Out of curiosity, couldn't bittorrent clients be tweaked a bit to facilitate a "fair use" defense?
Let's say a given peer in a large swarm (where peers>>pieces) greatly prefers to seed only one "piece" of the torrent. Could that be considered infringement? I mean, one "piece" out of hundreds, that sure seems like fair use to me. It's just a snippet of the whole copyrighted work.
And if each peer chooses one "piece" like this, couldn't the entire torrent be downloaded by someone without any of the seeds ever sending over anything more than a "fair use" snippet?
Obviously the initial uploader would still be guilty of infringement, but what about all the other seeds in the swarm?
The entire US population must be really spoiled and lazy, because in the rest of the world a guy on a scooter will deliver your order in all those conditions.
Scooters?... Scooters???
I don't know how it works over on your side of the pond, but here, most pizza delivery drivers are male. And again, I don't know how it works over there, but here, guys on scooters are mocked relentlessly. Scooters are fundamentally incompatible with the traditional American mentality. We have cycles with 8.2L V10 engines, and you expect us to ride scooters?!
I'm sure that someone that owns one of these, these, or these would just love to bolt one of those awesome looking insulated boxes to the back of their bike. And I'm sure those uber-rich pizza delivery drivers don't mind having "a car on standby to fill the big orders".
As a former pizza delivery driver, I can tell you that motorcycles or bikes just wouldn't work.
It's raining out? No pizza for you. Snowing, you also gotta come pick it up yourself. Really cold out? Really hot out? No delivery.
You'd like 6 large pies, 6 2L bottles of soda, and a couple order of wings and breadsticks? Sure, we'll bring it by in 3 deliveries.
Also, I can't imagine the additional airflow resulting from not being enclosed in a passenger compartment will do wonders to keep your pizza piping hot while it travels to your residence.
"Single Owner Home Office" is a ridiculously nebulous term. What if the home is jointly owned by more than one individual? What if it's in a duplex, or other multi-family home? Would that make this scenario any different? Why does it matter how many entities the home is owned by?
Or, since the expression is so ambiguously worded, is the home office what's singly owned? If so, does ownership really matter here? If there were third party investors that owned the home office, does that change anything? If you're doing your own thing, in your own home, do you print differently depending on where the capital for your home office originated?
Please join me in my quest for acronym reform. SOHO has been a reference to "South of Houston [Street]", an area of New York City, for over 50 years. Consequently, anyone trying to commandeer the term to instead mean "single office / home office" or "small office / home office" or "single owner home office" is actively trying to break the English language. English already has enough homonyms, so let's all take a stand against those who would burden us with even more ambiguity in our speech.
Sadly, no Democrats are willing to engage that concept in any serious fashion.
Let's be honest, no elected legislator of either major party is willing to engage that concept, even in a lighthearted fashion.
Define "giving up" -- the rich have already seen substantial tax hikes in the past 4 years -- why do you pretend as if nothing has been done? When is enough enough? When they're out of money? As I said before, they're already paying a historically massive sum of total taxes.
I was trying not to digress, but this question is beyond the scope of the original topic. Taxation serves, or can serve, more than one purpose. One obvious purpose is to fund the government. Another is to implement socioeconomic change. There are those among us that believe equitable distribution of wealth strengthens an economy, and that even wealthy people are "better off" if poor people have money to spend. To ensure an equitable distribution of wealth, a government may implement an appropriate system of taxation, to limit the ability of the wealthy to become more wealthy, and to likewise limit the ability of the poor to become more poor. That being said, despite these "historically massive" taxes that the wealthy are allegedly paying, their share of wealth ownership continues to increase relative to the rest of society. Therefore, it is easy to see how some people might be calling for higher taxes on the wealthy, and similarly easy to see when "enough is enough". Clearly, equitable distribution of wealth is not yet being facilitated by these "historically massive" taxes, so that is why "unprecedentedly gargantuan" taxes are being called for.
Yes, that is what I'm suggesting. 2013 US GDP was a hair above 15 trillion. 17% of that is about 2.5 trillion. The 2013 federal budget had 3.8 trillion dollars in outlays. That's the kind of spending we're talking about.
Wow. That really is an eye-opener. I honestly didn't realize that about 1/4 of GDP goes to the feds. That really is some crazy shit. I'm not sure how this ranks among other developed Western nations, but you may have just convinced me of the value, or even the necessity, of talking about spending. I seriously recommend you take this as a talking point in future discussions. However, while I concede that there is perhaps not enough of a focus on cutting spending, you can't simply ignore the issue of taxation, even if only for the reasons I mention previously. Taxation isn't solely about raising revenues for the government. Additionally, you can't talk about solving the issue by cutting spending alone. To cut the deficit to zero without increasing revenues, we'd need to slash nearly 1/4 of the federal budget. That would indisputably have a serious impact on the economy, disrupting roughly $901B in federal outlays, or 6% of GDP. If cutting 1/4 of the federal budget cuts 1/4 of the federal jobs (a big if), that could mean over 600K new people looking for work. I'm just glad I'm not in charge, because this really does seem like a shitty situation.
No, benefit changes are the last thing I want. I want a well designed program that isn't susceptible to govt raiding of the funds, a shrinking workforce, or a declining population.
Yea, I think we all want that. And unicorns. But really, even a well designed program as you describe would amount to a benefit change. We simply can't keep paying people as we've promised if we keep charging people as we've been doing. The demographics just won't support it. The numbers don't work, and it's not any fault of Social Security's.
It is a task better suited for the state government, where the majority of these programs should be implemented. I disagree with the unconstitutional nature of the federal programs. But I believe that such safety net programs should exist.
The states had a good couple decades, centuries in some cases, to get this shit straightened out. Nothi
If I wanted to sell at $10 but there was no Bob around with a buy offer, and some third party bought up my shares only to turn around and sell them to Bob for $11 a week later, should I feel cheated? A day later? An hour later? At what point does it become wrong?
I agree, and the situation you describe here is indeed not wrong in my eyes. It only becomes wrong when Bob is there with a buy offer, but he gets pre-empted by the HFT middleman regardless.
I agree that it's more complex than simply "HFT is bad!", but to the layman and casual trader, it is evident that there are cases when HFT is not "good" for anyone other than the HFT house itself. This will result in negative public sentiment towards HFT until this issue is resolved. Whether it's resolved by thoughtless populist legislation, or by self-regulation in the industry, or by a well-reasoned compromise, or not at all, only time will tell. I'm just saying that there are inarguably cases when HFT is parasitic and does not offer any benefit to society. For as long as those cases persist, haters gonna hate.
Yes, for funding the government, as has been done many times before in the past w/ respect to increasing the debt limit. It's particularly relevant considering the Dems spent the past half decade spending like sailors on shore leave (including on their beloved Obamacare, and Obama's tax cuts, and entitlements, which are all the primary drivers of our current debt).
Yes, like sailors on shore leave, unlike the preceding administration's fiscal responsibility with things like the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the "Bush tax cuts", Medicare Part D, which make the current "spending spree" seem like austerity.
I'm saying that the Republicans never get concessions, and frankly are due. They've been asking for entitlement reform for forever, for instance.
Much like Democrats have been asking for single payer healthcare, a significant reduction in military spending, and a repeal of the second amendment. I got news for you: it's not happening, and simply asking for the same thing over and over again isn't going to make it any more palatable to the voting public.
That's the problem.
The problem is that people keep voting for Democrats and Republicans. Both sides are equally guilty of sucking ass.
That's fine, historical top marginal rates of 90% aren't relevant because people dodged taxes back then. Unlike today? So the solution is not to actually enforce the tax code, or to get rid of loopholes, but instead to simply lower taxes? Some of us are unwilling to bend to the will of the rich and don't feel that giving up on taxing them is the optimal solution here.
Except that if you took ALL their income, you still couldn't pay the bills at our level of govt spending, as I've already stated.
According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, "in 2007, the share of after-tax income going to the top 1 percent hit its highest level (17.1 percent) since 1979". That means that that the income of the top 1% accounts for roughly 17% of GDP. Are you suggesting that federal spending is greater than 17% of GDP? Where are you getting these numbers?
Social Security and Medicare reform would be a good start... Bush tried to do something about runaway social security spending by privatizing part of it.
Reform... what does that even mean? Let's say we give $X/year in entitlements to recipients of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other social programs that need "reform". Surely you'll agree that this will cost at least $X/year, plus overhead costs. By "reform", are you talking about cutting the already-nominal overhead costs? If so, you'll be disappointed to hear that this won't put any noticeable dent in the federal budget. Of course, you don't mean reform. You mean you want to gut these social programs, to pay out less to the recipients. You want to screw people that have spent their entire lives paying into the system, allowing "the market" to "take care" of them. At least be honest and say you don't think it's the government's business to take care of those in need, and that you have no issue with them dying in the streets so long as it doesn't cost you much to sweep up their corpses.
That's an entirely rational point of view to espouse, so I can't fault you for it. After all, what's in it for you if we pamper our elderly, or heal the ailing poor. You're not elderly, and you're not poor. It's just a drain on your own personal resources. Thankfully enough, sociopaths like you aren't a majority in our society.
What if it's Bob that's been waiting for me to sell? What if Bob was already sitting there, with a limit order set at $11? Here I come with my $10 asking price, just what Bob was waiting for. But here comes HFT at light speed, cutting in front of Bob to buy my $10 share and offer it to Bob for a nice $11, just like he wanted.
Why is that preferable to Bob and I splitting the spread, with both of us getting/saving $0.50 more than we had expected?
Because without HFT middlemen, you have human middlemen.
Why? What's wrong with this open outcry system of old? Why can't a seller call out their price and wait for a buyer to produce a matching bid? Why can't the exchange be the middleman? Isn't that the whole point of the exchange?
Because the traders aren't there at the exact same time, so they can't just trade with one another.
Aren't they, though? When I move to buy a share of a stock, there are plenty of people trying to sell a share of that same stock, unless we're talking about Berkshire's class A shares or something. Not only at the exact same time, but also immediately before and immediately after. If they're selling for $X, why can't I just buy from them at $X? Are computers at the exchange unable to match up buyers with sellers anymore?
With that kind of spread, it isn't.
Really, the spread was merely an example. If you prefer to use your numbers, we can. Let's say bids are at $10.499 and asks are at $10.501. No trades will be executed, regardless of any HFT involvement. If an HFT algorithm is buying high and selling low, I can't imagine that would work out well for the HFT house. In your hypothetical situation, no HFT will engage in arbitrage over a negative spread like that.
I'm assuming you got your numbers backwards, and ask is down to $10.499 and bid is up to $10.501, leaving us with a $0.002 spread. Now, HFT gobbles this up, pocketing a fraction of a penny in arbitrage profit. However, why is it better for HFT to pocket this $0.002 instead of the two participants merely splitting the difference and completing the transaction at $10.500? Are exchanges not capable of this type of mathematical wizardry?
I keep re-reading my quoted statement, but I fail to see where I refer to any "free" healthcare.
Perhaps you can explain to me why you chose to reply to my post, when the content of your reply clearly has nothing to do with what I was talking about.
they are market makers. They find a willing buyer and a willing seller, arrange the transaction, and execute the trade.
How was the market "made" before HFT arrived on the scene? How were buyers and sellers able to find each other to arrange transactions and execute trades before HFT arrived on the scene? How is the presence of HFT as middlemen between buyers and sellers of benefit to traders? Why is it beneficial to traders for HFT to pocket a profit from arbitrage rather than simply trading between each other?
If I'm willing to sell a share of ABCD for $10 and Bob is willing to buy a share of ABCD for $11, why is it better for HFT to pocket $1 rather than for me to sell for $10.50 and Bob to buy for $10.50, effectively splitting the $1 between the two of us?
I understand why it's better for the HFT. I'm asking why it's better for everyone else.
Conversely, I tore my ACL last year. I actually have decent health insurance, but I didn't see a penny from them, beyond covering the first doctors visit. MRI? 100% covered after the $1500 deductible, which means 0% covered since the cost was "only" $1200. Surgery would've been covered (well, after I spent another $300), but I opted to physical therapy (as it was only a partial tear). Physical therapy is 100% covered under my plan... but only inpatient. Outpatient physical therapy, 0% coverage. I tried reasoning with them, explaining that it would cost them much more if I checked myself in for therapy. I ended up paying for it myself.
I'm only 31, so I don't have much experience with health insurance. This was my first "real" encounter with healthcare, and it left me feeling like health insurance is a huge scam. It sure would be nice to not have to read pages of fine print explaining in-network vs out-of-network, copays, deductibles, premiums, out-of-pocket maximums, lifetime maximums, etc.
On the other hand, I can see the "conservative" side of the argument too. Imagine how terrible it would be if you could just, you know, go to the hospital and not worry about the financial aspects. People would be injecting themselves with carcinogens and breaking their own limbs just to get a taste of that free hospital food.
Highly misleading. Rates on the "super wealthy" are far from historically low. The only people currently benefiting from historically low taxes are the poor. Taxes on everybody else are around "average" historical values: http://www.factcheck.org/2012/07/tax-facts-lowest-rates-in-30-years/ [factcheck.org] (and that article was before the December tax hike)
You're either a liar or an idiot. In any case, take a look at this chart and apologize for trying to misinform the readers of slashdot.
For bonus awesomeness, one of the articles you yourself link to (the money.cnn.com one) states: "By historical standards, those rates are pretty low. While income tax rates for top earners have been below 40% since 1986, they were as high as 91% in the 1960s" in reference to the increased rates Obama has proposed.
So fuck you and your greed, bullshitting about "envying" the rich. I don't envy greedy sociopaths; I hate them. The reason people are talking about taxing the rich is because they're the only ones that still have any money left to tax. You can't squeeze blood from a stone, you fuckwit. You really think we can fix the deficit by taxing poor people's welfare payments? How the fuck would that even make sense?
And we'd love to see healthcare reform
Oh of course. That's why see Republicans pushing for single-payer heathcare. That's why we see a flood of healthcare reform bills coming out of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. Not a single Republicans is trying to break the entire economy to defund Obamacare because they're all so busy proposing alternative healthcare reforms. You're a sack of shit. Stop making excuses for your bullshit obstructionism.
How would that be a compromise? The Democrats would get something they want (a funded government), but have to support something they didn't want (defunding/reforming/neutering Obamacare). The Republicans would get something they want (defunding/reforming/neutering Obamacare), but have to support something they didn't want (a funded government)? Or are you saying that it would only really be a compromise on the part of Democrats, or basically that the Republicans should get what they want without any real concessions?
So you're saying that Makar Devushkin and Varvara Dobroselova must surely have existed, because of the extensive written accounts, letters, etc that are found in Fyodor Dostoevsky's first novel Poor Folk?
Or are you open to the possibility that those written accounts, letters, etc that comprise the Christian bible could be just as fictitious as the ones in Dostoevsky's novel?
That's the beauty of it; if the perpetrator's life need not be preserved, it can be as simple as shanking a high profile target right in public, with something as innocuous as a sturdy pen!
If you think about it (and please don't, not too much at least), we're all so incredibly vulnerable, with such strong faith in humanity. The guy standing behind you in line at the grocery store could kill you before you even saw it coming. The guy driving down the [undivided] highway opposite you could veer into oncoming traffic, killing you in a split second.
Of course, these things don't happen because most of us value our own lives, and the consequences of perpetrating any of these actions are significant. I'd like to think that people are inherently good, and that that's what keeps them from indiscriminate victimization of others, but the Stanford prison experiment casts some doubt on that.
These suicidal people, if only they could get over themselves for just a few moments, for just long enough to contemplate actions like these, are much like the subjects of that study, but acting in the real world instead of an academic research project.
Perhaps that's why there seems to be an increase in these senseless mass killings of late (although I don't know if there's actually been any increase... has anyone seen any nice mass killings / year charts?). Perhaps these antidepressants that you mention can give people just enough motivation to kill themselves, and perhaps they can give people just enough motivation to take some others with them.
the explosive international rise of Subway restaurants
I never understood this. Subway makes the worst fresh sandwiches I've ever had the pleasure of consuming. Actually, I'd even say that pre-made shrink-wrapped sandwiches that can sometimes be purchased at chain convenience stores are oftentimes clearly superior to the garbage peddled by Subway.
How is it possible that a fast food restaurant chain like Subway could be so successful? Clearly it is not the quality of their product. Have you ever tried their roast beef? I remember the first time I did, I was disappointed by the amount of meat on my sandwich; it was but a single layer of thinly sliced, overcooked roast beef. My next time around, I asked for double meat. Big mistake. There's a reason there's only a pinch of meat on there by default: you can't quite taste it in small quantities. Double meat was sufficient to inform my taste buds that this wasn't roast beef, at least not in the traditional sense of "roast beef". Additionally, the overwhelming veininess of the meat became impossible to ignore at this scale. That was the last time I got meat on a Subway sandwich, ever.
I live in NJ, where you're never more than a mile from a pizza place (figuratively). Any pizza place will make subs that are actually edible, if not outright delicious. Yet there's still Subway restaurants everywhere. I see many of my coworkers munching on crappy Subway meals all the time, and I can't help but think... WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?!
Slashdot Mirror
Out of curiosity, couldn't bittorrent clients be tweaked a bit to facilitate a "fair use" defense?
Let's say a given peer in a large swarm (where peers>>pieces) greatly prefers to seed only one "piece" of the torrent. Could that be considered infringement? I mean, one "piece" out of hundreds, that sure seems like fair use to me. It's just a snippet of the whole copyrighted work.
And if each peer chooses one "piece" like this, couldn't the entire torrent be downloaded by someone without any of the seeds ever sending over anything more than a "fair use" snippet?
Obviously the initial uploader would still be guilty of infringement, but what about all the other seeds in the swarm?
Nothing a little parallel construction can't fix.
Welcome to the future. Fuck.
The entire US population must be really spoiled and lazy, because in the rest of the world a guy on a scooter will deliver your order in all those conditions.
Scooters? ... Scooters???
I don't know how it works over on your side of the pond, but here, most pizza delivery drivers are male. And again, I don't know how it works over there, but here, guys on scooters are mocked relentlessly. Scooters are fundamentally incompatible with the traditional American mentality. We have cycles with 8.2L V10 engines, and you expect us to ride scooters?!
I'm sure that someone that owns one of these, these, or these would just love to bolt one of those awesome looking insulated boxes to the back of their bike. And I'm sure those uber-rich pizza delivery drivers don't mind having "a car on standby to fill the big orders".
The plural of medium is media.
The singular of media is medium.
(just another word that got mangled over the years)
You'd like 6 large pies, 6 2L bottles of soda, and a couple order of wings and breadsticks? Sure, we'll bring it by in 3 deliveries.
Alternate solution: Sure, let me just put on my aviator goggles and scarf, then load up my sidecar here...
As a former pizza delivery driver, I can tell you that motorcycles or bikes just wouldn't work.
It's raining out? No pizza for you. Snowing, you also gotta come pick it up yourself. Really cold out? Really hot out? No delivery.
You'd like 6 large pies, 6 2L bottles of soda, and a couple order of wings and breadsticks? Sure, we'll bring it by in 3 deliveries.
Also, I can't imagine the additional airflow resulting from not being enclosed in a passenger compartment will do wonders to keep your pizza piping hot while it travels to your residence.
YouTube has ads?
I think you're doing it wrong.
"Single Owner Home Office" is a ridiculously nebulous term. What if the home is jointly owned by more than one individual? What if it's in a duplex, or other multi-family home? Would that make this scenario any different? Why does it matter how many entities the home is owned by?
Or, since the expression is so ambiguously worded, is the home office what's singly owned? If so, does ownership really matter here? If there were third party investors that owned the home office, does that change anything? If you're doing your own thing, in your own home, do you print differently depending on where the capital for your home office originated?
Please join me in my quest for acronym reform. SOHO has been a reference to "South of Houston [Street]", an area of New York City, for over 50 years. Consequently, anyone trying to commandeer the term to instead mean "single office / home office" or "small office / home office" or "single owner home office" is actively trying to break the English language. English already has enough homonyms, so let's all take a stand against those who would burden us with even more ambiguity in our speech.
Sadly, no Democrats are willing to engage that concept in any serious fashion.
Let's be honest, no elected legislator of either major party is willing to engage that concept, even in a lighthearted fashion.
Define "giving up" -- the rich have already seen substantial tax hikes in the past 4 years -- why do you pretend as if nothing has been done? When is enough enough? When they're out of money? As I said before, they're already paying a historically massive sum of total taxes.
I was trying not to digress, but this question is beyond the scope of the original topic. Taxation serves, or can serve, more than one purpose. One obvious purpose is to fund the government. Another is to implement socioeconomic change. There are those among us that believe equitable distribution of wealth strengthens an economy, and that even wealthy people are "better off" if poor people have money to spend. To ensure an equitable distribution of wealth, a government may implement an appropriate system of taxation, to limit the ability of the wealthy to become more wealthy, and to likewise limit the ability of the poor to become more poor. That being said, despite these "historically massive" taxes that the wealthy are allegedly paying, their share of wealth ownership continues to increase relative to the rest of society. Therefore, it is easy to see how some people might be calling for higher taxes on the wealthy, and similarly easy to see when "enough is enough". Clearly, equitable distribution of wealth is not yet being facilitated by these "historically massive" taxes, so that is why "unprecedentedly gargantuan" taxes are being called for.
Yes, that is what I'm suggesting. 2013 US GDP was a hair above 15 trillion. 17% of that is about 2.5 trillion. The 2013 federal budget had 3.8 trillion dollars in outlays. That's the kind of spending we're talking about.
Wow. That really is an eye-opener. I honestly didn't realize that about 1/4 of GDP goes to the feds. That really is some crazy shit. I'm not sure how this ranks among other developed Western nations, but you may have just convinced me of the value, or even the necessity, of talking about spending. I seriously recommend you take this as a talking point in future discussions. However, while I concede that there is perhaps not enough of a focus on cutting spending, you can't simply ignore the issue of taxation, even if only for the reasons I mention previously. Taxation isn't solely about raising revenues for the government. Additionally, you can't talk about solving the issue by cutting spending alone. To cut the deficit to zero without increasing revenues, we'd need to slash nearly 1/4 of the federal budget. That would indisputably have a serious impact on the economy, disrupting roughly $901B in federal outlays, or 6% of GDP. If cutting 1/4 of the federal budget cuts 1/4 of the federal jobs (a big if), that could mean over 600K new people looking for work. I'm just glad I'm not in charge, because this really does seem like a shitty situation.
No, benefit changes are the last thing I want. I want a well designed program that isn't susceptible to govt raiding of the funds, a shrinking workforce, or a declining population.
Yea, I think we all want that. And unicorns. But really, even a well designed program as you describe would amount to a benefit change. We simply can't keep paying people as we've promised if we keep charging people as we've been doing. The demographics just won't support it. The numbers don't work, and it's not any fault of Social Security's.
It is a task better suited for the state government, where the majority of these programs should be implemented. I disagree with the unconstitutional nature of the federal programs. But I believe that such safety net programs should exist.
The states had a good couple decades, centuries in some cases, to get this shit straightened out. Nothi
If I wanted to sell at $10 but there was no Bob around with a buy offer, and some third party bought up my shares only to turn around and sell them to Bob for $11 a week later, should I feel cheated? A day later? An hour later? At what point does it become wrong?
I agree, and the situation you describe here is indeed not wrong in my eyes. It only becomes wrong when Bob is there with a buy offer, but he gets pre-empted by the HFT middleman regardless.
I agree that it's more complex than simply "HFT is bad!", but to the layman and casual trader, it is evident that there are cases when HFT is not "good" for anyone other than the HFT house itself. This will result in negative public sentiment towards HFT until this issue is resolved. Whether it's resolved by thoughtless populist legislation, or by self-regulation in the industry, or by a well-reasoned compromise, or not at all, only time will tell. I'm just saying that there are inarguably cases when HFT is parasitic and does not offer any benefit to society. For as long as those cases persist, haters gonna hate.
Yes, for funding the government, as has been done many times before in the past w/ respect to increasing the debt limit. It's particularly relevant considering the Dems spent the past half decade spending like sailors on shore leave (including on their beloved Obamacare, and Obama's tax cuts, and entitlements, which are all the primary drivers of our current debt).
Yes, like sailors on shore leave, unlike the preceding administration's fiscal responsibility with things like the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the "Bush tax cuts", Medicare Part D, which make the current "spending spree" seem like austerity.
I'm saying that the Republicans never get concessions, and frankly are due. They've been asking for entitlement reform for forever, for instance.
Much like Democrats have been asking for single payer healthcare, a significant reduction in military spending, and a repeal of the second amendment. I got news for you: it's not happening, and simply asking for the same thing over and over again isn't going to make it any more palatable to the voting public.
That's the problem.
The problem is that people keep voting for Democrats and Republicans. Both sides are equally guilty of sucking ass.
Except that if you took ALL their income, you still couldn't pay the bills at our level of govt spending, as I've already stated.
According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, "in 2007, the share of after-tax income going to the top 1 percent hit its highest level (17.1 percent) since 1979". That means that that the income of the top 1% accounts for roughly 17% of GDP. Are you suggesting that federal spending is greater than 17% of GDP? Where are you getting these numbers?
Social Security and Medicare reform would be a good start... Bush tried to do something about runaway social security spending by privatizing part of it.
Reform... what does that even mean? Let's say we give $X/year in entitlements to recipients of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other social programs that need "reform". Surely you'll agree that this will cost at least $X/year, plus overhead costs. By "reform", are you talking about cutting the already-nominal overhead costs? If so, you'll be disappointed to hear that this won't put any noticeable dent in the federal budget. Of course, you don't mean reform. You mean you want to gut these social programs, to pay out less to the recipients. You want to screw people that have spent their entire lives paying into the system, allowing "the market" to "take care" of them. At least be honest and say you don't think it's the government's business to take care of those in need, and that you have no issue with them dying in the streets so long as it doesn't cost you much to sweep up their corpses.
That's an entirely rational point of view to espouse, so I can't fault you for it. After all, what's in it for you if we pamper our elderly, or heal the ailing poor. You're not elderly, and you're not poor. It's just a drain on your own personal resources. Thankfully enough, sociopaths like you aren't a majority in our society.
What if it's Bob that's been waiting for me to sell? What if Bob was already sitting there, with a limit order set at $11? Here I come with my $10 asking price, just what Bob was waiting for. But here comes HFT at light speed, cutting in front of Bob to buy my $10 share and offer it to Bob for a nice $11, just like he wanted.
Why is that preferable to Bob and I splitting the spread, with both of us getting/saving $0.50 more than we had expected?
Because without HFT middlemen, you have human middlemen.
Why? What's wrong with this open outcry system of old? Why can't a seller call out their price and wait for a buyer to produce a matching bid? Why can't the exchange be the middleman? Isn't that the whole point of the exchange?
Because the traders aren't there at the exact same time, so they can't just trade with one another.
Aren't they, though? When I move to buy a share of a stock, there are plenty of people trying to sell a share of that same stock, unless we're talking about Berkshire's class A shares or something. Not only at the exact same time, but also immediately before and immediately after. If they're selling for $X, why can't I just buy from them at $X? Are computers at the exchange unable to match up buyers with sellers anymore?
With that kind of spread, it isn't.
Really, the spread was merely an example. If you prefer to use your numbers, we can. Let's say bids are at $10.499 and asks are at $10.501. No trades will be executed, regardless of any HFT involvement. If an HFT algorithm is buying high and selling low, I can't imagine that would work out well for the HFT house. In your hypothetical situation, no HFT will engage in arbitrage over a negative spread like that.
I'm assuming you got your numbers backwards, and ask is down to $10.499 and bid is up to $10.501, leaving us with a $0.002 spread. Now, HFT gobbles this up, pocketing a fraction of a penny in arbitrage profit. However, why is it better for HFT to pocket this $0.002 instead of the two participants merely splitting the difference and completing the transaction at $10.500? Are exchanges not capable of this type of mathematical wizardry?
I keep re-reading my quoted statement, but I fail to see where I refer to any "free" healthcare.
Perhaps you can explain to me why you chose to reply to my post, when the content of your reply clearly has nothing to do with what I was talking about.
they are market makers. They find a willing buyer and a willing seller, arrange the transaction, and execute the trade.
How was the market "made" before HFT arrived on the scene? How were buyers and sellers able to find each other to arrange transactions and execute trades before HFT arrived on the scene? How is the presence of HFT as middlemen between buyers and sellers of benefit to traders? Why is it beneficial to traders for HFT to pocket a profit from arbitrage rather than simply trading between each other?
If I'm willing to sell a share of ABCD for $10 and Bob is willing to buy a share of ABCD for $11, why is it better for HFT to pocket $1 rather than for me to sell for $10.50 and Bob to buy for $10.50, effectively splitting the $1 between the two of us?
I understand why it's better for the HFT. I'm asking why it's better for everyone else.
Conversely, I tore my ACL last year. I actually have decent health insurance, but I didn't see a penny from them, beyond covering the first doctors visit. MRI? 100% covered after the $1500 deductible, which means 0% covered since the cost was "only" $1200. Surgery would've been covered (well, after I spent another $300), but I opted to physical therapy (as it was only a partial tear). Physical therapy is 100% covered under my plan... but only inpatient. Outpatient physical therapy, 0% coverage. I tried reasoning with them, explaining that it would cost them much more if I checked myself in for therapy. I ended up paying for it myself.
I'm only 31, so I don't have much experience with health insurance. This was my first "real" encounter with healthcare, and it left me feeling like health insurance is a huge scam. It sure would be nice to not have to read pages of fine print explaining in-network vs out-of-network, copays, deductibles, premiums, out-of-pocket maximums, lifetime maximums, etc.
On the other hand, I can see the "conservative" side of the argument too. Imagine how terrible it would be if you could just, you know, go to the hospital and not worry about the financial aspects. People would be injecting themselves with carcinogens and breaking their own limbs just to get a taste of that free hospital food.
Highly misleading. Rates on the "super wealthy" are far from historically low. The only people currently benefiting from historically low taxes are the poor. Taxes on everybody else are around "average" historical values: http://www.factcheck.org/2012/07/tax-facts-lowest-rates-in-30-years/ [factcheck.org] (and that article was before the December tax hike)
You're either a liar or an idiot. In any case, take a look at this chart and apologize for trying to misinform the readers of slashdot.
For bonus awesomeness, one of the articles you yourself link to (the money.cnn.com one) states: "By historical standards, those rates are pretty low. While income tax rates for top earners have been below 40% since 1986, they were as high as 91% in the 1960s" in reference to the increased rates Obama has proposed.
So fuck you and your greed, bullshitting about "envying" the rich. I don't envy greedy sociopaths; I hate them. The reason people are talking about taxing the rich is because they're the only ones that still have any money left to tax. You can't squeeze blood from a stone, you fuckwit. You really think we can fix the deficit by taxing poor people's welfare payments? How the fuck would that even make sense?
And we'd love to see healthcare reform
Oh of course. That's why see Republicans pushing for single-payer heathcare. That's why we see a flood of healthcare reform bills coming out of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. Not a single Republicans is trying to break the entire economy to defund Obamacare because they're all so busy proposing alternative healthcare reforms. You're a sack of shit. Stop making excuses for your bullshit obstructionism.
Concessions? For what, funding the government?
How would that be a compromise? The Democrats would get something they want (a funded government), but have to support something they didn't want (defunding/reforming/neutering Obamacare). The Republicans would get something they want (defunding/reforming/neutering Obamacare), but have to support something they didn't want (a funded government)? Or are you saying that it would only really be a compromise on the part of Democrats, or basically that the Republicans should get what they want without any real concessions?
So you're saying that Makar Devushkin and Varvara Dobroselova must surely have existed, because of the extensive written accounts, letters, etc that are found in Fyodor Dostoevsky's first novel Poor Folk?
Or are you open to the possibility that those written accounts, letters, etc that comprise the Christian bible could be just as fictitious as the ones in Dostoevsky's novel?
That's the beauty of it; if the perpetrator's life need not be preserved, it can be as simple as shanking a high profile target right in public, with something as innocuous as a sturdy pen!
If you think about it (and please don't, not too much at least), we're all so incredibly vulnerable, with such strong faith in humanity. The guy standing behind you in line at the grocery store could kill you before you even saw it coming. The guy driving down the [undivided] highway opposite you could veer into oncoming traffic, killing you in a split second.
Of course, these things don't happen because most of us value our own lives, and the consequences of perpetrating any of these actions are significant. I'd like to think that people are inherently good, and that that's what keeps them from indiscriminate victimization of others, but the Stanford prison experiment casts some doubt on that.
These suicidal people, if only they could get over themselves for just a few moments, for just long enough to contemplate actions like these, are much like the subjects of that study, but acting in the real world instead of an academic research project.
Perhaps that's why there seems to be an increase in these senseless mass killings of late (although I don't know if there's actually been any increase... has anyone seen any nice mass killings / year charts?). Perhaps these antidepressants that you mention can give people just enough motivation to kill themselves, and perhaps they can give people just enough motivation to take some others with them.
the explosive international rise of Subway restaurants
I never understood this. Subway makes the worst fresh sandwiches I've ever had the pleasure of consuming. Actually, I'd even say that pre-made shrink-wrapped sandwiches that can sometimes be purchased at chain convenience stores are oftentimes clearly superior to the garbage peddled by Subway.
How is it possible that a fast food restaurant chain like Subway could be so successful? Clearly it is not the quality of their product. Have you ever tried their roast beef? I remember the first time I did, I was disappointed by the amount of meat on my sandwich; it was but a single layer of thinly sliced, overcooked roast beef. My next time around, I asked for double meat. Big mistake. There's a reason there's only a pinch of meat on there by default: you can't quite taste it in small quantities. Double meat was sufficient to inform my taste buds that this wasn't roast beef, at least not in the traditional sense of "roast beef". Additionally, the overwhelming veininess of the meat became impossible to ignore at this scale. That was the last time I got meat on a Subway sandwich, ever.
I live in NJ, where you're never more than a mile from a pizza place (figuratively). Any pizza place will make subs that are actually edible, if not outright delicious. Yet there's still Subway restaurants everywhere. I see many of my coworkers munching on crappy Subway meals all the time, and I can't help but think... WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?!
Don't you mean "on the lose"?
Do you really think "rental agency" when you "pay rent"? I've never payed my monthly rent to a "rental agency", in Texas or anywhere else.
Let's ask Google.
Judging from the first page of hits... yea, I'm not the only one to associate a "rental agency" with "paying rent" with "an apartment".
Gee, I dunno. When someone talks about paying rent, you think they're talking about cars and tuxes?
Many people rent a residence. To live in. As shelter. Apparently this is uncommon in Texas?