come at me bros
Hmm, every winning candidate is bankrolled by big corporations. It's as if elected officials from the Evil Other Party are drawn towards big money for some reason and the state actually enables corporations to have their way.
We obviously need government to regulate corporations not to do that. And while we are at it, government could also regulate the government not to join them.
“I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in — and the West in general — into an unbearable hell and a choking life. - Osama bin Laden
i hope unicef had fun making the new definition what poverty isOriginally Posted by lungs
i don't know what the old definition was, but unicef defined it as:
"living in a household in
which disposable income, when adjusted
for family size and composition, is less
than 50% of the national median income."
http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/rc10_eng.pdf
@mfckr, all you're going to do is passively like anglas's post? where is your passion?
Memes ... you're getting there!
It's easy to criticize someone else's definition, but to make the criticism more meaningful try offering a counter definition. Such as how would You define poverty?
IEE 649 sx/sp cp
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Let us not forget what is the most expensive type of government program pumping money into big corporations.
Here are some statistics of big metal and powder corporations profiteering from WWI by the retired Major General Smedley Butler. Adjust to modern dollar by multiplying with 18.
Besides steel and powder, interesting shit like hundreds of thousands of saddles (none of them were used during war time) and 8 pairs of boots per soldier, 40 million yards of unused mosquite net (there were no mosquitoes in France) were bought.
Do correct if I'm wrong but not much has improved between end of WWI and today. Pentagon is constantly failing to keep track of it's inventory.
Some rant about paramilitary police:
Last edited by Aquagraph; 09-17-2014 at 04:10 PM.
“I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in — and the West in general — into an unbearable hell and a choking life. - Osama bin Laden
Stalinism brutal serfdom is still the fastest method of industrialisation. Jus' sayin
[QUOTE=lungs;1042368]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price/wage_spiral
leads to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Built-in_inflation
leads to
leads to
Disclaimer: I don't actually think food stamps are a problem. They are a fairly small expenditure and wringing one's hands over them would be like taking time to plug a pencil-sized hole on the Titanic. But still...this video=Also I think that man is a genius. he knows the score.
I've been using government-run healthcare for most of my life, and I can say, more people will probably die from the bureaucratic inefficiency and laziness caused by an inability to offer competitive compensation and thereby attract the best (or even passable!) talent than a lack of insurance. Even been to the DMV? Imagine that, only with healthcare.
But, if you want an emotional appeal, a human story instead of just facts and figures, here you go. My father was employed by the government. When I was very little my family was on food stamps. My father died in part due to a psychologically taxing military program set up by the government. My mother was pensioned by the government after his death. This pension was set up in my & my sister's name in order to ensue that we receive more money. Even though my mother had moved us back in with her parents and we were living rent free. She was fully able bodied, doing nonprofit work which she asked not to be compensated for due to the pension. I was also discouraged during my teenage years from working because of the pension. Throughout my whole life I received medical care from the government, for everything from a broken arm to passing infections. When I graduated high school, I received an incredibly generous taxpayer funded military scholarship which has paid for nearly all of my tuition at an expensive private lib arts college, despite the fact that my mother owns nearly half a million in her stock portfolio now. The government pays me $4,000 a month in living expenses during the school year, which I have blown on all manner of things like video games and gym memberships. I'm basically beginning a four month vacation in Japan tomorrow on your tax dollars.
All my life I have been suckling on the government's golden teat. And what has it produced? A directionless fool accustomed to a life of luxury and nonexistent adversity! My whole life is the living testament to the outcome of welfare and government healthcare. there are few people more qualified to speak on the subject than me, from a personal point of view. And I am telling you that it is not working. To create a truly competent workforce, sometimes you need to light a fire under their asses. More legislation is not the answer. More government is not the answer. I am biting the hand the fed me not out of petty teenage rebellion, but I can see that this is not going to end well. "Keynes is dead, and we're all living in the long run" "There's no such thing as a free lunch" You pay for something now, or you pay for it later, but you pay eventually. With the way the deficit is, I know that all this luxury that neither my mother nor I earned came from obscene printing runs in the Federal Reserve. Printing money leads to inflation, and inflation leads to it taking more money to buy goods. Hopefully we won't end up as bad as postwar Germany or Zimbabwe, but...
The peasants will soon be banging at the doors of Versailles, my dearest Antoinette...
Last edited by Whoobie77; 09-24-2014 at 07:07 AM.
You do realize these matters nil to the poor and very little to the middle class who don't save and have very actually wealth affected by inflation. What matters is a living wage and decent benefits.
If manged properly without resulting in hyperinflation, it's one of the non-revolutionary methods of eroding the death grip the rich have over wealth.
The wealthy(especially those that didn't earn it and got it from some trust fund) are scared as hell of this, they're the biggest losers in any sort of inflationary situation.
When the floor wage requirement rises, the cost of production must also rise, even if marginally.Therefore the goods the middle class and poor are buying will cost more, because businesses will be trying to continue to turn a profit. Also, as labor costs increase, this may lead to the termination or consolidation of positions, production going overseas due to NAFTA, or potential entrepreneurs deciding they are unable to accrue the necessary capital to start a business. Inflation hurts everyone.
Now I know you might say, "Labor is just a marginal cost! The CEOs of these companies are making millions!" Well, that's just the way supply and demand works. Lebron James is a lot better at shooting a basketball than me, and people pay a lot of money to see it. CEO X of a Fortune 500 company is a lot better at steering a giant organization of people through the marketplace than me, and the consumers are voting with their wallets and the board of directors (representatives of the shareholders, or, people with money.) are setting a price to attract good talent. Meanwhile, there are hundreds of millions of people who can flip a burger or push a broom. The hard fact is that no matter how high the minimum wage goes, some people will be rich, some people will be middling, and some people will be poor.
There are other factors contributing to inflation that will necessitate this wage increase, and the next, and the next, and on and on and on. All I'm saying is just look. Look at where this cycle leads over time.
This sounds exactly like the Corporate Whining Meme above.
Do prices rise with a minimum wage rise? Of course. However, to assume that such is an isolated causality is incorrect. The majority of spending in the economy is done by the poorest people. People making minimum wage do not horde money, they spend it. McDonalds customers may see their average transaction go up by fifty cents, but more people will be able to afford fast food more often than before. It's not like there haven't been times in the history of the United States when the minimum wage was at a higher worth than today. The argument that it's too expensive is bad economics, and disproven by places like Seattle who are currently succeeding at a high minimum wage.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-s...conomics-wrong
"As fast-food workers demonstrate nationwide for a $15 hourly wage, and congressional Republicans fight off a $10 federal minimum, little SeaTac has something to offer the debate. Its neighbor, Seattle, was the first big city to approve a $15 wage, this spring, but that doesn’t start phasing in until next year. SeaTac did it all at once. And, though there’s nothing definitive, this much is clear: The sky did not fall.
“SeaTac is proving trickle-down economics wrong,” says David Rolf, the Service Employees International Union official who helped lead the $15 effort in SeaTac and Seattle, “because when workers prosper, so do communities and businesses.”
Where does this lead to, people living decent lives on a fair wage, and as long as the cycle can continue, they can live decent lives...
How to keep this cycle going, because it sounds very pleasant? You talk about the world as you think it has to be, but that's not how humans have to conduct ourselves. We humans can choose to be more than mere predators who prey on our own kind and exploit them for some nominal gain which in the grand scheme of things can make it a terrible place to live. It's not like this predator way of living is sustainable either, history has show that all civilizations rise and fall. There are other ways to live, which are just as sustainable and can provide a much better standard of living, which can produce great accomplishments above and beyond base brutality.
This is not an argument.
“I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in — and the West in general — into an unbearable hell and a choking life. - Osama bin Laden
i dont actually get into these discussions bcuz the arguments are usually about whether social safety nets or unobstructed markets are best for the middle class etc. and all i could do is pull up the same statistics and reasoning other people go back and forth with depending on their already decided emotional/personal inclination imo lol.
my own story is that after i had my son at 17 i went on welfare and food stamps and daycare assistance while i went through school and obtained a job paying well enough to no longer need the programs. a pretty standard success story. i worked for the county welfare office for awhile and saw people getting thrown off and marked as a "success" when their jobs at arbys or some factory started paying them slightly over the margin and that was kind of depressing. i sat on the phone with people while they cried about how they were going to feed their kids and had no choice but to tell them the rules of the program and that they could call their legislator if they didn't think it was fair...and meanwhile i was still getting assistance myself, as i was a part time intern getting $6 an hour. growing up my mom got welfare but a lot of it went towards alcohol...i spent a lot of time without food at home, electricity, phone, etc. then i moved in with my dad and he was low income enough to qualify but too proud. though we at least didnt get our heat turned off during the winter because of laws preventing that from happening.
Not trying to argue. The argument is little more than pissing propaganda and dealing with trolls. It's a choice, I simply choose to live a life where I do not vainly strive for profits and seek to end exploitation. And I will do so until I die. You can choose not to live this life, it is perhaps a harder path for some to live my life. But should you attempt to exploit others or perpetuate systems that exploit others, be prepared for the most fierce resistance from myself and people like me.
Here you announce your values. You also seem to imply that people who are philosophically capitalists would be capitalists at heart, as if engaging in, say, anonymous charity couldn't be a form of self-interest.
And this is a threat. To be fair, possibly a retaliatory one. Define exploitation.
“I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in — and the West in general — into an unbearable hell and a choking life. - Osama bin Laden
1. I prefer transparency.
2. Charitable donations typically tax shelters, get a name on some building, narcissistic stuff.
3. Pay workers decent wages.
4. I am pro-entrepreneurship, but I am also pro-fair wage, wealth redistribution. I don't see entrepreneurship and wealth redistribution as necessarily competing forces, in fact these are forces which should be aligned systematically to create sustainable systems. I don't particularly care how this is accomplished, private organization, public organization, unions, charity, etc. The fact that it is not occurring is the problem. I'm organizationally agnostic as far as the operating mechanism of wealth generation and wealth redistribution, however if it's not being done properly, organize to get it done. However people shouldn't be force to be entrepreneurs any more than they should be forced into unions or unfair labor. I prefer a diversification of
5. Power to the people not power to the capitalists
6. Political terminology like capitalism and charity is often little more than political pissing, trolling and/or fraud. Most capitalist aren't entrepreneurs anymore and many charities little more than tax shelters, political lobbies or just plain fraud.
1. There's a lot of definitions for this word, and my viewpoint is that we do not know the specific definition for this, but there are multiple variations which I will see as expressions. From a quantum mechanical perspective, you call say my definition is the "sum over histories" definition of the word exploitation. And this is sort of my definition of all these unknowns big picture concepts is in a similar manner, "sum over histories". I've been reading Feynman's formulation of quantum mechanics in a attempt to grasp it's essence, and I think his formulation of quantum mechanics to define something that cannot be grasped in the definite but can be grasped in a representational manner, has allowed me to come to this new way of thinking on definitions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_integral_formulation
Concepts such as exploitation can be viewed to have "single indistinguishable "class" of paths which all share the same events".
2. It's not a threat, it's merely a statement of resistance. It is a expression of my non-agreement and resistance to all such paths of exploitation hereby defined by my sum over histories interpretation of exploitation. It is a declaration of freedom and independence like those made by many freedom loving people. Any system which I see as exploitative is no different than existing systems such as states, business, and any such organization that might engage willingly or unwillingly in exploitative processes. My actions within and towards these systems shall be declared below.
3. I do not retaliate, I resist, I do not engage in vindictive, tit for tat conflict in order to harm others but rather I engage in active and passive resistance against forces and organization which I see may harm myself and others. The purpose is to prevent harm, and not to harm others based on some vindictive rationalization. Sometimes the removal of a threat is necessary but the purpose of resistance is not removal of threats, but rather the prevention of harm.
Cool. Audit the Fed? Harry Reid was very actively supportive of it, but the bill is probably going to die on his desk anyways.
I said "anonymous charity".
Sure, I like nice things happening. Actually, I'm in support of overtly abundant wages and mansions for everyone.
Doesn't mean almost anything unless this is specified.
Minimum wage. Let's call a spade a spade. "Fair" is value-laden word.
2 dollars per day would be their salary doubled for a billion people or so. They would call it "fair".
You mean flattening the wealth gaps or income equality.
"Systematically aligned" and "sustainable systems" are very vague as well.
And doing it by having more government force is your solution because reasons.I don't particularly care how this is accomplished, private organization, public organization, unions, charity, etc. The fact that it is not occurring is the problem. I'm organizationally agnostic as far as the operating mechanism of wealth generation and wealth redistribution, however if it's not being done properly, organize to get it done.
In your view, the definition of "unfair" wouldn't be at the hands of the workers but in the hands of the elected leaders.However people shouldn't be force to be entrepreneurs any more than they should be forced into unions or unfair labor.
"The people" and "the capitalists" are collectives and collectives do not have opinions nor ability to function as one mind. Your statement is meaningless.5. Power to the people not power to the capitalists
FTFY. For a man so critical of political terminology, your post contains a lot of stuff you can't even define concisely.6. Political terminology like capitalism and charity is often little more than political pissing, trolling and/or fraud.
You advocate political means to end exploitation yet you are unable to define it. Try to keep this clear and concise. Let's not drag quantum mechanics into this.1. There's a lot of definitions for this word, and my viewpoint is that we do not know the specific definition for this, but there are multiple variations which I will see as expressions. From a quantum mechanical perspective, you call say my definition is the "sum over histories" definition of the word exploitation. And this is sort of my definition of all these unknowns big picture concepts is in a similar manner, "sum over histories". I've been reading Feynman's formulation of quantum mechanics in a attempt to grasp it's essence, and I think his formulation of quantum mechanics to define something that cannot be grasped in the definite but can be grasped in a representational manner, has allowed me to come to this new way of thinking on definitions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_integral_formulation
Ugh, let's just put it this way: Your worst fears in the US come true. What will you do?2. It's not a threat, it's merely a statement of resistance. It is a expression of my non-agreement and resistance to all such paths of exploitation hereby defined by my sum over histories interpretation of exploitation. It is a declaration of freedom and independence like those made by many freedom loving people. Any system which I see as exploitative is no different than existing systems such as states, business, and any such organization that might engage willingly or unwillingly in exploitative processes. My actions within and towards these systems shall be declared below.
3. I do not retaliate, I resist, I do not engage in vindictive, tit for tat conflict in order to harm others but rather I engage in active and passive resistance against forces and organization which I see may harm myself and others. The purpose is to prevent harm, and not to harm others based on some vindictive rationalization. Sometimes the removal of a threat is necessary but the purpose of resistance is not removal of threats, but rather the prevention of harm.
“I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in — and the West in general — into an unbearable hell and a choking life. - Osama bin Laden
I don't try to be concise when there is no need to, political terminology tends to make concise what is not concise. "Ignorance is Freedom", "Freedom is Slavery", "Capitalism is fair"
Bullshit like that. Frankly, your desire to be spoon-fed concise slogan definitions is pretty ignorant.
Exploitation is a very "big" topic not able to be concisely defined, much like freedom, obscenity, etc. Quantum mechanics and the methods of scientific research have allowed us to define various unknown physical qualities and perhaps in quantum computers in the future define various unknown conceptual qualities in a more accurate fashion. Since i do this professionally and am well versed in information science, I see these things at clear. Feynman has really helped clear up a few things in my head recently and I'm grateful for that.
Anyways, Aqua, you're a good kid, but you've been exposed to a lot of propaganda like most human beings and such and there's very little do about that, I just ask you what you think exploitation is and see if that's actually true, and if it's actually true if it's the only thing that's true. Sometimes the best lie is a truth that hides other truth, and I think you've been given a truth that you think is the only truth but is actually hiding you from other truths.
You asked the question, I gave you the best possible definition I can from the sum of my knowledge.
My worst fears won't come true in the US. I'm pretty sure I'll be dead long before my worst fears come true. Authoritarians always kill people like me first anyways. I'm just content to live my life as productive as possible until the end however it might come. Going to get that Chris Pratt shirt, "Fear is not real."
I can talk about these matters easily without using political terminology. You can't. Statists from left to right are almost never quietists.
As Einstein put it, if you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
“I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in — and the West in general — into an unbearable hell and a choking life. - Osama bin Laden
Of course you can.... NOT. It's very evident that you cannot distance yourself from your own very own political terminology and your mind is trapped. You're young, these things can still be reversed.
You writing here is very littered with political terminology and always has been.
I however questioned the nature of political terminology.
What is statist, what is quietist, what is capitalist, what is charity, what is the state? I question every term, you simply questioned exploitation which I gave you a very apolitical definition for, and it's extremely quietist if you could recognize the heritage of my in-determinism. I explained what I explained extremely simply. "Sum over histories.." of all potential exploitative acts.
You have very powerful political definitions of these terms, which have you trapped in your political ideology. I feel sad for you.
"Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, But Not Simpler"
Sorry about your thread, lungs.
“I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in — and the West in general — into an unbearable hell and a choking life. - Osama bin Laden
I kind of wish we had a more progressive tax system. I would gladly pay higher taxes in order for us to have universal primary/secondary education and health care. Everyone pays according to their ability. I cannot understand how the wealthy do not see it in their interest to have healthy, educated people of every class.
Putting more money on something doesn't necessarily mean that it works better. Today, Americans spend most on healthcare per capita but they are just ahead of Cuba in quality. Even if spending did correlate well with quality, I'd rather focus on moving the money from things like military budget and corporate subsidies to better areas.
Since the very rich people own the American politicians, they are not going to make it more progressive without putting loopholes for themselves. In the end, voter's call for raising the taxes would probably only hit the poor and the middle-class who are already at the risk of not being able to fund their education, although the rhetoric would be for taxing the rich.
It is still very possible that some of the very rich that weren't enough friendly to the state (= didn't lobby and fund campaigns enough) would get taxed more, but it would just make the state a weapon to weed out the non-lobbying competition. You can't grow big without allying yourself with the state anymore, it's a competitive must. The extra tax on the rich without the loopholes wouldn't keep them rich for long when they compete with rich people with the loopholes.
“I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in — and the West in general — into an unbearable hell and a choking life. - Osama bin Laden
Fair enough. (Although I will say that it is during the explanation process that understanding can improve as the process itself provides a sequence of events from beginning to end to hang the idea on.)
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