https://democracyjournal.org/arguments/keep-it-simple-and-take-credit/

"Implementing these kinds of policies are also no road to electoral success. Peoples’ lives are hard enough without tax credits and savings accounts and eligibility forms and government phone calls that determine whether one’s household income puts one in the bracket for this or that plan or benefit or subsidy and on and on. No voter is thanking anyone who puts them on this road, even if there’s a small pot of money at the end of it.

And forget the annoyance—the amount of immense mental energy and social capital required to keep track of, comprehend the eligibility requirements of, and then successfully apply for these benefits is a de facto regressive tax on people whose lives are too materially difficult to deal with arcane bureaucratic bullshit. That is, those people that need the help the most.

So what to do? No more savings accounts, no more cleverly hidden help that people won’t even notice, no more tax-preferenced, means-tested, government-monitored, website-reliant, bronze/gold/platinum-benefits-so-long-as-you-apply-during-open-enrollment. Just give people the stuff they need.

This shouldn’t even be a liberal-socialist divide, although it seems to have become one in recent years. When society decided citizens should be able to read, we didn’t provide tax credits for books, we created public libraries. When we decided peoples’ houses shouldn’t burn down, we didn’t provide savings accounts for private fire insurance, we hired firefighters and built fire stations. If the broad left takes power again, enough with too-clever-by-half social engineering. Help people and take credit."

As Lambert Strether of Corrente says: universal, concrete, material benefits.

And this is why it'll keep going this way...

They knew (just like most MMO or server based games do) that there was demand and completely failed to meet it, then dropped key features like cheetah speed to try and play catch up...

As for F2P with microtransactions, no, it's not worse. It's far superior depending on the transaction model. I get to play the game and if I enjoy it, I can plonk down as much dosh as I wish to. With Simcity, they just couldn't play the game they paid for. Yay...

Nevermind if you want to while away the hours on a flight playing a bit of Simcity, or if your internet drops out for the evening. Just because most people can be connected all the time doesn't mean they always are. If you want to play it single player and miss out the regional stuff, why shouldn't you be able to?

And let's not even get started on stuff like tiny city sizes, broken mechanics like miniscule employment rates in high population cities causing your retail sector to collapse, fire stations ignoring calls from places next door merrily burning away, no undo, lost cities due to the cloud save fucking up etc...

You want to bend over and let them take advantage of you sans lube, go nuts, but every time you do you let them know it's okay to try it on with everyone else.

what a horrible mentality to have.

I know it costs money, but this seems pretty "set back retarded" to have the ability but to choose not to because of such a off the wall policy. Include that in the taxes they do pay, why make it separate. If I was that guy I would be secretly plotting the flammability of the fire station.

Here is my take. And if you get tired of discussing the topic, let me know. I love to debate but I cut my debate down because I was too long winded.

Parents need to be active in children’s lives. True. More important than the influence of parents, studies and observations show, are peers and new stimulations. I.e., “Monkey see monkey do,” or “new pussy wins out.” This works for the conformity and anticonformity mindset. Even the hermit who goes to live alone in the forest was a product, most of all, of his peers (They molded him to be a loner.) Education and parenthood can remove some of this commercialist mindset we inherit from our human genes, but that takes a long time. That statement is broad and is not meant to be 100% inclusive of everyone nor everyone's reactions to different scenarios. Some are better at being individuals than others. But those exceptions are rare.

Adults are the same way. The way you interact with one 'teaches' that adult what is normal or abnormal. You may not have children Blank, but you most likely interact with children or parents. So you mold them one way or another. Because of this, you should definitely have input on education. In fact, think of society as a job. You should have a say in how everyone does their jobs, fills their niches. That survey at the end of a training session? It applies to everyone in the class of life.

Good parenting is required for good children, yes, but it only shapes an outline. Genetics and new stimulus children encounter account for far more.

Further Blank, you are still a part of society. Casting responsibility away for the woes of our society, meanwhile griping about away for whatever reason, is unacceptable (By that I mean, don't be mad when your house get's burglarized or your car get's stolen by some punk kid. You left them to their own devices, now they are making their own choices. By logic, you should have no say in what they do---just as you should have no say in matters of their education. I am not saying you do cast away responsibility and gripe, I am just making a point.) As long as you admit you were potentially part of their delinquency, I am cool with that. That is the world you crafted through inactivity or distance, and the world I actively crafted.

I volunteer at the Big Brothers mentor program, not because I love children or wish to be better than others... I am not altruism at its finest. I do it to shape one child's life so that hopefully he does not become a danger to myself, my family, my friends, my neighbors, or anyone, even you. Do I owe this to Blank? Do you owe it to me to do likewise? Only if you don’t want punk kids running the streets with their gangs. If responsible people won’t accept them, then someone else will.

You could say you owe nothing to anyone and you would be correct. We all could---parents, children, sons, daughters, why stop at you? Why should mom or dad be any different than you? Their responsibility, technically (Just like your responsibility is technically nothing,) is to drop the kid off at a fire station. "They chose to have children," and? They then chose to abandon or deject their child. Just like you chose to abandon taking care of the place you live in.

Your last paragraph is on point and would be nice.

>> ^csnel3:

This could have been wriiten by the police. This is how they want us to act when they interact with us.
Pull over immediately. ? (really? what happened to get to a safe spot? Women on a dark road, go to a police or fire station).
Show your hands. grip the wheel. Turn on the lights so they can see in.
Dont talk back, be nice. Answer their questions unless you want to go to jail and tell it to the judge.
If you have nothing to hide , empty your pockets, otherwise be ready for trouble.
If your detained, just cooperate and get a lawyer. Dont make a fuss. Just do as your told or it will get worse.
Its hard to fight the police so just go down easy.
THis just seems like a film by The Man to keep the cattle calm, trying to pass as a movie that will help the cattle..


You must of watched a different video. The video I watched was all about how to resist officers requests without giving them a reason to escalate the situation to you getting beat down and charged with felony assault. Don't talk back? Really? There were several very key and pivotal things you NEED to say when dealing with police which this video taught us. Go down easy? It isn't easy resisting people who aren't afraid to use force and have guns. What you are trying to do is fruit of the poison tree tactics. Give them no ground to go to except the unreasonable use of force, and you have a case to get them in trouble. If you give them reason or worse, permission, you are inviting in your own pain.

This could have been wriiten by the police. This is how they want us to act when they interact with us.

Pull over immediately. ? (really? what happened to get to a safe spot? Women on a dark road, go to a police or fire station).
Show your hands. grip the wheel. Turn on the lights so they can see in.
Dont talk back, be nice. Answer their questions unless you want to go to jail and tell it to the judge.
If you have nothing to hide , empty your pockets, otherwise be ready for trouble.
If your detained, just cooperate and get a lawyer. Dont make a fuss. Just do as your told or it will get worse.
Its hard to fight the police so just go down easy.

THis just seems like a film by The Man to keep the cattle calm, trying to pass as a movie that will help the cattle..

>> ^blankfist:
Firefighters aren't fire insurance. There actually is a thing called fire insurance. Maybe we should socialize, universalize or whatever you want to call it fire insurance. fear politicking with loose logic. I want the corporations out of health care, too. But, this is silly.


Your description of the fear channel is:

A place for videos exhibiting examples of fear, the use of fear to control and oppress, fear of differences, terrorized people and animals, paranoia, distrust, fear of death, and phobias.

Is pointing out the true fact that private insurance companies can deny claims, and that the uncovered medical bills can bankrupt you really qualify for *fear?

How about anti-smoking ads that tell people smoking can cause lung cancer? Is that fear too?

How about videos that say war leads to the death of innocent people? Is that fear too?

Using fear to oppress people is saying "Vote for me, or the terrorists will kill your children".

So is saying that our current health care system can lead to very bad outcomes sometimes, and that an alternative could prevent that "the use of fear to control and oppress"? Is it the "fear of differences" or an example of "paranoia", "phobias", or "distrust"? It can't be "fear of death" since there is no death mentioned. No terrorized people or animals appear in the clip, either.

If anything, the real problem with comparing health care to what we do with fire departments is that fire departments are more government run than what's being proposed by even the Kuciniches of the Democratic party.

Firefighters are employees of the government. There's no insurance at all. That's like Britain's NHS, not like a Canadian or French style single-payer system.

If we had single-payer fire fighting, we would actually have privately owned and operated fire stations who compete for contracts with the government, who then pays them with tax money collected via a progressive tax structure. But they wouldn't deny your claims.

The medical equivalent of the fire insurance you're talking about would be disability coverage -- and we do have that socialized, universalized, or fascistized or whatever the fuck you fear mongers want to call it when you're trying to use fear to control and oppress the majority of people in this country.

Lurch, i would refer to bases in germany, uk, lithuania and literally scores of other countries as a form of occupation, it's a kind of quiet empire. The presence of those bases gives the USA considerable political leverage.
"state sponsored killing" referred to collateral damage, not bases. i would definitely call the US Army blowing up Iraqi civilians "state sponsored killing". Hope that explains it.

As for the whole "there will be bloodshed if we withdraw"... damn, as if there isn't bloodshed now, and as if the bloodshed will stop quicker with an occupying christian army on their soil. Comparisons to Vietnam are interesting... last time I checked Vietnam was not a communist stronghold bathing in blood.

What you are saying, by extension, is "there should be US troops in every country where there's bloodshed" and that is totally impossible. What is so different about Iraq? Why not go prevent the bloodshed in Sudan or Burma or China or Russia? No war proponent has ever explained this to me.

About those bases you say aren't permanent:

We're talking about a U.S. embassy compound under construction these last years that's meant to hold 1,000 diplomats, spies, and military types (as well as untold numbers of private security guards, service workers, and heaven knows who else). It will operate in the Iraqi capital's heavily fortified Green Zone as if it were our first lunar colony. According to William Langewiesche, writing in Vanity Fair, it will contain "its own power generators, water wells, drinking-water treatment plant, sewage plant, fire station, irrigation system, Internet uplink, secure intranet, telephone center (Virginia area code), cell-phone network (New York area code), mail service, fuel depot, food and supply warehouses, vehicle-repair garage, and workshops."
...
When it comes to American construction projects in Iraq, the sky's really the limit. Just recently, National Public Radio's Defense Correspondent Guy Raz spent some time at Balad Air Base about 70 kilometers north of Baghdad. As Thomas Ricks of the Washington Post reported, back in 2006, Balad is essentially an "American small town," so big that it has neighborhoods and bus routes -- and its air traffic rivals Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174858/baseless_considerations