts of science largely from an uneducated or emotion/irrational perspective as well as one trying to create a religious bias in our educational system.
Wouldn't you prefer a well-rounded education that includes an objective perspective of religion, science, and the socio-political world? I would.
Frankly, no that isn't a high priority for me. Currently most students leaving high school don't even know what the scientific method is or how it is applied. They don't have a basic introduction to logic, or critical thinking, or the rhetorical method. In short, they're missing basic mental tools needed to learn more advanced concepts going forward and make rational decisions. I don't think we should be adding religion or politics into the curriculum until such a time as we have covered the basics, like the scientific method.
In the end, that's what education is all about.
With limited time, we have to make choices about what is taught. For too long those choices have been dominated by what is easy to teach and test. Anything that actually requires solving a problem (with the exception of math) has been cut out and we're left with an educational system devoted to rote memorization and regurgitation of factoids. Adding in memorization of religions and political ideas is not a reasonable solution. Most of the information is forgotten just as quickly as it is learned anyway. We need real reform and a push towards demonstrable use of the basics of rational thought, like science and logic, research skills and critical thinking. Once kids have those tools in their mental toolkit, we can tech them to apply them to specific topics and add more facts about the world.
If the new curriculum passes, he says he will insist that high-school biology textbooks point out specific aspects of the fossil record that, in his view, undermine the theory that all life on Earth is descended from primitive scraps of genetic material that first emerged in the primordial muck about 3.9 billion years ago
Depending on what those "specific aspects" are, this could in fact be actual, hard science in these textbooks.
Unlikely. Science isn't just a method of defending a belief, it's a formal method for forming a belief that is likely to be true. It is determining which of the scientific theories presented is the best working model. Unless the people making the assertion that these fossils falsify evolution started without having the initial premise that a biblical creation has to be valid, it isn't science. It is vaguely possible he had no opinion, followed the scientific method, and now thinks the preponderance of evidence for how abiogenesis occurred now favors a theory other than the prevailing one (which I might mention is not the theory of evolution anyway), but if that is the case then to be following the scientific method he has to have another theory he now thinks better fits the evidence. He has presented no such scientific theory that I know of.
Ergo, he is not presenting alternative science, but turning away from science.
Seems like all the ID-ists/Creationist are Anonymous Cowards - i wonder why that is? Just trolling or too embarrased to stand up and be counted?
Generally discussions like this get linked to on some other discussion board so all the crazies come out and argue, but since they've never been here before they don't have accounts.
In the end, it's all about education not being right or wrong. I wish both sides could understand that being educated and informed doesn't necessarily equate belief, endorsement, or apostasy.
Yes, lets also teach the flying spaghetti monster theories in science classes and let teach people about my belief that licking the floor for an hour will make you smarter in physical education. Lets introduce all sorts of absurd and unsupported ideas into all of our different courses, especially ones that have nothing to do with the subject. That doesn't take away any valuable time from learning useful things or in any way validate those ideas in the minds of students.
That kind of thinking led to the dark ages. Ignorance reigns amongst the absolutists.
This isn't about what people can believe or say, its what we include in the educational programs for kids. It's also about what the government is promoting with my tax dollars, you know the government explicitly prohibited from promoting any religion. If I start a cult can I get half an hour a day with your kids to educate them, paid for by tax dollars?
But I'm interested in a real evolutionist's answer to how critters like the bombardier beetle evolved/survived to live in their present state.
Basically, it's not that different from any other evolutionary process, like eyes, which we have all sorts of stages of in various animals. Bombardier beetles were used as an example by several creationist speakers and writers, but sadly they got a lot of their facts completely wrong in the process. Simple things like, that the three chemicals used aren't present or useful in other animals (they are and are common in many species other than the bombardier beetle). If you're actually curious a good explanation is available: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/bombardier.html. For that matter, it's a good site if you have any questions about the evolution versus creation debate as they go through most of the creationist talking points and explain the errors and misconceptions.
Evolutionists, ID'ers shouldn't be allowed to spew their propaganda in public schools. None of this is science just silly speculation to justify what they believe.
Belief based upon the results of the scientific method is called, "SCIENCE". Belief based upon anything else, is not.
For example of science "Water boils at 100c and freeze at 0c" this is scientific fact.
Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't based upon the conditions. Climb a really high mountain and try it and you'll have disproved that theory, which is why the scientific method adopts better and more accurate theories as more experiments are performed. Whatever the best theory to date is, is the one scientists believe is true. Anything else is pseudo science.
The origin of life or any such nonsense is just speculation. Did someone go back it time and video something? It isn't fact.
No, they came up with theories and tested them and the one most supported by the evidence using the scientific method is the leading scientific theory on that subject and what every rational person should believe until we come up with something better.
It isn't fact. People beliefs do not belong in school...
Outside of mathematics, nothing can be proved absolutely. It can just be supported by the evidence or not. It can be a belief decided upon by a formalized, objective, logical method (like the scientific method) or it can be decided by an illogical method and defended logically or illogically. Your equivocation is just another way of claiming science is no better than non-scientific methods. That's a fine belief, but it has jack to do with what should be taught in a science class. Hopefully, this attempt to undermine science will fail and the kids will not be as uneducated as you when they walk out of it.
I've never understood why religious folk have such a hard time with evolution. I mean, can't they just say "okay, fine, evolution is the process, and God is the architect". Far as I can see, that kind of solves it.
That's exactly what most religious folk do. The reason evolution is still an issue is because it is profitable and useful. The theory of evolution is no more threatening to christianity than the theory of heliocentrism is. The difference is, evolution is more complex and easier to confuse people about. So long as people can't see it as obvious, those people can be exploited by preachers and politicians who want power and money. They use it to make those people mad and feel attacked and to motivate those people to part with their cash and place their votes. The other reason it works is because a large part of the population does take it as pretty unassailable truth (why practically speaking it is) and hence fights back against people trying to teach kids something else, providing the press and anger and feelings of persecution. If they just laughed at the idiots, like we do when people tell us the earth is flat or the sun moves around the earth, it would not be a very good issue for profiting from. (Not that people don't profit pushing both those beliefs, they just have a smaller pool of suckers.)
What is this? The third time in a row you've changed the subject?
In order to stay on topic, all questions need to be addressed. Just ignoring the ones you don't have answers for or which are inconvenient is not changing the topic. You're the one trying to change it by introducing new business before the old is taken care of.
All of your questions were about things I didn't say, based on assumptions that aren't true...
No they weren't, but even if you thought they were you still have to address them and point out where you think the flaw in my premise is. Why is it that I have to educate you on how to conduct a logical discussion?
...or were supposedly rhetorical ad-hominem attacks like "Are you an idiot?" Out of curiosity, which school is it that advocates the ad-hominem approach you're so fond of?
Sigh. You don't even know what an ad hominem attack is. It's when you argue someone is wrong because of who they are. Calling someone an idiot or asking if they are an idiot is not an ad hominem attack. By the way, it isn't ad-hominem it's "ad hominem" or "argumentum ad hominem".
If you want any more of an answer you'll just have to read my original response again and hope it makes more sense to you the second time around.
You're pretty hopeless. You have opinions, but don't know enough to have informed ones. You don't seem to understand what wealth disparity even is, but you want to argue it is not important or whether it is increasing, as if it was even a question in any educated person's mind. You don't know what socialism is as an economic term and you make up absurd, off the cuff definitions that don't even make sense. You don't understand what the economic recovery plans are, let alone the merits of various plans. You don't seem to want to know, instead trying to start arguments about everything else. You keep bringing up, related but completely wrong peripheral items. Seriously, read a fricking book on the rhetorical method, one on logic, and one on critical thinking. Then, actually apply that knowledge in future discussions. Or you could continue making half-assed attempts to defend illogical opinions based upon emotional ideals and whatever facts you could come up with that sort of appear to support them if you ignore all the rest of the data and don't question the veracity of said facts. Gee, I wonder which you'll choose.
Sorry, answer my questions from my previous post and I'll respond to yours. Until then, we're not getting anywhere. I take it you did not have to learn the rhetorical method at the school that so miseducated you?
I'm bound to get modded a troll or flamebait or off-topic or something for this, but how is this different from pirating music?
Interestingly, one difference is this is commercial copyright infringement instead of noncommercial. Up until we had crazy laws passed in the 70's, this would have been illegal whereas downloading songs for personal use would not have been.
/. group-think says it's not theft and trots out a whole bunch of other self-justification about the evil RIAA and so forth, because you're "not depriving anyone of something physical", etc. It's the same, right?
Well, since you used "groupthink" in your post, you're probably a troll. That said, neither is stealing, both are copyright infringement. Interestingly, depending on the software in use and the songs in question, some people justify it based upon whether or not the copyright holder is a criminal cartel or trust convicted of abuse and which donates lots of money to politicians in order to influence our laws. I'm not saying the actions of infringers are just any more than I'm saying the actions of the criminal trusts are. I'm just pointing out that there are differences.
Is it different in this case because it's a small company doing it rather than a whole bunch of individuals? Does that mean it's okay if it's just me, but wrong if my company is doing it?
To some degree, yes. Part of copyright law is supposed to include the affect upon the market and commercial (a small company using it to profit) versus noncommercial (just you for private use) is a real difference and used to be a legal difference.
I hate the concept of red light cameras but I'm hating the concept of being t-boned even more.
Hmm, studies have fairly conclusively shown that the rate of accidents increases with the use of these cameras. Collisions up 29%-40%, collisions with injuries up 40%-50%.
If accidents are your concern, adjusting the timing of yellow lights can create measurable decreases. Red light cameras are not a solution to that problem.
First, I didn't say whether I thought income disparity was increasing or decreasing - I simply questioned whether you could name an economist who said it was increasing and that it increasing would be a problem.
To what end? It's a very, well known trend t the point that every economist is claiming it.
That said, I thought your list was kinda funny. Peter Wallison takes the stance completely opposite of you on regulation.
Indeed he does, of course these days he's also being paid to take that position by AEI. I threw him in mostly because if you are one of those people who only pays attention to biased right wing nutjobs I figured it would save a round of going back and finding one.
And if he's incorrect on deregulation, how can he be trusted about income disparity?
Sigh, are you still on that? Wealth disparity and income disparity are both increasing according to every study. Can you find any reputable study that says otherwise? I mean, this trend has been going on for decades. How can you claim to have any education in economics and not know this?
If you had even bothered to read the introduction of their paper
Are you really that big of an idiot? Seriously? They say it is decreasing for some subgroups, then go on to show that it is increasing overall for the population.
But it's almost irrelevant anyway, because the paper isn't measuring disparity between "rich" and "poor", but based on race, age, sex, marital status, education and some other factors along those lines.
Sigh. Wealth disparity is the difference between the richest and the poorest. They're breaking it down into the difference between the richest and poorest in certain segments of the population, such as just women or just hispanics.
I couldn't find the Folsom article you mentioned, but given his other work [elliottwave.com] I'm a little skeptical that he's the economic authority you're making him out to be.
Umm, he's a writer who writes a ton of articles about finance.
Ahh, but we're providing for the national defense by redistributing wealth.
That doesn't even make sense. Paying somebody for a service they provide doesn't fite[sic] the traditional definition of "redistributing wealth."
Is it your reading comprehension or your ability to reason that is so broken? Paying someone with tax dollars taken more from the wealthy then than the poor for a service they provide to both rich and poor, however, does fit the definition of wealth disparity. Think of it this way. Five guys go in on a pizza. The guy with the best paying job pays the most and the unemployed guy doesn't pay at all. Everyone eats the pizza. That's wealth redistribution.
Okay, I'll ask the question another way: what are the poor doing that they deserve to have their social services paid for by other people?
What are the wealthy doing to deserve being born with more money? This isn't even so much about what the poor deserve. It's about making the economic playing field even enough so that our economy does not collapse when too large a portion is born with nothing and has to go into debt immediately just to have a chance at advancement or to live a normal life.
Or, even better, why not just provide social services to everybody for free?
That is what is proposed. That's what socialism is, provided it is paid for with progressive taxation, like we have now. The problems being, we currently don't have enough socialism or progressive enough taxes for the playing field to be level and the economy to be stable, as we've been reducing the level of progressiveness of taxes for several decades now and it has imbalanced the system.
P.S. in a normal discussion between educated people, it is customary to actually answer the questions directed at you before moving on to other points. I asked you numerous questions in my last post and you answered none of them.
The progressiveness of the tax rate has, yes, has decreased. But,the amount of the taxes paid by the top 5% earners has increased dramatically and the percent of people not paying any taxes is now approaching 50%.
True, but I don't see why that is important. You understand how it is they're paying a greater share based upon a lower rate, don't you? It's because they've managed to acquire an even greater share of the wealth. That's not a good thing.
Looking at tax revenues collected, the system has become more progressive.
No it hasn't. It might appear that way if you look at twisted statistics put out by PR machines like "The American" but the truth is the system is less progressive, but the wealth has consolidated to a frightening and unstable level. There are a few places publishing numbers such as you describe. I suggest you look into the one you read those numbers from. REputable economists will no longer support trickle down theory, so PR firms have started publishing pieces that parrot just the info you mention in an attempt to mislead people and try to justify the absurdity. Reputable economic journals won't even publish that tripe.
But, being "born poor" does not necessitate staying in that state. If people grow up, get an education, work hard...they too CAN amass wealth, and own rental properties..etc.
This is called upward mobility. In general it is inversely related to wealth disparity. For example, without socialist educational programs, only the wealthier people can afford even basic schooling. Without assistance, few people can get a higher education and if they do they end up tens of thousands in debt to people who were born in more fortunate circumstances. In this way, people making the decision to better themselves earn money for the wealthy who aren't necessarily bettering themselves.
Take me as an example. I've been working technology startups for a long time. I am very intelligent and good at what I do. I take risks, get in on the ground floor and work long hours in exchange for stock options that sometimes are worth something and sometimes aren't. For every dollar I earn for myself with this hard and smart work, I earn several dollars for people who simply started out with the capital I need to get started. At the same time, I pay interest on a mortgage so I have a place to live, also a good financial decision, but making money for people who simply started out in a better position.
In a true meritocracy we'd have 100% inheritance taxes and all start equally and I wouldn't have to borrow to do either because I would have started life with an equal share. Not that I'm saying such inheritance taxes are a good idea, just that they are an example of a meritocracy that does a better job of motivating people. A compromise is progressive taxation and socialist programs to help level the playing field a little bit and give people the opportunity for upward mobility.
But, it can be overcome. I know it in the past, I've SEEN it done many times.
Sure it can. You can also make money playing the slots in Vegas. I've seen it happen many times. But you're a freaking idiot if you think the general trend will be for the casinos to lose money. Anecdotes about statistical outliers don't change the general trends, which is taxes that aren't progressive enough punish people so much for their initial station in life that people in general don't succeed just by being smart or working harder. When this happens, we see money consolidate into fewer and fewer hands, just as it has been.
LOL! You're really confused. Socialist countries have higher taxes because they need to pay for the services they provide. But having high taxes doesn't make a country socialist in and of itself.
No, that is one of the two measures of socialism. The other being where that money is spent. It's simple. If you tax a lot, but spend that money on things that benefit the wealthy instead of the poor or everyone, you're still not being socialist. If you tax everyone and spend that money equally, you're socialist, since you obviously are spending that money on something and the private sector could handle that market or industry otherwise.
The reverse is also true. Having low taxes doesn't make a country capitalist - it could just be an efficient socialist government..
Nope. That would be a hallmark of fascism.
You could have just said, "No, I can't name one."...It's almost like you changed the subject
Okay, you actually want names of economists: Edward N. Wolff, Ajit Zacharias, and Thomas Masterson a the Levy institute just published a paper showing the Gini was up to 6.2 as of 2004 (a drastic increase). Robert Folsom, just published an article on it the other day. Peter Wallison is a vert well known economist and he's been writing articles and giving interviews about this for a decade. Did you want more names?
No paying a Navy is providing national defense, which most people would concede is very much different than taking money from some people and giving it directly to other people for no reason at all.
I'm sorry, you just failed. Since when does a requirement of socialism have to be that the distribution is done for "no reason at all"!?! We could have private militaries and mercenaries provide for our national defense and that is the capitalist thing to do. To some extent, we do this already with Xe and the like. When we tax the people and provide it for all of society, that is socialism, just as taking over the healthcare market and providing it for all of society is.
Providing defense is in the constitution. Redistribution of wealth isn't.
Ahh, but we're providing for the national defense by redistributing wealth. That's both socialism and in the constitution. There are a lot of other things in the constitution too, and taxation is one of them.
At the very least, the Navy is providing a service, namely defending the country.
So? If we pay doctors to treat the ill via socialism instead of capitalism they are also providing a service to the country and helping to insure people have life and a chance to pursue happiness. That doesn't mean they aren't both socialism. What about public schools? What about fire departments? All socialism.
What service do you think poor people are providing that they deserve to get paid tax money for doing it?
Umm, who says we should hand cash to the poor? That's not socialism. Socialism is taxing the people to provide services and industries by the government, instead of by the private sector. Redistribution of wealth comes in when we tax the wealthy at higher rates than the poor in order to pay for shared services. That is to say, when we implement anything that isn't a tax as single sum everyone pays equally, we're redistributing wealth while implementing services. Of course nobody implements taxes as a flat sum anymore because it is not a sustainable economic system, We all tax based upon income and usually at a progressive rate because nobody wants to live in the hellhole countries that that result from other methods.
I minored in economics. That doesn't make me an "expert" by any means, but it's enough to know you're full of shit.
You got ripped off neighbor. You don't know wealth disparity is increasing in the US and then you say you minored in economics. Were you drunk the wh
Sure....but, equal opportunity does not meat equal results.
In the large scale, however, you can measure the equal opportunity of a system by the large scale trends that result. If you have a system where wealthy people tend to get wealthier and poor people tend to get poorer, regardless of how they acquired their wealth or lack thereof, isn't that an indication that it is the wealth itself that is leading to more wealth? Rent and mortgage payments, for example, are simply taxes on people born without wealth and paid to people born with wealth. It's clear if you're born wealthy with properties to rent and others are born poor and need a place to live, you'll gain money faster than them, all other things being equal. They have to be smarter than you and work harder by a significant degree to overcome this handicap.
So my question to you is, how do you determine what the appropriate level of progressiveness of taxes is to maximize how much of a meritocracy our system is? What factors do you look at to see if people are gaining wealth based upon their own merits or based upon the fact they just inherited wealth? If wealth is constantly consolidating what does that mean to you?
Obama does not make it harder for industry insiders to influence government by having them occupy various influential positions within the government.
You mean like putting RIAA lawyers into the second and third highest positions in the Justice Department?
No, I mean like ordering all executive branch officials to refuse to speak to lobbyists who have been working in the executive within the last 2 years, and refuse to participate in activities within the government directly related to any former job within the last 2 years.
Technically, the Attorney General is under orders from Obama to investigate and potentially fire both of these lawyers if they do not have a written waiver from Peter Orszag. Additionally, he is under orders to bring a civil suit against them.
I'd say seeing if that happens and if Obama makes sure it is enforced is serious test of the administration, especially since the Attorney General can hardly claim to be ignorant of either the executive order or the actions of his direct subordinates.
He announced policies to make lobbying much harder. As of last week, nothing appears to have been implemented yet.
Obama's second executive order in office (order 13490) ordered all executive branch employees to follow the new guidelines in all hiring. He's made about a dozen exceptions in his own hiring into the executive, but for everyone else it is implemented. Heck, it was implemented before he banned torture or addressed Guantanamo.
As has already been explained, Non-Sequential thinking is hard, you postulate double speed...
No, I state that the design offers the theoretical potential of double speed, under perfect conditions. Realistically it will always be less and in practice it is often more like 10%-30% for applications it helps at all. But we don't need to postulate anything. I'm describing the feature added over a year ago. It works just fine.
...how does this speed things up on multicore.
For some CPU bound applications, where the CPU's ability to process data to send to the GPU takes a significant amount of the processing, splitting that out into a separate process results in significant benefit. Since this was one common bottleneck profile, it worked well.
...so unless all cores are at 100% you have saved nothing
No, just one core (the one running the application's main process) has to be 100% and causing the bottleneck. Then, any portion of that thread which is dedicated to feeding the GPU can be split out. Usually the application hits another bottleneck anyway, but it does help. Don't you think it is a bit absurd to be arguing it will cause more overhead when it's been working and shown to provide improvement is benchmarks for quite a while now?
Having the OS and it's compilers change single threaded code into something that can take advantage of multiple cores *for you* is what Apple is working on.
Right. And each copy of Snow Leopard is going to come with a free unicorn.
Actually, it has been working in OS X since 10.5 for OpenGL applications. It's fairly limited right now, but it does provide real performance improvements for applications that were written without any foreknowledge that Apple was going to add such a feature.
"policies to make lobbying, especially by insiders, harder" - or to put it another way: "raise the barriers of entry to the lobbying system, thus protecting the well established lobbyists from competition by new entrants".
My you're jaded. Not without reason I suppose. Still, in this case, not so much. The executive always has a lot of turnover as administrations change. The new rules basically stop people from leaving the executive, then taking a job as a lobbyist trying to get things from their former coworkers. Given the turnover, I doubt this protects the established lobbyists very much, especially if their main value is they know the people who used to work there before Obama took office, but who no longer work there. It's hard to spin such rules as a negative.
"Does Obama become aware of this issue and if so, does he do something about it?"
The people always loved Stalin for as long as he lived. The sentiment was 'if only he was aware'.
Yes well, Obama will certainly be aware within a few weeks when the press starts mentioning this one, like he became aware of the FOIA issue, which has actually resulted in some progress. We have to give him a little time to be fair, don't you think?
Little did they know he himself set the quotas for the number of people to arrest/kill/torture and frequently awarded those who went above them.
An interesting choice of analogy, considering this is the president that stopped the torturing or people in our custody and ordered a halt to arrests that violate the constitution and/or our treaties.
We collect a smaller percentage of the income of the wealthiest people in comparison to the poorest. That's a decrease in socialism and an increase in capitalism. That's been the trend for a decade.
So you're arguing that the effective income tax rates decrease as income goes up? Check your tax tables again, bud.
You misunderstand. The progressiveness of taxes has decreased over the last two decades. That is to say, the amount MORE that the wealthy pay to balance out the wealth condensation has decreased. Today the highest tax brackets are about 35%, whereas in the 70's they were 70%. We've been moving to less progressive taxes resulting in more wealth accumulating in fewer hands more rapidly. That's less wealth distribution by taxation, i.e. more capitalist, less socialist.
"The poor getting poorer"? How do you figure? The disparity between "rich" and "poor" may have grown, but overall even the poor are better off here than they were.
Because disparity is what matters both for correlations with societal ills and for stability of markets. It's why poverty rarely appears in actual economics formulas. Real wealth is always relative. Sure more people have cell phones because the technology has gotten cheaper. How many people own their own homes comparatively? How many own property?
I'm going to say this loud and clear: THE US IS NOT A FUCKING DEMOCRACY!
Calm down captain semantics. The US is a republic, which is a representative democracy.
You can make a case for some form of "progressive" (oh dear lord how I hate that word... but that's another rant) tax rate, to an extent, by reason that those with more income and assets benefit more from certain government programs.
Economically speaking, the best system is a meritocracy. Since 100% inheritance taxes are not feasible at this time, we use progressive taxes to balance out wealth condensation so that we are stable. That is to say, wealth disparity does not tend to increase or decrease in general, but shifts based upon the merits of the individual... with the assumption that statistically speaking it comes out in the wash.
Over the last several decades we've drastically decreased the progressiveness of taxes so money has constantly been consolidating due to wealth condensation. Now the distribution is seriously imbalanced. Returning to levels we had 20 years ago would halt that constant shift and let individuals merits be the determining factor. Even so, that is likely not enough anymore since 50% of our nation has no net wealth anymore.
You can argue that some kind of estate tax is necessary to keep money in circulation, rather than being taken out and stored--I don't necessarily agree, but at least there's more reason behind that than "waah, he has stuff, and it's not fair!"
Your histrionics aside, you don't believe in everyone having an equal chance? Should we go back to a monarchy, where some people are born with political power greater than others too, since. After all, it's just people saying waah, he has rights, and it's not fair!"
!" Communism and overt socialism eventually fail every time, because of one simple fact: people don't like busting their asses for nothing.
Actually you're wrong. Extreme communism and extreme socialism fail every time. Extreme capitalism also fails every time. Stable economies are the ones that balance all three appropriately. Go ahead and look at the countries with completely flat taxes at low rates. Want to live in any of them? Yeah, didn't think so. The US has always been socialist to a significant extent and we were doing a lot better 20 years ago when we were more socialist. The real problem is education, where people thing socialist means either those commies or programs and services paid for by the government except all those ones we've had forever and don'
Why am I bothering? I wonder. You aren't open to learning and you don't seem to really know enough to understand what I'm writing. Is there any point?
That's a change in tax policy, not a change in economic system. Get a clue.
Economically speaking, capitalism is private ownership and control of markets and industries. Socialism, is collection of monies and resources collectively and government control of markets and industries. Collecting more in taxes and spending it on more social programs (school funding for our socialized school system, police for our socialized law enforcement, and to pay for socialized healthcare) is increased socialism. Further, more progressive taxes that take larger shares from the rich and redistribute them via government spending on such programs is increased socialism. The more progressive taxes are and the more are collected and redistributed, the more socialist our economy. The less collected and the less progressive the taxes, the less socialized our economy. We've been moving to less progressive taxes which is less money redistributed from the rich to the poor which is less socialist and more capitalist.
The wealthy are getting wealthier and the poor are getting poorer as a trend. Do you expect that to be sustainable and stable? Economists sure don't.
I don't even think you can name a real economist who thinks that's happening, much less one who thinks it's happening and thinks it's a problem.
Umm, okay. That's what happens when you only get your news from Fox and associates. Sorry, but pretty much every economist recognizes wealth disparity is increasing and the gini coefficient is increasing.
The government's job to do the will of the people within the limited range of powers granted to it in the Constitution. Taking from the rich and giving to the poor isn't one of those powers.
Sure it is. Taxing the people and establishing a navy instead of letting those who can afford it provide for their own defense with private militaries, for example.
Nice straw man. Back in real life, most "rich" people start off "poor", which according to you isn't even possible.
Bullshit. Statistically speaking, most rich people start rich. You haven't ever even opened an economics textbook, have you?
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So does this mean you can't tell me the section of the Wolff, Zacharias, and Masterson paper that says they're comparing the "richest" and "poorest" in each category?
Sigh, it's hard having a discussion with someone who can't even look up terms. You notice the paper uses the term "wealth disparity" and references Gini coefficients. If you bothered to look up either term you'd see that both are measures of the difference in wealth between the richest and poorest. How can you have a minor in economics and not know this? We covered it in Econ 101. Seriously, where did you got to school? I want to be sure to never hire anyone from there.
As to anything else, go back to my earlier posts and actually answer the questions I asked you. Once you've done that, I'm happy to move forward on the topic in general. If nothing else it should force you to learn enough so you can actually have a moderately informed discussion on the topic.
Or would you rather just nag me about mis-placed hyphens?
You're posting on the internet. How hard is it to actually look up the terms you use or read? Why would you use the term "ad hominem" if you don't know what it means? How can you expect to understand any of a discussion of "wealth disparity" if you haven't looked up the term to see what it means in economics? This is what, the 15th post in a discussion about wealth disparity and the economy where you're arguing a position on it, and you don't even know what it is. You seem truly hopeless.
religion and creationism belong to the realm of social sciences and humanities because of the political, historical, and philosophical contexts. Ignoring the world's largest religions and their impact on humanity because one doesn't "believe" in them is ignorant and small-minded. A "World Religions" course is 100% appropriate in public schools.
There's nothing stopping schools from teaching that now, and in fact, my public school did have a portion of our world history class devoted to religions of the world, mind you it was just a brief overview. We touched on several creation myths, for example.
I'm not suggesting that science courses be taught differently but rather changing the method by which we expose school children to the world around them. Moving Creationism away from the "hard" sciences seems to be the logical compromise for dealing with the faith versus science argument.
Except teaching creation myths and the modern creationist movement are completely different. The former is educational, if unscientific. The latter is simply an attack on certain parts of science largely from an uneducated or emotion/irrational perspective as well as one trying to create a religious bias in our educational system.
Wouldn't you prefer a well-rounded education that includes an objective perspective of religion, science, and the socio-political world? I would.
Frankly, no that isn't a high priority for me. Currently most students leaving high school don't even know what the scientific method is or how it is applied. They don't have a basic introduction to logic, or critical thinking, or the rhetorical method. In short, they're missing basic mental tools needed to learn more advanced concepts going forward and make rational decisions. I don't think we should be adding religion or politics into the curriculum until such a time as we have covered the basics, like the scientific method.
In the end, that's what education is all about.
With limited time, we have to make choices about what is taught. For too long those choices have been dominated by what is easy to teach and test. Anything that actually requires solving a problem (with the exception of math) has been cut out and we're left with an educational system devoted to rote memorization and regurgitation of factoids. Adding in memorization of religions and political ideas is not a reasonable solution. Most of the information is forgotten just as quickly as it is learned anyway. We need real reform and a push towards demonstrable use of the basics of rational thought, like science and logic, research skills and critical thinking. Once kids have those tools in their mental toolkit, we can tech them to apply them to specific topics and add more facts about the world.
If the new curriculum passes, he says he will insist that high-school biology textbooks point out specific aspects of the fossil record that, in his view, undermine the theory that all life on Earth is descended from primitive scraps of genetic material that first emerged in the primordial muck about 3.9 billion years ago
Depending on what those "specific aspects" are, this could in fact be actual, hard science in these textbooks.
Unlikely. Science isn't just a method of defending a belief, it's a formal method for forming a belief that is likely to be true. It is determining which of the scientific theories presented is the best working model. Unless the people making the assertion that these fossils falsify evolution started without having the initial premise that a biblical creation has to be valid, it isn't science. It is vaguely possible he had no opinion, followed the scientific method, and now thinks the preponderance of evidence for how abiogenesis occurred now favors a theory other than the prevailing one (which I might mention is not the theory of evolution anyway), but if that is the case then to be following the scientific method he has to have another theory he now thinks better fits the evidence. He has presented no such scientific theory that I know of.
Ergo, he is not presenting alternative science, but turning away from science.
Seems like all the ID-ists/Creationist are Anonymous Cowards - i wonder why that is? Just trolling or too embarrased to stand up and be counted?
Generally discussions like this get linked to on some other discussion board so all the crazies come out and argue, but since they've never been here before they don't have accounts.
In the end, it's all about education not being right or wrong. I wish both sides could understand that being educated and informed doesn't necessarily equate belief, endorsement, or apostasy.
Yes, lets also teach the flying spaghetti monster theories in science classes and let teach people about my belief that licking the floor for an hour will make you smarter in physical education. Lets introduce all sorts of absurd and unsupported ideas into all of our different courses, especially ones that have nothing to do with the subject. That doesn't take away any valuable time from learning useful things or in any way validate those ideas in the minds of students.
That kind of thinking led to the dark ages. Ignorance reigns amongst the absolutists.
This isn't about what people can believe or say, its what we include in the educational programs for kids. It's also about what the government is promoting with my tax dollars, you know the government explicitly prohibited from promoting any religion. If I start a cult can I get half an hour a day with your kids to educate them, paid for by tax dollars?
But I'm interested in a real evolutionist's answer to how critters like the bombardier beetle evolved/survived to live in their present state.
Basically, it's not that different from any other evolutionary process, like eyes, which we have all sorts of stages of in various animals. Bombardier beetles were used as an example by several creationist speakers and writers, but sadly they got a lot of their facts completely wrong in the process. Simple things like, that the three chemicals used aren't present or useful in other animals (they are and are common in many species other than the bombardier beetle). If you're actually curious a good explanation is available: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/bombardier.html. For that matter, it's a good site if you have any questions about the evolution versus creation debate as they go through most of the creationist talking points and explain the errors and misconceptions.
Evolutionists, ID'ers shouldn't be allowed to spew their propaganda in public schools. None of this is science just silly speculation to justify what they believe.
Belief based upon the results of the scientific method is called, "SCIENCE". Belief based upon anything else, is not.
For example of science "Water boils at 100c and freeze at 0c" this is scientific fact.
Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't based upon the conditions. Climb a really high mountain and try it and you'll have disproved that theory, which is why the scientific method adopts better and more accurate theories as more experiments are performed. Whatever the best theory to date is, is the one scientists believe is true. Anything else is pseudo science.
The origin of life or any such nonsense is just speculation. Did someone go back it time and video something? It isn't fact.
No, they came up with theories and tested them and the one most supported by the evidence using the scientific method is the leading scientific theory on that subject and what every rational person should believe until we come up with something better.
It isn't fact. People beliefs do not belong in school...
Outside of mathematics, nothing can be proved absolutely. It can just be supported by the evidence or not. It can be a belief decided upon by a formalized, objective, logical method (like the scientific method) or it can be decided by an illogical method and defended logically or illogically. Your equivocation is just another way of claiming science is no better than non-scientific methods. That's a fine belief, but it has jack to do with what should be taught in a science class. Hopefully, this attempt to undermine science will fail and the kids will not be as uneducated as you when they walk out of it.
I've never understood why religious folk have such a hard time with evolution. I mean, can't they just say "okay, fine, evolution is the process, and God is the architect". Far as I can see, that kind of solves it.
That's exactly what most religious folk do. The reason evolution is still an issue is because it is profitable and useful. The theory of evolution is no more threatening to christianity than the theory of heliocentrism is. The difference is, evolution is more complex and easier to confuse people about. So long as people can't see it as obvious, those people can be exploited by preachers and politicians who want power and money. They use it to make those people mad and feel attacked and to motivate those people to part with their cash and place their votes. The other reason it works is because a large part of the population does take it as pretty unassailable truth (why practically speaking it is) and hence fights back against people trying to teach kids something else, providing the press and anger and feelings of persecution. If they just laughed at the idiots, like we do when people tell us the earth is flat or the sun moves around the earth, it would not be a very good issue for profiting from. (Not that people don't profit pushing both those beliefs, they just have a smaller pool of suckers.)
What is this? The third time in a row you've changed the subject?
In order to stay on topic, all questions need to be addressed. Just ignoring the ones you don't have answers for or which are inconvenient is not changing the topic. You're the one trying to change it by introducing new business before the old is taken care of.
All of your questions were about things I didn't say, based on assumptions that aren't true...
No they weren't, but even if you thought they were you still have to address them and point out where you think the flaw in my premise is. Why is it that I have to educate you on how to conduct a logical discussion?
...or were supposedly rhetorical ad-hominem attacks like "Are you an idiot?" Out of curiosity, which school is it that advocates the ad-hominem approach you're so fond of?
Sigh. You don't even know what an ad hominem attack is. It's when you argue someone is wrong because of who they are. Calling someone an idiot or asking if they are an idiot is not an ad hominem attack. By the way, it isn't ad-hominem it's "ad hominem" or "argumentum ad hominem".
If you want any more of an answer you'll just have to read my original response again and hope it makes more sense to you the second time around.
You're pretty hopeless. You have opinions, but don't know enough to have informed ones. You don't seem to understand what wealth disparity even is, but you want to argue it is not important or whether it is increasing, as if it was even a question in any educated person's mind. You don't know what socialism is as an economic term and you make up absurd, off the cuff definitions that don't even make sense. You don't understand what the economic recovery plans are, let alone the merits of various plans. You don't seem to want to know, instead trying to start arguments about everything else. You keep bringing up, related but completely wrong peripheral items. Seriously, read a fricking book on the rhetorical method, one on logic, and one on critical thinking. Then, actually apply that knowledge in future discussions. Or you could continue making half-assed attempts to defend illogical opinions based upon emotional ideals and whatever facts you could come up with that sort of appear to support them if you ignore all the rest of the data and don't question the veracity of said facts. Gee, I wonder which you'll choose.
Sorry, answer my questions from my previous post and I'll respond to yours. Until then, we're not getting anywhere. I take it you did not have to learn the rhetorical method at the school that so miseducated you?
I'm bound to get modded a troll or flamebait or off-topic or something for this, but how is this different from pirating music?
Interestingly, one difference is this is commercial copyright infringement instead of noncommercial. Up until we had crazy laws passed in the 70's, this would have been illegal whereas downloading songs for personal use would not have been.
Well, since you used "groupthink" in your post, you're probably a troll. That said, neither is stealing, both are copyright infringement. Interestingly, depending on the software in use and the songs in question, some people justify it based upon whether or not the copyright holder is a criminal cartel or trust convicted of abuse and which donates lots of money to politicians in order to influence our laws. I'm not saying the actions of infringers are just any more than I'm saying the actions of the criminal trusts are. I'm just pointing out that there are differences.
Is it different in this case because it's a small company doing it rather than a whole bunch of individuals? Does that mean it's okay if it's just me, but wrong if my company is doing it?
To some degree, yes. Part of copyright law is supposed to include the affect upon the market and commercial (a small company using it to profit) versus noncommercial (just you for private use) is a real difference and used to be a legal difference.
I hate the concept of red light cameras but I'm hating the concept of being t-boned even more.
Hmm, studies have fairly conclusively shown that the rate of accidents increases with the use of these cameras. Collisions up 29%-40%, collisions with injuries up 40%-50%.
If accidents are your concern, adjusting the timing of yellow lights can create measurable decreases. Red light cameras are not a solution to that problem.
First, I didn't say whether I thought income disparity was increasing or decreasing - I simply questioned whether you could name an economist who said it was increasing and that it increasing would be a problem.
To what end? It's a very, well known trend t the point that every economist is claiming it.
That said, I thought your list was kinda funny. Peter Wallison takes the stance completely opposite of you on regulation.
Indeed he does, of course these days he's also being paid to take that position by AEI. I threw him in mostly because if you are one of those people who only pays attention to biased right wing nutjobs I figured it would save a round of going back and finding one.
And if he's incorrect on deregulation, how can he be trusted about income disparity?
Sigh, are you still on that? Wealth disparity and income disparity are both increasing according to every study. Can you find any reputable study that says otherwise? I mean, this trend has been going on for decades. How can you claim to have any education in economics and not know this?
If you had even bothered to read the introduction of their paper
Are you really that big of an idiot? Seriously? They say it is decreasing for some subgroups, then go on to show that it is increasing overall for the population.
But it's almost irrelevant anyway, because the paper isn't measuring disparity between "rich" and "poor", but based on race, age, sex, marital status, education and some other factors along those lines.
Sigh. Wealth disparity is the difference between the richest and the poorest. They're breaking it down into the difference between the richest and poorest in certain segments of the population, such as just women or just hispanics.
I couldn't find the Folsom article you mentioned, but given his other work [elliottwave.com] I'm a little skeptical that he's the economic authority you're making him out to be.
Umm, he's a writer who writes a ton of articles about finance.
Ahh, but we're providing for the national defense by redistributing wealth.
That doesn't even make sense. Paying somebody for a service they provide doesn't fite[sic] the traditional definition of "redistributing wealth."
Is it your reading comprehension or your ability to reason that is so broken? Paying someone with tax dollars taken more from the wealthy then than the poor for a service they provide to both rich and poor, however, does fit the definition of wealth disparity. Think of it this way. Five guys go in on a pizza. The guy with the best paying job pays the most and the unemployed guy doesn't pay at all. Everyone eats the pizza. That's wealth redistribution.
Okay, I'll ask the question another way: what are the poor doing that they deserve to have their social services paid for by other people?
What are the wealthy doing to deserve being born with more money? This isn't even so much about what the poor deserve. It's about making the economic playing field even enough so that our economy does not collapse when too large a portion is born with nothing and has to go into debt immediately just to have a chance at advancement or to live a normal life.
Or, even better, why not just provide social services to everybody for free?
That is what is proposed. That's what socialism is, provided it is paid for with progressive taxation, like we have now. The problems being, we currently don't have enough socialism or progressive enough taxes for the playing field to be level and the economy to be stable, as we've been reducing the level of progressiveness of taxes for several decades now and it has imbalanced the system.
P.S. in a normal discussion between educated people, it is customary to actually answer the questions directed at you before moving on to other points. I asked you numerous questions in my last post and you answered none of them.
The progressiveness of the tax rate has, yes, has decreased. But,the amount of the taxes paid by the top 5% earners has increased dramatically and the percent of people not paying any taxes is now approaching 50%.
True, but I don't see why that is important. You understand how it is they're paying a greater share based upon a lower rate, don't you? It's because they've managed to acquire an even greater share of the wealth. That's not a good thing.
Looking at tax revenues collected, the system has become more progressive.
No it hasn't. It might appear that way if you look at twisted statistics put out by PR machines like "The American" but the truth is the system is less progressive, but the wealth has consolidated to a frightening and unstable level. There are a few places publishing numbers such as you describe. I suggest you look into the one you read those numbers from. REputable economists will no longer support trickle down theory, so PR firms have started publishing pieces that parrot just the info you mention in an attempt to mislead people and try to justify the absurdity. Reputable economic journals won't even publish that tripe.
But, being "born poor" does not necessitate staying in that state. If people grow up, get an education, work hard...they too CAN amass wealth, and own rental properties..etc.
This is called upward mobility. In general it is inversely related to wealth disparity. For example, without socialist educational programs, only the wealthier people can afford even basic schooling. Without assistance, few people can get a higher education and if they do they end up tens of thousands in debt to people who were born in more fortunate circumstances. In this way, people making the decision to better themselves earn money for the wealthy who aren't necessarily bettering themselves.
Take me as an example. I've been working technology startups for a long time. I am very intelligent and good at what I do. I take risks, get in on the ground floor and work long hours in exchange for stock options that sometimes are worth something and sometimes aren't. For every dollar I earn for myself with this hard and smart work, I earn several dollars for people who simply started out with the capital I need to get started. At the same time, I pay interest on a mortgage so I have a place to live, also a good financial decision, but making money for people who simply started out in a better position.
In a true meritocracy we'd have 100% inheritance taxes and all start equally and I wouldn't have to borrow to do either because I would have started life with an equal share. Not that I'm saying such inheritance taxes are a good idea, just that they are an example of a meritocracy that does a better job of motivating people. A compromise is progressive taxation and socialist programs to help level the playing field a little bit and give people the opportunity for upward mobility.
But, it can be overcome. I know it in the past, I've SEEN it done many times.
Sure it can. You can also make money playing the slots in Vegas. I've seen it happen many times. But you're a freaking idiot if you think the general trend will be for the casinos to lose money. Anecdotes about statistical outliers don't change the general trends, which is taxes that aren't progressive enough punish people so much for their initial station in life that people in general don't succeed just by being smart or working harder. When this happens, we see money consolidate into fewer and fewer hands, just as it has been.
LOL! You're really confused. Socialist countries have higher taxes because they need to pay for the services they provide. But having high taxes doesn't make a country socialist in and of itself.
No, that is one of the two measures of socialism. The other being where that money is spent. It's simple. If you tax a lot, but spend that money on things that benefit the wealthy instead of the poor or everyone, you're still not being socialist. If you tax everyone and spend that money equally, you're socialist, since you obviously are spending that money on something and the private sector could handle that market or industry otherwise.
The reverse is also true. Having low taxes doesn't make a country capitalist - it could just be an efficient socialist government..
Nope. That would be a hallmark of fascism.
You could have just said, "No, I can't name one."...It's almost like you changed the subject
Okay, you actually want names of economists: Edward N. Wolff, Ajit Zacharias, and Thomas Masterson a the Levy institute just published a paper showing the Gini was up to 6.2 as of 2004 (a drastic increase). Robert Folsom, just published an article on it the other day. Peter Wallison is a vert well known economist and he's been writing articles and giving interviews about this for a decade. Did you want more names?
No paying a Navy is providing national defense, which most people would concede is very much different than taking money from some people and giving it directly to other people for no reason at all.
I'm sorry, you just failed. Since when does a requirement of socialism have to be that the distribution is done for "no reason at all"!?! We could have private militaries and mercenaries provide for our national defense and that is the capitalist thing to do. To some extent, we do this already with Xe and the like. When we tax the people and provide it for all of society, that is socialism, just as taking over the healthcare market and providing it for all of society is.
Providing defense is in the constitution. Redistribution of wealth isn't.
Ahh, but we're providing for the national defense by redistributing wealth. That's both socialism and in the constitution. There are a lot of other things in the constitution too, and taxation is one of them.
At the very least, the Navy is providing a service, namely defending the country.
So? If we pay doctors to treat the ill via socialism instead of capitalism they are also providing a service to the country and helping to insure people have life and a chance to pursue happiness. That doesn't mean they aren't both socialism. What about public schools? What about fire departments? All socialism.
What service do you think poor people are providing that they deserve to get paid tax money for doing it?
Umm, who says we should hand cash to the poor? That's not socialism. Socialism is taxing the people to provide services and industries by the government, instead of by the private sector. Redistribution of wealth comes in when we tax the wealthy at higher rates than the poor in order to pay for shared services. That is to say, when we implement anything that isn't a tax as single sum everyone pays equally, we're redistributing wealth while implementing services. Of course nobody implements taxes as a flat sum anymore because it is not a sustainable economic system, We all tax based upon income and usually at a progressive rate because nobody wants to live in the hellhole countries that that result from other methods.
I minored in economics. That doesn't make me an "expert" by any means, but it's enough to know you're full of shit.
You got ripped off neighbor. You don't know wealth disparity is increasing in the US and then you say you minored in economics. Were you drunk the wh
Sure....but, equal opportunity does not meat equal results.
In the large scale, however, you can measure the equal opportunity of a system by the large scale trends that result. If you have a system where wealthy people tend to get wealthier and poor people tend to get poorer, regardless of how they acquired their wealth or lack thereof, isn't that an indication that it is the wealth itself that is leading to more wealth? Rent and mortgage payments, for example, are simply taxes on people born without wealth and paid to people born with wealth. It's clear if you're born wealthy with properties to rent and others are born poor and need a place to live, you'll gain money faster than them, all other things being equal. They have to be smarter than you and work harder by a significant degree to overcome this handicap.
So my question to you is, how do you determine what the appropriate level of progressiveness of taxes is to maximize how much of a meritocracy our system is? What factors do you look at to see if people are gaining wealth based upon their own merits or based upon the fact they just inherited wealth? If wealth is constantly consolidating what does that mean to you?
Obama does not make it harder for industry insiders to influence government by having them occupy various influential positions within the government.
You mean like putting RIAA lawyers into the second and third highest positions in the Justice Department?
No, I mean like ordering all executive branch officials to refuse to speak to lobbyists who have been working in the executive within the last 2 years, and refuse to participate in activities within the government directly related to any former job within the last 2 years.
Technically, the Attorney General is under orders from Obama to investigate and potentially fire both of these lawyers if they do not have a written waiver from Peter Orszag. Additionally, he is under orders to bring a civil suit against them.
I'd say seeing if that happens and if Obama makes sure it is enforced is serious test of the administration, especially since the Attorney General can hardly claim to be ignorant of either the executive order or the actions of his direct subordinates.
He announced policies to make lobbying much harder. As of last week, nothing appears to have been implemented yet.
Obama's second executive order in office (order 13490) ordered all executive branch employees to follow the new guidelines in all hiring. He's made about a dozen exceptions in his own hiring into the executive, but for everyone else it is implemented. Heck, it was implemented before he banned torture or addressed Guantanamo.
As has already been explained, Non-Sequential thinking is hard, you postulate double speed...
No, I state that the design offers the theoretical potential of double speed, under perfect conditions. Realistically it will always be less and in practice it is often more like 10%-30% for applications it helps at all. But we don't need to postulate anything. I'm describing the feature added over a year ago. It works just fine.
...how does this speed things up on multicore.
For some CPU bound applications, where the CPU's ability to process data to send to the GPU takes a significant amount of the processing, splitting that out into a separate process results in significant benefit. Since this was one common bottleneck profile, it worked well.
...so unless all cores are at 100% you have saved nothing
No, just one core (the one running the application's main process) has to be 100% and causing the bottleneck. Then, any portion of that thread which is dedicated to feeding the GPU can be split out. Usually the application hits another bottleneck anyway, but it does help. Don't you think it is a bit absurd to be arguing it will cause more overhead when it's been working and shown to provide improvement is benchmarks for quite a while now?
Having the OS and it's compilers change single threaded code into something that can take advantage of multiple cores *for you* is what Apple is working on.
Right. And each copy of Snow Leopard is going to come with a free unicorn.
Actually, it has been working in OS X since 10.5 for OpenGL applications. It's fairly limited right now, but it does provide real performance improvements for applications that were written without any foreknowledge that Apple was going to add such a feature.
"policies to make lobbying, especially by insiders, harder" - or to put it another way: "raise the barriers of entry to the lobbying system, thus protecting the well established lobbyists from competition by new entrants".
My you're jaded. Not without reason I suppose. Still, in this case, not so much. The executive always has a lot of turnover as administrations change. The new rules basically stop people from leaving the executive, then taking a job as a lobbyist trying to get things from their former coworkers. Given the turnover, I doubt this protects the established lobbyists very much, especially if their main value is they know the people who used to work there before Obama took office, but who no longer work there. It's hard to spin such rules as a negative.
"Does Obama become aware of this issue and if so, does he do something about it?"
The people always loved Stalin for as long as he lived. The sentiment was 'if only he was aware'.
Yes well, Obama will certainly be aware within a few weeks when the press starts mentioning this one, like he became aware of the FOIA issue, which has actually resulted in some progress. We have to give him a little time to be fair, don't you think?
Little did they know he himself set the quotas for the number of people to arrest/kill/torture and frequently awarded those who went above them.
An interesting choice of analogy, considering this is the president that stopped the torturing or people in our custody and ordered a halt to arrests that violate the constitution and/or our treaties.
We collect a smaller percentage of the income of the wealthiest people in comparison to the poorest. That's a decrease in socialism and an increase in capitalism. That's been the trend for a decade.
So you're arguing that the effective income tax rates decrease as income goes up? Check your tax tables again, bud.
You misunderstand. The progressiveness of taxes has decreased over the last two decades. That is to say, the amount MORE that the wealthy pay to balance out the wealth condensation has decreased. Today the highest tax brackets are about 35%, whereas in the 70's they were 70%. We've been moving to less progressive taxes resulting in more wealth accumulating in fewer hands more rapidly. That's less wealth distribution by taxation, i.e. more capitalist, less socialist.
"The poor getting poorer"? How do you figure? The disparity between "rich" and "poor" may have grown, but overall even the poor are better off here than they were.
Because disparity is what matters both for correlations with societal ills and for stability of markets. It's why poverty rarely appears in actual economics formulas. Real wealth is always relative. Sure more people have cell phones because the technology has gotten cheaper. How many people own their own homes comparatively? How many own property?
I'm going to say this loud and clear: THE US IS NOT A FUCKING DEMOCRACY!
Calm down captain semantics. The US is a republic, which is a representative democracy.
You can make a case for some form of "progressive" (oh dear lord how I hate that word... but that's another rant) tax rate, to an extent, by reason that those with more income and assets benefit more from certain government programs.
Economically speaking, the best system is a meritocracy. Since 100% inheritance taxes are not feasible at this time, we use progressive taxes to balance out wealth condensation so that we are stable. That is to say, wealth disparity does not tend to increase or decrease in general, but shifts based upon the merits of the individual... with the assumption that statistically speaking it comes out in the wash.
Over the last several decades we've drastically decreased the progressiveness of taxes so money has constantly been consolidating due to wealth condensation. Now the distribution is seriously imbalanced. Returning to levels we had 20 years ago would halt that constant shift and let individuals merits be the determining factor. Even so, that is likely not enough anymore since 50% of our nation has no net wealth anymore.
You can argue that some kind of estate tax is necessary to keep money in circulation, rather than being taken out and stored--I don't necessarily agree, but at least there's more reason behind that than "waah, he has stuff, and it's not fair!"
Your histrionics aside, you don't believe in everyone having an equal chance? Should we go back to a monarchy, where some people are born with political power greater than others too, since. After all, it's just people saying waah, he has rights, and it's not fair!"
!" Communism and overt socialism eventually fail every time, because of one simple fact: people don't like busting their asses for nothing.
Actually you're wrong. Extreme communism and extreme socialism fail every time. Extreme capitalism also fails every time. Stable economies are the ones that balance all three appropriately. Go ahead and look at the countries with completely flat taxes at low rates. Want to live in any of them? Yeah, didn't think so. The US has always been socialist to a significant extent and we were doing a lot better 20 years ago when we were more socialist. The real problem is education, where people thing socialist means either those commies or programs and services paid for by the government except all those ones we've had forever and don'
Why am I bothering? I wonder. You aren't open to learning and you don't seem to really know enough to understand what I'm writing. Is there any point?
That's a change in tax policy, not a change in economic system. Get a clue.
Economically speaking, capitalism is private ownership and control of markets and industries. Socialism, is collection of monies and resources collectively and government control of markets and industries. Collecting more in taxes and spending it on more social programs (school funding for our socialized school system, police for our socialized law enforcement, and to pay for socialized healthcare) is increased socialism. Further, more progressive taxes that take larger shares from the rich and redistribute them via government spending on such programs is increased socialism. The more progressive taxes are and the more are collected and redistributed, the more socialist our economy. The less collected and the less progressive the taxes, the less socialized our economy. We've been moving to less progressive taxes which is less money redistributed from the rich to the poor which is less socialist and more capitalist.
The wealthy are getting wealthier and the poor are getting poorer as a trend. Do you expect that to be sustainable and stable? Economists sure don't.
I don't even think you can name a real economist who thinks that's happening, much less one who thinks it's happening and thinks it's a problem.
Umm, okay. That's what happens when you only get your news from Fox and associates. Sorry, but pretty much every economist recognizes wealth disparity is increasing and the gini coefficient is increasing.
The government's job to do the will of the people within the limited range of powers granted to it in the Constitution. Taking from the rich and giving to the poor isn't one of those powers.
Sure it is. Taxing the people and establishing a navy instead of letting those who can afford it provide for their own defense with private militaries, for example.
Nice straw man. Back in real life, most "rich" people start off "poor", which according to you isn't even possible.
Bullshit. Statistically speaking, most rich people start rich. You haven't ever even opened an economics textbook, have you?