@NetRunner @dystopianfuturetoday

I'm looking for debate too, but I'm not going to find it if I argue the progressive angle. I'll be Lucifer's lawyer on this one.


A few things. First, I'm with those of you who doubt the truth of Schiff's statement that he's paying 50% of his income in taxes. I demand to see his tax return!

I'm potentially sympathetic to Schiff here. As we all know income taxes, and even capital gains taxes aren't the only taxes that exist. Schiff is a business owner. I suspect his issue is with the "double taxing" of profits. His business makes a profit which is then taxed. That taxation thus reduces the value of his business. Further, the remaining profits are taxed again (in the form of capital gains) when he decides to liquidate his stake in the company. So if you basically make your money by creating value in businesses in exchange for an ownership stake, that value is taxed twice before you even see it. Now of course this comes from someone that frequently makes disingenuous claims like the majority of Americans "don't pay taxes," considering the substantial share of their income they pay in consumption taxes; but his point stands on its own. I wish we had a more streamlined tax system that did away with loopholes as well as double taxation of value creation (like a VAT).


Secondly, even if it were 50%, and it went up to 65%, in what universe is it ever in Schiff's interest to stop making money? In fact, wouldn't it be an incentive for him to work harder? If he's used to a lifestyle of consumption of $1 million a year, and suddenly he's only able to consume $800k/yr, wouldn't that mean he'd redouble his efforts and try to make more money if he couldn't accept such austerity? He certainly wouldn't dismantle his businesses and cut off the source of his income.

You clearly don't value your time. Schiff's input/brand is probably the core asset of his ventures (in fact that's something you always have to remember about the guy, he's selling himself). That means he probably leads a fairly stressful life, and might choose to exchange some of his labor for the leisure time he could clearly afford in either case. That means generating less business, and thus requiring fewer "cost centers" (like staff). One argument might be that if he does dismantle his business, someone else will just fill the void in the marketplace, and hire (possibly that same) staff. However, if it was the case that there was someone willing to do what Schiff does for substantially less than Schiff, it's likely they'd already be competing with him under the favorable tax rates.


Thirdly, on jobs, like dft said, employers hire exactly as many people as they need to produce the amount of goods (or services) they're able to sell, and not a single person more. They're not going to hire more people to produce more goods if they can't sell all of what they're currently producing, that would just be pure loss to them.

This isn't always true. Businesses often use recessions to "buy labor low" to prepare a competitive advantage for the next cycle. Propping up the labor market arguably never lets the labor market reach a valuation in which this market based counter-cyclic mechanism can take place. It's further arguable that if you allowed that mechanism to take place, the resulting employment allocation may be more efficient/sustainable than, e.g. taking a census. I'm a bleeding heart, so you don't have to tell me about breadlines and old people in the streets, but part of me feels as though the youth has become soft. They don't want to learn. They don't create with what they have. They play video games and argue on Videosift.


Putting more money into the hands of the suppliers isn't going to boost employment for exactly that reason. Employers will only hire new people if they need to produce more goods, and they're only going to produce more goods if their sales increase. You really need to put more money into the hands of people who want to consume, not those who want to produce. You need to find a large group of people who want to buy more things, but can't because they don't have the money. In other words, you need to put money into the hands of poor people, not rich factory owners.

See Schiff would say DON'T give money to the employers. Stop giving money to ANYBODY. Leave the money right where the market put it. Doing anything else just allows some asshole to hoodwink the whole damn country rather than just their clients. Personally I feel there needs to be some initial breaking up of the oligarchy if you really want to pursue that line of reasoning (i.e. sorry Schiff, we're taking your gold with our pitchforks), but that's just me.


Schiff doesn't seem to know all this stuff, which is why everyone should laugh in his face when he says he knows anything about economics.

Come on, we're classier than that.

Dude, stimulus does not immediately kick in. It takes time to take effect. And considering the economic data that suggests that this was the worst economic downturn in since the Great Depression, where unemployment reached 25%, how is it "balderdash" unemployment would have climbed into the teens?

You also failed in your economic analysis. To say that the stimulus jobs created 1 job for every $200,000 is the most absurd thing I've ever read. First off, it assumes that the only jobs created are the jobs of people it directly contributed to hiring without taking into account the residual effects of said hiring, or the results of whatever goods and services produced from the work they did. How many jobs are created or preserved by building infrastructure? How many jobs were created or preserved by providing all workers hired through stimulus programs, which in turn spent that income on goods and services produced by private sector workers? What about workers producing goods and services necessary for these programs that wouldn't immediately show up?

"...the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released a report in August that said the stimulus bill has '[l]owered the unemployment rate by between 0.7 percentage points and 1.8 percentage points' and '[i]ncreased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million.'"

http://www.factcheck.org/2010/09/did-the-stimulus-create-jobs/

The economy is cyclical in nature. Stopping the bleeding is a big deal. And most economists believe the stimulus bill wasn't as successful as it should have been is because it wasn't big enough, not because it was too big or was done at all.

Again, I challenge you to show me a recession in modern times that was not ended after a period of deficit spending. You can't name one, can you?

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/include/us_deficit_100.png

So there's completely DUH obvious undeniable, there's no other way to explain it, basic US historical fact that we've ALWAYS ended recessions with deficit spending. How can you possibly argue that "when government steps into the market, it creates an artificial bubble that PROLONGS an economic downturn." So what was WWII?! What were the 1980's?! You have no factual claims to stand on! Explain how in the world deficits prolonged the Great Depression! We deficit spent quite a bit leading up to WWII, still didn't get out of the Great Depression, massive record deficit spent, THEN got out of the Depression. It is undeniable that's what did the trick.

I don't for the life of me understand why people like you will literally argue the sky isn't blue if it fits your ideological narrative.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

You can't say it didn't work before because unemployment was skyrocketing and then stopped when the stimulus kicked in.
The facts...
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000
Unemployment started going up a bit in May of 2008 (5.4%). By February of 2009 (Stimulus bill passes) the rate was 8.2%. By October of 2009, unemployment was 10.1%. +2%. After. The. Stimulus. Unemployment hit 9%+ in May of 2009 and has stayed in that zone ever since.
Unemployment did spike a total of +4% between May of 2008 and May of 2009. 60% of that spike took place before the stimulus, and 40% of the spike took place AFTER the stimulus. In order for anyone to claim that the stimulus 'stopped' unemployement from rising, they would have to conclusively prove that unemployment WOULD HAVE RISEN to 13.4% by May of 2010, then to 17.4% by May of this year without the passage of the stimulus. Balderdash. Unemployment hit a natural free market peak in late 2009, and it was going to do that with our without the stimulus.
Let's assume the stimulus DID 'create jobs'. Is that backed up by facts?
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/13/us-usa-campa
ign-stimulus-idUSTRE78C08R20110913
http://web.econ.ohio-state.edu/dupor/arra10_may11.pdf
Economic data is open to debate. On the one side here we have the CBO which gave the stimulus a very generous amount of credit (based on some very questionable interpretations of job 'creation') for 'creating or preserving' 3 million jobs. Then we have an OSU study which uses statistics to prove the stimulus 'created' 450,000 government jobs and KILLED a million private sector jobs.
I personally I think the OSU study hits the nail on the head. "ARRA funds were largely used to offset state revenue shortfalls and Medicaid increases rather than directly boost private sector employment." That is a statement that reflects reality. The stimulus mostly plugged up budgeting gaps that had nothing to do with employment. In fact, the CBO itself freely admitted, "it is impossible to determine how many of the reported jobs would have existed in the absence of the stimulus package.” QUOTE!
But let's be really nice and use the CBO's figures - even though they are highly questionable. 3 million jobs were 'created or preserved' by the stimulus bill. Even in this very rosy scenario, the stimulus made 1 job for every $200,000 dollars. It can be credibly argued that doing NOTHING would have generated a better result in an overall analysis compared to spending $200K for 1 job.
But for the sake of discussion let's take a good hard look at the jobs that were 'created'. After all, 200K a job might make sense if they were GOOD jobs...
http://reason.com/archives/2009/12/11/did-the-stimulus-create-jobs
They weren't. Most of the jobs were government jobs. And most of them were temporary construction jobs or other seasonal gigs for make-work projects scheduled to complete in a year or less (at which point they are fired). The private sector - where jobs are needed most - got virtually NO boost from the stimulus.
I could keep on going for hours, but suffice it to say that the stimulus didn't 'stop' unemployment. There is solid, real, credible evidence that the government's interference in the free market did far more harm than good. That's what happens. When government steps into the market, it creates an artificial bubble that PROLONGS an economic downturn.

The full range of his arguments are not entirely clear to me, but here's what I got.

1) Free trade leads us to send jobs and money overseas.

2) Crappy tax code means the rich are amassing huge fortunes while the rest of us face service cuts in the face of our deficit.

3) We spend lots of money covering the losses of banks.

4) Politicians who go against special interests get thrown out of office.

To which I could respond:

1) Free trade also makes imports cheap. If they raised tariffs and TVs and cellphones doubled in price, would we all thank the government for making American businesses more competitive? Back when it was actually possible to buy American did people do it? No. They went to wall-mart to save $5.

2) We voted for it. How many democrats have we seen clobbered at the ballot box because they presumed to raise taxes on the rich? The only Democrats who have won the presidency in my lifetime have done it by putting as little daylight as possible between themselves and their opponents on tax policy.

3) When banks fail we have recessions. When we have recessions, we vote out whoever is in charge. Thus, the government borrows and spends and bails as much as it can to minimize the cyclic nature inherent in any market economy. Is this good for long term competitiveness, growth, or our national finances? No. Does this stop voters (from both parties) from demanding that the government "fix" every economic downturn immediately? No.

4) Do special interests get special votes? No. They just put lots of (generally dishonest) advertising on the air, and voters are too lazy or too stupid to determine what is true and what is not.

In summary, why does our government inflict these horrible policies on us? Why do they suffer from such gridlock? Because we ask them too. We like living on borrowed money to buy cheap crap that distracts us from the difficult truths that a more responsible electorate would face head on. We have the government we chose and the government we deserve.

I feel for your plight and understand why you're upset over what you feel is a needless, avoidable death, but in order to "save" this guy from himself, you would have to sacrifice your own freedom and time to live his life for him, or pay someone else to do it. Even if you could do this, what kind of mental weakling would you be "saving"?

Compassion is too political nowadays. Society may allow you to "throw away" compassion for a fat person who ate their way to an early grave (this guy apparently didn't) yet if you announced you had zero compassion for gays with AIDS that got it through risky, avoidable behavior, you could be charged with a hate crime.


>> ^BoneRemake:

Having been a person who was grossly over weight and know very well the mind fuck and redundant and cyclical life style that one leads because of it, I do have a holier than thou mindset.

Having been a person who was grossly over weight and know very well the mind fuck and redundant and cyclical life style that one leads because of it, I do have a holier than thou mindset.

You can continue to expand your body mass by not getting help and wallowing around in your own ignorance, destroying your body and taxing those you love around you. Or wake up and change. Dont for a second think most people cant loose weight, they dont do it because its hard and people are lazy.

it just flat out sickens me, its not natural and its not right. I really do not have the patience to express myself fully so maybe you would understand why I have no compassion for such situations or people in the situation. There is a point where you have to realize that " its just not right " and you change, damn rights I believe the guy gave up, 7 feet and 550 pounds ? come on, throw your compassion out the door at some point.

The burger joint and its owner are a pathetic attempt at a "niche" market restaurant, the spokesman he hired glorified that.

I have no respect for it or those that profit from it.

Who wants to be my friend ?

Batshiat! There is a reason that word exists.

It sounds to me that he has literally caused a type of psychosis. The drugs have facilitated the change via memory and neuron construction. This doesn't sound like bi-polar (all though it seems like it's cyclical, I think it's the drugs--since he views them as a joke with no negatives), this sounds like a drug induced semi-delusion, schizophrenia, or literally a psychotic break.

This is what happens to you when you take too much--your brain finds a way to sustain itself in every fashion. The drugs were in the way so it cut around the useless area and reconnected. Simple stuff.

It made Charlie believe he's more than mortal, "in touch" with something "else", rampant rambling that's almost incoherent. This is ALL textbook; hell you don't need to be a doctor (one second he asks her if she's a doctor as though that brings qualification; the next he thinks the doctors have got it all wrong; rambling, psychotic...). Charlie needs to take a Human Anatomy 101, Psychology 101, and then either a Psychology +102, Neuroscience 101+, and then a Philosophy 101.

He might find out that his experience is: A-Not unique or special. B-VERY common to people to OD or take heavy doses of psychoactive drugs (or really any neurotransmitter/neurochemical based drug such as Xanax, Phenegran, or the common choice of an Opioid) C-Surprisingly he'll most likely end up like a statistic. Especially, because he thinks he's doing the right thing (psychosis).

I highly doubt Charlie will stop himself, it's up to the people around him that are close enough to affect a change (good luck with that; I know how hard that is to pull off).

Charlie Sheen is only human.

I don't know. We know global warming is real, but no one can accurately say it's man made. Over 95% of the carbon emissions are naturally made, the majority of emissions coming from volcanoes. These things were around long before the industrial age, and life on earth seems to have evolved just fine. We also know our earth has experienced global warming in the past, so this may be a cyclical event man has no influence over.

You really should read more about what climate scientists who study this say. For one, the massive climate changes in the past coincide with mass extinctions. For another, study of how the environment responds to differing levels of CO2 shows that small changes in total CO2 output can cause significant changes in climate (as in, the kind that causes mass extinctions). Then there's also the whole idea of multipliers, where small warming causes a change like the melting of permafrost, which makes that part of the earth less reflective (and also amounts to a change in climate).

In the 70s "they" said we were facing an ice age. Did we? Remember acid rain? Another 70s scare that turned out to be a red herring for environmentalists. Good science always prevails, and there's probably a good reason why Al Gore is being sued for fraud.

Did "they" say that? From what I've read on the supposed new ice age, there was a small minority scientists who said that, and the media amplified it completely out of proportion.

It's funny that you bring up acid rain though. You know why that went away? We implemented cap and trade for sulfur dioxide emissions, and it essentially eradicated the problem.

As for the "good reason" Al Gore is being sued for fraud, it's because there's a tremendous amount of right-wing political groups and corporations that want to discredit the entire environmental movement. A cost-effective way to do that is to try to tarnish the movement's most recognizable representative.

I can give you the Libertarian perspective: you solve it with lawsuits. If you pollute and it affects the health of others, then they have a right to sue for damages. There's no corporation limit to liability in a free market, and class actions would prove to be silly. People individually would sue the company and that would deter them from damaging the environment.

Ahh, so that's how you completely disguise all responsibility. If I get killed in a road accident during a freak snowstorm caused by global warming, mintbbb has to choose between using the life insurance money to settle affairs and pay off debts she may not be able to service without my income, or gamble it by trying to engage in a lawsuit against a coalition of oil, gas, coal, and power companies?

If we were talking about someone pissing in my water supply, would I really have to drink it, and then later prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it did some harm to me before I could expect law enforcement to get involved? Couldn't I just say "I don't consent to have pee put in my drinking water!" and get the police to stop people who wouldn't comply?

In reply to this comment by blankfist:

So where do you stand on the whole carbon emissions and climate change thing? Are you one of these people who think scientists are engaged in a massive socialist conspiracy? Maybe just all completely wrong?

I don't know. We know global warming is real, but no one can accurately say it's man made. Over 95% of the carbon emissions are naturally made, the majority of emissions coming from volcanoes. These things were around long before the industrial age, and life on earth seems to have evolved just fine. We also know our earth has experienced global warming in the past, so this may be a cyclical event man has no influence over.

In the 70s "they" said we were facing an ice age. Did we? Remember acid rain? Another 70s scare that turned out to be a red herring for environmentalists. Good science always prevails, and there's probably a good reason why Al Gore is being sued for fraud.

I mean, read this, and tell me how you think we should deal with property rights when it comes to air pollution.

I can't speak for Conservatives, because I'm not one, but I can give you the Libertarian perspective: you solve it with lawsuits. If you pollute and it affects the health of others, then they have a right to sue for damages. There's no corporation limit to liability in a free market, and class actions would prove to be silly. People individually would sue the company and that would deter them from damaging the environment.

The alternative, which is what we have today, is the EPA fines them a one time penalty that is less than 1% of their gross revenue. That's the statist answer. Look at the Smithfield Foods fiasco for proof of this, and what's worse they then gave Smithfield Foods an award in environmentalism. And not a penny of the money they received from fining Smithfield was sent to the sick families to help with their health care.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

I never really thought about it till now, but how does a chinook rotate without a tail rotor? It is all just differential rotor rotation? If so, does that mean you can turn around different axis' depending on which blade you use as the pivot?


"Tandem rotor designs achieve yaw by applying opposite left and right cyclic to each rotor, effectively pulling both ends of the helicopter in opposite directions."

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

^ One solution, NR, would be to criminalize the process of creating criminals, of providing them with the programming to encourage recidivism instead of rehabilitation. Begin with a flow chart of just who profits from the prison system in this country.....(BF, it's closer to 2 percent of everyone in prison now)

The trail of money that starts with a profiling quota for routine stops by a petty thug, bully or bullied damaged fuckstick in the form of "peace officer" (oxy fucking moron), is designed as a cyclical money siphon. Arrest, litigation or incarceration, repeat. More laws mean more revenue for states, municipalities, more cips, more prisons-

The "prison" described above mimics the prisons those who manage to stay out of that system work hard to remain in....the prison of unending wage-slavery....So that one day, they too might be found to be worthy of a part of,,,,sayyyyyy, for deciding to boycott the IRS-If enough people would drop a motherfucking nut simultaneously, perhaps we would not be party to our own, languorous demise. It's called civil disobedience and in my experience, people are all about talk, and programmed to take no action for the fear that has been systematically instilled......

Yeah man, prisons make money hand over fist, and the subsidies they receive form the feds would probably be dwarfed only by those doled out to Agribiz and Pharmaceuticals. The two-fold benefit to the system is that they program each new generation to believe their fucking lies and act accordingly.....

It is cyclical, but who times the cycles?

The poor don't do it. The poor did nothing wrong regarding this.

Enron robbed California blind, and nothing was really done about it.

Arthur Anderson, Bear Sterns (short sold), Bernie Madoff who could not have stolen all of that money by himself.

We are not seeing an aberration of the system.

We are witnessing the essence of the system.

>> ^Throbbin:
"There's got to be some kind of a rebellion between the people who have nothing and the people who've got it all."
Amen.


Kinda like the french revolution. Problem is it is cyclical...cause now YOUR the one with stuff...prepare to be revolutioned on!

Seriously though, trusting politicians not to be corrupt/ignorant to dole out, at this point, trillions of dollars has to be the largest lunacy of our time.

>> ^EndAll:
There's more to the arguments than all the talk about thermite, though. Take for instance the account of former 9/11 videographer Kurt Sonnenfeld. As for the thermite though, there still are some valid questions to be raised - a recent scientific study was released that added credence to these questions.. check it out, it's linked to in this here article.
And Nordlich, I can empathize with the way you feel. It's hard not to be pessimistic, apathetic, or just feel utterly hopeless about everything. There are individuals and organizations all over the world though that fight every single day to educate people and inform them of the truth. It's up to us to get involved and enact real change.


Nooooo, you've been suckered in by their utter non-scientific drivel too! What exactly in Kurt's writings did you find to be of any credibility? Really. He goes on about how if black boxes were destroyed, how come other bits that he saw weren't. Um... because things like that happen all the time when it comes to destruction, some things get utterly destroyed, while other bits escape seemingly unharmed due to the way their were thrown from the area or whathaveyou. I mean THIS is the sort of shit that the ENTIRE 'truther' movement is based around, these sorts of bullshit 'I saw molten metal, must have been steel, how could it have got that hot without explosives' SHIT.

Argh, it drives me mad.

And Kurt himself left the country due to the suspicious death of his wife where he was accused of murdering her. Which he has now turned into a way for them to stop him showing something or other about 9/11... which is madness.

And the 'scientific study'. *sigh* You need to spend some time reading the posts here because everything those supposed scientists claim as being 'proof' is utterly debunked.

Almost completely everything to do with the 9/11 conspiracy nonsense is people seeing things happen one way, against what they expect (the buildings falling straight down for instance) and then ascribing something they do know to look like that (a demolition) and forcing the facts to fit.

It's utterly infuriating. And you can spend a long time in 'their world' on the net and seem to think you're reading material backed up by others, but it's all a cyclic loop of the same stuff feeding back from one person to another.

Don't get suckered in.

As for the New World Order... meh, I haven't spent the time looking into it, and don't plan on wasting my time on it frankly.

Idiot Winston. You don't even know what a growth rate is or how to calculate it

READ:

Ideally, GROWTH RATES would be close to 0%.

0% Perfectly sustains the population at a GIVEN MOMENT. NOT A GIVEN SIZE.

I specifically state that growth rate has NOTHING to do with Ideal Size.

Ideal SIZE is a function of the carrying capacity.

You are one dumb son of a bitch, if you didn't know.


Also, Population may be cyclical, but if you look at data collected over time, you see that it is also quite hard, if not impossible, to reliably predict future numbers. Malthus proved why.

So we deal with reality instead. The Reality of RATES OF PRODUCTION AND CAPACITY over RATES of CONSUMPTION. This utilizes data akin to the census. We need to know What is Using What, How Fast, and thus, simply put, decide what we CAN DO about it.

I really do not like you. You've said before you're not QM's alt.... but that seems unlikely. We haven't even gotten into Logistic Growth, and already you display the same lack of familiarity with basic mathematical concepts....you just use outdated perspectives to inform your already outdated opinion... which is a minor accomplishment in itself, so congrats on being Really Worthless and using those feelings of inadequacy for Evil instead of Good.

Go volunteer at the animal shelter -- the dogs don't care who walks them, and you'll be accomplishing something within your means.

population is cyclical...

Too many people, not enough resources, the population decreases

population decreases, renewable resources renew, population is allowed to grow again.

Here is a parametric predator-prey model to show what I mean