Well, at least you're honest.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
I'm very upset that I chose profit and performance-rewards when it came to my own employment path. I didn't choose to be a social worker, because everyone knows that's a shit job with shit pay. But now that all my free market bullshit is blowing up in my face, because I'm at the bottom of the pyramid that I bought into, I'm going to do the most pathetic cowardly thing that I can:

I'm going to advocate that anyone who chose to help their fellow man, and take the slow, plodding, mediocre route to success be publicly exposed for their shameful weakness. Then my friends and I are going to steal our future from them instead of working for it ourselves like we always said we were going to do. Here's the thing, I could have joined the public sector and sacrificed some pay for more security. But those people all smelled, and worked in dingy offices with people who had real problems. How was I supposed to know they were making the wise decision!?!?

Well not anymore. Even though social programs fix more problems than they cause, it's time for them to go. Sure, I could work against the culture that pays their elite 500 times more than the average person makes, but that would actually take innovation and intelligence. Besides, I'm willing to overlook those people, because they share my greedy, corporate, business-reptile mentality.

No, it's the people with master's degrees who make thirty-thousand dollars a year that I'm after. Anyone who's willing to accept punishment like that has already made themselves easy prey. And how! All we have to do is present enough "evidence" accumulated by bogus, business advocacy groups to convince the rest of the tired and desperate people out there that there's a really really easy solution to their problems that involves no hard work whatsoever! We just cut all the funding to anything that involves helping people besides ourselves and all of our problems will simply go away! Well... except for the hippies.

I cheered for the little, yellow pyramid; and rejoiced at its final escape from the enslavement of the multicolored circles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid#Mesopotamia

No one is saying it is money well spent, except you. But that doesn't mean you can't marvel at what it is. Pyramids are a terrible example of slave labor, but they are still impressive. Governments are good at spending money, every once in awhile, the product of their spending is very impressive...even if ill conceived.

>> ^messenger:

Defending a $320 billion jet program by highlighting its efficiency?>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
>> ^robbersdog49:
I'm not seeing anything impressive about this. The jet engine has been around for a long time, and the Harrier was doing this forty years ago. The only difference is the electronics controlling it, and you can see that in action in a £200 model helicopter I can control with my phone.
The only reaction this video got from me was a 'why has it taken them so long to do this and why do people think it's impressive?'

You could make the same comparison in computers, or cars. This isn't a revolution in planes, but an evolution. And is still thrilling to people who love this type of thing. Why would you see an action movie, seen one seen'em all? Then answer is you like seeing them. @Jinx summed it up quite well, it has a huge power plant enabling supersonic flight and maintain a VERY highly stable hover state without using as much fuel. Even with that huge power plant and strange mechanical and aerodynamic arrangements to accommodate vertical abilities, manages to be "stelthy".
The beauty of some things is the combination of abilities that are normally thought to be mutually exclusive. It would be the same as a truck coming out that can carry 2 tons and still get better gas millage than a Prius, very worthy to note. If NASA came out with a new shuttle that was highly refined and enabled 4 times as much payload into space, would you knock it because "shuttles are 30 years old"?

>> ^shogunkai:

>> ^blankfist:
I'm still not sure why people think taxing income is okay. And I'm speaking about federal income tax, not state and local. I think in times like this when the country is running record deficits, it should cut spending instead of looking elsewhere for more money.
I don't care about the guy in the video, I'm just curious what people's reasoning is on this because it seems to be such a hot button issue these days. That people really, really, really want taxes to be raised, and I don't understand it. Without spouting some tenuous social contract talking point, is there some reason why government should own the product of our labor? Keep in mind income tax only makes up a third of the federal revenue, although some charts go as high as 45%. And most states and local governments collect income tax already, and that's where we already fund the important stuff like police, fire departments and roads.
One thing that's never mentioned in these cases is that the majority of our taxes goes to militarism, nation-building, corporate welfare and wars. I'm okay with creating an excise tax for paying for roads, police, etc. But that's not what federal income tax goes to. Why can't we work on cutting the bad spending first (wars being number one on that list)? And then we can have a dialog about what we need to fund after that?
I just think all this chest thumping to raise taxes is silly when it's being spent for shit most of you hate. Anyone? Anyone?

Yes, I'm sure if you get rid of income taxes people will donate money to build roads and fund schools. I'm sure the person making 600k a year would gladly give the same percentage of their income as someone making 40k a year.


maybe roads, but not the schools... slaves need to be able to get from pyramid to pyramid... they don't need to read roadsigns... there are slave drivers with whips for that

Your video, Ron Swanson's Pyramid of Greatness, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

It's amazing to me how much I agree with this pyramid. And I'm a horrible anarchist.

The Pyramid of Greatness was my wallpaper for at least a couple of months. I too am shocked this wasn't here already. *quality

Actually I have no problem with motive. I heard Ron Paul say at the debates that we are spending 20bil to air-condition tents for soldiers in Afghanistan... that 20bil is making SOMEONE really rich, so there is definitely a LOT of profit to be made in war.

That said, there is absolutely no way in hell that our government (present, past or future) is clever enough to pull off some of the absolutely ludicrous shit that these conspiracy nuts are peddling. What pissed me off the most is how many internet "experts" we have on demolitions, engineering, plane debris, etc.

It is the same logic that idiots who think that aliens built the pyramids use: I can't conceive of how to build a pyramid without the use of modern heavy-lifting machinery, therefore ancient societies couldn't have possibly done so and therefore... fucking aliens.

Basically, just because they don't understand something, they go to ANY explanation that is controversial and feeds conspiracy. NWO Ninja Demolitionists, lizard politicians, aliens, impossible conspiracies where hundreds if not thousands of participants have to not only keep quiet, but also cover an inevitable trail of planning, communication and on-the-ground efforts that simply cannot go unnoticed.

Seriously, there is just no way that our government, stupid fucks that they ALL are (dems, reps, libertarians, etc), just no way.


>> ^NetRunner:

@marinara maybe I've just forgotten my 9/11 conspiracy storyline, but to me the problem with the whole "WTC was taken down by demolition" theory is motive.
Why would someone want to do that? It's a lot easier to destroy documents with shredders, and there are much easier ways to commit insurance fraud.
I can see someone making the case that some people in the US wanted 9/11 itself to happen, but I don't really see why those someones would do something as weird as packing the building with explosives, and then hitting it with airplanes.
I mean, there was an Al Qaeda bombing of the WTC some eight years earlier, why mess with the planes if you could've just blown the building up with secret bombs?

>> ^budzos:

U mad?
I bet you wish you could souplex me into a pyramid of soup cans right now! Then I'd know wrestling isn't fake, or something, right? Plus it would be equivalent to Shakespeare!
>> ^Duckman33:
>> ^budzos:
Wrestling is far more fake than movies or TV.

Exactly how is that Einstein? It's based on a script, just like movies or TV. It has acting. Just like movies or TV. It has choreographed/scripted fights just like movies or TV. So tell me how it's "far more fake" than movies or TV.



LOL. No I'm not mad. That comment ranks up there with some of the most ignorant things I have seen say on the web. "Wrestling is more fake than TV or movies". LOL

This is how the pyramids were constructed.

>> ^LukinStone:

Why is it morally justified to impose a higher tax rate on the more highly paid? I'm already paying twenty people's worth.. Why should it be more?
It's moral because "you" can still afford gold plated rocket cars with a higher tax rate.
Or, if you believe in Jebus, there's that whole thing about a camel going through the eye of a needle.

If you make that much more money you are doing it at the expense of the people who make less! Is that moral? What makes your life so much more valuable than someone else's life?


You are standing on the backs of many others but you don't want to strengthen the base of the pyramid, you want to make the top heavier while weakening the base. That kind of thinking will end badly for everyone.

-Karl

>> ^hpqp:

What's sadder is that many who do still prefer to cling to the american pipedream of one day being in that top 1%. It's a nationwide pyramid scheme.
>> ^Drachen_Jager:
What's sad is that most Americans don't already know all this.



Interesting idea. Work hard and you'll get everything you deserve......you hear people say that a lot. But when you look closely, the people who have money don't work very hard at all in comparison to people who are likely just as intelligent if not more so than they. There's no value in producing anymore.

Had a guy in the area who owns a lot of land, and while not hugely wealthy is probably wealthy enough for himself and his kids to live off of his holdings with employees taking care of it. He told my dad that he's never going to make money digging ditches (my dad doesn't dig ditches, but it was his way of saying manual labor), and that he should lift his head from his work and do what the wealthy people do.

Can you tell what the wealthy people do? I only see them swinging political opinion in their favor and telling people to work harder for them (by proxy of course).

There's no value in producing. Even though you know there should be immense value in producing, there just isn't as much as there should be....they value the container, billboards, markup percentages than the actual item they are selling to people. The "perception" of the product is more important than the product.

So if the perception is valuable, then people who can sell nothing succeed. That's my take on it at least.......and it seems backwards to me. People who produce nothing, but hold wealth control the system. While people who produce and hold little or no wealth are trapped in the spider web the wealthy have spun. The harder you work, the more stuck you become until they come along and cocoon you up and drain you dry.

What's sadder is that many who do still prefer to cling to the american pipedream of one day being in that top 1%. It's a nationwide pyramid scheme.

>> ^Drachen_Jager:

What's sad is that most Americans don't already know all this.