Second off...the stock was sold BY the company to raise cash. It said, "Please give us 10 million dollars to build a new plant with. We'll pay a dividend on this stock so you will pay more for it and you can resell it to other shareholders who desire dividends".
HP and numerous other companies and municipalities have cut wages and hours by 5-10% or more lately.
In some cases, the people started to shed and find jobs elsewhere and pay recovered. Where people didn't find other jobs or the company/municipality couldn't afford the going rate, those who didn't leave just got paid less.
It's not that simple. Many things are at "world price". There are large blocks of housing being torn down in china and replaced with $200k condo's. How can people making $5k exist in that environment?
The very rich THINK they can do this ("Those lazy bums don't deserve MY resources!").
Then the larger group of poor and middle class finally wakes up, goes apeshit and tears the entire system down (as they have repeatedly in the past when the rich did this).
I'm surprised we haven't seen more unrest so far. I have friends out of work 2 years now.
It's wierd tho because the ones with jobs are retiring huge amounts of debt.
--- There is nothing wrong with a decline in the american standard of living. We had a nice run but that's unsustainable. You can't sustain having a worker making $2k 1000 miles from a worker making $40k to do the same thing. Wages will even out.
Currently the compensation for the wealthy is completely out of line. The only reason they can keep it going is that they have a closed circle jerk going of the top 1%. Once they cut enough lower level labor tho, then they are competing against companies where the top executives make 1% to 10% of what our executives make.
What are the things you can do short of the government killing or imprisoning or gagging you prior to you doing them?
These are natural rights.
Some are not nice.
You have the natural right to hit someone. If you have a gun, you have a natural right to shoot someone. The strong have a natural right to pick on the weak. The weak have a natural right to group up against the strong.
Some are innocuous. You have a natural right to look at things in your field of vision and to breath.
This is independent of any deity. Just because you exist you can do certain things.
A group of individuals can decide to punish you for doing some of those things after you do them but they can't prevent you from exercising them without punishing you before you do them.
Anything that truly depends on a deity is relative to that particular society. Another society could view that as not a right and grant rights you feel are not rights.
These are really negotiated rights determined by your local social contract. You can change those rights over time by redefining terms, changing laws, changing social standards, etc.
Man.. right now there are factories in Japan with 3 employees.
The rest the jobs are gone.
This model works as long as some business somewhere else hires humans. But they increasingly do not need to.
Detroit and GM is getting by on a fraction of the labor it used to take.
When a majority (not even "most") of companies operate on this model (and google is really one of them - highly capitalized, comparatively few humans to the income level) then the rest of the humans can a) sit around doing nothing b) start rioting.
a) is much more likely if they are not starving and have housing.
Natural rights are those like "thinking what you want to think" and arguably "pursuing happiness" and "freedom of speech".
Rights are those things we grant to ourselves like "happiness" and "medical care" and "internet access" and "freedom of not being shot, tortured, or imprisoned after using your freedom of speech".
The Chronicle is not conservative or liberal so much as "owned" by the Houston powers that be. You can count on them to be "for" whatever the Houston elite is for.
The other articles they run are... 1) Syndicated national columnists 2) Syndicated national news (why do I care some mom murdered her kids in kentucky more than I care about the business dealings of my city councilmen?) 3) Syndicated national comics 4) Some local sports (I don't watch sports) 5) Syndicated religious columns once a week.
I.e. We have a 3+ million person market and mostly they feed us regurgitated national news, opinions, sports and comics.
The ads are tough for them- more people buy online and hence don't care about local advertisements as much as they used to.
But to the point of the post...
The Houston Press produces more investigative LOCAL (City and State) investigative articles per year than the Chronicle does. And it's just a local paper with restaurant, medical study, and "adult services" advertisements.
Muslims in Europe and Hispanics in the US are reproducing at high rates. They will come to dominate the population and then their high population values will continue population growth in those areas.
So clearly, we'll continue until there is a collapse.
Already we are exhausting resources which took millions of years to create. Already parts of the ocean and soil are dying from the demand by humans exceeding their capacity to produce. In many areas, the real food supply available is less than a week. When we have a war and power and transportation are disrupted, billions will die.
Political and societal rules won't fix it. Any attempt to limit the population will result in higher breeding populations coming to dominate the population and then rejecting the value to hold population down.
It's going to take a mass die off. We are no better than deer.
Someone at Hellfire club had massive mind control. There was that entire black queen fetish piece with Jean Grey. Wasn't Proteus was it? It's been a couple decades now so it gets muddy.
I know women wear smaller bikini's these days but masses of women in lingerie must have been nice to live with while the sexual revolution was in full bloom and women had not yet become equal.
The film was enjoyably sexist (as a male fantasy). Perhaps from Mad Men ? (which I haven't watched).
I think this is the 2nd or 3rd reboot of continuity now. They don't toss everything out but they do drop big chunks. Clearly Xavier and Magneto are NOT children of the atom due to the new Retcon to their origins being well before the first A-Bombs dropped.
I found the "gay and proud" to be jarring and heavy handed. And a bit cliched. And a bit "90's"/early "00's" when it was cooler. Or perhaps just no delivered well by the actors and shoehorned in to scenes. The "don't ask don't tell" reference was better delivered and flowed better.
I thought the death scene was pretty damn "Phantasm" horror movie terrible and implicitly Xavier helped since he could have released control of Shaw and chose to scream instead.
It was a bit sad to see all the familiar X-Men youthified. I remember Rogue deaging from a competent mid 30's adult to a 20 year old not legal to drink character. I was also said that professor X got the chair in this film. It would have been nice to have that happen in a second or third film. And it violates canon (which showed him bald and young walking around the middle east and fighting a powerful psionic there).
I remember the original shaw having different powers ( mind control?) and being more sean connery like in appearance.
I severely disliked the VTOL blackbird. I liked the 'stunt character' drop ins (storm, wolverine) but disliked the John Saxon (and the guy from Roswell/Bones) on the ship. Saxon was fine in Starship Troopers but out of place here. An anonymous actor would have been better here.
Overall I would say it was a "1st class" movie-- just don't think about it too much.
And loved Moira in lingerie. Even tho it covered more than a bikini which might stir any interest at all.
I see the point. Against that is the evidence in the US and Europe of online sales just laying waste to large numbers of small businesses. They can't afford rent and other expenses after losing half their business (and most of their profit margin sales).
This is a valid point. If the money you save is spent locally then you'll have more products and the same amount of money flowing around the local economy except the amount you spent.
And part of what you buy at the local stores doesn't circulate- instead it immediately leaves the state for any product made out of state.
So the effect is less on at least two accounts but it's still real. You are damaging the local economy (that might be keeping your job afloat) to get something cheaper. On a larger scale, about the same as buying chinese made products to save money.
If you have half a brain, your shipping is capped at $75 bucks per year... and that also gets you access to a 5,000+ (and growing) title video library.
We pay a lot more sales tax than $75 per year.
I like the internet model- but I understand how states depend on there actually being local businesses to continue operation.
7. you like having jobs right? Buying from Amazon pumps huge amounts of money DIRECTLY out of the state's economy into another state. Where you used to buy from a local store and their employees spent their salaries at other local stores, now there is no local store and no employees spending at other local stores.
Now, there is a general benefit to the country- $50 items are $45 (or even $20 or in some cases $10). But there are hidden costs. Money that used to circulate 7 times in the local economy doesn't circulate at all- it shoots straight out.
Forget sales tax- just charge income tax on dividends, investment income, and salary sufficient to cover the services provided by the state.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course.
Amazon just buys a "Prime" membership and then it can ship for free.
First off... dividends run about 3% right now.
Second off...the stock was sold BY the company to raise cash. It said, "Please give us 10 million dollars to build a new plant with. We'll pay a dividend on this stock so you will pay more for it and you can resell it to other shareholders who desire dividends".
HP and numerous other companies and municipalities have cut wages and hours by 5-10% or more lately.
In some cases, the people started to shed and find jobs elsewhere and pay recovered. Where people didn't find other jobs or the company/municipality couldn't afford the going rate, those who didn't leave just got paid less.
It's not that simple. Many things are at "world price".
There are large blocks of housing being torn down in china and replaced with $200k condo's. How can people making $5k exist in that environment?
I think the nightmare scenario is more like:
The very rich THINK they can do this ("Those lazy bums don't deserve MY resources!").
Then the larger group of poor and middle class finally wakes up, goes apeshit and tears the entire system down (as they have repeatedly in the past when the rich did this).
I'm surprised we haven't seen more unrest so far. I have friends out of work 2 years now.
It's wierd tho because the ones with jobs are retiring huge amounts of debt.
---
There is nothing wrong with a decline in the american standard of living. We had a nice run but that's unsustainable. You can't sustain having a worker making $2k 1000 miles from a worker making $40k to do the same thing. Wages will even out.
Currently the compensation for the wealthy is completely out of line. The only reason they can keep it going is that they have a closed circle jerk going of the top 1%. Once they cut enough lower level labor tho, then they are competing against companies where the top executives make 1% to 10% of what our executives make.
It's not a toy if it's shooting 3000 legos per second at supersonic velocities. ;-)
It's dumb but you could retype this in a few hours.
You could probably set up something to screen capture and OCR it as well.
What are the things you can do short of the government killing or imprisoning or gagging you prior to you doing them?
These are natural rights.
Some are not nice.
You have the natural right to hit someone.
If you have a gun, you have a natural right to shoot someone.
The strong have a natural right to pick on the weak.
The weak have a natural right to group up against the strong.
Some are innocuous.
You have a natural right to look at things in your field of vision and to breath.
This is independent of any deity. Just because you exist you can do certain things.
A group of individuals can decide to punish you for doing some of those things after you do them but they can't prevent you from exercising them without punishing you before you do them.
Anything that truly depends on a deity is relative to that particular society. Another society could view that as not a right and grant rights you feel are not rights.
These are really negotiated rights determined by your local social contract. You can change those rights over time by redefining terms, changing laws, changing social standards, etc.
Man.. right now there are factories in Japan with 3 employees.
The rest the jobs are gone.
This model works as long as some business somewhere else hires humans.
But they increasingly do not need to.
Detroit and GM is getting by on a fraction of the labor it used to take.
When a majority (not even "most") of companies operate on this model (and google is really one of them - highly capitalized, comparatively few humans to the income level) then the rest of the humans can
a) sit around doing nothing
b) start rioting.
a) is much more likely if they are not starving and have housing.
Historically, we get "b".
Someday maybe I'll join you guys.
Not really,
Natural rights are those like "thinking what you want to think" and arguably "pursuing happiness" and "freedom of speech".
Rights are those things we grant to ourselves like "happiness" and "medical care" and "internet access" and "freedom of not being shot, tortured, or imprisoned after using your freedom of speech".
When there are no employees left, how will humans earn the money to buy products with?
Your point is entirely valid. Automation and robotics are replacing jobs faster than they are being created now.
The Chronicle is not conservative or liberal so much as "owned" by the Houston powers that be. You can count on them to be "for" whatever the Houston elite is for.
The other articles they run are...
1) Syndicated national columnists
2) Syndicated national news (why do I care some mom murdered her kids in kentucky more than I care about the business dealings of my city councilmen?)
3) Syndicated national comics
4) Some local sports (I don't watch sports)
5) Syndicated religious columns once a week.
I.e. We have a 3+ million person market and mostly they feed us regurgitated national news, opinions, sports and comics.
The ads are tough for them- more people buy online and hence don't care about local advertisements as much as they used to.
But to the point of the post...
The Houston Press produces more investigative LOCAL (City and State) investigative articles per year than the Chronicle does. And it's just a local paper with restaurant, medical study, and "adult services" advertisements.
Seriously- put them on a usb drive.
Give them to a news organization with bandwidth to distribute them.
And a female wearing a Burka is offensive to others.
Do they think through these laws?
No.
Just birthrates of the population susceptible to financial inducements.
Meanwhile...
http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2003/03middleeast_taspinar.aspx
Muslims in Europe and Hispanics in the US are reproducing at high rates. They will come to dominate the population and then their high population values will continue population growth in those areas.
So clearly, we'll continue until there is a collapse.
Already we are exhausting resources which took millions of years to create.
Already parts of the ocean and soil are dying from the demand by humans exceeding their capacity to produce.
In many areas, the real food supply available is less than a week. When we have a war and power and transportation are disrupted, billions will die.
Maybe 2 billion.
We are beyond sustainable population already.
It ends ugly in about 50 years.
Political and societal rules won't fix it.
Any attempt to limit the population will result in higher breeding populations coming to dominate the population and then rejecting the value to hold population down.
It's going to take a mass die off. We are no better than deer.
Man... I'm batting .150 today.
You are right. Old timers disease.
Ah! Thank you. Of course. I'd merged the two characters together.
I'm probably confused then.
Someone at Hellfire club had massive mind control. There was that entire black queen fetish piece with Jean Grey. Wasn't Proteus was it? It's been a couple decades now so it gets muddy.
I know women wear smaller bikini's these days but masses of women in lingerie must have been nice to live with while the sexual revolution was in full bloom and women had not yet become equal.
The film was enjoyably sexist (as a male fantasy). Perhaps from Mad Men ? (which I haven't watched).
I think this is the 2nd or 3rd reboot of continuity now. They don't toss everything out but they do drop big chunks. Clearly Xavier and Magneto are NOT children of the atom due to the new Retcon to their origins being well before the first A-Bombs dropped.
I found the "gay and proud" to be jarring and heavy handed. And a bit cliched. And a bit "90's"/early "00's" when it was cooler. Or perhaps just no delivered well by the actors and shoehorned in to scenes. The "don't ask don't tell" reference was better delivered and flowed better.
I thought the death scene was pretty damn "Phantasm" horror movie terrible and implicitly Xavier helped since he could have released control of Shaw and chose to scream instead.
It was a bit sad to see all the familiar X-Men youthified. I remember Rogue deaging from a competent mid 30's adult to a 20 year old not legal to drink character. I was also said that professor X got the chair in this film. It would have been nice to have that happen in a second or third film. And it violates canon (which showed him bald and young walking around the middle east and fighting a powerful psionic there).
I remember the original shaw having different powers ( mind control?) and being more sean connery like in appearance.
I severely disliked the VTOL blackbird. I liked the 'stunt character' drop ins (storm, wolverine) but disliked the John Saxon (and the guy from Roswell/Bones) on the ship. Saxon was fine in Starship Troopers but out of place here. An anonymous actor would have been better here.
Overall I would say it was a "1st class" movie-- just don't think about it too much.
And loved Moira in lingerie. Even tho it covered more than a bikini which might stir any interest at all.
I see the point. Against that is the evidence in the US and Europe of online sales just laying waste to large numbers of small businesses. They can't afford rent and other expenses after losing half their business (and most of their profit margin sales).
This is a valid point. If the money you save is spent locally then you'll have more products and the same amount of money flowing around the local economy except the amount you spent.
And part of what you buy at the local stores doesn't circulate- instead it immediately leaves the state for any product made out of state.
So the effect is less on at least two accounts but it's still real. You are damaging the local economy (that might be keeping your job afloat) to get something cheaper. On a larger scale, about the same as buying chinese made products to save money.
If you have half a brain, your shipping is capped at $75 bucks per year... and that also gets you access to a 5,000+ (and growing) title video library.
We pay a lot more sales tax than $75 per year.
I like the internet model- but I understand how states depend on there actually being local businesses to continue operation.
7. you like having jobs right? Buying from Amazon pumps huge amounts of money DIRECTLY out of the state's economy into another state. Where you used to buy from a local store and their employees spent their salaries at other local stores, now there is no local store and no employees spending at other local stores.
Now, there is a general benefit to the country- $50 items are $45 (or even $20 or in some cases $10). But there are hidden costs. Money that used to circulate 7 times in the local economy doesn't circulate at all- it shoots straight out.
Forget sales tax- just charge income tax on dividends, investment income, and salary sufficient to cover the services provided by the state.