Post your political rants here

[tnycman]

However well intentioned a universal guaranteed income will fix nothing.

There will always be people that are destitute and homeless just as there will always be people who are addicts, criminals, and ignorant. Nothing will change that.

Bluntly the best interest of the public is to protect the public from those that impose a never ending drain on public resources.

The great conundrum is where do we place the "marker" between the unredeemable and those that would become solid citizens. That is now and has always been the great divide in the nation.

Neither "left" or "right" are correct positions because both sides are based upon self serving beliefs.

The United States has been a becon to the world because despite veering hither and yon over the political spectrum the average course has been decidedly middle of the road.

 

How about the people who don't fall under these categories what's the solution for them ?
Under the bridges ?

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[BradMillner46]

33 minutes ago, tnycman said:

How about the people who don't fall under these categories what's the solution for them ?
Under the bridges ?

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Yet another EXTREMELY good point. tncyman, you and I have a lot in common.

 

To Musser..........................

You said............."

There will always be people that are destitute and homeless just as there will always be people who are addicts, criminals, and ignorant. Nothing will change that.

Bluntly the best interest of the public is to protect the public from those that impose a never ending drain on public resources.

The great conundrum is where do we place the "marker" between the unredeemable and those that would become solid citizens. That is now and has always been the great divide in the nation."

I'm not ridiculing you here, I'd just like to know what you think we should do with all these people? Do you think we should kill all of them?

[The Mage]

41 minutes ago, BradMillner46 said:

This idea currently has very strong support from both Libertarians and Progressives in this country...........

If they believe in this, I am not sure they are true libertarians. 

The version proposed by Milton Friedman made a lot of sense, but it was only a response to the Welfare bureaucracy. Welfare is badly designed that punishes people trying to get off the system. The problem called "the cliff". With Friedman's idea of a reverse tax, there was no cliff, and there was a benefit to working. In fact the second you got exceeded the benefit, you suddenly had an increase in every dollar, the reverse of the cliff. With over half of all money going into welfare going toward preventing fraud, that mostly goes away, and what doesn't go away turns into the regular job of the IRS.

Unlike basic income, it goes away. Unlike basic income, you aren't giving Bill Gates and Warren Buffett an income. Nor are you giving an income to the 10.4 million millionaires living in this country.

First, do the math. How much are people going to get? Who is going to get this money? Do you get an extra amount for each kid you have? Do the people with 8 kids get 10 times as much as the single person? Now total it all together. $10K per person is grater than $3 trillion. Limit it to adults only, and we are about $2.5 Trillion. Where does all this money come from? (Why isn't there a single economist in this discussion? Then again, most economists are politicians in disguise.)

There always seems to be 2 solutions to economics. The first is to move money around, and think you have actually done something. Move from column A to column B, but no matter what the total is always the same.

The second is to create more wealth. $100 becomes $200, and that become $400, $800, $1,600......It never stops. Then think about everything you can do with money. You can store it, invest it, spend it, or destroy it. Since there are too many people burning cash for heat, (except in cartoons,) that really only leaves 3 things done with money. And while people do store money in jars and things, it really isn't a significant part of the economy. So that leaves investing and spending. (Banks are included in investing here.) Investing and spending both result in that money flowing through more and more hands, with an economic benefit each time.

Some people mistakenly think these have the same benefit, "they are going to spend the money too," but this isn't really any different than the Broken Window Fallacy. One is gaining only what another looses, plus now there is only spending. These are not the people who invest. 

[The Mage]

14 minutes ago, BradMillner46 said:

I'm not ridiculing you here, I'd just like to know what you think we should do with all these people? Do you think we should kill all of them?

Hmm, no more homeless... (This is a JOKE.)

There are multiple reasons people are homeless. But we need to figure out what is actually the situation is.

Close to 2 decades ago, there was a big study of the homeless in our city, and interestingly a little over a third of them had health insurance through their jobs. Most of the homeless were in a temporary situation, most often breaking up with somebody, and not being from the local area.

I used to have a coworker who was homeless, about the same time, and he kept asking me, and others, to take his hours. I suggested that he would benefit from working more, and he agreed, but still wanted the time off. I always took it.

More recently, I had a manager where I worked who ended up living in a storage garage. This is the person who was paid the most, and received a decent bonus every 3 months.

Third person I knew actually decided to become homeless. He loved camping, and found out as long as he moved his tent every 2 days, he could camp indefinitely. This isn't the first person I heard of that volunteered to become homeless. I have seen interviews with people who are nomadic by nature, and have found they can make enough to get by by begging. 

Speaking of which, there are plenty of beggars who are not homeless. One drunk guy who hung around my workplace, constantly begging, had a place to live. He acted homeless any time he was drunk. 

Now I could include the story of the guy I watched begging, who made at least $36 an hour. (Conservative estimate.) But I have wrote that story at least once.

So what does this mean? There are the temporarily homeless, who mostly don't know where to go. There are people who choose to be homeless, and those that pretend to be homeless. That leaves runaway teens, the mentally ill, and the addicted. (The last 2 are often the same.)

I know of at least 20 local, non-governmental organizations that try to help the homeless and the poor. There is more than enough help for the homeless, and yet we still have homeless. The problem is not economic, there are other factors involved.

[57thTom]

Put on your rags, and if you don't have any borrow some and when they stink go sit up all night in a warming center watching all that you own so it won't get stolen.....oh yea. Too fake. If you've never been hungry you don't know much about it.

[musser]

1 hour ago, tnycman said:

How about the people who don't fall under these categories what's the solution for them ?
Under the bridges ?

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There is no solution, never was never will be.

The failure to recognize we can not "fix" every human failing, quirk or injustice is how we got in the mess we are in to begin with. The best we can do is create a level playing field and let the game go on. And in saying that I am well aware of the implications regarding government and capitalist and socialist entanglements.

[musser]

I have been hungry, very very hungry, and homeless. But not permanently. I have known people that are permanently homeless. There are some truly heartbreaking life stories.

But that does not change realty. The number of homeless that would be otherwise is pretty small. Most of the "homeless" just are unable to deal with social norms long enough to keep themselves off the street. It is just the way it is.

I want no one to starve. I am not a person with out empathy. But that does not change anything.

Where do we put that "marker" help/no help? Who decides?  That is the political reality we are talking about here.

A side note. The real problem in my opinion is there are simply too many people. We have exceeded the ability of the planet to absorb all of us.

At one time EVERY person coming to this country was homeless. But there was space and resources for survival. That is all gone. We cannot recreate that time in our history. Homelessness did not used to be a death sentence but those times are gone.

I think the future is bleak.

 

[musser]

The "solutions" government, the public, the charitable sector come up with for societies many problems are based on what we thought worked in the past. Well the so called solutions seldom worked at all. But today the pressure of population is unlike anytime in human history. None of what we did in the past will work.

We are fast approaching what futurists call a "steady state economy". More people than the earths resources can sustain. What then? The reality is simple, either we (the human race") will  become very equal, all of us living a very Spartan existence, or we will be dominated by ever more powerful oligarchs.

But be realistic, nothing we did in the past will be much use in the future.

[The Mage]

With the world population increase, real starvation has dropped, and not as a percentage, but in numbers, about half over the past 20-25 years. Also what is defined as middle class worldwide has grown dramatically, and is not stopping.

But anyone worried about the population exploding way beyond what it is now, really don't have anything to worry about. As the death rate of children in communities drop, so do the numbers of children people have. It has happened in almost every time an area has developed. It takes about 30 years, but it is already starting to happen in most if not all communities on Earth.

[The Mage]

I guess videos have been posted here, so I might as well add one.

This does a pretty good job of explaining things, and it's a cartoon too. And only 6 1/2 minutes long.

 

[tnycman]

I haven't done a thorough research, but i believe America is number one country when it comes to charity donations, be it for tax purposes, or simply goodwill.
However that begs the question of why ? Apparently, there are many people in need this great country than anywhere else in the Western world.
There isn't a day that i don't see a charity commercial in TV be it animal, or police, military, and that begs the question of WHY ? USA prides itself as being the greatest richest and most powerful country, however we have children, elderly, disabled, sick people in dire need of a decent insurance, and unable to afford a decent meal.
We're the same people who trust our money to charities that only use penny on a dollar to "help" people in need, but don't want our tax dollars to help the same people..

Any the real reason why Japan, Germany, Canada, Australia and so on, don't have as many charities combined as the US, the answer is simple, no need since these countries take care their citizens. You can call them communist, socialist but i see nothing wrong with helping people in need.
At the end of the day that person could be a disabled military person, your
next door neighbor, a police officer, firefighter or godfobid your relative.
You bever know in life, it could happen to the best of us..
Maybe I'm to compationate, but i always try to put myself in someone's shoes, and trust me i doubt anyone in the right mind would lime to sleep outside hungry in a freezing weather.


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[tnycman]

Check this out and these are the people I'm talking abut, our fellow Americans, be it Republicans, or Democrats.

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[BradMillner46]

To The Mage..............Thank you for posting that video. That was extremely interesting and informative. The people who did that video also did the video I posted earlier called "Is War Over?" Do you have any other videos you can post?

I think (maybe?) you and I share the same optimistic view of the future and do not see "Doomsday."

Personally I think the ENORMOUS power of technology along with the MONUMENTAL factor of people starting to question things will pull us into the next Renaissance the likes of which this world has never seen. 

[The Mage]

4 hours ago, BradMillner46 said:

To The Mage..............Thank you for posting that video. That was extremely interesting and informative. The people who did that video also did the video I posted earlier called "Is War Over?" Do you have any other videos you can post?

I think (maybe?) you and I share the same optimistic view of the future and do not see "Doomsday."

Personally I think the ENORMOUS power of technology along with the MONUMENTAL factor of people starting to question things will pull us into the next Renaissance the likes of which this world has never seen. 

This was information I already knew, so i did a quick search and found this one. 

Anyway, yes I am very optimistic of the future. I do recognize that a dystopian future is possible, but statistics and history is snowing a constant move toward a better future. But I also see people working hard to create that dystopian future. Ones who think they are doing right, but apparently never read 1984. Or read it, and actually think it's a good idea.

The health industry is a great example. I have posted before that an MRI used to cost as much as $3 million about 10 to 15 years ago, but now you can get one for $50K. And obviously a better one too. This technology was improving health, but at the same time driving up costs. But now the prices have dropped. This was discussed in financial articles that showed we had hit the peak in medical prices. The costs should have flattened out, not matching inflation. Interestingly it has gone up. Our health insurance is up somewhere around 4 times since Obamacare came in. To me this means that the drop that should have occurred in healthcare is instead making Obamacare look much better than it actually is.

I imagine what would have happened if this was put into place when healthcare was on it's climb. 

But regardless, technology will keep moving forward, and prices will keep dropping. I imagine drugs could drop too if we can break the collusion between drug companies and the FDA.

Here is a video from 5 years ago. Now realize that 1 year later, there were two 4K televisions available, and each were $20K or more. Now they are cheaper than the HD tv's were back then.

 

[lacanteen]

[tnycman]

One of too many DT retarded twits



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[musser]

An MRI cost $3,000,000 fifteen years ago? I had an MRI 20 years ago and it cost $1800. So much for intelligent conversation.

[The Mage]

43 minutes ago, musser said:

An MRI cost $3,000,000 fifteen years ago? I had an MRI 20 years ago and it cost $1800. So much for intelligent conversation.

The machine itself, (at the upper end,) not the procedure.

[musser]

My health insurance dropped under 'Obamacare". Not by much, but still a drop.

The issue with a lot of policies that ballooned in cost was they were in many cases pretty fraudulent. The new health care law brought some standards to the industry. These standards when enacted pretty much required people to have a policy like the one I have been paying for.

The main responsibility for the "problem" of health care costs I believe should be thrown on the Reagan and Bush Jr. Administrations, The Reagan Administration required all health care givers receiving Federal money from any source treat "all comers". The Bush Administration expanded Medicare Drug coverage with no funding mechanism. But my personal belief is that if ones wants to point a finger to the most problematic health care issue the finger would point to Ronald Reagan .

But ok, what did the care requirement mean? The requirement meant that millions of people were treated for free. Now this treatment was at the emergency room level because the requirement was to "stabilize" the patient. But who pays for this? Up till Obamacare people like ME paid for that free care. A hospital is going to get paid somehow. If they dole out twenty boxes of Kleenex but only one person has insurance to pay for Kleenex what do you think happens to the cost of a box of Kleenex? This is why my premiums have been over $1000 a month for a very long time.

I do not believe in Nationalized Healthcare because it is rife with fraud. But I support its existence because I have borne the brunt of the uninsured for a very long time.

Call me a pragmatic Libertarian.

I cant recall which Republican Congressman said it but his comment was when asked about the end of Obamacare, "there is nothing to worry about they can go to the emergency room". Political thinking like this is what is so discouraging.

[musser]

21 minutes ago, The Mage said:

The machine itself, (at the upper end,) not the procedure.

ok

[tnycman]

My health insurance dropped under 'Obamacare". Not by much, but still a drop.

The issue with a lot of policies that ballooned in cost was they were in many cases pretty fraudulent. The new health care law brought some standards to the industry. These standards when enacted pretty much required people to have a policy like the one I have been paying for.

The main responsibility for the "problem" of health care costs I believe should be thrown on the Reagan and Bush Jr. Administrations, The Reagan Administration required all health care givers receiving Federal money from any source treat "all comers". The Bush Administration expanded Medicare Drug coverage with no funding mechanism. But my personal belief is that if ones wants to point a finger to the most problematic health care issue the finger would point to Ronald Reagan .

But ok, what did the care requirement mean? The requirement meant that millions of people were treated for free. Now this treatment was at the emergency room level because the requirement was to "stabilize" the patient. But who pays for this? Up till Obamacare people like ME paid for that free care. A hospital is going to get paid somehow. If they dole out twenty boxes of Kleenex but only one person has insurance to pay for Kleenex what do you think happens to the cost of a box of Kleenex? This is why my premiums have been over $1000 a month for a very long time.

I do not believe in Nationalized Healthcare because it is rife with fraud. But I support its existence because I have borne the brunt of the uninsured for a very long time.

Call me a pragmatic Libertarian.

I cant recall which Republican Congressman said it but his comment was when asked about the end of Obamacare, "there is nothing to worry about they can go to the emergency room". Political thinking like this is what is so discouraging.

"there is nothing to worry about they can go to the emergency room"."

I think it was Lacanteen who said that [emoji3]

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[musser]

Don't know about that, but the comment was made by a Republican Congressman.

[BradMillner46]

13 hours ago, The Mage said:

This was information I already knew, so i did a quick search and found this one. 

Anyway, yes I am very optimistic of the future. I do recognize that a dystopian future is possible, but statistics and history is snowing a constant move toward a better future. But I also see people working hard to create that dystopian future. Ones who think they are doing right, but apparently never read 1984. Or read it, and actually think it's a good idea.

The health industry is a great example. I have posted before that an MRI used to cost as much as $3 million about 10 to 15 years ago, but now you can get one for $50K. And obviously a better one too. This technology was improving health, but at the same time driving up costs. But now the prices have dropped. This was discussed in financial articles that showed we had hit the peak in medical prices. The costs should have flattened out, not matching inflation. Interestingly it has gone up. Our health insurance is up somewhere around 4 times since Obamacare came in. To me this means that the drop that should have occurred in healthcare is instead making Obamacare look much better than it actually is.

I imagine what would have happened if this was put into place when healthcare was on it's climb. 

But regardless, technology will keep moving forward, and prices will keep dropping. I imagine drugs could drop too if we can break the collusion between drug companies and the FDA.

Here is a video from 5 years ago. Now realize that 1 year later, there were two 4K televisions available, and each were $20K or more. Now they are cheaper than the HD tv's were back then.

 

To The Mage............I think you and I probably have a lot more in common, certainly than we first realized. Thanks for the Michio Kaku video, I think that guy is awesome and I listen to him all the time (but I haven't yet seen this video yet so extra thanks for that.) 

It looks like I had you all wrong because at first I thought you were someone with an incredibly closed mind who was using your power as Administrator to shut down free-thinking ideas but I'm beginning to see that you're really not that way so my apologies to you.

If you don't mind, I just have a couple questions for you, not for the purpose of opening up a new argument but simply because I'm trying my best to understand you better.......

1) I really liked the video you posted above regarding world population though I don't agree at all with its assessment that poverty is plummeting, I believe it's very much so rising because poverty is a relative measurement to the entire population. Anyway, that video was VERY educational for me because now I have a new understanding of the worlds population that I'm sure you and I would agree eliminates the need for fear about this issue.

My first question to you is, why do you accept the information contained in that video but totally reject the information contained in the video I posted "Humans Need Not Apply?" I think that video also contains obvious truth that can not be discarded and it shows very clear real life examples and statistics that I don't think can be dismissed. Did I misunderstand what your take is on that video?

2) Hypothetically speaking, would you object to having a 2 system world where both the Free Market Monetary System co-existed peacefully with a Resource Based Economy? 

 

[tnycman]

Anyone have read any of Karl Marx, communism aside, i think he has some points in regards, of course for people with an open mind..

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[The Mage]

I'm beginning to think we need a politics section.

35 minutes ago, BradMillner46 said:

1) I really liked the video you posted above regarding world population though I don't agree at all with its assessment that poverty is plummeting, I believe it's very much so rising because poverty is a relative measurement to the entire population. Anyway, that video was VERY educational for me because now I have a new understanding of the worlds population that I'm sure you and I would agree eliminates the need for fear about this issue.

 It is a fact that the average person on Earth is better off than they were a quarter century ago. In fact it has been improving for well over a century.

This chart is from Forbes. As you can see, it is very relative to the population.

This is from BBC. They use the UN definition of middle class as earning or spending $10 to $100 a day. This estimate is from 2013, and I believe we may have already surpassed 3B people in the middle class, ahead of the 2020 projection. I think they are using a linear progression, when I believe it will be a little more exponential. Regardless, this is growing faster than the population.

 

1 hour ago, BradMillner46 said:

My first question to you is, why do you accept the information contained in that video but totally reject the information contained in the video I posted "Humans Need Not Apply?" I think that video also contains obvious truth that can not be discarded and it shows very clear real life examples and statistics that I don't think can be dismissed. Did I misunderstand what your take is on that video?

They had some interesting thoughts in that video, but it seemed to me they took a position, and then tried to prove it. Attempting to compare humans to horses is a horrible analogy. Horses are closer to a product than an employee.

Honestly i can see there being growing pains from the adoption of new technologies. But I found it lacking. You want an open mind, I didn't see that in this video. I saw people thinking the same way they did at the beginning of the industrial revolution, and again at the beginning of the computer revolution. Jobs were expected to be lost, and many were, but whole groups of new jobs nobody ever expected were created. And the second problem is something I already understand, and that the whole concept of work and income is evolving. I don't have a job, and haven't for about 5 years. I haven't worked full time since 2008.

Once I understood money, and how it works, I quit asking for raises. It's a whole different paradigm that completely altered my way of thinking. It's been a while since I saw that video, but I don't remember even a hint at that type of thinking. 

Pretty much what i saw was them stuck in a single mindset with no ability to see outside their box. 

1 hour ago, BradMillner46 said:

2) Hypothetically speaking, would you object to having a 2 system world where both the Free Market Monetary System co-existed peacefully with a Resource Based Economy?

I have said before that as long as the system was voluntary, that I didn't have a problem with it. I still believe it will fail without help from Capitalism. The same way all socialist countries, and communes needed some form of Capitalism to survive. Capitalism struggles when people get in the way, and try to add in communism, or bad ideas that are not capitalism. (And after screwing things up, they sit there and blame Capitalism.)

Another problem is when people look at a system that functions, or seems to function with some socialism, and that must mean it works. Not once thinking that it's possible that it might work better if they didn't have the socialist aspects.

Just image you took a chubby person, put him on a healthy diet, had him exercise daily, and slapped him across the face once a day. He lost weight, got healthier, so obviously it must be the slapping that is helping, so we expand slapping programs all over.

Most scientists know that coloration is not causation. (Except the ones that do epidemiology studies.) But it is well accepted in politics. (And the numbers will be altered if they don't support the politician.)