Do you have any facts to back up your claim?

Liberals think that raising tax rates = higher revenue. Nope. The wealthy simply put their money in tax-free investments with smaller returns or invest overseas.

It's the middle class--whom liberals claim to support--who gets it in the ass. To wit, Obamacare.

>> ^Drachen_Jager:

Ben Stein may be a Right Wing ass, but he actually understands numbers (apparently unlike all the other Right Wing asses on Fox).
You cannot raise government revenues by lowering taxes! Real economics do not work by magical thinking.

>> ^lantern53:

If a person has no job, they cannot afford to go to a casino, which employs hundreds. Since Sheldon thinks that Romney will create more jobs then Obama and more people will be able to go to the casino, and since Sheldon has actual business experience, unlike Barack Obama, I think it will follow that Sheldon is more likely to know what he is doing.
Go Sheldon! Go Jobs!


so you are saying most businessmen and ceo's are more interested in creating jobs than making profits/bonuses? what color is the sky in your world? and shareholders too are more interested in jobs created than return on investment, right? and a consumer economy can exist without a growing middle class, with a decent amount of disposable income?

i really like, "the more people the casino employs, the more people can go to the casino" point... really a proponent of debt slavery aren't you? lol

i'm sure you also believe in sustainable unlimited growth markets, and that the USA is #1 too

>> ^Asmo:

I don't get this fascination with 'beating' WoW, if a game makes money and returns on investment, and it's players enjoy it, isn't that the definition of success? I personally hate EVE gameplay but people enjoy it and the company makes money. So it doesn't kill wow, it's an entirely diff game and appeals to diff people...


Also I don't agree that you "kill" a game that has reached the amazing success WoW has. There's no such thing as a WoW Killer...there's just the next logical step in gaming. Which I believe now is SW:TOR with it's fully voiced quests and all that jazz, it makes me feel like I'm playing a single player game. That's all I've ever wanted when soloing in a MMO.

I don't get this fascination with 'beating' WoW, if a game makes money and returns on investment, and it's players enjoy it, isn't that the definition of success? I personally hate EVE gameplay but people enjoy it and the company makes money. So it doesn't kill wow, it's an entirely diff game and appeals to diff people...

>> ^smooman:

>> ^Sarzy:
>> ^chilaxe:
@Sarzy
My understanding is that marketing budgets tend to be roughly equal to production budgets, so double the listed production budget to find the true cost of the film.
A "profitable" movie in Hollywood means earning a lot more than for example a 15% return on investment after 3 years (5% per year) of transferring the money because the ROI has to compensate for that there's substantial risk involved.

Well, notwithstanding the vagaries of profitability in the studio system, I think it's generally accepted that -- broadly speaking at least -- a movie is considered successful if it makes back its reported budget.
But even by your stricter definition of what constitutes a successful movie, with the exception of Lady in the Water, all of Shamalan's movies pass that test.

Titanic grossed almost 2 billion.....whats your point?


My point was just that Chilaxe was wrong about Shyamalan's movies losing money. I wasn't commenting on the quality of his movies at all.

>> ^Sarzy:

>> ^chilaxe:
@Sarzy
My understanding is that marketing budgets tend to be roughly equal to production budgets, so double the listed production budget to find the true cost of the film.
A "profitable" movie in Hollywood means earning a lot more than for example a 15% return on investment after 3 years (5% per year) of transferring the money because the ROI has to compensate for that there's substantial risk involved.

Well, notwithstanding the vagaries of profitability in the studio system, I think it's generally accepted that -- broadly speaking at least -- a movie is considered successful if it makes back its reported budget.
But even by your stricter definition of what constitutes a successful movie, with the exception of Lady in the Water, all of Shamalan's movies pass that test.


Titanic grossed almost 2 billion.....whats your point?

>> ^chilaxe:

@Sarzy
My understanding is that marketing budgets tend to be roughly equal to production budgets, so double the listed production budget to find the true cost of the film.
A "profitable" movie in Hollywood means earning a lot more than for example a 15% return on investment after 3 years (5% per year) of transferring the money because the ROI has to compensate for that there's substantial risk involved.


Well, notwithstanding the vagaries of profitability in the studio system, I think it's generally accepted that -- broadly speaking at least -- a movie is considered successful if it makes back its reported budget.

But even by your stricter definition of what constitutes a successful movie, with the exception of Lady in the Water, all of Shamalan's movies pass that test.

@Sarzy

My understanding is that marketing budgets tend to be roughly equal to production budgets, so double the listed production budget to find the true cost of the film.

A "profitable" movie in Hollywood means earning a lot more than for example a 15% return on investment after 3 years (5% per year) of transferring the money because the ROI has to compensate for that there's substantial risk involved.

ABOUT ONSLAUGHT MEDIA:

Onslaught Media is a full-service film and High-definition video production company with a unique blend of creative talent, experienced project management, technical proficiency and Internet savvy. Highly regarded for creativity and customer service we have been producing unique, effective corporate sales, training and direct response media for 10 years. Our focus is to help you deliver a powerful message and realize a strong Return on Investment (ROI).



The "star" of this epic film is none other than the "CEO" of "Onslaught Media". They have a great portfolio too! He stars in almost everything they've produced.

The myth is SS is solvent for the next 50 years. The truth is its solvent only because government can tax to be so. And that's where SS apologists claim it's not a Ponzi scheme, because there's no promise of a return on investment (as in, you pay us but we have zero obligation to pay you.).

What gives the government the ability to tax you now to pay others yet gives them zero obligation to give you a return on your investment? Nothing except that it's welfare. It should be an investment into your retirement, but it's not. Why specifically?

Because the government has no obligations to its people, which has been proven in US Supreme Court cases. So, technically is it a Ponzi scheme? Not if you're not guaranteed a return on your investment. That just makes it theft at the barrel of the gun, doesn't it?

I've got a lot of nitpicking to do on the second question (why hasn't cleanup tech advanced like drilling tech). Basically, he didn't give the obvious answer to the question, and Maddow didn't call him on it.

Survey say: $$$

Oil companies have massive financial motivation to improve drilling techniques. Better drilling means that previously unavailable fields can be tapped, which means more money. Better drilling and pumping technology probably means fewer drill-site spill incidents, and as they say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Fewer spills and better pumping means more money.

Oil companies have very little financial motivation to improve cleanup tech. Every barrel lost to a spill is a barrel that they don't get to sell, but that provides motivation to avoid spills entirely rather than clean them up more effectively.

The only thing they have to gain from good cleanup is a slight mitigation in the amount that the people affected by the spill hate them; a fantastic cleanup by BP in the current scenario might improve their short-term public image from a Chernobyl-level meltdown to a mere Three Mile Island. Playing the odds and hoping that the fickle public will quickly fade in its vitriol is probably much more financially viable.

Also, his answer that there aren't enough BIG spills to push forward the technology is actually a fairly honest one, it just gets docked points for evading the primary source ($). Maddow mentioned the volume of oil spilled in the first couple of incidents she listed (100,000 and 200,000 gallons). That sounds like a lot, but for that sort of volume I imagine that whether one is using magical 25th century petrol-eliminator rays or good 'ol iron-age shovels, the primary source of the cleanup (to the extent it even can be cleaned) is going to be human labor to operate whatever tools are available.

It would also be worthwhile to know how many gallons have been spilled (to date) in the current incident to compared to those other ones Maddow would suggest we should have learned from. I bet most of her list of incidents would be eliminated if one were to only include spills with a volume of at least 1/10th (or even 1/100th) of the current "big" spill. So I'd say that his statement that there have been few "big" spills like this is accurate. (Just did a quick google search and came up with 40 million gallon estimate -- so 1/100th of that would be 400,000 gallons, double the volume of the highest incident she mentioned)

I don't say these things to absolve BP of responsibility. I'm just saying that expecting them to have worked extremely hard to develop some sort of magical cleanup technology is ridiculous. The only way that we could encourage improvements in that arena is by making it clear that they are 100% financially responsible for fixing the leak and cleaning it up (again, to the extent that it even can be). But even then, they are going to get more bang for their buck by developing better drilling to hope to avoid spills entirely or make them easier to stop/plug than they would ever get a return on investing R&D dollars into cleanup.

>> ^Farhad2000:

The problem is you can't do that. You can't quantify that at all.
It's like Big Pharam, you spend billions of dollars in R&D to find the next possible pill to alleviate heart problems and suddenly you create Viagra.
>> ^chilaxe:
I was hoping for more analysis of the quantifiable return on investment in the sciences... like the Apollo program yielding $14 for every $1 (over an unspecified period of time).
Talking about a sense of wonder and possibility is great for the culture, but to really get the machine of capital and policy rolling, you have to speak the language of profit and self-interest.



Exactly. his entire point is that we need explorers precisely because we dont know what they'll find out, thats what exploration is. It is a widely believed myth that the people who were against Columbus' attempt to sail around the world to reach India(which was the original plan for the exploration) all thought the earth was flat, they didnt actually think so, their main argument was that the distance would be too great, and as such they were completely right, not only did they figure that Columbus wouldnt make it, so the investment in the ship would be wasted, but even if he DID make it all the way to India, the distance would still make commercial traffic unfeasible. And they were actually right on all points. The entire beauty and nature of exploration, however, is that you can bump into America on the way over there, and there is no way to tell you this in advance. To tell you in advance what the return on the investment in exploring is, we need to explore.. well, you get the point.

The problem is you can't do that. You can't quantify that at all.

It's like Big Pharam, you spend billions of dollars in R&D to find the next possible pill to alleviate heart problems and suddenly you create Viagra.

>> ^chilaxe:

I was hoping for more analysis of the quantifiable return on investment in the sciences... like the Apollo program yielding $14 for every $1 (over an unspecified period of time).
Talking about a sense of wonder and possibility is great for the culture, but to really get the machine of capital and policy rolling, you have to speak the language of profit and self-interest.

I was hoping for more analysis of the quantifiable return on investment in the sciences... like the Apollo program yielding $14 for every $1 (over an unspecified period of time).

Talking about a sense of wonder and possibility is great for the culture, but to really get the machine of capital and policy rolling, you have to speak the language of profit and self-interest.

>> ^rychan:
>> ^jwray:
Actually access to cheap contraception and abortion is one of the most effective ways to reduce poverty everywhere on earth.
Same resources divided among more people = poverty.

Mostly false. More people = better economies of scale = better standards of living for everyone.
Do you think a company like Intel could exist without a first world economy with billions of people? How can they afford to invest 10's of billions of dollars and millions of man hours into infrastructure and research to create a next generation CPU? Because the world economy is big enough for them to make up their investments.
Do you think the NIH could distribute 10's of billions of dollars for medical research to extend and improve your life if we didn't have hundreds of millions of taxpayers?
The larger the world economy, the more specialists such as scientists and researchers you can support to benefit the entire world. The more amazing engineering projects you can undertake because the return on investment is higher. GPS, the Internet, etc etc... You could not enjoy the quality of life that you have now if the world population were 1 million people, regardless of how educated they might be and how trivial food and energy production might be (hint: neither would be trivial, because both enjoy economies of scale and both benefit from modern science).


So by your logic the countries with the highest birth rates should have the best standards of living in the world right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_birth_rate

Also, I dont argue that more people = better quality of life for some of the population, but that's looking at it from a macro scale, when you look more closely you'll see that the people benefitting from the additional population are not the poor, they are just providing cheap labour for the companies, and the people who use the resources are the ones getting the most benefit - hence why choice for them makes sense.