That's the kind of thing that makes it obvious that the economics are NOT the real reason.

Include Viagra in my list of elective things that people should pay for themselves.

...On the other hand, to fully compare we'd need to know how many individuals are being provided with those things. I remember seeing that $8.4m figure before, I think it was for ~15,000 trans soldiers? The military is spending about 5 times as much on viagra, but I'd wager that it gets distributed to more than 75,000 (15k x 5) guys.

I don't really think the military should be paying for either, but I'm sure that the military line would be that they're buying more per-capita emotional well being with $41m worth of viagra than $8m for trans.

15:05-15:30: you tell Mr and Mrs Front-Porch that your loonie of 1871 cannot be compared to your loonie of 2013 (year of this interview). You went off the gold standard in '33, you abandoned the peg in '70, and your currency has been free-floating ever since. Yes, the ratio of debt to GDP has some importance, but so does the nature of your currency. Just look at Greece and Japan, where the former uses a foreign currency and the latter uses its own, sovereign, free-floating currency.

Pay back the national debt -- have you thought that through?

First, the Bank of Canada is the monopolist currency issuer for the loonie, so explain to me in detail just how the issuer of the currency is supposed to borrow the currency from someone else? If you're the issuer of the currency, you spend it into existence, and use taxation as a means to create demand for your currency, and to free resources for the government to acquire, because you can only ever buy what is for sale.

Second, every government bond is someone else's asset. An interest-bearing asset. A very safe asset, in the case of Canada, the US, the UK, Japan, etc. "Paying back the debt" means putting a bullet into just about every pension fund in the world that doesn't rely exlusively on private equity or other sorts of volatile toilet paper.

There's a distributional issue with these bonds (they are concentrated in the hands of the non-working class, aka the rich), no doubt about it. But most of the other issues are strictly political, not economical.

What if the interest rate rises 1%? The central bank can lower the interest rate to whatever it damn well pleases, because nobody can ever outbid the currency issuer in its own currency. Remember, the central banks were the banks of the treasuries. The whole notion of an independent central bank was introduced to stop these pesky leftists from spending resources on plebs. That's why central banks were often removed from democratic control and handed over to conservative bankers. If the Treasury wants an interest rate of 2% on its bonds, it tells its central bank to buy any excess that haven't been auctioned off at this rate. End of story.

What if the market stops buying government bonds? Then the central bank buys the whole lot. However, government bonds are safe assets, and regulations demand a certain percentage of safe assets in certain portfolios, so there is always demand for the bonds. Just look at the German Bundesanleihen. You get negative real rates on 10 year bonds, and they are still in very high demand. It's a safe asset in a world of shitty private equity vaporware.

But, but.... inflation! Right, the hyperinflation of 2006 is still right around the corner. Just like Japan hasn't been stuck near deflation for two decades, and all the QE by the BoE and the ECB has thrown both the UK and the Eurozone into double-digit inflation territory. Not! None of these economies are running near maximum capacity/full employment, and very little actual spending (the scary, scary "fiscal policy") has been done.

But I'm going off track here, so.... yeah, you can pay back your public debt. Just be very aware of what exactly that entails.

As for the poster-child Latvia: >10% of the population left the country.

Here's a different poster-child instead, with the hindsight of another 4 years of austerity in Europe after this interview: Portugal. The Portuguese government told Master of Coin Schäube to take a hike, and they are now in better shape than the countries who just keep on slashing.

On a different note: Marx was wrong about the proletariat. Treating them like shit doesn't make them rebellious, it makes them lethargic. Otherwise goons like Mario Rajoy would have had their comeuppance by now.

PS: Blyth's book on Austerity is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in its history or its current effects in particularly the Eurozone.

What do real scientists say?
...the one's he worked with all said Lindzen is totally wrong, and his views are not held by the vast, VAST majority of other scientists that actually work in climatology. He's a political shill now, working for 'conservative think tanks' to deny climate change.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/06032017/climate-change-denial-scientists-richard-lindzen-mit-donald-trump

Note, his graph at the beginning that appears to show no significant rise because as usual they start in late 97-98, a super hot El Nino year (the hottest on record) typically used as a starting point to pretend that temperatures aren't rising as fast as they are. Start at any other time to see how different the results are. This graph contains the hottest 15 years in recorded history over a period of the last 19 years. That's pretty telling by itself.

1)the climate is always changing-but according to natural cycles, we should be in a cooling period, not a warming period.
2)so at least in his mind, everyone agrees CO2 is a greenhouse gas that causes warming...that's better than most deniers.
3)"little ice age"-During the period 1645–1715, in the middle of the Little Ice Age, there was a period of low solar activity known as the Maunder Minimum. The Spörer Minimum has also been identified with a significant cooling period between 1460 and 1550 (it was not caused by low CO2 levels), and CO2 is produced more in warmer temperatures than cold, so starting shortly after then you can claim the CO2 levels have been rising since well before the industrial revolution...which cherry picked like that may be technically true but is again misleading by starting at an unusually low level following a low level solar period, but the level of that rise has consistently risen since the industrial revolution, and is incredibly higher than any natural mass releases besides rare massive super volcano eruptions that caused mass extinction events.
4) just plain not true, and not agreed on by scientists.
5)What they actually said-
Improve methods to quantify uncertainties of climate projections and scenarios, including development and exploration of long-term ensemble simulations using complex models. The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. Rather the focus must be upon the prediction of the probability distribution of the system�s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions. Addressing adequately the statistical nature of climate is computationally intensive and requires the application of new methods of model diagnosis, but such statistical information is essential.

Confident prediction of future weather is not possible, weather predictions are based on statistical probabilities too. Because they aren't perfect doesn't mean they're wrong, useless, or should be ignored until they're 100% right every time. More funding for more study will improve the predictions consistently, but we are intentionally defunding them instead.

Religion channel? As in the religion of climate change denial? That's not what that channel is.
Philosophy channel? What?
Learn channel, only if the viewer looks into his BS elsewhere to learn the truth.
Lies, yep...controversy, yep....politics, yep....conspiracy,OK. His ilk are steeped in those, but you left out money, the driving force for all the deniers controversial, political lies and crazy conspiracy theories. ;-)

This is Monty Python we're talking about. The fans overthink everything. We put the 'anal' into over-analysis.

Case in point, here are a few things that may or may not be relevant that he missed:
1) We see Bedevere tying coconuts to birds' legs to distribute them, as per the first castle scene.

2) When God talks to Arthur, both are played by Graham Chapman. Does this mean God is only in his/your own mind? The other knights react to what they see, but don't talk to him or reference anything he says.

3) You can see that when the black knight is down just just the one leg, he's actually played by a one-legged local instead of by Cleese.

There's lots of this rubbish, and we love it. I only just made up number two (although it is true).

As a bonus, here's a relevant XKCD:
https://xkcd.com/16/

Not too popular in the U.S., but its an Olympic event. Each shot is loaded individually, and people customize them heavily for things like weight distribution. Here is more info:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_meter_air_pistol

*spammer

NHS Heroes
posted by NHSHeroes12 1 hour 49 minutes ago • 1 view
NHS Heroes is an online website which specializes in pain medication and all the medications which are referenced by this site are distributed by HR Healthcare Limited, Britannia Way, Bolton and UK. The NHS Heroes website is not specifically a pharmacy though it has drugs but a getaway to a pharmacy and also registered doctors. The motto of this website is to provide a healthy living condition to every citizen by offering the best medication to their clients. visit- https://www.nhsheroes.co.uk/

Right. Here are some facts.

The CIA isn't spying on most of us through our TVs right now, though they do have the technology to do it and have developed it specifically for that purpose.

So have countless other entities (government and independent. You can download the tech yourself if you care to, or have the technical ability).

Samsung is spying on you through your Samsung TV's
(http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/fine-print-on-one-of-samsungs-tvs-says-its-recording-your-voice/)

Any consumer products with voice recognition could be considered to be spying on you, such as Google and Amazon "home assistants".

Technically, by now anything with an active microphone has the capability to do this. It should probably be considered worse that it's not the government, but completely unknown third-parties who supply the infrastructure to do this on a massive scale for the purposes of data mining for advertising.

I have personal experience with this technology and the industries that develop and distribute it. This isn't hearsay or conjecture. I will never understand why it's acceptable for unchecked third-party corporations to spy on you, but once the government does it, a slightly larger minority gets upset.

Don't most of you know that Christians are required to murder you if you don't worship properly, or try to leave Christianity?

How about Deuteronomy 17:
Deuteronomy 17
If there be found among you, within any of thy gates which the LORD thy God giveth thee, man or woman, that hath wrought wickedness in the sight of the LORD thy God, in transgressing his covenant; 17:3 And hath gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, either the sun, or moon, or any of the host of heaven, which I have not commanded; 17:4 And it be told thee, and thou hast heard of it, and enquired diligently, and, behold, it be true, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought in Israel; 17:5 Then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman, which have committed that wicked thing, unto thy gates, even that man or that woman, and shalt stone them with stones, till they die.
Or Deuteronomy 13:
6 If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” (gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, 7 gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, from one end of the land to the other), 8 do not yield to them or listen to them. Show them no pity. Do not spare them or shield them. 9 You must certainly put them to death. Your hand must be the first in putting them to death, and then the hands of all the people. 10 Stone them to death, because they tried to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 11 Then all Israel will hear and be afraid, and no one among you will do such an evil thing again.
12 If you hear it said about one of the towns the Lord your God is giving you to live in 13 that troublemakers have arisen among you and have led the people of their town astray, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” (gods you have not known), 14 then you must inquire, probe and investigate it thoroughly. And if it is true and it has been proved that this detestable thing has been done among you, 15 you must certainly put to the sword all who live in that town. You must destroy it completely, both its people and its livestock. 16 You are to gather all the plunder of the town into the middle of the public square and completely burn the town and all its plunder as a whole burnt offering to the Lord your God. That town is to remain a ruin forever, never to be rebuilt.
Or Numbers 31, where God commands the Israelites to attack Midian and kill all the men, all the married women and all the male children but to keep the virgin females as the spoils of war and distribute them among the soldiers. The reason offered for that barbarism? Two Midianite women had allegedly “tempted” two Israelite men to worship other gods.

Christians consistently ignore the inconvenient parts unless they work to further their current prejudices. I've never heard of a Red Lobster or Gap being firebombed for selling shellfish or mixed fabrics, but gays..stone em, burn em, bomb em, and stone them some more over the same instructions they otherwise ignore. Mowing your lawn on Sunday is actually worse than homosexuality by my reading, but no one gets harassed for that.

If this happened here in the U.S. they would sue the mall for negligence and pain and suffering. Then sue to get distribution rights for this video.

I think her argument is incredibly flawed.
It misses out the crucial aspect of training. An umbrella needs no instruction to function inside the parameters it's designed for. It's comes ready for use. Babies, however, require a lot of resources and training to perform even somewhat satisfactory. The amount of time you need to invest to train tricks, like walking and not-pooping-the-pants successfully, greatly outweights the demanded time period to acustomise yourself with the functions and limitations of a new umbrella. To even learn the boundaries of what babies are capable of leads quite often to a frustrating process of trial and error that can render your baby unusable. Which leads of to the next issue.
To procure an umbrella you have varying retail options, including online distribution, as well as exchange of services or goods among acquaintances. For some unfathomable reason, these options are frowned upon by a political correctness obsessed society in regards to babies. The only viable option that won't cause offense among your peers is manufacturing one yoursef. Imagine what our economy would look like if we handeled all goods this way. It's preposterous!
So you are stuck with whatever baby you can produce on your own, relying on unskilled labor in most cases. Not only do you have to go through the time consuming and strenuous acts of sexual activity, which we all now can lead to severe cases of depression and anxiety, there is a unreasonable waiting time included as well. Imagine you had to wait 9 months for every Amazon delivery. This is just customer harassment.
Loosing an umbrella is not worse than losing a baby but it's not because of reasons that cannot be fixed. If we as a society would work together and openly oppose the unfair unequality in treatment of babies and umbrellas, our lives could be improved in unpredecented ways. But we don't. We are all to blame for this.

Very impressive considering differences in centre of gravity and weight distribution.

@gorillaman

It's almost as if some countries have different cultural values than the United States. For example:

Japan:
--Distributing pornography is illegal and punishable by up to two years in prison and a $25,000 fine (under Article 175 of the Penal Code, which defines pornography as showing the naughty parts of a man or woman, hence mosaics on all Japanese porn)
--Domestic violence and rape laws are often unenforceable
--LGBT community has almost no legal recourse in the face of discrimination of virtually any kind (housing, work, banking, etc.)

America itself has its share of bat-shit insane laws (from the rest of the world's perspective at least) such as legalized death penalty, and "well-intentioned" Christians are still fighting to deny gay people the right to marry in court at this very moment.

Should we come to the conclusion that Americans and Japanese people are "bad people" because these laws exist? Or maybe, as Ahmed Ahmed suggested, we should stop lumping huge groups of people (in the case of Muslims literally millions of people from an extremely culturally diverse group of countries) together and assuming they're all alike and believe exactly the same things?

Hops started being used along the Rhine river in Germany around the 10th-11th century. It took some time before the use of hops was written into the Purity Law to ensure the quality of beer.

Because German beer would keep longer, it could be distributed further. With wider distribution, the beer could be made in larger batches. Larger batches meant it could be made more cheaply (per unit) which allowed German beer to compete against local breweries.

The early edge the Germans had in incorporating hops into their ales and beers gave them a competitive advantage that would last for centuries, and a brewing culture that thrives to this day.

Incidentally, the invention of calculus made trade easier as most beer (and pretty much everything else too) was carried in wooden barrels. Since barrels were hand-made they would often have slightly different sizes. Calculus made it easier to calculate the volume of the container to ensure the seller and customer would get a fair deal on the trade.

I can't really disagree with that, but it has to be said that the issues that are not brought up are distinctly non-partisan--that is, the issues that are not brought up are the ones that are disadvantageous to both parties.

For instance, no one talks about gerrymandering anymore. It clearly benefits both parties, but it is destroying our political system by creating disincentives to working across the aisle with the other party.

In my view, there are three major structural reforms in the US government that need to be addressed: 1) Gerrymandering 2) Campaign finance and 3) regulatory capture. Of these three, only the second one is addressed by either candidate, but not in a satisfying way.

We need major reforms in healthcare and economic wealth distribution, and we need to prepare ourselves for certain worldwide economic changes due to technological innovation and globalization, but until we deal with those three major issues, we won't be able to make any headway.

The flaw I also see is with the "distribution". I question the equal spread of good-looking & nice, good-looking & jerky, etc...I think on one hand, we would qualify more people as jerks, while on the other hand every one of us has adequately qualified as a jerk in someones eyes at some point.

Also, we tend to over-emphasize the negative with the less-than intimate/familiar, much like how 99% of the News is really sucky stuff.