Well, I think we should weed out things like Down's Syndrome before birth, but once they are here, we must take care of them. We should have some common decency towards otherwise helpless, or lower functioning people, like the sick, disabled, retarded, jobless, poor etc. but try to avoid making new ones.

>> ^gorillaman:

>> ^KnivesOut:
Taken at face value, you sound like a pretty awful person.
Care to elaborate? Forgot sarcasm checkbox?
Humanity is intellect.
This is a video of essentially stillborn babies leading sham-lives with the help of delusional puppeteers, at a real cost to society.
This is the voice of compassion. We're ill-enough-equipped to deal with the existing problems of living, intellectually active humans without supporting the anthropomorphizational fantasies of grieving parents.
As gwiz will be pleased to hear, ~90% of downs foetuses are aborted in civilised countries. We need to improve that towards 100%, while implementing other controls on low-value births. Eugenics is not the enemy; it's a necessary step in the advancement of our species. This ad, emotionally satisfying as it may be, pulls us in exactly the wrong direction.

bullshit. I love knowledge and acquiring new information about our world.


...and I'm a jobless uninspired drunk

>> ^legacy0100:

I remember having this conversation with my brother few months ago. I compared the Occupy movement with the Stop SOPA/PIPA movement, and how the Stop SOPA movement was so successful in such short period of time, when Occupy movement has been going on for a longer period of time but couldn't materialize any 'real change'.
For one thing, the occupy movement started out demanding accountability in the bank/finance industry. Then the agenda blew up to having social equality of laborers, minority rights, states rights, environmental rights etc etc. It tried taking in EVERY social reform agenda that was out there, taking the focus away from the original efforts demanding real reform in the financial industry.
Last year I remember Occupy protesters coordinating a march on Martin Luther King Jr day. Now I'm sure this is all a good message, but what does this have to do with Wall Street? This only goes to show that this mass movement is lacking focus, and in desperate need of core representatives, like we did during SOPA/PIPA movement when Reddit.com first lead the march, and other giants such as Wikipedia had moved in.


I think the major success of the SOPA/PIPA protests was that there were several very large corporations like google and facebook supporting and participating in the protests. It made it very hard for the media to ignore and detractors to dismiss the protestors as jobless smelly hippies.

And I think you're right about them losing focus. If they start to include every liberal cause under the sun they're going to alienate a lot of people who support financial reform, but may not support gay marriage, or increased environmental regulations.

While more successful over all, the tea party also lost a lot of support when they started subverting the economic reform message with social conservative agendas.

All this right wing nonsense about the unregulated free market being our savior is just downright laughable. Especially when you consider the content of this very video.

These people aren't greedy, they are passionately recognizing that the interests of the people of the state are not being represented or sought by the government of that state.

To bring up the tired old neo-classical bullshit about "efficiency" is absolutely uncalled for.

Entertain the following scenario: The most efficient market processes are adapted, do we now live in a utopia? Or do we realize a society where joblessness is at all time highs, corporate profits are through the roof, and a crumbling social infrastructure and middle class threatens nations' abilities to pay their debts.
Sound familiar?

I would suggest that the neo-classical free(est) market mantra is about efficiency only, and ignores the human side of economics. Economics should not rule us, it should serve us. This is currently not the case, and the 99% are waking up to this nightmare.

Finally, I would note that judging by the unfolding ecological crisis, and the crippling of economies by outdated, overpriced, low EROEI energy sources, the movement to change economic theory and purpose will only grow stronger. If occupy falters now, it won't be long before it bubbles to the surface once again (without vast changes to our democracy and economic practices). Don't be fooled by the mainstream media, history doesn't always repeat itself, the youth and disenfranchised will be the vanguard and protectorate of a new era. It would seem to be inevitable.

>> ^chilaxe:

@NetRunner said: "What about the needs of people who have no money? Is helping them literally worthless? Are you a better servant of humanity if you make diamond jewelry than you are if you work for a public school in an underprivileged neighborhood?"
Salary is a reasonable measure of societal contribution, but it's not a perfect measure, so there are of course exceptions to the rule. That being said, all lines of evidence point to that teaching in underprivileged neighborhoods is an ineffective form of philanthropy, even though it's heart-warming.

@NetRunner said: "And "advocating careerism" isn't particularly useful if what you really mean is you like to yell "get a job" at homeless people."
One of the best things we can do for society is to argue against the flaws in the zeitgeist. If those flaws predictably create poverty, showing people there's another path that their opinion leaders and teachers have strangely never exposed them to should be a high priority.
>> ^NetRunner:
>> ^chilaxe:
The 'jobless economic recovery' we've experienced means all those people who don't like to read weren't contributing much to the economy.
That sounds like nonsense to me. Are you saying that the only reason why unemployment ever was low in the first place was because corporations hired people whose labor they couldn't profit from out of charity? What changed in 2007-2008 that made them all stop being charitable simultaneously?
>> ^chilaxe:
Netrunner said: "Also, it's not really healthy to define your self-worth and the worthiness of others solely on the basis of their salary. I doubt your "friends" would care much for you referring to them as mediocre or lazy, either."
1. Salary is a reasonable measure of how much we're contributing to humankind. If society values something, it will be willing to pay for it.
2. Advocating careerism is humanistic and good for the world.
Ahh, so you do think markets are perfectly moral systems. What about the needs of people who have no money? Is helping them literally worthless? Are you a better servant of humanity if you make diamond jewelry than you are if you work for a public school in an underprivileged neighborhood?
And "advocating careerism" isn't particularly useful if what you really mean is you like to yell "get a job" at homeless people.



Can you please describe the other path you speak of? So far all I've identified from the OWS message is a general upset with wealth disparity, but no coherent or unified solution. It'd be great to hear what they are advocating for. It's the required next step from rallying against something, or this will all go either no where, or somewhere much worse.

@NetRunner said: "What about the needs of people who have no money? Is helping them literally worthless? Are you a better servant of humanity if you make diamond jewelry than you are if you work for a public school in an underprivileged neighborhood?"

Salary is a reasonable measure of societal contribution, but it's not a perfect measure, so there are of course exceptions to the rule. That being said, all lines of evidence point to that teaching in underprivileged neighborhoods is an ineffective form of philanthropy, even though it's heart-warming.



@NetRunner said: "And "advocating careerism" isn't particularly useful if what you really mean is you like to yell "get a job" at homeless people."

One of the best things we can do for society is to argue against the flaws in the zeitgeist. If those flaws predictably create poverty, showing people there's another path that their opinion leaders and teachers have strangely never exposed them to should be a high priority.

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^chilaxe:
The 'jobless economic recovery' we've experienced means all those people who don't like to read weren't contributing much to the economy.
That sounds like nonsense to me. Are you saying that the only reason why unemployment ever was low in the first place was because corporations hired people whose labor they couldn't profit from out of charity? What changed in 2007-2008 that made them all stop being charitable simultaneously?
>> ^chilaxe:
Netrunner said: "Also, it's not really healthy to define your self-worth and the worthiness of others solely on the basis of their salary. I doubt your "friends" would care much for you referring to them as mediocre or lazy, either."
1. Salary is a reasonable measure of how much we're contributing to humankind. If society values something, it will be willing to pay for it.
2. Advocating careerism is humanistic and good for the world.
Ahh, so you do think markets are perfectly moral systems. What about the needs of people who have no money? Is helping them literally worthless? Are you a better servant of humanity if you make diamond jewelry than you are if you work for a public school in an underprivileged neighborhood?
And "advocating careerism" isn't particularly useful if what you really mean is you like to yell "get a job" at homeless people.

>> ^chilaxe:

The 'jobless economic recovery' we've experienced means all those people who don't like to read weren't contributing much to the economy.

That sounds like nonsense to me. Are you saying that the only reason why unemployment ever was low in the first place was because corporations hired people whose labor they couldn't profit from out of charity? What changed in 2007-2008 that made them all stop being charitable simultaneously?

>> ^chilaxe:
Netrunner said: "Also, it's not really healthy to define your self-worth and the worthiness of others solely on the basis of their salary. I doubt your "friends" would care much for you referring to them as mediocre or lazy, either."
1. Salary is a reasonable measure of how much we're contributing to humankind. If society values something, it will be willing to pay for it.
2. Advocating careerism is humanistic and good for the world.

Ahh, so you do think markets are perfectly moral systems. What about the needs of people who have no money? Is helping them literally worthless? Are you a better servant of humanity if you make diamond jewelry than you are if you work for a public school in an underprivileged neighborhood?

And "advocating careerism" isn't particularly useful if what you really mean is you like to yell "get a job" at homeless people.

Netrunner said: "High unemployment represents a huge chunk of useful labor potential going to waste."

The 'jobless economic recovery' we've experienced means all those people who don't like to read weren't contributing much to the economy. Last-century jobs are increasingly better done by automation or by overseas outsourcing. There are never enough talented 21st century workers.

There are always some people who are 21st century thinkers who are unemployed, but the only reason 'unemployment is high' is because we imported 80 million unskilled workers over the last 40 years. Agreeing to put in place rational border control would be a good start.


Netrunner said: "Also, it's not really healthy to define your self-worth and the worthiness of others solely on the basis of their salary. I doubt your "friends" would care much for you referring to them as mediocre or lazy, either."

1. Salary is a reasonable measure of how much we're contributing to humankind. If society values something, it will be willing to pay for it.

2. Advocating careerism is humanistic and good for the world.
>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^chilaxe:
>> ^NetRunner:
>> ^chilaxe:
We should be clear what we're talking about when we say there are problems with unemployment: people don't want to work hard at jobs that the economy actually needs.

Seriously? You think everyone who's unemployed is just being lazy?

The reason my mediocre friend vastly outperformed most of the people I know was because he was doing work that was valued by the economy.
That often involves hard work, but the more people invest themselves into their career, the more rewarding and fun it becomes, and the more they grow as people.

But that's not the cause of unemployment. People should be free to pursue whatever kind of career they want to. Some people may just chase whatever has the highest salary, but most will probably go for something they enjoy working on, so long as the pay is decent. In a bad labor market with high unemployment, you don't have those options. You get PhD's applying to work at McDonald's to pay the bills, and getting turned down because they're overqualified (or they're just not hiring!).
High unemployment represents a huge chunk of useful labor potential going to waste, not some mass outbreak of people deciding to take a break from working.
Also, it's not really healthy to define your self-worth and the worthiness of others solely on the basis of their salary. I doubt your "friends" would care much for you referring to them as mediocre or lazy, either.

You are ruining it for the people with legitimate concerns. Congratulations!

>> ^cito:

well he is telling the truth about me, I've been up there protesting and I damn sure don't want to work
course im protesting for hell of it as many of my friends are, 3 of us are on disability.
so we have been showing up mainly for the live music, there's been several bands doing free concerts and such it's been great!

You're too disabled to hold a job but can hang out and go to concerts?

I hope your comment was sarcasm, because the compassion, empathy, and basic human decency of the left is subverted and weakened by people living off of the generosity and hard work of their neighbors for no legitimate reason beyond their own sloth and contemptible selfishness.

I don't want to wish this for any human being, but I really hope there is something very seriously wrong with you, and that's a foreign thought for me to have.

So instead of thinking the worst about someone, I'd prefer to hope they are legitimately impaired in some way that justifies their life of leisure while others work to provide it.

Oh, also, O'Reilly is a complete hypocrite and a tool.

>> ^cito:

well he is telling the truth about me, I've been up there protesting and I damn sure don't want to work
course im protesting for hell of it as many of my friends are, 3 of us are on disability.
so we have been showing up mainly for the live music, there's been several bands doing free concerts and such it's been great!

This.
>> ^dag:

I'm loving these. Wish their movement had a chance in hell of succeeding.

unemployment is at 20%. but slightly over 2% have unemployment insurance. (using the 7.34M number from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/23/jobless-claims-rise-to-429000-weak-economy_n_882824.html)

you're right, americans won't do backbreaking work. Mexicans at least have the hope of supporting their family with the cash they make. You couldn't support your family on a farmworkers wage here in the USA even if you worked 24 hours a day.

The democrats are wrong on this issue. illegal labor is wrong, republicans are right.

Democrats are jointly responsible with Republicans in the destruction of the middle class. Cutting the corporate tax rates would serve primarily to increase corporate profits. If the demand isn't there for goods and services, corporations won't increase production and hire more workers. Not to mention this won't help deficits. You definitely would help the stock market in the short run, which is disproportionately invested in by the rich, thereby stratifying the population even more along class lines.

The stats you're pointing to are horrible stats for useful data points about economic policy. It's true that the bottom 50% of the population are paying less as a percentage of total tax revenues collected today compared to five years ago. When unemployment went to 10% and higher, who typically lost their jobs? The bottom 50%. Whose houses typically got foreclosed on? The bottom 50%. When pay was cut, who most often lost out on that? The bottom 50%.

If you're paying taxes, it means you're earning income. Ask the unemployed what they'd rather be - taxpayers or jobless? They'd go with having to pay taxes. It's not all roses for the bottom 50% who are not paying taxes right now. But the point still stands - when the economy goes into a tailspin, it distorts who's shouldering the burden for paying the taxes.

This data varies too widely to be useful due to extraneous influences.

>> ^bobknight33:

Fuck that. The democrats had the chance and the duty to pass a budget when they were in complete control. This issue lays on their door step.
Cut corporate taxes jobs will come back and bring more opportunity fro all of us. Then pass the budget proposal for 2012 that cuts more than $5.8 trillion spread over a few years. These ex FED employees could then go back to private employment.
The top 1% of taxpayers pay about 40% of all income taxes,
the top 10% pay 71%,
and the top 50% pay 97% of all taxes.
The bottom 50% pays less than 3% of all income taxes paid.

There are many Scapegoats:
1) The poor ("lazy jobless leaches on the system who shouldn't have the right to vote")
2) Mexicans ("criminal leaches on the system who take American jobs")
3) Gays ("Sinners hell bent on destroying the sanctity of marriage with an agenda for 'special' rights")
4) Muslims ("Terrorists who hate us for our freedom")
5) African Americans ("ACORN, Jeramiah Wright, Sherrod, Obama the Kenyan,the continuation of the Southern Strategy")
6) "Socialists" ("Godless statist traitors")

i think the guy is jobless now. probably unhireable for life after his little stand.