REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

A thread for Democrats Only

POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Monday, October 21, 2024 20:59
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Thursday, May 10, 2018 3:46 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:

I look forward to when you find your 2nd book title.
Perhaps you could start a thread on Economic Theories or Practices, Policies. To make a repository of reference material to be found?

Good idea.

Thanks.
I had imagined a new thread, to make finding the info easier.
As is now, it's kinda buried in another thread of many posts.

Easiest remedy: along with the newly altered title, place in the OP a link to where the added topic began in earnest/summary. As OP, you can do that for your thread. Details: go to your summary (or other post of choice), select "edit", click on "update thread" or whatever that button says at the bottom right of the dialogue box, and then when you are back at your post of choice, select and copy (or block) the web address in the address field of your browser.
Now go to your OP and "edit". Find a spot in that OP, and "place" or "move" or "paste" or "copy" there.
This link will now take anybody directly to the top of the specific post you chose. A short-cut.

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Friday, May 11, 2018 5:17 AM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


I had a VERY SPECIFIC suggestion as to how to improve people's lives without trying to create a worker's utopia or have massive redistribution of wealth, and it involved re-purposing the military. SECOND has managed to not actually discuss my post at all.

But it does certainly snark and troll at every post.

SECOND is a troll.




So anyway ... anyone up for a rational, fact-based, and civil discussion about the topic?

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Friday, May 11, 2018 7:14 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

As far as Yanis Varoufakis is concerned, his activities can best be described as "whinging for money". Now, I agree that Greece was done hard by Goldman, the ECB/EC/IMF ("troika") and its own dirty politicians. But urging overextension is just what banks do, because when they come to collect they not only get the money that you already paid on your too-big loan, they ALSO get the collateral on which the loan was based. Real property for pennies on the dollar! Austerity for the population, as the lenders squeeze out that last possible Euro from Greece, short of bankrupting the entire nation!

Yanis' argument, as best as I can tell, was that Greece needed more money for further development so that it could compete more effectively (in the EU? In the world?) and pay back its loans. But he overlooks the fact that is not a solution for ALL national debts: That simply raises the overall level of productivity, but in the resulting hyper-competitive world there will STILL be winners and losers, and the losers will STILL have unpayable debt. So Greece may come out better than Portugal, but Portugal will be left in even worse shape than before because it's income production will be relatively less, having been "out-competed" by Greece. So what is Yanis' solution for Portugal? Or Brazil? Or the USA?

Signym, the real story is not what you wrote. I am both sorry and irritated to tell you, but your wonderful writing gifts are being misused to sell a false story on fireflyfans.net.

Yanis Varoufakis, in his book "Adults in the Room", gives the recorded conversations where he tries, and sadly fails, to reason with people who really don’t care what happens to Greece, so long as German bankers get the satisfaction of beating the Greeks to a pulp. Varoufakis isn't as crude as I am at describing what happened. The book: https://thepiratebay.org/search/Varoufakis/0/99/0

Varoufakis footnoted this article to succinctly describe Greece’s financial negotiations. He convinced the I.M.F. to see his viewpoint but not the Germans.

Aug. 15, 2015
www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/business/international/the-greek-debt-deals
-missing-piece.html


At long last, European creditor nations and Greece have reached an agreement on a third bailout in five years.

The bailout, which was approved by Greece’s Parliament on Friday, included familiar details: In return for an infusion of 86 billion euros, or $95 billion, Greece has promised to increase taxes, cut spending and enact measures to make its economy function more efficiently.

But there was one glaring omission. As it stands, none of that new money flowing into Greece will come from the agency that has, until now, played a crucial role in virtually every bailout, in Greece and elsewhere around the world: the International Monetary Fund.

That is because the I.M.F. says that Greece was simply incapable of repaying its staggering debt. Yet the accord reached last week makes no effort to reduce that burden. If you agree with the I.M.F.’s reasoning, you might have to conclude that despite all of the seemingly ironclad provisions of the agreement imposed by eurozone creditors, Greece will be no more able to honor the deal or to repay its new loans than it has been in other bailouts.

“I remain firmly of the view that Greece’s debt has become unsustainable and that Greece cannot restore debt sustainability solely through actions on its own,” the I.M.F.’s chief, Christine Lagarde, said on Friday, following the accord’s approval this week.

The Greek debt drama has had its share of twists and turns. Alliances have shifted, rivalries have deepened, and the back-room maneuverings have been appropriately Byzantine.

But the I.M.F. shift from being Greece’s most persistent scold to its main advocate for a break on its debt has been among the most intriguing developments so far.

. . . If the I.M.F. wants to be seen as an international, as opposed to a European, monetary fund, it must prove that it can speak with an independent voice. And if that means arguing that Europe, its senior partner in these talks, needs to take a loss on its loans — well, so be it.

Many have commended the fund for going public with its views. But the release of its debt reports has not yet had any practical effect.

The latest bailout is heavy on austerity measures like privatization of Greek power companies and seaports, reduced Greek pensions and tax increases in shipping and tourism, and says nothing about debt relief.

. . . by not forcing creditors to take a loss back in 2010, the pain has been borne almost exclusively by the Greeks themselves, and not by bond investors.

“The fund should have pushed for a restructuring then,” she said. “That, after all, is its job — to assess the risks and say whether or not the debt is sustainable.”

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, May 11, 2018 7:28 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by 1kiki:
I had a VERY SPECIFIC suggestion as to how to improve people's lives without trying to create a worker's utopia or have massive redistribution of wealth, and it involved re-purposing the military. SECOND has managed to not actually discuss my post at all.

But it does certainly snark and troll at every post.

SECOND is a troll.

I'm a troll because I have no respect for your thinking? Too bad. If the Senate had a majority of Democrats, the Republicans could not have passed their tax cut. Now that they have, the cut has to be defended against those Democrats taking control of Congress.

Sheldon Adelson cuts $30 million check to help House Republicans win the midterms. Do you think the casino billionaire is fighting for the common man? Or do you think it was because Sheldon Adelson's company recorded a *$670 million* income tax windfall from the GOP tax law in the first quarter? That money will not be available to "improve people's lives" in 1kiki's phrase.

The commitment of the likes of Adelson to the GOP cause is a reminder that despite the way culture war topics dominate the messaging of Republican Party politicians, economic issues remain core to the actual stakes of American politics. The $30 million the octogenarian casino billionaire is spending on the midterms may sound like a lot, but it’s actually a drop in the bucket compared to what Adelson’s heirs will gain thanks to the estate tax cut provisions of Trump tax bill alone.

www.vox.com/2018/5/10/17339180/sheldon-adelson-congressional-leadershi
p-fund


One more example of Republicans making sure money is not available to "improve people's lives":

By all accounts, Trump really hates the idea of people receiving “welfare,” by which he means any government program that helps people with low income, and he wants to eliminate such programs wherever possible.

Most recently, he has reportedly threatened to veto the upcoming farm bill unless it imposes stringent new work requirements on recipients of SNAP — the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, still commonly referred to as food stamps.

Let me be upfront here: There’s something fundamentally obscene about this spectacle. Here we have a man who inherited great wealth, then built a business career largely around duping the gullible — whether they were naïve investors in his business ventures left holding the bag when those ventures went bankrupt, or students who wasted time and money on worthless degrees from Trump University. Yet he’s determined to snatch food from the mouths of the truly desperate, because he’s sure that somehow or other they’re getting away with something, having it too easy.

But however petty Trump’s motives, this is a big deal from the other side. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that new work requirements plus other restrictions proposed by House Republicans would end up denying or reducing nutritional aid to around two million people, mostly in families with children.

Why would anyone want to do that? The thing is, it’s not just Trump: Conservative hatred for food stamps is pervasive. What’s behind it?

The more respectable, supposedly intellectual side of conservative opinion portrays food stamps as reducing incentives by making life too pleasant for the poor. As Paul Ryan put it, SNAP and other programs create a “hammock” that “lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency and complacency.”

But this is a problem that exists only in the right’s imagination. Able-bodied SNAP recipients who should be working but aren’t are very hard to find: A vast majority of the program’s beneficiaries either are working — but at unstable jobs that pay low wages — or are children, elderly, disabled or essential family caregivers.

www.nytimes.com/2018/05/10/opinion/trump-food-stamps-agriculture.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, May 11, 2018 7:49 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


So what date did you put on your check to house Democrats for your $30 Million check to to make sure that they put higher taxes on you next year, Second?

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Friday, May 11, 2018 8:21 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
So what date did you put on your check to house Democrats for your $30 Million check to to make sure that they put higher taxes on you next year, Second?

I have never been subtle about this: no matter which party controls America, I win. If it is Democrats, I win because I dislike the beliefs of the GOP Texans I am familiar with. If it is Republicans controlling government, I win because I am getting a tax cut. Win/Win for me! If it was three choices, Democrat/Republican/Communist, it would be for me Win/Win/Lose:

What Made Marxism So Deadly?
www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/05/what-made-marxism-so-deadly/

Brad DeLong points me to Noah Smith, who uses the occasion of Karl Marx’s 200th birthday to muse about the many, many failings of real-world communism:
Quote:

For those who have read history or lived through the 20th century, it’s hard to forget the tens of millions of people who starved to death under Mao Zedong; the tens of millions purged, starved or sent to gulags by Joseph Stalin; or the millions slaughtered in Cambodia’s killing fields. Even if Marx himself never advocated genocide, these stupendous atrocities and catastrophic economic blunders were all done in the name of Marxism. From North Korea to Vietnam, 20th century communism always seem to result in either crimes against humanity, grinding poverty or both. Meanwhile, Venezuela, the most dramatic socialist experiment of the 21st century in a nation with the world’s largest oil reserves, is in full economic collapse.
I realize I’m barging into a conversation that’s been going on for many decades, and also that I’m woefully inadequate to comment. But I’m going to comment anyway. It strikes me that Smith has the causation backward here. It’s not that Marxism inherently leads to crimes against humanity, but that ruthless autocrats—the kind likely to commit crimes against humanity—find Marxism a convenient economic doctrine to adopt.

Why convenient? Because autocrats desire centralized control, and Marxism delivers by insisting that the state should own the means of productions. Autocrats also like to pose as populists, and Marxism delivers there too. Even more conveniently, Marx himself said that full communism would take a long time to develop, which provides an endless series of excuses for underachievement. Also conveniently, Marxism contrasts itself explicitly to market capitalism, which provides autocrats in poor countries with an automatic enemy in the capitalist West to keep the masses enthralled.

All in all, if I were an autocrat, I’d probably find Marxism pretty congenial. Would I care about what Marx actually wrote or what his economic ideas really were? Not really. Every autocrat has his own national version of Marxism anyway.

As for the grinding poverty, that’s because Marxism is (a) deeply flawed, (b) adopted only by poor countries in the first place, and (c) generally just a thin veneer over the usual autocratic kleptocracy that’s impoverished countries for centuries.


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, May 11, 2018 8:47 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
So what date did you put on your check to house Democrats for your $30 Million check to to make sure that they put higher taxes on you next year, Second?

I have never been subtle about this: no matter which party controls America, I win. If it is Democrats, I win because I dislike the beliefs of the GOP Texans I am familiar with. If it is Republicans controlling government, I win because I am getting a tax cut. Win/Win for me!



Well then. I've made my point.

Just wondering why you sound so pissed off all the time. Sounds like you got it made up there in that Ivory Tower.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Friday, May 11, 2018 8:48 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

Signym, the real story is not what you wrote. I am both sorry and irritated to tell you, but your wonderful writing gifts are being misused to sell a false story on fireflyfans.net.
SECOND: Everything you post about Varoufakis merely validates my summary: His activities can best be described as "whinging for more money". What it means, in this case, is that he begged for better (delayed/reduced) repayment terms for the vastly over-indebted Greek government. I read/ listened to the many, many reasons why he thought this was rational; and the many mechanisms by which he thought it could work, but he failed to understand the lessons of the IMF and his German, Nederlander, and Finnish creditors: Did he NEVER look at how bankers deal with creditor nations? Austerity. If he was able to convince LaGarde, he was not able to convince German FM Schauble.


Austerity. THAT'S their answer.

Hey, I was watching this in real time as it was happening. Don't sell me alternate facts.

Quote:

I have never been subtle about this: no matter which party controls America, I win. If it is Democrats, I win because I dislike the beliefs of the GOP Texans I am familiar with. If it is Republicans controlling government, I win because I am getting a tax cut. Win/Win for me!
A PERFECT example of why the Democratic party is just as corrupt as the GOP! Any party which does not disturb your comfortable position as a rentier capitalist is a party that does not deserve affiliation.

What you are fighting 150% of your time is any change to the rules of the of the game by which you remain in privileged status. So you'll play the financial conservatives against the social liberals and the social conservatives against the financial liberals until the cows come home. Meanwhile, you keep collecting your rentier checks. What a deal! [for you]


-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

America is an oligarchy
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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Friday, May 11, 2018 10:15 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Quote:

I have never been subtle about this: no matter which party controls America, I win. If it is Democrats, I win because I dislike the beliefs of the GOP Texans I am familiar with. If it is Republicans controlling government, I win because I am getting a tax cut. Win/Win for me! -Second


A PERFECT example of why the Democratic party is just as corrupt as the GOP! Any party which does not disturb your comfortable position as a rentier capitalist is a party that does not deserve affiliation.

What you are fighting 150% of your time is any change to the rules of the of the game by which you remain in privileged status. So you'll play the financial conservatives against the social liberals and the social conservatives against the financial liberals until the cows come home. Meanwhile, you keep collecting your rentier checks. What a deal! [for you]



Meanwhile, he can come in here (and it should be assumed other places) and virtue signal all day long to soothe his conscious... except for the times that he gets pissed off enough to drop the act that he cares about anybody but himself and let's the 99%ers know what he really thinks about them.

Honestly, since he doesn't give a shit about anybody but himself and he's got no skin in the game, I don't know why he even posts here at all.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Friday, May 11, 2018 11:10 AM

CAPTAINCRUNCH

... stay crunchy...


Before you 2 (Six and Sig) get to far ahead of yourselves, there is a lot to be learned by observing the concept of negative space. In this case it shows that no matter who wins Second also loses. If Reps are in power his neighbors are even more unbearable, and if Dems win he gets no tax cut. Sorry to spoil your rants, hope I made your day.

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Friday, May 11, 2018 6:07 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by captaincrunch:
Before you 2 (Six and Sig) get to far ahead of yourselves, there is a lot to be learned by observing the concept of negative space. In this case it shows that no matter who wins Second also loses. If Reps are in power his neighbors are even more unbearable, and if Dems win he gets no tax cut. Sorry to spoil your rants, hope I made your day.




Yeah... Tough days there for Second. I'm gonna cry a bunch for somebody who has enough money they don't ever have to interact with their rich neighbors, and who is going to pay more in taxes this year than I will pay in my entire life.

Boo Hoo.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Saturday, May 12, 2018 1:14 AM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


"I'm a troll because I have no respect for your thinking?"

SECOND is a troll because it constantly misrepresents what people post, fails to address their actual positions, and resorts to personal attacks when its brain isn't working (which is most of the time).






SECOND is a troll because it constantly misrepresents what people post, fails to address their actual positions, and resorts to personal attacks when its brain isn't working (which is most of the time).

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Saturday, May 12, 2018 7:23 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by captaincrunch:
Before you 2 (Six and Sig) get to far ahead of yourselves, there is a lot to be learned by observing the concept of negative space. In this case it shows that no matter who wins Second also loses. If Reps are in power his neighbors are even more unbearable, and if Dems win he gets no tax cut. Sorry to spoil your rants, hope I made your day.

It's like I am watching a sitcom from Russia that has been dubbed into English. Five minutes of these Republicans clowning around, then I turn off Trump TV because I've got better things to do with real people.

What was the episode subject on Trump TV, yesterday? Drug prices. I don’t have any drug prescriptions but I do own drug stocks. My stocks are up because Trump broke his populist promises to lower drug prices. I am amused that Trump claims drug prices would go lower despite him doing nothing that would move the prices downward. It is a triple win for me: 1) more money for me from the stockmarket. 2) Satisfaction for me that Republican voters won’t get the lower prices Trump promised. 3) My personal amusement that most Republican voters don’t understand and soon won’t even remember what happened. When they do pay higher prices, they will tell themselves the increase would be far worse if Trump hadn’t acted.

Trump Proposes to Cut Drug Prices by Allowing Companies to Charge More

President Trump will lay out on Friday a broad strategy to reduce prescription drug prices, but in a break from one of his most popular campaign promises, he will not call for Medicare to negotiate lower prices with drug manufacturers, senior administration officials said.

The administration will, as expected, put pressure on foreign countries to relax drug price controls, in the belief that pharmaceutical companies can then lower prices in the United States.

So Trump is proposing to increase drug prices overseas and then do nothing to leverage this into lower prices here.
www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/05/trump-proposes-to-cut-drug-pric
es-by-allowing-companies-to-charge-more
/

Drug company stocks liked Trump speech on drug prices. Trump has abandoned his campaign commitments in favor of an industry-friendly approach.
www.vox.com/2018/5/11/17346006/trump-pharma-speech-stock

President Donald Trump vowed Friday to “derail the gravy train for special interests” as he outlined what he called a comprehensive strategy to lower the cost of prescription drugs by promoting competition and pressing foreign nations to raise their drug prices to alleviate pressure on U.S. consumers.

But he dropped the popular and populist proposals of his presidential campaign, opting not to have the federal government negotiate lower drug prices for Medicare or allow American consumers to import low-cost prescriptions from abroad.

Trump said the current system has been corrupted by greedy businesses and middlemen who have made “an absolute fortune” through “dishonest double-dealing” at the expense of consumers.

But his proposals hardly put a scare into that system. Ronny Gal, a securities analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., said the president’s speech was “very, very positive to pharma,” and he added, “We have not seen anything about that speech which should concern investors” in the pharmaceutical industry.
www.wral.com/trump-outlines-plan-to-lower-drug-prices/17548751/

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Saturday, May 12, 2018 7:39 AM

CAPTAINCRUNCH

... stay crunchy...


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by captaincrunch:
Before you 2 (Six and Sig) get to far ahead of yourselves, there is a lot to be learned by observing the concept of negative space. In this case it shows that no matter who wins Second also loses. If Reps are in power his neighbors are even more unbearable, and if Dems win he gets no tax cut. Sorry to spoil your rants, hope I made your day.

It's like I am watching a sitcom from Russia that has been dubbed into English. Five minutes of these Republicans clowning around, then I turn off Trump TV because I've got better things to do with real people.



I can barely make 3 minutes before I can't breath. The bleach, the yards of pastel stretch fabric, the nasal whine... too much, the buzz like a hive of angry bees.

Interesting pattern noticed by Chris Hayes and others: Trump does his never ending campaign appearances and during most of them he will rail against a company or a business sector, like drugs and pharma. Afterwards, after the reviews of his speeches have hit the air waves and the newspapers and social media and negative press has started to press in on these businesses, along comes Cohen with a proposition and a tin cup (gold cup). "Do you want the president's ear? i.e., do you want to make him talk about something else? It's a classic shake down, one Trump and Cohen surely learned about when they were very young and greedy and living in NYC.

The more I read the more making politics makes making sausage look like fun, and I have seen (and smelled) making sausage from pig to plate.

https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/nick-ayers-mike-pence/

Like flies to shit.

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Saturday, May 12, 2018 8:26 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

Before you 2 (Six and Sig) get to far ahead of yourselves, there is a lot to be learned by observing the concept of negative space. In this case it shows that no matter who wins Second also loses. If Reps are in power his neighbors are even more unbearable
Oh boo hoo. That's a loss? SECOND hates everyone.

Quote:

and if Dems win he gets no tax cut.
Oh boo hoo. SECOND is very happy with 'the way things are' that keep him so near the top of the pile.

SECOND brings up Veblen, who (btw) points out that it is people LIKE SECOND who are the real parasites who are disrupting the system. Why are people LIKE SECOND allowed to be parasites? Because the rules of the game allow it.

A REAL loss, for SECOND, would be something like nationalization of gas fields, where the rules of the game are knocked out from under SECOND. But neither establishment Dems nor Repubs are about to change the rules of the game, because they too sustain crooked politicians, who parasitize the parasites. It's a whole ecology of parasites!


-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

America is an oligarchy
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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Saturday, May 12, 2018 8:54 AM

CAPTAINCRUNCH

... stay crunchy...


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:

Before you 2 (Six and Sig) get to far ahead of yourselves, there is a lot to be learned by observing the concept of negative space. In this case it shows that no matter who wins Second also loses. If Reps are in power his neighbors are even more unbearable
Oh boo hoo. That's a loss? SECOND hates everyone.

Quote:

and if Dems win he gets no tax cut.
Oh boo hoo. SECOND is very happy with 'the way things are' that keep him so near the top of the pile.



I try to give you good news and you completely miss it - of course.

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND brings up Veblen, who (btw) points out that it is people LIKE SECOND who are the real parasites who are disrupting the system. Why are people LIKE SECOND allowed to be parasites? Because the rules of the game allow it.

A REAL loss, for SECOND, would be something like nationalization of gas fields, where the rules of the game are knocked out from under SECOND. But neither establishment Dems nor Repubs are about to change the rules of the game, because they too sustain the crooked politicians, who parasitize the parasites.




You'd want the US gov to run our oil and gas? You expect anyone to believe that?

Do you think all rental land owners are parasites? Where would people live if they couldn't rent or lease? Tents? Rest stops? A nation of homeless? You stop making any sense when you argue both sides of a concept.

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Saturday, May 12, 2018 9:05 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

You'd want the US gov to run our oil and gas? You expect anyone to believe that?
Did I say that? No, I didn't. How about this: THE GOVERNMENT becomes the ultimate "rentier" for natural resources, and companies pay THE GOVERNMENT for the right to "develop" these natural resources. That would allow the government to stop collecting income taxes, for example.

If you don't think that's a realistic idea, that's how things work in MOST oil- and gas-producing nations, including Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, and the North Sea nations Norway, Britain, Denmark, Germany, Nederlands.


Quote:

Do you think all rental land owners are parasites?
Yes.
Next?

Quote:

Where would people live if they couldn't rent or lease?
In their own homes, which they could afford if they weren't being parasitized from morning to night?

Clearly, in your vigorous defense of "consumers" (instead of "producers") you too consider yourself to be a parasite. No wonder you defend parasitism so vigorously!

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

America is an oligarchy
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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Saturday, May 12, 2018 10:21 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

SECOND brings up Veblen, who (btw) points out that it is people LIKE SECOND who are the real parasites who are disrupting the system. Why are people LIKE SECOND allowed to be parasites? Because the rules of the game allow it.

A REAL loss, for SECOND, would be something like nationalization of gas fields, where the rules of the game are knocked out from under SECOND. But neither establishment Dems nor Repubs are about to change the rules of the game, because they too sustain crooked politicians, who parasitize the parasites. It's a whole ecology of parasites!

The Communists called Capitalists intestinal parasites, which only showed that Commies loved too much their rhetorical flourishes. The better analogy, which is nastier yet truer, would be Capitalists are Dairymen with the Workers being Milk cows. When there is a drought and the pastures aren’t producing enough grass to keep the entire cow herd fed, Dairymen send part of their herds to the slaughter house because paying for grain (instead of free grass) to feed the excess cattle is expensive.

Dairymen don’t love cows. Capitalists don’t love workers. The Capitalists let the ever-loving government look after the laid-off workers. The workers hope the government loves them during bad times, not treat them like cattle.

I have a historic example of excess workers being fired, exactly like excess cattle being slaughtered during a many years long drought. It is from Signym’s childhood storybook, The Worldly Philosophers, Chapter IX, “The Heresies of John Maynard Keynes”:

And the worst of it, the most depressing aspect of the Great Depression, was that there seemed to be no end to it, no turning point, no relief. In 1930, the nation manfully whistled “Happy Days Are Here Again,” but the national income precipitously fell from $87 billion to $75 billion. In 1931 the country sang “I’ve Got Five Dollars”; meanwhile its income plummeted to $59 billion. In 1932 the song was grimmer: “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”—national income had dwindled to a miserable $42 billion.

By 1933 the nation was virtually prostrate. The income of the country was down to $39 billion. Over half the prosperity of only four years back had vanished without a trace; the average standard of living was back where it had been twenty years before.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, May 12, 2018 12:14 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


So here I am, making a simple suggestion that we redirect the military - from pointless, money-wasting adventures overseas and boondoggle military projects, to useful, value-producing work at home.

It seems a modest proposal, and non-partisan, in that neither side has any financial or cultural reason to be more against it than the other.

And SECOND doesn't seem to have anything negative to say about it, because he has done nothing but ignore, mis-direct, misrepresent, and post ad hominems - ie, troll. It looks like he's doing everything BUT address the point.

But I'm curious what other people think.

Set aside your preconceptions about whether or not it might be implemented.

Would it work?






SECOND is a troll because it constantly misrepresents what people post, fails to address their actual positions, and resorts to personal attacks when its brain isn't working (which is most of the time).

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Saturday, May 12, 2018 12:23 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by 1kiki:
So here I am, making a simple suggestion that we redirect the military - from pointless, money-wasting adventures overseas, to useful, value-producing work at home.

It seems a modest proposal, and non-partisan, in that neither side has any financial or cultural reason to be more against it than the other.

And SECOND doesn't seem to have anything negative to say about it, because he has done nothing but ignore, mis-direct, misrepresent, and post ad hominems - ie, troll. It looks like he's doing everything BUT address the point.

But I'm curious what other people think.

Set aside your preconceptions about whether or not it might be implemented.

Would it work?

What about doing the exact opposite of what 1kiki suggests? Have you ever heard of the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers? www.usace.army.mil/

The Corp does flood control. I would prefer that the Corp receive hundreds of billions of dollars more for flood control in Texas. That's military spending for something useful, unlike more H-bombs or more foreign military adventures or more cruise missiles, more drones or research on building Terminators to replace the Marine Corp and Seal Team 6 and Army Rangers.

Maybe I should theorize why this won't happen? The other 49 states and the District of Columbia do NOT want to spend their tax money on Texas. But all 50 states do want to kill foreigners.

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Saturday, May 12, 2018 3:56 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


You missed one important aspect of redirecting the military proper - jobs.

"The projected active duty end strength in the armed forces for fiscal year 2017 was 1,281,900 servicemembers, with an additional 801,200 people in the seven reserve components."

The military proper is a total of roughly 1.3 million jobs. That's 1.3 million people not receiving unemployment.

Thanks for not answering the question.

Perhaps someone else could chime in, since SECOND can't address the actual topic.

We could redirect the military - from pointless, money-wasting adventures overseas, to useful, value-producing work at home.

It seems a modest proposal, and non-partisan, in that neither side has any financial or cultural reason to be more against it than the other. Set aside your preconceptions about whether or not it might be implemented.

Would it work? Is this a way to improve the value the members of this society receive from the society, within the bounds of our current economic system?





SECOND is a troll because it constantly misrepresents what people post, fails to address their actual positions, and resorts to personal attacks when its brain isn't working (which is most of the time).

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Saturday, May 12, 2018 7:50 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by 1kiki:
You missed one important aspect of redirecting the military proper - jobs.

"The projected active duty end strength in the armed forces for fiscal year 2017 was 1,281,900 servicemembers, with an additional 801,200 people in the seven reserve components."

The military proper is a total of roughly 1.3 million jobs. That's 1.3 million people not receiving unemployment.

Thanks for not answering the question.

Perhaps someone else could chime in, since SECOND can't address the actual topic.

We could redirect the military - from pointless, money-wasting adventures overseas, to useful, value-producing work at home.

It seems a modest proposal, and non-partisan, in that neither side has any financial or cultural reason to be more against it than the other. Set aside your preconceptions about whether or not it might be implemented.

Would it work? Is this a way to improve the value the members of this society receive from the society, within the bounds of our current economic system?



I'd be for this if those funds and personnel were re-directed and no longer actually "in" the military. I'm thinking somewhere along the lines of putting all of that to use fixing the failing infrastructure of the country. Say, once you've served your four year stint you have a nice paying, but heavy work job waiting for you that will teach you a trade. If you so choose.

But if you think the gun nuts are bad now, just try to put 1.3 million soldiers patrolling up and down the streets of the country and watch donations to the NRA increase by a factor of 10 overnight.



Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Saturday, May 12, 2018 7:58 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


"just try to put 1.3 million soldiers patrolling up and down the streets of the country"

I wasn't thinking of any military-style work. Just work on public lands like restoration and conservation, or for public projects like infrastructure, or in public hospitals in underserved areas.




SECOND is a troll because it constantly misrepresents what people post, fails to address their actual positions, and resorts to personal attacks when its brain isn't working (which is most of the time).

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Sunday, May 13, 2018 4:05 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

[ SECOND brings up Veblen, who (btw) points out that it is people LIKE SECOND who are the real parasites who are disrupting the system. Why are people LIKE SECOND allowed to be parasites? Because the rules of the game allow it.

A REAL loss, for SECOND, would be something like nationalization of gas fields, where the rules of the game are knocked out from under SECOND. But neither establishment Dems nor Repubs are about to change the rules of the game, because they too sustain crooked politicians, who parasitize the parasites. It's a whole ecology of parasites! - SIGNY

The Communists called Capitalists intestinal parasites - SECOND

They did? I never knew that, Why don't you find me some quotes, seeing as you seem to know a lot more about it than I do.

Quote:

The better analogy, which is nastier yet truer, would be Capitalists are Dairymen with the Workers being Milk cows. When there is a drought and the pastures aren’t producing enough grass to keep the entire cow herd fed, Dairymen send part of their herds to the slaughter house because paying for grain (instead of free grass) to feed the excess cattle is expensive.
Hmmm... I think it's a stupid analogy. It would only work if, in your analogy the dairy herd plowed the fields; grew harvested and siloed their own grain; built their own milk barn and milking equipment; milked themselves and trucked the milk to market; and managed the operation ... and THEN the dairyman took money from the sales for himself, and selected some of the herd for slaughter.

Because in reality producers do all the work of production. THAT's the problem with the rentier class, as Veblen saw it ... they don't do anything productive. Put another way, they can't possibly justify their outsized wealth based on their production.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

America is an oligarchy
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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Sunday, May 13, 2018 6:22 AM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 1kiki:
I had a VERY SPECIFIC suggestion as to how to improve people's lives without trying to create a worker's utopia or have massive redistribution of wealth, and it involved re-purposing the military. SECOND has managed to not actually discuss my post at all.

But it does certainly snark and troll at every post.

SECOND is a troll.

I'm a troll because I have no respect for your thinking? Too bad.

www.vox.com/2018/5/10/17339180/sheldon-adelson-congressional-leadershi
p-fund


Most recently, he has reportedly threatened to veto the upcoming farm bill unless it imposes stringent new work requirements on recipients of SNAP — the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, still commonly referred to as food stamps.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that new work requirements plus other restrictions proposed by House Republicans would end up denying or reducing nutritional aid to around two million people, mostly in families with children.

As Paul Ryan put it, SNAP and other programs create a “hammock” that “lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency and complacency.”

Able-bodied SNAP recipients who should be working but aren’t are very hard to find: A vast majority of the program’s beneficiaries either are working — but at unstable jobs that pay low wages — or are children, elderly, disabled or essential family caregivers.

www.nytimes.com/2018/05/10/opinion/trump-food-stamps-agriculture.html

So what is your complaint? Or do you not know after presenting somebody else's thoughts as your own? Those who are working will qualify under "work requirements" so they will not be effected.

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Sunday, May 13, 2018 6:54 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by 1kiki:

Thanks for not answering the question.

Perhaps someone else could chime in, since SECOND can't address the actual topic.

Your questions are of zero interest to me. If I answer one, it will be followed by an even less interesting question. I have seen a thousand times where these so-called "conversations" go on fireflyfans.net -- to nowhere. This is where I want to go and Signym suggested it:

Republicans are offended by John Maynard Keynes. And why would they be? Money. Keynesian macroeconomics calculated how much government money needs to be spent to get the effect Democrats desire and the huge amount offends Republican sensibilities. Republicans wish the effect could be created by keeping the Federal budget approximately the same, or even shrinking the budget, and instead moving money from one part of the national budget to another or negotiating "better" international trade agreements. Republican wishful thinking never works, but Republicans keep dreaming that this time it will because they really hate to see more money spent to solve an economics problem.

From Signym’s childhood storybook by Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers, Chapter IX, "The Heresies of John Maynard Keynes"
https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/12143671/The_Worldly_Philosophers_._R
obert_L._Heilbroner_._epub

www.amazon.com/Worldly-Philosophers-Economic-Thinkers-Seventh/dp/06848
6214X
/

Starting in the middle of Chapter IX: Thus the paradox of poverty amidst plenty and the anomaly of idle men and idle machines. At the bottom of a slump there was a heartless contradiction between a crying need for goods and an insufficiency of production. But the contradiction was purely a moral one. For the economy did not operate to satisfy human wants—wants are always as large as dreams. It turned out goods to satisfy demand—and demand is as small as a person’s pocketbook. Hence the unemployed were little more than economic zeros; they might as well have been on the moon for all the economic influence they exerted on the marketplace.

To be sure, once investment declined and the economy shrank in size, social misery appeared. But not—as Keynes points out—effective social misery: the nation’s conscience would not do as an effective substitute for enough investment. Rather, since savings declined along with investment, the economic flow turned over evenly, quite unaffected by the fact that it was smaller than it used to be.

A peculiar state of affairs, indeed a tragedy without a villain. No one can blame society for saving, when saving is so apparently a private virtue. It is equally impossible to chastise businessmen for not investing when no one would be so happy to comply as they—if they saw a reasonable chance for success. The difficulty is no longer a moral one—a question of justice, exploitation, or even human foolishness. It is a technical difficulty, almost a mechanical fault. But its price is no less high for all of that. For the price of inactivity is unemployment.

. . . Here, then, was the gloomy diagnosis of John Maynard Keynes’s The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money:
Quote:

First, an economy in depression could stay there. There was nothing inherent in the economic mechanism to pull it out. One could have “equilibrium” with unemployment, even massive unemployment.

Second, prosperity depended on investment. If business spending for capital equipment fell, a spiral of contraction would begin. Only if business investment rose would a spiral of expansion follow.

And third, investment was an undependable drive wheel for the economy. Uncertainty, not assurance, lay at the very core of capitalism. Through no fault of the businessman it was constantly threatened with satiety, and satiety spelled economic decline.

Certainly it was an unsettling outlook. But it would have been utterly unlike Keynes to content himself with making a diagnosis of gloom and letting it go at that. With all its prophecy of danger, The General Theory was never meant to be a book of doom. On the contrary, it held out a promise and it proposed a cure.

As a matter of fact, the cure had begun before its actual prescription was written; the medicine was being applied before the doctors were precisely sure what it was supposed to do. The Hundred Days of the New Deal had enacted a flood of social legislation that had been backing up for twenty years behind a dam of (Republican) governmental apathy. These laws were meant to improve the social tone, the morale, of a discontented nation. But it was not social legislation that was designed to revitalize the patient. That tonic was something else: the deliberate undertaking of government spending to stimulate the economy.

. . . Keynes came to Washington in 1934—this was when he made his notes on the impression of President Roosevelt’s hands—and urged that the program be extended further. The statistics showed that the bottom had fallen out of private investment activity: business expansion, which had pumped out $15 billion in wages and salaries and profits in 1929, had fallen to the appalling figure of $886 million in 1932—a drop of 94 percent. Something had to start up the investment motor that hoisted the economic car up the shaft, and he hoped that government spending would act as such a stimulus by bolstering the nation’s general buying power—“priming the pump,” it was called in those days.

Hence when The General Theory came out in 1936, what it offered was not so much a new and radical program as a defense of a course of action that was already being applied. A defense and an explanation. For The General Theory pointed out that the catastrophe facing America and, indeed, the whole Western world, was only the consequence of a lack of sufficient investment on the part of business. And so the remedy was perfectly logical: if business was not able to expand, the government must take up the slack.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, May 13, 2018 7:15 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:

[ SECOND brings up Veblen, who (btw) points out that it is people LIKE SECOND who are the real parasites who are disrupting the system. Why are people LIKE SECOND allowed to be parasites? Because the rules of the game allow it.

A REAL loss, for SECOND, would be something like nationalization of gas fields, where the rules of the game are knocked out from under SECOND. But neither establishment Dems nor Repubs are about to change the rules of the game, because they too sustain crooked politicians, who parasitize the parasites. It's a whole ecology of parasites! - SIGNY

The Communists called Capitalists intestinal parasites - SECOND

They did? I never knew that, Why don't you find me some quotes, seeing as you seem to know a lot more about it than I do.

Quote:

The better analogy, which is nastier yet truer, would be Capitalists are Dairymen with the Workers being Milk cows. When there is a drought and the pastures aren’t producing enough grass to keep the entire cow herd fed, Dairymen send part of their herds to the slaughter house because paying for grain (instead of free grass) to feed the excess cattle is expensive.
Hmmm... I think it's a stupid analogy. It would only work if, in your analogy the dairy herd plowed the fields; grew harvested and siloed their own grain; built their own milk barn and milking equipment; milked themselves and trucked the milk to market; and managed the operation ... and THEN the dairyman took money from the sales for himself, and selected some of the herd for slaughter.

Because in reality producers do all the work of production. THAT's the problem with the rentier class, as Veblen saw it ... they don't do anything productive. Put another way, they can't possibly justify their outsized wealth based on their production.


"Because in reality producers do all the work of production."

You're wrong, Signym. Producers do NOT do all the work of production. As one example, Ford's F150 truck production line is temporarily closed because a supplier of magnesium parts is closed.
www.freep.com/story/money/business/columnists/josh-linkner/2018/05/12/
josh-linkner-ford-f-150/603778002
/

And it is not just one magnesium part. Auto companies buy tires and wheels and seats and preformed floor rugs and rolls of steel and . . . from other suppliers. If any of those suppliers fail to deliver, then Ford has to close an assembly line.

Originally my analogy was that capitalists are cattlemen rather than diarymen. The workers get to be the cows in the analogy. I know the cattle industry, but I didn't like the idea that the only way to make money was to send the cattle (the workers) out to slaughter. That is cannibalism, not capitalism, and that is why I switched the analogy to the dairy industry, because it milks the cows (the workers). But if grocery stores sell less milk, the dairy industry will shrink and the the milk cows (the workers) will go to slaughter (workers get fired). I suppose you could imagine a loving government rescuing the cows from slaughter by moving them to a government owned pasture. The government could do the same to fired human workers, but the pasture closes after 26 weeks. That is not long enough.
www.businessinsider.com/heres-how-long-unemployment-benefits-now-last-
in-each-state-2014-1


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, May 13, 2018 7:51 AM

CAPTAINCRUNCH

... stay crunchy...


You seem to have understood zero of what I posted - I may not get use to that.

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:

You'd want the US gov to run our oil and gas? You expect anyone to believe that?
Did I say that? No, I didn't. How about this: THE GOVERNMENT becomes the ultimate "rentier" for natural resources, and companies pay THE GOVERNMENT for the right to "develop" these natural resources. That would allow the government to stop collecting income taxes, for example.

If you don't think that's a realistic idea, that's how things work in MOST oil- and gas-producing nations, including Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, and the North Sea nations Norway, Britain, Denmark, Germany, Nederlands.


Quote:

Do you think all rental land owners are parasites?
Yes.
Next?



More examples of your "let's just wing it" thinking, completely devoid of any real logic or real world experience.

You say you didn't say you want the Gov to run our oil business, just own and rent the land. Then you say you think all land renters are parasites. Owning the land and renting it would in effect put them in charge of our oil since they would be the arbiters of who gets to drill where, how and other such rules. I continue to think you are just eating up our time here with no real intent other than to practice your typing.

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:

Where would people live if they couldn't rent or lease?
In their own homes, which they could afford if they weren't being parasitized from morning to night?



How would they earn enough capital to afford these housing resources?

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Clearly, in your vigorous defense of "consumers" (instead of "producers") you too consider yourself to be a parasite. No wonder you defend parasitism so vigorously!



Another complete miss - just the opposite. I never defended consumers. I pointed out that you and Kiki never (that I recall) hold them accountable for their actions.

I have no idea what you mean by "parasite" - it seems to keep shifting and might even be used just as a place holder for "insult."

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Sunday, May 13, 2018 7:55 AM

CAPTAINCRUNCH

... stay crunchy...


Quote:

Originally posted by 1kiki:
"just try to put 1.3 million soldiers patrolling up and down the streets of the country"

I wasn't thinking of any military-style work. Just work on public lands like restoration and conservation, or for public projects like infrastructure, or in public hospitals in underserved areas.




I'd rather see unemployed citizens get those jobs. The Dems are proposing Gov jobs, but it will probably be shot down and maybe even for good reasons.

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Sunday, May 13, 2018 10:27 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

SECOND brings up Veblen, who (btw) points out that it is people LIKE SECOND who are the real parasites who are disrupting the system. Why are people LIKE SECOND allowed to be parasites? Because the rules of the game allow it.

A REAL loss, for SECOND, would be something like nationalization of gas fields, where the rules of the game are knocked out from under SECOND. But neither establishment Dems nor Repubs are about to change the rules of the game, because they too sustain crooked politicians, who parasitize the parasites. It's a whole ecology of parasites! - SIGNY

The Communists called Capitalists intestinal parasites - SECOND

They did? I never knew that, Why don't you find me some quotes, seeing as you seem to know a lot more about it than I do. - SIGN

Well! So much for your insinuation that I'm a communist because "they" called Capitalists intestinal parasites and I called rentiers parasites!

Quote:

The better analogy, which is nastier yet truer, would be Capitalists are Dairymen with the Workers being Milk cows. When there is a drought and the pastures aren’t producing enough grass to keep the entire cow herd fed, Dairymen send part of their herds to the slaughter house because paying for grain (instead of free grass) to feed the excess cattle is expensive. - SECOND

Hmmm... I think it's a stupid analogy. It would only work if, in your analogy the dairy herd plowed the fields; grew harvested and siloed their own grain; built their own milk barn and milking equipment; milked themselves and trucked the milk to market; and managed the operation ... and THEN the dairyman took money from the sales for himself, and selected some of the herd for slaughter.

Because in reality producers do all the work of production. THAT's the problem with the rentier class, as Veblen saw it ... they don't do anything productive. Put another way, they can't possibly justify their outsized wealth based on their production. - SIGNY

You're wrong, Signym. Producers do NOT do all the work of production. As one example, Ford's F150 truck production line is temporarily closed because a supplier of magnesium parts is closed.- SECOND



A "supplier" of magneisum parts is a PRODUCER of magnesium parts. Furthermore, the supplier of magnesium stock from which the parts were made is a PRODUCER of magnesium, as is the PRODUCER of electricity and fuel needed to refine the magnesium. I don't care how far back or wide wide you go in the production chain, but one producer feeds another. We must be talking about entirely different things.



-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

America is an oligarchy
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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Sunday, May 13, 2018 10:37 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

You seem to have understood zero of what I posted - I may not get use to that.

Quote:

You'd want the US gov to run our oil and gas? You expect anyone to believe that? - GSTRING

Did I say that? No, I didn't. How about this: THE GOVERNMENT becomes the ultimate "rentier" for natural resources, and companies pay THE GOVERNMENT for the right to "develop" these natural resources. That would allow the government to stop collecting income taxes, for example. If you don't think that's a realistic idea, that's how things work in MOST oil- and gas-producing nations, including Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, and the North Sea nations Norway, Britain, Denmark, Germany, Nederlands.

Quote:

Do you think all rental land owners are parasites?- GSTRING

Yes. Next? SIGNY



More examples of your "let's just wing it" thinking, completely devoid of any real logic or real world experience. You say you didn't say you want the Gov to run our oil business, just own and rent the land. Then you say you think all land renters are parasites. Owning the land and renting it would in effect put them in charge of our oil since they would be the arbiters of who gets to drill where, how and other such rules.- GSTRING


Well, yes! That's how nationalized oil works! The government licenses who gets to drill where. IN THE REAL WORLD, THAT'S EXACTLY HOW IT WORKS!

Quote:

I continue to think you are just eating up our time here with no real intent other than to practice your typing.= GSTRING
Why? Just because I pointed out something that you, with you lack of real world experience, didn't know?

Quote:

Where would people live if they couldn't rent or lease? - GSTRING

In their own homes, which they could afford if they weren't being parasitized from morning to night? - SIGNY

How would they earn enough capital to afford these housing resources?- GSTRING

By working and saving.

Quote:

Clearly, in your vigorous defense of "consumers" (instead of "producers") you too consider yourself to be a parasite. No wonder you defend parasitism so vigorously! - SIGNY

Another complete miss - just the opposite. I never defended consumers. I pointed out that you and Kiki never (that I recall) hold them accountable for their actions. I have no idea what you mean by "parasite" - it seems to keep shifting and might even be used just as a place holder for "insult." - GSTRING

Well, it seems like whenever I bring up tariffs, you and SECOND whinge about how "expensive" things will get, without recognizing that the people who produce goods and service will be paid commensurately more.

Quote:

PARASITE: In evolutionary biology, parasitism is a relationship between species, where one organism, the parasite, lives on or in another organism, the host, causing it some harm, and is adapted structurally to this way of life.[1] The entomologist E. O. Wilson has characterised parasites as "predators that eat prey in units of less than one".


-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

America is an oligarchy
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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Sunday, May 13, 2018 11:14 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by captaincrunch:
Quote:

Originally posted by 1kiki:
"just try to put 1.3 million soldiers patrolling up and down the streets of the country"

I wasn't thinking of any military-style work. Just work on public lands like restoration and conservation, or for public projects like infrastructure, or in public hospitals in underserved areas.




I'd rather see unemployed citizens get those jobs. The Dems are proposing Gov jobs, but it will probably be shot down and maybe even for good reasons.




Well if we got the decrease in military like almost all of us want in here, there are going to be a lot more unemployed people.

I'd say this should also go to the underemployed as well as the unemployed.


I'd hate to think that I would get passed up for a great job because I finally got a mediocre one that pays 1/5th of what I used to make.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Sunday, May 13, 2018 1:39 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


Since we're already spending the money for the military, it makes sense to simply give them different assignments.

As for this being a "good job", "the initial monthly pay for the lowest rank, E-1, is $1,531.50 per month" or somewhat less than $6.50 an hour. And then, you live on base, go to bed when they tell you to, get up when they tell you to, run when they tell you to, eat what they give you, and so on. On top of that, they have some very specific rules covering things you and I might think of as our personal life, like no adultery. Violating that, and other rules they have, will get you kicked out.

There's one individual advantage to my plan above and beyond military service and above a private job, which is the training to get good skills. A potential social advantage is that females may be more attracted to a non-combat army, and would acquire weapons expertise, putting them in a less disadvantaged position to men re guns in civilian life.




SECOND is a troll because it constantly misrepresents what people post, fails to address their actual positions, and resorts to personal attacks when its brain isn't working (which is most of the time).

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Sunday, May 13, 2018 10:33 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by 1kiki:
Since we're already spending the money for the military, it makes sense to simply give them different assignments.

As for this being a "good job", "the initial monthly pay for the lowest rank, E-1, is $1,531.50 per month" or somewhat less than $6.50 an hour. And then, you live on base, go to bed when they tell you to, get up when they tell you to, run when they tell you to, eat what they give you, and so on. On top of that, they have some very specific rules covering things you and I might think of as our personal life, like no adultery. Violating that, and other rules they have, will get you kicked out.

There's one individual advantage to my plan above and beyond military service and above a private job, which is the training to get good skills. A potential social advantage is that females may be more attracted to a non-combat army, and would acquire weapons expertise, putting them in a less disadvantaged position to men re guns in civilian life.



One thing women aren't attracted to are men that make $6.50 an hour. That's a fact.

Putting military into infrastructure work and paying them the same wage that KMart pays their employees won't work for a lot of reasons.

First of all, the training is worthless if those skills are learning things that could only get you a job making $6.50 an hour. Now instead of shipping our jobs overseas, we'd be taking one of the biggest opportunities for creating work at home that cannot in any way be outsourced and we'd be massively undercutting what the pay for that work should be with our own taxpayer dollars.

At that rate of pay, nobody would do it. It's hard work. Sometimes even grueling work. I can't think of a single person who would do it for $6.50 an hour when they could go to Walmart and push carts for almost twice as much money.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Sunday, May 13, 2018 11:51 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:

Originally posted by 1kiki:
Since we're already spending the money for the military, it makes sense to simply give them different assignments.

As for this being a "good job", "the initial monthly pay for the lowest rank, E-1, is $1,531.50 per month" or somewhat less than $6.50 an hour. And then, you live on base, go to bed when they tell you to, get up when they tell you to, run when they tell you to, eat what they give you, and so on. On top of that, they have some very specific rules covering things you and I might think of as our personal life, like no adultery. Violating that, and other rules they have, will get you kicked out.

There's one individual advantage to my plan above and beyond military service and above a private job, which is the training to get good skills. A potential social advantage is that females may be more attracted to a non-combat army, and would acquire weapons expertise, putting them in a less disadvantaged position to men re guns in civilian life.

One thing women aren't attracted to are men that make $6.50 an hour. That's a fact.

Fake News, that's a Fake Fact.
Your delusions, ignorance, and Libtard Maths are showing.

Pay grade for E-1 in 2018 is reportedly 1,638 per month. Which would be about $9.45/hr at 40 hours/week. E-2 is $1,836/mo, or about $10.59/hr.
E-1 lasts 6 months max, unless the recruit starts at E-2, and that lasts 9 months max.
After 3 months of Boot Camp, the accumulated pay is issued in one check. So those not promoted have 3 months remaining at E-1, usually in further training.
Twice per month, The Eagle Poops and they get paid, with nothing to spend it on. Bills? None. Food? Already fully Fed, as much as you can eat. Lodging? Already supplied. Work clothes? Already in the closet. Fitness clubs? Gyms on every base. Discount pricing at every PX and base theater. Maybe your stoner bimbos cannot comprehend, but many 18 year old women understand that having $400 per week (less taxes) to spend on nothing but women can color a guy attractive. A lot of Marines are Babe Magnets, lots of eye candy seen around. Marine graduation from Boot Camp generates a huge influx of the hottest babes you'll see at any given time. Some women also think a guy who has a few future years of steady employment and pay is further enticing.

Some thought is required to find stuff to throw your cash at. Buying food is merely a way to avoid standing in line at the Chow Hall. When you can't find enough targets, you end up with something like 10 paychecks to sift through whenever you want to cash one, which actually presents problems.

I'm sure the Spacey bimbos you hang with cannot stand healthy, trained, steadily Employed, organized men with pockets full of untethered cash, but those do not account for all women.

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Monday, May 14, 2018 12:26 AM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:

Originally posted by captaincrunch:
Quote:

Originally posted by 1kiki:
"just try to put 1.3 million soldiers patrolling up and down the streets of the country"

I wasn't thinking of any military-style work. Just work on public lands like restoration and conservation, or for public projects like infrastructure, or in public hospitals in underserved areas.

I'd rather see unemployed citizens get those jobs. The Dems are proposing Gov jobs, but it will probably be shot down and maybe even for good reasons.

Well if we got the decrease in military like almost all of us want in here, there are going to be a lot more unemployed people.

Why are you in such a hurry to start another war?

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Monday, May 14, 2018 4:13 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:

Originally posted by 1kiki:
Since we're already spending the money for the military, it makes sense to simply give them different assignments.

As for this being a "good job", "the initial monthly pay for the lowest rank, E-1, is $1,531.50 per month" or somewhat less than $6.50 an hour. And then, you live on base, go to bed when they tell you to, get up when they tell you to, run when they tell you to, eat what they give you, and so on. On top of that, they have some very specific rules covering things you and I might think of as our personal life, like no adultery. Violating that, and other rules they have, will get you kicked out.

There's one individual advantage to my plan above and beyond military service and above a private job, which is the training to get good skills. A potential social advantage is that females may be more attracted to a non-combat army, and would acquire weapons expertise, putting them in a less disadvantaged position to men re guns in civilian life.

One thing women aren't attracted to are men that make $6.50 an hour. That's a fact.

Fake News, that's a Fake Fact.
Your delusions, ignorance, and Libtard Maths are showing.

Pay grade for E-1 in 2018 is reportedly 1,638 per month. Which would be about $9.45/hr at 40 hours/week. E-2 is $1,836/mo, or about $10.59/hr.
E-1 lasts 6 months max, unless the recruit starts at E-2, and that lasts 9 months max.
After 3 months of Boot Camp, the accumulated pay is issued in one check. So those not promoted have 3 months remaining at E-1, usually in further training.
Twice per month, The Eagle Poops and they get paid, with nothing to spend it on. Bills? None. Food? Already fully Fed, as much as you can eat. Lodging? Already supplied. Work clothes? Already in the closet. Fitness clubs? Gyms on every base. Discount pricing at every PX and base theater. Maybe your stoner bimbos cannot comprehend, but many 18 year old women understand that having $400 per week (less taxes) to spend on nothing but women can color a guy attractive. A lot of Marines are Babe Magnets, lots of eye candy seen around. Marine graduation from Boot Camp generates a huge influx of the hottest babes you'll see at any given time. Some women also think a guy who has a few future years of steady employment and pay is further enticing.

Some thought is required to find stuff to throw your cash at. Buying food is merely a way to avoid standing in line at the Chow Hall. When you can't find enough targets, you end up with something like 10 paychecks to sift through whenever you want to cash one, which actually presents problems.

I'm sure the Spacey bimbos you hang with cannot stand healthy, trained, steadily Employed, organized men with pockets full of untethered cash, but those do not account for all women.



I was going with the numbers that Kiki posted. I didn't do any research on it.

This would all be a lot different if we were talking about putting military to work in non military infrastructure jobs at home.

I for one, would not support the free room and board for these people on taxpayer dime. It would be far too close to having a standing army on our own shores. And as I said before, if people (not you) think the gun nuts are bad now, they'd have a field day with this one.

I would only support this for soldiers who have finished their tour of duty and chose to have a job when they came back home. It would have to be a good paying one though, and $10.xx/hr isn't shit when you have to buy your own housing and food.

Women aren't attracted to men who make $10.00 and have nothing left to spend on them after basic survival bills are paid for. Even if they were, you could go to Walmart and make that money pushing carts and have a much easier job.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Monday, May 14, 2018 7:45 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

I was going with the numbers that Kiki posted. I didn't do any research on it.

This would all be a lot different if we were talking about putting military to work in non military infrastructure jobs at home.

I for one, would not support the free room and board for these people on taxpayer dime. It would be far too close to having a standing army on our own shores. And as I said before, if people (not you) think the gun nuts are bad now, they'd have a field day with this one.

I would only support this for soldiers who have finished their tour of duty and chose to have a job when they came back home. It would have to be a good paying one though, and $10.xx/hr isn't shit when you have to buy your own housing and food.

Women aren't attracted to men who make $10.00 and have nothing left to spend on them after basic survival bills are paid for. Even if they were, you could go to Walmart and make that money pushing carts and have a much easier job.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

In 1966, which was one of America’s more exciting years, NASA was spending $43,554,000,000 in 2014 constant dollars. That is twice as much as NASA spends today, but America got one thousand times more bang per dollar because it was doing something interesting. The astronauts were the few military guys working at NASA and the rest were scientists and engineers. The Moon was made of American Cheese. Very exciting times if you lived near Johnson Space Center.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA

In 2017, NASA was not exciting because what NASA does is so dull. That’s mostly because its budget was reduced to $18,866,000,000. Somewhere the Republicans took over a vital part of the US economy and turned it into a dull jobs program centered around the crappy Space Shuttle. Nowadays the only exciting space stuff centers around SpaceX and Blue Origin, both run by billionaires willing to spend whatever amount of money it takes, very unlike the Federal government. But Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos don't have the power of the White House. But then again, Musk and Bezos aren't as dumb as Trump about space.
www.forbes.com/sites/carolpinchefsky/2012/04/18/5-horrifying-facts-you
-didnt-know-about-the-space-shuttle/#5d685f4df9d4


Who stopped America from going to the Moon? Nixon. The cheapskate President with no imagination:
Haldeman: “So you do want to cancel [Apollo] 16 and 17?”
Nixon: “Yes, I do want to cancel them, and do other things.”
Haldeman: “Do we want to follow his point, coupling [the cancellation with] the
announcement that we’re going to fund the space shuttle?”
Nixon. “That’s right, and let the other two [Apollo missions] go . .. the other two shots. . . . 1 just don’t think we should take the risk of a possible goof off in the damn thing.” Haldeman: “The other thing you could do is postpone them.”
Nixon: “Postpone and then cancel them, if you could get away with it . . . That’s right, no shots in ’72.”
https://goo.gl/o1wpJy

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, May 14, 2018 8:22 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


For wealthy Texas Republicans relied upon by national party officials for vital campaign cash, the GOP’s inability to repeal Obamacare last summer wasn’t just a disappointing legislative low point.

It became a reason for them to turn off the money spigot.

“It was super frustrating,” said Houston energy executive Dan Eberhart, a Trump supporter and national GOP donor. “They used that line for 10 years: ‘Repeal and Replace.’ They raised money on it, and then they just flopped.”

But since then, Eberhart has come around.

“I feel like maybe I’ve done a full revolution,” he said. “In October, I was very upset. I felt like ‘You guys raised all this money and just completely failed on Obamacare repeal and replace.’ That’s where my head was at. Once they passed tax reform, I guess maybe I fell in line and came back into the fold.” . . .

Texas Republican donors tightened their wallets in 2017 when they saw little return from the Trump administration’s early chaotic months with Congress.

But some top donors say that changed with December’s tax cut bill, which also ended the individual mandate penalty under the Affordable Care Act. Big Republican money has started flowing again, starting with Texas, the honey-pot of national GOP fundraising.

www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Republican
-donors-beginning-to-reopen-the-money-12911446.php


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, May 14, 2018 1:57 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Trump never delivered his much-promised plan to release a “terrific” Obamacare alternative that would cover everyone. Instead, he backtracked on his promise to protect Medicaid from cuts.

Trump dropped the promise to negotiate lower prescription drug prices for Medicare, dropped the promise to break up big banks, dropped the promise of a $1 trillion infrastructure bill, and dropped the promise to develop a tax program that would leave the rich paying more — and, of course, his version of “draining the swamp“ has brought a level of corruption to official Washington that would have embarrassed the congressional barons of the Gilded Age.

Trump never took on the National Rifle Association, he never delivered a solution for the DREAMers, and of course Mexico isn’t going to pay for the wall.

Everyone knows this, which raises the question of why everyone is pretending to believe that Trump may make a diplomatic breakthrough with North Korea.

A good clue that we are being set up for some bullshit is that not only is the Trump administration’s North Korea policy being headed up by Donald Trump, but it has been conducted so far like you would expect a bullshitter to conduct policy.

For decades, leaders in North Korea have been seeking a personal meeting with an American president. Trump decided to make exactly that large, unilateral concession to the North Koreans. Except rather than defend the president’s dovish new direction, Republicans — including the White House itself — are spinning the meeting as a concession by the North Koreans. “Trump’s Tough on North Korea Approach Is Working,” according to a press release from the RNC, and this kind of spin has gotten picked up by Fox News. When a notorious liar does something dramatic and new and starts immediately lying about what it is that he’s doing, a sensible reaction is to become alarmed and suspicious — not to suddenly become credulous and naive.

www.vox.com/2018/5/14/17343860/donald-trump-korea-diplomacy



The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, May 14, 2018 7:24 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.



Quote:

One thing women aren't attracted to are men that make $6.50 an hour. That's a fact.
Uh ... what does that have to do with anything? What point are you addressing? None that I made.
Quote:

First of all, the training is worthless if those skills are learning things that could only get you a job making $6.50 an hour.
That's why I specified skills such as carpentry, electrician, heavy machinery operation, various medical technician jobs etc. It pays to read what people post so you don't waste both our time going over silly arguments.
Quote:

... we'd be massively undercutting what the pay for that work should be with our own taxpayer dollars.
Which is why I specified public works type jobs, and service in public institutions, that are not now being performed. Again ... read what people post.
Quote:

At that rate of pay, nobody would do it. It's hard work. Sometimes even grueling work. I can't think of a single person who would do it for $6.50 an hour when they could go to Walmart and push carts for almost twice as much money.
But people join the army and put health, limb, brain, their individual identity, and life on the line for that rate of pay. I'm not seeing your point on this either.


Quote:

Pay grade for E-1 in 2018 is reportedly 1,638 per month.
http://work.chron.com/much-enlisted-army-soldiers-make-28798.html for my figure. Note that my figure was for 2014, not 2018.
Quote:

Which would be about $9.45/hr at 40 hours/week.
But you are on base at the army's beck and call and on their schedule 24/7. *IF* your time 'at work' was limited to 40 hours per week, it would be about 9.40 an hour for an average roughly 30.5-day month.
Quote:

Maybe your stoner bimbos cannot comprehend, ...
Why are you arguing that point with me? I didn't make it. Six did.
My point was that if you are married you cannot fool around. IF YOU ARE SINGLE you can't fool around with a married person either. Both are adultery and will get you canned.
Some people might find those 'hey, it's MY personal life' restrictions will cramp their style.


Quote:

This would all be a lot different if we were talking about putting military to work in non military infrastructure jobs at home.
I for one, would not support the free room and board for these people on taxpayer dime. It would be far too close to having a standing army on our own shores.

Some people* would argue that, Constitutionally, we're not supposed to have a standing army at all. (*This has never been addressed in the courts.) And yet, through the miracle of reauthorization, we get to re-support the military every two years, as per the Constitutional limit.

When it comes to deployment, the army is not supposed to be deployed within US borders and take action against citizens (Posse Comitatus act, not part of the Constitution) although Eisenhower used an exception during school desegregation. I agree with the act, which is why I would call this non-military service 'training', not 'deployment'.






SECOND is a troll because it constantly misrepresents what people post, fails to address their actual positions, and resorts to personal attacks when its brain isn't working (which is most of the time).

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Monday, May 14, 2018 8:48 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by 1kiki:

Quote:

One thing women aren't attracted to are men that make $6.50 an hour. That's a fact.
Uh ... what does that have to do with anything? What point are you addressing? None that I made.



My mistake. I misread this part of your post.

Whether you made the argument or not, none of what you're suggesting is a very wise life choice in the long run.

Quote:

A potential social advantage is that females may be more attracted to a non-combat army, and would acquire weapons expertise, putting them in a less disadvantaged position to men re guns in civilian life.


Quote:

Quote:

First of all, the training is worthless if those skills are learning things that could only get you a job making $6.50 an hour.
That's why I specified skills such as carpentry, electrician, heavy machinery operation, various medical technician jobs etc. It pays to read what people post so you don't waste both our time going over silly arguments.



You're proposing drastically under cutting the value of this work by having it all done on taxpayer dime. This essentially amounts to taxpayer funded "scabs" doing the work for 1/5th of the actual value of the work. Regardless of how you see things, this is a valid argument and would have impact beyond what you're projecting.

Quote:

Quote:

... we'd be massively undercutting what the pay for that work should be with our own taxpayer dollars.
Which is why I specified public works type jobs, and service in public institutions, that are not now being performed. Again ... read what people post.



Who cares if they're not currently being performed? What happens when that work is done? The answer is they will start doing jobs that are already currently being performed by people who make a living at it. They would eventually take over those sectors of jobs as well because A) they'd be cheaper than anyone else and B) they're the gummint.

Quote:

Quote:

At that rate of pay, nobody would do it. It's hard work. Sometimes even grueling work. I can't think of a single person who would do it for $6.50 an hour when they could go to Walmart and push carts for almost twice as much money.
But people join the army and put health, limb, brain, their individual identity, and life on the line for that rate of pay. I'm not seeing your point on this either.




Not as many as you'd think today. Army doesn't get as many people as they used to. The only reason they haven't gone to a draft is because there are still enough people joining up because the danger of the job still really isn't all that much.

There's a lot of appealing things about the army to young people, particularly ones that had a shitty childhood. Living on the other side of the world being a major one of them. They're not doing that here.


Quote:

Some people might find those 'hey, it's MY personal life' restrictions will cramp their style.


Right. I can't imagine a bunch of people signing up for a non-combat army that stays at home and fixes bridges and in exchange for free room and board and a few bucks over minimum wage they're going to hand 24/7 control over their lives to the Government.


Quote:

Quote:

This would all be a lot different if we were talking about putting military to work in non military infrastructure jobs at home.
I for one, would not support the free room and board for these people on taxpayer dime. It would be far too close to having a standing army on our own shores.

Some people* would argue that, Constitutionally, we're not supposed to have a standing army at all. (*This has never been addressed in the courts.) And yet, through the miracle of reauthorization, we get to re-support the military every two years, as per the Constitutional limit.

When it comes to deployment, the army is not supposed to be deployed within US borders and take action against citizens (Posse Comitatus act, not part of the Constitution) although Eisenhower used an exception during school desegregation. I agree with the act, which is why I would call this non-military service 'training', not 'deployment'.




I would just change your entire plan to "post-duty-optional-training", pay them a decent buck and put them on the fast track to real livable wages when it's done. Nobody is going to sign up for this as their only army duty. The pros seriously do not outweigh the cons of your idea.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Monday, May 14, 2018 11:05 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


Quote:

You're proposing drastically under cutting the value of this work by having it all done on taxpayer dime. This essentially amounts to taxpayer funded "scabs" doing the work for 1/5th of the actual value of the work. Regardless of how you see things, this is a valid argument and would have impact beyond what you're projecting.
Quote:

Who cares if they're not currently being performed? What happens when that work is done? The answer is they will start doing jobs that are already currently being performed by people who make a living at it. They would eventually take over those sectors of jobs as well because A) they'd be cheaper than anyone else and B) they're the gummint.
I can't imagine what are essentially government workers being used for private-sector work while they're still government workers. Yanno, maybe it happens in some movie version of a corrupt dictatorship, where the generalissimo has the troops build his gold mansion with private landing strip on the pristine mountain, instead of hiring contractors ... but we're not that. At least not yet.
Quote:

Army doesn't get as many people as they used to.
To some extent that's due to the aging of the population as a whole. But many people don't volunteer for the simple reason that 1) they saw people get redeployed over and over in Afghanistan and Iraq, in what I call a 'use them until they break, then throw them away' policy; and 2) nobody with any sense wants to risk their life. https://www.politico.eu/article/the-militarys-real-problem-fewer-ameri
cans-are-joining
/

And that topic leads in to this:
Quote:

Nobody is going to sign up for this as their only military duty.
If you remove combat duty from the equation, death and permanent disability DISincentives disappear.
Quote:

I can't imagine a bunch of people signing up for a non-combat army that stays at home and fixes bridges and in exchange for free room and board and a few bucks over minimum wage they're going to hand 24/7 control over their lives to the Government.
Yeah, why would a young person who can't get a job want to 1) get a job, 2) be provided for, 3) move out of the house and hood, 4) not risk life and limb, and 5) LEARN A VALUABLE TRADE OR SKILL for when they leave?

You seem to think that people would be more eager to join the military if only they just could have the fantabulous opportunity of dying or being disabled BEFORE they get their training, instead of skipping the risk and going straight to the training.

I'm not saying it would be for everybody. But the combined services are ~1.3M strong. Even under today's circumstances, it attracts a significant number of people. I can imagine it would continue to attract at least as many, if not more.




SECOND is a troll because it constantly misrepresents what people post, fails to address their actual positions, and resorts to personal attacks when its brain isn't working (which is most of the time).

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Tuesday, May 15, 2018 8:31 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


ACA falters across Texas. Uninsured rises after attacks on Obamacare

www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Number-of-uninsured-A
mericans-on-the-rise-12914114.php


The historic gains in Texas and the rest of the nation are now slipping away as the uninsured rate starts to rise again, a new national health care report has found.

The rate of working age adults without health coverage — those between age 19 and 64 — has ticked up to about 15.5 percent so far in 2018, up from 12.7 percent in 2016, according to the latest Commonwealth Fund tracking survey released this month.

Texas continues to lead the nation in the rate and number of uninsured, according to health statistics. About 4.5 million people in the state are uninsured, including nearly 700,000 children.

Still, Republicans do not see the report as necessarily grim. Dr. Deane Waldman, director for Health Care Policy at the right-leaning Texas Public Policy Foundation, complained “Obamacare” creates bureaucratic bloat and is unduly restrictive on types of affordable coverage available, calling the individual mandate “government coercion.”

Under the ACA, the individual mandate was considered a necessary pillar to help broaden the risk pool. The idea was that if everyone, including those who did not use much health care, were required to buy broad coverage it would help offset the cost to cover those who were sicker and needed more treatment.

The national uninsured rate prior to Obamacare was about 16 percent. The situation was even more dire in Texas when more than one in four people — by some estimates as many as 26 percent — lacked coverage, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

But by last year as the law entered its seventh year the national rate had dropped to a historic low of around 9 percent nationally and around 17 percent in Texas.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, May 15, 2018 1:55 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Removing the mandate was the best thing Trump has done so far.

If we want to fix healthcare in this country, removing insurance from the equation is what needs to be done. Forcing everyone to have insurance is regressive to the goal.

Health insurance has risen by more than 300% since the ACA was enacted, and deductibles have doubled.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Tuesday, May 15, 2018 3:29 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
For wealthy Texas Republicans relied upon by national party officials for vital campaign cash, the GOP’s inability to repeal Obamacare last summer wasn’t just a disappointing legislative low point.

It became a reason for them to turn off the money spigot.

“It was super frustrating,” said Houston energy executive Dan Eberhart, a Trump supporter and national GOP donor. “They used that line for 10 years: ‘Repeal and Replace.’ They raised money on it, and then they just flopped.”

But since then, Eberhart has come around.

“I feel like maybe I’ve done a full revolution,” he said. “In October, I was very upset. I felt like ‘You guys raised all this money and just completely failed on Obamacare repeal and replace.’ That’s where my head was at. Once they passed tax reform, I guess maybe I fell in line and came back into the fold.” . . .

Texas Republican donors tightened their wallets in 2017 when they saw little return from the Trump administration’s early chaotic months with Congress.

But some top donors say that changed with December’s tax cut bill, which also ended the individual mandate penalty under the Affordable Care Act. Big Republican money has started flowing again, starting with Texas, the honey-pot of national GOP fundraising.

www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Republican
-donors-beginning-to-reopen-the-money-12911446.php


Interesting to know some parts of the nation have a brain.

And you have made a reasonable post. Are you ill again, or still?

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Tuesday, May 15, 2018 3:38 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


Quote:

Originally posted by 1kiki:
Quote:

Maybe your stoner bimbos cannot comprehend, ...
Why are you arguing that point with me? I didn't make it. Six did.

My reply was to 6ix. I was not replying to you.
6ix replied to you, I replied to 6ix.

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Tuesday, May 15, 2018 8:43 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by 1kiki:
Quote:

You're proposing drastically under cutting the value of this work by having it all done on taxpayer dime. This essentially amounts to taxpayer funded "scabs" doing the work for 1/5th of the actual value of the work. Regardless of how you see things, this is a valid argument and would have impact beyond what you're projecting.
Quote:

Who cares if they're not currently being performed? What happens when that work is done? The answer is they will start doing jobs that are already currently being performed by people who make a living at it. They would eventually take over those sectors of jobs as well because A) they'd be cheaper than anyone else and B) they're the gummint.
I can't imagine what are essentially government workers being used for private-sector work while they're still government workers. Yanno, maybe it happens in some movie version of a corrupt dictatorship, where the generalissimo has the troops build his gold mansion with private landing strip on the pristine mountain, instead of hiring contractors ... but we're not that. At least not yet.
Quote:

Army doesn't get as many people as they used to.
To some extent that's due to the aging of the population as a whole. But many people don't volunteer for the simple reason that 1) they saw people get redeployed over and over in Afghanistan and Iraq, in what I call a 'use them until they break, then throw them away' policy; and 2) nobody with any sense wants to risk their life. https://www.politico.eu/article/the-militarys-real-problem-fewer-ameri
cans-are-joining
/

And that topic leads in to this:
Quote:

Nobody is going to sign up for this as their only military duty.
If you remove combat duty from the equation, death and permanent disability DISincentives disappear.
Quote:

I can't imagine a bunch of people signing up for a non-combat army that stays at home and fixes bridges and in exchange for free room and board and a few bucks over minimum wage they're going to hand 24/7 control over their lives to the Government.
Yeah, why would a young person who can't get a job want to 1) get a job, 2) be provided for, 3) move out of the house and hood, 4) not risk life and limb, and 5) LEARN A VALUABLE TRADE OR SKILL for when they leave?

You seem to think that people would be more eager to join the military if only they just could have the fantabulous opportunity of dying or being disabled BEFORE they get their training, instead of skipping the risk and going straight to the training.

I'm not saying it would be for everybody. But the combined services are ~1.3M strong. Even under today's circumstances, it attracts a significant number of people. I can imagine it would continue to attract at least as many, if not more.




SECOND is a troll because it constantly misrepresents what people post, fails to address their actual positions, and resorts to personal attacks when its brain isn't working (which is most of the time).


Your whole premise is based upon spending just as many taxpayer dollars as we do today, but to train troops at home and give them low paying jobs. I don't see any point at all to any of this.

It would make sense to do this for a short period to give our currently enlisted members of our ridiculously bloated army something to do while paring down the size of our military and expenditures, but you're suggesting that instead we subsidize our own military by enslaving citizens to cheap labor and 24/7 government dictatorship over their lives in exchange for low paying jobs and a little bit of training, and it seems like you're endorsing making this a new thing that we just continue to do.

Sorry Kiki, but you're speaking from your own position of financial privilidge. This almost sounds like an idea that Second would think was a good one.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Wednesday, May 16, 2018 7:28 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Sorry Kiki, but you're speaking from your own position of financial privilidge. This almost sounds like an idea that Second would think was a good one.

Trump helps banned Chinese phone maker ZTE after China delivers a big loan to a Trump project.

Many Republicans in Congress are clearly aware that something fishy is happening with ZTE. But while they have extensive oversight powers that could be used to check Trump’s conflicts of interest, they decline to use any of them, leaving America to depend on nothing more than Trump’s say-so.

Trump stands to gain from an Indonesian project that got a $500 million loan right before he flip-flopped on ZTE, a banned phone maker. A Chinese state-owned company came through with hundreds of millions of dollars which will pay for construction of Trump-branded properties in Indonesia.

Asked at Monday’s press briefing about the business deal in Indonesia, White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah punted questions to the Trump Organization, saying, “You’re asking about a private organization’s dealings.”

And the Trump Organization, as a privately held business, has no obligation to answer skeptical questions from the public. The obligation to answer questions rests with the White House, and the questionable conduct is on the part of the US president.

Way back in January 2017, Trump attorney Sheri Dillon reassured the public that “no new foreign deals will be made whatsoever during the duration of President Trump’s presidency.” Ha-ha-ha!

She was, obviously, misleading people about that and doing so on behalf of Trump. A company that he owns and that is run by his sons — sons who also serve as close political advisers — is doing business all around the world, including with foreign governments, at the same time that Trump is doing multifaceted international negotiations with those same governments.

The chronology of the Chinese loan to Trump and Trump's flip-flop on banning ZTE, a Chinese company, are here:
www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/5/15/17355202/trump-zte-indonesia
-lido-city


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, May 16, 2018 7:40 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Why quote me then post that?

Is the simple fact that your name brought up in the previous post justification enough to segway into whatever random thought pops up in that little pea brain of yours?

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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