US Economic Issues...

[MayheM]

Man can I attest to what you are saying about Cali being broke!!!! The are all about giving money to the poor and can not even pass a budget on time. Here in San Francisco a homeless guy can walk and get $35 a day just for being alive. They do not ahve to contribute anything. So with no taxes and no rent they have $35 a day for food. Sounds good in theory if it was actually helping them get off the streets. However they get this money and still beg for more. I watched on guy begging for money outside a starbucks say "can I get a quarter for some food" as I walked out minutes later I watched a woman hand him some coffee and food from the starbucks. Then a few things I saw baffled me.
1. He did not even say thanks... Not a big deal but still
2. She walked off and he watched her turn the corner. Once she was out of sight he went over and hid the food and then started begging again.
The guy asked me for change and I told him Obama is gunna give him all the change he needs...
I am sorry but if they spent the money they where given on food they would eat better then most people in the city. $35 a day for food is actually a decent amount. Well now the stimulus bill is set to give them more money...

I spent a good part of my 20's just scraping by. I picked up shifts at my job and worked extra jobs so I could pay my bills. According to my W2 i was still under the poverty level. However, I never went and took a handout! I was riased to work for what I need. My dad worked two jobs so my mom could stay home and take care of my brother and I. We where not rich, in fact I now know my parents really struggled. But when I was a kid I had no idea. Taking handouts makes you weak! Dont get me wrong sometimes everyone needs help. The issue is we have created an entire culture of people who just think the deserver it. That the american dream is no longer work hard and get ahead. Now the american dream is gimme gimme gimme... People spend more then they can afford, $0 down on a house, maxed out credit cards... People living in a shack with a $50,000 car... Priorities are freaking WACK! That is where the economy went wrong. People blame it on the banks... well if someone offers you a deal that sounds too good to be true, it is. But then again things have gotten to the point where everyoe wants to point fingers... That goes for so many things as well. Look at games being blamed for violence. God forbid you blame the lame ass parents for not teaching thier kids right from wrong... The fact is everyone needs to be responsible for thier own actions.

[Ennui]

A governments sole purpose is to provide a national defense and provide a postal service.

You really believe this?

I bet you'd really enjoy paying for and constructing a road to get to where-ever you want to go, and just think of the fun you'd have after that stopping other people from using your road or forcing them to abide by your rules if you let them use it.

[ad_hominem]

A governments sole purpose is to provide a national defense and provide a postal service.

You really believe this?

I bet you'd really enjoy paying for and constructing a road to get to where-ever you want to go, and just think of the fun you'd have after that stopping other people from using your road or forcing them to abide by your rules if you let them use it.

Or even before that, finding that nobody knows how to make a road, due to lack of education, and by extention training.

[MayheM]

A governments sole purpose is to provide a national defense and provide a postal service.

You really believe this?

I bet you'd really enjoy paying for and constructing a road to get to where-ever you want to go, and just think of the fun you'd have after that stopping other people from using your road or forcing them to abide by your rules if you let them use it.

Actually it is local government which take care of roads and things like that. I believe he was refering to federal government which really is mainly responcible for national defense enc... I say mainly becaseu there are other things but I think you missunderstood what he meant... I could be wrong though...

[korge]

EDIT: Yeah, Thanks for clearing that up mayhem. it is the federal govns sole purpose to provide national defense and postal service.

A governments sole purpose is to provide a national defense and provide a postal service.

You really believe this?

I bet you'd really enjoy paying for and constructing a road to get to where-ever you want to go, and just think of the fun you'd have after that stopping other people from using your road or forcing them to abide by your rules if you let them use it.

Or even before that, finding that nobody knows how to make a road, due to lack of education, and by extention training.

If it had to, It would be handled in the private sector. Where there is need, money will go there. Only this time the road would not take 6 months to make, but 1 - 2 months. Why? Because who ever makes the roads the fastest, with the highest quality, is the one who gets paid. That is the point of risk capitalism. To invest and create a better product.

Also, There were not ogranized public schools in old old times. Instead there were trades, skills and apprentices. If you wanted to eat or survive, you learned a trade and survived off what you were good at. Too often today, the standards for the American public education are lowered DAILY to accomodate the lazy people. If you dont believe, look at the standards for inner city schools. You can thank the garbage government who is to blame. Stop talking about the US if you dont know anything about the US.

[MayheM]

Good point on the schools korge...

I work in a school and see some crazy things. We make accommodations for some kids because of learning problems, development issues and what not. Things like giving students more time to take tests or a laptop because they have bad handwriting. In theory it is a good idea but I cannot help but to think we are doing kids a disservice. When the go out into the job market they will not be able to go to their boss and say "well I have a learning disability so I will not be able to make the deadline you set for me, I will need more time" Their boss would fire them... People are under the impression everyone can do every job and that everyone is equal on all levels and in every way. I am sorry but everyone is different! Some people can do things I can not do and I can do things other people can not.

I was also talking to some people who said their kids are on sports teams where when they play they do not have winners and losers. They do not keep score because they do not want kid’s feelings to get hurt. I feel sorry for those kids when they have to be confronted by disappointment later in life. I sucked at sports when I was a kid, but I learned to deal with it. Kids today are going to be a bunch of creampuff bitches that will run home to mommy and daddy when they graduate college and can not find a job because they are ill prepared.

Sorry I got a little off topic there but just wanted to chime in on that...

[Sacul15]

I had a thought the other day about privatizing roads. One of the main problems people have with this idea is that there is going to have to be some way to pay for them, and that usually comes in the form of tolls. However, not everyone, especially frequent commuters, can afford to pay this toll, so some people are going to be unable to commute.

So how about this:
Consider how most internet sites are paid for. Some require you to pay the equivalent of a toll, but most are paid for by selling advertising space to other companies. The more "traffic" a site has, the more expensive placing an ad there is. If this system works so well with internet traffic, and lets most sites maintain their servers and what-not as well as making a profit off them, why couldn't it work with automobile traffic? Instead of paying a toll when you get on a highway, you simply drive through and see the thousands of ads people have placed there. While this might be dangerous in that people are looking away from the road, we are approaching the point where cars won't need human drivers to get from place to place, so there wouldn't be a safety problem anymore.

What do you guys think. Could it work?

[MayheM]

Sacul15 that sounds ok but bilboards already exsist and there is not way to be sure people are actually looking at them. People visit web sites maily because they want to but most people drive on roads because as you stated they have to... The money for roads should come from the people who use them. I do think since trucks put a beating on them they should pay more... and I think they do... but while I am on the topic of fruckers I would love to know why retrds are not illegal. If one of those things ever hits someone on a motorcycle they will get thier head cut off. Anyway, I just do not think it would work if that was how roadwork was funded...

[korge]

About the Roads: use our tax dollars to pay for the roads. I just think that the jobs should be privatized. Give the jobs to real companies who actually have to operate on a time table and not some government contractor.

About the schools: I feel sorry for any poor sap who got through high school and got into the workforce expecting their boss to be lenient with them. Its a true disservice and is simply creating a generation of degenerates. In the work place, no one is equal. We are judged by our results and we dont "deserve" anything. Which is why I think its crazy that like Mayhem said earlier, that some people get paid for simply being alive. Im not saying they should starve to death, but seriously, if that welfare wasnt in place, I bet they would be forced to find a job no matter what because the result would be death.

[MayheM]

The say Necessity is the mother of all invention.. Well it is also a great motivator...

[dragonfliet]

About the Roads: use our tax dollars to pay for the roads. I just think that the jobs should be privatized. Give the jobs to real companies who actually have to operate on a time table and not some government contractor.

Er. You know that if the government hires someone to do a job, that person is a government contractor right? Also, you get all up in arms about how long it takes to build a road, even using time periods, such as it takes 6 months to build a road. I love this. How long is this supposed road and how is it going to be built faster by other people for less money? I'm not saying it's impossible, only that your example reeks.

As for you idea of trades: Not only has this country moved away from "blue collar" labor, which makes trade apprenticeships nearly impossible, we've also raised our standard of living. Even if people are more lazy now, which is a completely subjective argument, we're living better and doing better. I can handle that. That schools need to be improved is not something you'll hear me argue against, that schools should be privatized and only those who can afford to pay tuition and the rest should be shipped off to manual labor (essentially what you just suggested), I can't even begin to point out the myriad of problems there.

Moving further to your comments. I'm a fan of you saying that by giving a significant tax cut to the middle class, it is somehow widening the classes. How does aiding the middle class= eliminating the middle class?

Re: economics and taxes. Let me parody what you said: You cannot tell me that you know basic economics when you think that people are giving over half of their paychecks to the government. The cap is 36% for the richest (up to 39% in new budget proposal) and that's not even counting in all of the write-offs and tax shelters that will bring down the amount of the paychecks significantly. For example, I'm in the 15% tax bracket and I paid approximately 7.5% in federal taxes. I'm not even rich enough to take advantage of most of the fantastic loopholes!

Re: Dday. That was a LANDING. The war continued for months after that, I might add. On top of that, they weren't fighting people on their native soil, they were fighting invaders. The Iraq invasion went very well actually, with the government toppled very quickly. The problem is the people, who LIVE in this country, were pissed about it (well, a lot of them were happy, but a significant amount were pissed) and are fighting a guerilla war. Look at Columbia. This is a difficult thing to suppress.

That should give you some time to go ballistic.

~Jason

[Sathor]

Private organisations are not responsible to democratic pinciples. If you don't learn from it from the whole mess with private military corporations, I don't know. I am against strict state control, but the whole private-do-what-you-want-economy-dudes has bought this mess. A state is there to control a balance, to protect its people (basic rights should also be benefit rights) by not handing them into control of corporations working for profit. A human life would be worth a certain amount of money once everything is controlled by companies. There has to be a balance.

[YokaI]

EDIT: Yeah, Thanks for clearing that up mayhem. it is the federal govns sole purpose to provide national defense and postal service.

A governments sole purpose is to provide a national defense and provide a postal service.

You really believe this?

I bet you'd really enjoy paying for and constructing a road to get to where-ever you want to go, and just think of the fun you'd have after that stopping other people from using your road or forcing them to abide by your rules if you let them use it.

Or even before that, finding that nobody knows how to make a road, due to lack of education, and by extention training.

That is the point of risk capitalism. To invest and create a better product.

All socialization means to a capitalist business man is that he needs to do better than the state, and if he does he will get paid. The state will be their to give basic support, and the companies will be here to give better support. Schools should still have a public option, and have them be well funded to be a decent source of education, and there should still be a private option, which is better more academic. Right now, public schools are only good if you are a self-modivator, and not everyone at a young age can be self motivated. Hell, I had no self motivation going into highschool, and my public school (which jerrymander'd the districts to make it more of a private school that got state funding, a waste of tax payers money imo seeing as it was pretty much free education for the people who lived in the district (who were also rich) and for everyone else it was just high bills for out of district fees.) got me motivated. It was also a great school only because it had good funding. If their could be more schools, and smaller school districts, it would be smaller more personal education for each person. If you were a private school, you would still be better because you earn a lot of money due to high monthly fees and it would create less of a gap between the rich and the poor.

Whenever you have a country with a large gap between the rich and the poor it is a BAD country. Look at africa. Look at the middle east. Look everywhere there isn't any sort of public education, public services, or public anything. Ironically, McCain during the debates always used Ireland's lowered property tax, but Ireland is purely socialized and has many socialized housing for the homeless. Hell, almost everything there has a state equivalent. Most countries that have public services tend to be better than the ones that don't, and if we don't fund the public services it is almost as if there is no service at all.

How many times have you used a crappy inter net provider, get fed up with them, and realize that there's no way to switch to another company because no cable lines besides the ones owned by THAT provider go to your house? Imagine how much better it would be if the cable lines were owned by the state, and the service companies were just the ones who manage the data going between point a and point b. Obviously, my idea is a bit wishywashy because I am not too sure on the details of cable companies, however I know for a fact that the state could own the cable lines much like they own many street and many facilities. Not only that, but if you experienced a problem with you current ISP and wanted to switch, you could use the public alternative until you were finished finding another provider. These are the sort of things that public institutions are made for!

Also, There were not ogranized public schools in old old times. Instead there were trades, skills and apprentices. If you wanted to eat or survive, you learned a trade and survived off what you were good at. Too often today, the standards for the American public education are lowered DAILY to accomodate the lazy people. If you dont believe, look at the standards for inner city schools. You can thank the garbage government who is to blame. Stop talking about the US if you dont know anything about the US.

A lot of the public education isn't to accommodate* for the lower educated students, but it is more due to the fact that schools haven't recieved any exceptional funding for... well, since the dawn of the public school system. We either need fewer schools, with a lot of money going to them, or a lot of schools with a decent amount of money going to each school. When your school has problems affording white-board pens, you know it isn't to accommodate for people of lower education but it is more to accommodate for the lack of funding.

[zombie@computer]

more or less related

http://video.google.nl/videoplay?docid= ... 2583451279

[Mr. Happy]

Somehow this post became extremely long and entirely tangential to the main topic of this thread and I would not blame anyone for entirely skipping it!! If you do read it, please consider not responding as I don't wish to sidetrack the conversation. Watch the great video that zombie posted above me instead:

more or less related

http://video.google.nl/videoplay?docid= ... 2583451279

General Responses to Others (particularly Jigsaw, MayheM

I 100% agree with MayheM about sports, and, to a degree, agree about the simple fact that some people are more or less capable than others and we need to recognize that. Mr-Jigsaw, I understand how crazy I must come off saying we should raise taxes etc., but like all good ideas just because it sounds crazy doesn't mean it is. Mathematical modeling and empircal evidence (new deal etc.) show I'm right. Also, I tend to take the long view, not just worrying about tommorow, but ten, a hundred, even a thousand years from now. Also, a billion dollars is NOT alot of money. You are clearly missing the point, yes it does sound like alot of money, but you are grossly overestimating the VALUE of it. I think this goes to the muddled conceptions of debt, inflation, value, capitalism, and what the hell these things actually mean and how they apply to the real world, and while that is the main topic at hand and something I want to talk about, I let this post get way too long in other areas.

Detailed discussion of road construction and education
Like all of my posts in this sub-forum, this one grew alot lol. There's a TLDR at the end for everything after this line sentence.

Philosophically, I am 80% in agreement with Korge and company.

Pragmatically, you have no idea what you are talking about; your conception of reality is factually false. First of all, the average person in the inner city is not a low-life scum, I have a feeling you don't know anyone in the inner city and are just scared by the sensationalist evening news. Secondly, a soldier's life is worth less than anyone else's because it is his job to die if neccessary, that is why it is a noble profession. However, these are very hot-button emotional issues and so I will address the general concepts that you are discussing about the role of government in the specific context of roads and education.

Take for example Sacul15's idea about roads, while I agree wholeheartedly that it's a good idea theoretically, practically it's a very bad idea and will simply never work as road-side advertising is not only very ineffective, but is also very expensive to produce and maintain with, for example, internet advertising. Also, people living in rural areas would become disenfranchised as focus would move entirely to more populous urban centers as that is where there is greater advertising exposure. And, beyond that, this would completely fail to account for road construction and repair in the most urbanized areas there is simply no room for the billboards.

Also take for example Korge's statement about the declining quality of our educational system. Theoretically, I agree 100% that we should not allow the lazy to drag it down. However, the lazy are not in reality the problem. As Yokai explains so eloquently it is 99% more to do with funding, teacher availability, the "no child left behind" program (which penalizes poor performance rather than trying to improve it), etc. Beyond those issues you also have to take into account the dichotomy oft-spoken off in evolutionary psychology: nature versus nurture. It is a simple fact that some people are born smarter than others, and it is also simple fact that people are born into circumstances out of their control. While we cannot send the innately dumb to Princeton, or forgive the poor choices of those who grew up in disadvantaged environments, we do need as a society to work to mitigate these factors when they have negatively influenced a persons development. I.E. When a less intelligent person is born into a culture of crime, poverty, and immorality, they will not, no matter how hard they try, be able to do as well as others, and though we should not give hand-outs, we do need to recognize that there are those who when they do their best simply cannot do as well as we do, as well as the fact that there are those who would be better if not surrounded by a currupt culture. Especially when framed in the context of early childhood development, where we can see that poorer children who do not receive as adequate nutrition and stimulation when babies grow poorly functioning brains, I think it becomes clear that these problems really are social problems which, if you choose to live in society (and if you choose to live off the grid by yourself in teh forest I will concede it isn't your problem) we have at least some imperative to address, otherwise the cycle will, through less-than-you-might-think fault of these persons, continue. This applies to issues such as welfare as well. There is a common misperception that people on wellfare are lazy, or what have you, however these ideas are invariably supported by people who have never worked in a wellfare office, and therefore have no authority to speak on the subject.

(EDIT: Not to suggest I am an authority on society, but I do look into these things rather than making rash assumptions, and I do have family, friends, and other important people that have or do work in welfare departments, schools, government, etc.)

TLDR For Road Construction and Education

TLDR: Though philosophically admirable, the ideas presented by Korge and others who advance similar ideas have no bearing on the reality of societies problems. And this is a society, if you don't want to pay taxes, or to have your taxes pay for someone else's education etc., that's fine, but you better be a hunter-gatherer living in the woods and interacting with no other people otherwise you are (to varying degrees) a bit of a hypocrite.