That really speaks to the general state of selfish humanity.
If it isn't affecting me, then I don't care.

People not affected by the economic downturn, don't care about the recession.
People not affected by psycho police, don't care about police brutality.

Enough people are affected by the economy for there to be a lot that want to hear about it in the news.

Only some people are sacrificed to the police gods, so only some care to hear about that in the news.

(Although with 1% of our population in jail, and 1 in 30 in jail or on parole, 1 in 9 black males ages 20 to 34 in jail, it's not that small of an amount... and it's particularly sinister when these people are shoved into private jails that charge the public to hold the prisoners, and then charge the prisoners for their stay [as if it's a hotel], and use the prisoners for cheap labor that they sell to companies that don't want to hire people for livable wages, with solitary if you don't work for them. - on top of most people in jail being guilty of "crimes" that involved no one but themselves and have no harm.)

Ultimately, when it's you that's out of a job, the economy matters a lot.
And when it's you getting tazed, beat up, and charged with assault (oh the irony), then police brutality matters a lot.

The sentiment of "don't waste my time with your sob stories, we've got real problems (that affect me)", really goes all ways.
You could just as well read : "Who cares about your economy, when the government is taking my health and putting me away for no more than the entertainment/venting of a public employee".

-scheherazade

All I'm going to say is that this guy is completely wrong about the gold standard. This country was on gold for like 150 years and didn't collapse in an "inescapable deflationary spiral". That is nonsense trotted out by big government economist. In fact, the highest rates of GDP growth still remain gold standard years. The only reason the crash of 29 existed was because of the central bank's (which didn't exist prior to 1913) inflationary bubble in the 20s, which HAD to be corrected. And rather than letting it correct, Hoover and FDR resisted and intervened mightily. All prior recessions were allowed to run their course, this one wasn't. I mean, for god's sake, FDR was slaughtering livestock to prevent food prices from falling alongside wages. Is it any wonder the damn thing persisted for like 15 years?

@VoodooV It's not surprising to me that opponents of free markets characteristically lack an understanding of basic economics or just how incentives affect human behavior. And I'm not even an economist or a psychologist.

If a criminal has a gun to your head, and there's a policeman at the scene who is friends with the criminal and let's him do whatever he wants and leave, which one is worse?

VoodooV, would you steal, rape, or even kill if I were the law and promised you could get away with ZERO repercussions? If you do commit a crime, you'd be to blame, but wouldn't I be to blame even more for not only promising but letting you get away scot free?

It's human nature. Wall Street committed fraud on a large scale, and government was in on it. Is Wall Street to blame for the fraud? Sure, but why did they do it without any fear of loss to make them think twice? Because they knew government was letting them get away with it, which they did, no bankruptcies, no arrests.

As a college, would you turn away the opportunity of making more money by increasing tuition costs if the students weren't sensitive to the prices you charged?

Likewise, if you were a grocer selling apples, and your customers were being subsidized by free loans for apple consumption, wouldn't it make your life a lot easier to charge more for apples if no one ever complained about the price?

"Back then", college tuitions were a lot cheaper, look it up. You'd expect tuitions to become cheaper with time just taking into account the technological advances, economies of scale, etc., but prices have inflated monstruosly despite these forces.

Would you rather worry that the mechanics of supply and demand won't solve society's needs for education overnight, or that cheap loans would make the cost of tuition increasingly and absurdly high for society, even contributing to an economic recession? If the goal is to make education more accessible, wouldn't it make more sense to let education become cheaper, rather than enforce a policy that led to an ever increase in costs?

>> ^renatojj:

I dislike the careless use of the term "rich", it needs a more refined distinction.
A lot of people who are rich are honest and productive to society. They're also needed to help this country out of its recession.
Others are rich because they steal from society or benefit directly from the governments or the Fed, the institutions that steals the most.
So there are the productive rich (good), and the destructive rich or squanderers (bad)
Carry on.


When we use the term "Rich" we're usually not referring to just people with money. We're using it to refer to the Owners of the Country, those who buy the elections and expect what they paid for. Those who control the wealth of this nation and use the Managers to keep the mob at bay.

Also the Fed and the Government work for those owners of the nation and they have their own Welfare. Too Big to Fail it's called, knowing that no matter what happens, they will get bailed out by the Nanny state that they formed to protect them from the people and losing all their money.

>> ^renatojj:

I dislike the careless use of the term "rich", it needs a more refined distinction.
A lot of people who are rich are honest and productive to society. They're also needed to help this country out of its recession.
Others are rich because they steal from society or benefit directly from the governments or the Fed, the institutions that steals the most.
So there are the productive rich (good), and the destructive rich or squanderers (bad)
Carry on.


How about we call the destructive "parasites" instead?

I dislike the careless use of the term "rich", it needs a more refined distinction.

A lot of people who are rich are honest and productive to society. They're also needed to help this country out of its recession.

Others are rich because they steal from society or benefit directly from the governments or the Fed, the institutions that steals the most.

So there are the productive rich (good), and the destructive rich or squanderers (bad)

Carry on.

No, They do not have profits in excess of $140 per year. And No they are not 1%ers

Sesame Workshop, formerly known as the Children's Television Workshop (CTW), is a Worldwide American non-profit organization behind the production of several educational children's programs that have run on public broadcasting around the world (including PBS in the United States).

Although Sesame Workshop is occasionally confused with PBS,[citation needed] Sesame Workshop is an entirely separate and independent organization. Some Workshop programs are broadcast on PBS, and although PBS provides some funding for those programs, the money received covers only a fraction of production costs. Other financial support comes from individual donors, charitable foundations, corporations, government agencies, program sales and licensed products. Sesame Workshop grants licenses to various manufacturers who create toys, apparel and other products featuring Sesame Street characters, and Sesame Workshop receives a portion of the proceeds.

On March 12, 2009, Sesame Workshop announced that it had planned to cut 20% of its workforce due to the recession.
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sesame_Workshop

>> ^lantern53:

Sesame Street earns $140 million a year, but somehow they get 10% of that from the American taxpayer when they could easily make it and make it quite well, on their own.
Those folks are all 1%ers, aren't they?

Vetoing the 2012 NDAA would have held up the military budget and would not have stopped the detention clause. It was a lose/lose game of political chicken and Obama chose pragmatism over idealism.

Obama has greatly helped the country by creating a healthcare program, by passing stimulus, by using quantitative easing to keep the recession from going depression, by ramping down military operations in the middle east, by favoring diplomacy over sabre rattling in Iran.

As far as promises go, he has kept (or at least attempted to keep to the best of his ability) most of his big promises, like ending combat in Iraq, creating a health care system, ending the use of torture, putting needed financial regulations into place, restricting warrantless wiretaps, ending denial of health coverage for those with pre-existing conditions and signing an executive order to shut down Gitmo. Congress blocked his order to shut down Gitmo, which means the timetable is dependent on getting Republicans out of congress this November. Contrary to popular belief the executive branch is not all powerful. I know you don't like Obama, but can you at least admit these are positive changes for the better that would not have happened under a McCain or Romney administration? What were the broken promises you were talking about?

I love intellectuals like Chomsky and Chris Hedges and respect their criticisms of Obama. I think it would be much more productive to be informed by intellectuals, rather than slumming it in the right libertarian gutter. This video is just as frivolous as the Jackson video, if not morso.

I wish Obama was could be more progressive too, but that isn't going to happen in a conservative country where big business and the military industrial complex wield as much power as they do. We need both idealism and pragmatism if we are going to make progress. The country is far from how I'd like it to be, but I am happy that Obama is moving us in the right direction.

I like how the ladies turned their heads and noticed. That buy is goin' sum wheres.

... to recess

>> ^lantern53:

White men are the most maligned people on the planet. We make laws here protecting women from domestic abuse, providing health care and free breakfasts for their kids, etc. yet because this man is not a woman, he is some kind of shit to be abused.
By your logic, since he is a man, he must be thinking that woman are property to be utilized in any way with no regard for their well-being.
Your logic is porked.


Sorry, but that's just fucking sad.

This particular dipshit (I didn't see any other white men being interviewed) didn't pass the protections you mentioned all by himself (if he had anything to do with them at all). For all you know, he fought tooth and nail against them. By your "logic" this idiot shouldn't be criticised because those protections exist at all.

What in this video made you believe he has ANY regard for the well-being of women, outside of allowing an abortion to save her life? Or are you just running to his defense because he has an "R" next to his name?

About 30% of the world population is white. Do you think only white men had anything to do with laws that protect women? By your logic, those white men were ALSO solely responsible for the housing market collapse, 3 unneccesary wars, the world-wide recession, and all the financial scandals that seem to be exposed on a daily basis. They could use a little maligning. Cherry-picking history and regurgitating logical fallacies seem to be all you Repugs have in your arsenal nowadays. It's pitiful.

The whole point of the video is that this crusader against abortion hasn't even considered the view of those who would be most affected by anti-abortion laws. Why do you think that is? Money from anti-abortion donors? Religious nuttery? Towing the party line? Incapable of empathy (a sociopath)? That he is a man who wants to pass laws that only affect women makes it even more disgraceful.

We can always count on the gop-bots to bring the stoopid.

Liberals and socialists are always blind to the hidden costs and longer term consequences of their well intended actions.

Then poverty, waste, and recession ensues and they're unable to connect the dots. It doesn't register in their reality as anything other than a convenient failure of capitalism and the free market.

I also want healthcare to be accessible. The best way you can make something accessible is by reducing its costs and nurturing an environment of competition, not by forcing everyone to subsidize a single provider, the government, to hand it out for "free". That will only raise costs for the service, and even though some poor might benefit temporarily, the cost to society will be greater, and those costs will come back to hurt the very poor this bill intends to help.

This healthcare bill is unconstitutional, the Supreme Court ruling is a joke, and it gives government more power to carry out social injustice.

She has about the level of understanding I would expect from a bright 12 year old. If her parents are feeding her this, they have a "bright 12 year old"'s understanding of the financial system. About the same as Ron Paul.

Canada has debt because it spends more than it takes in. Doing so in recent years has been mostly a good decision - and generally it's hard to argue with Canadian fiscal and bank-regulatory policy given its recent performance. We've weathered the recession better than most other places (partly this is due to the our natural resources and industry mix, but not completely).

Fractional reserve banking has a complicated effect on the economy. It's not easy to fit this into a 5 minute talk, but it allows for beneficial ways of managing and growing the economy.

If you think banks are just stealing money, go start a bank or invest in one. You'll find that they're businesses like any other, and that Canadian banks are mostly well regulated, and mostly make their money in responsible ways. Banks are not magic, and individuals can leverage money in many of the same ways they do.

On the flip side, there's been tremendous misbehavior by American financial companies (most of these aren't best described as banks) in the last decade, supported by bad laws. Some people got very rich while the economy got screwed to Hell. This had nothing to do with the basic ideas of fractional reserve banking, and everything to do with naked dishonesty, regulatory capture, and plain old corruption.

To be fair yet unpoetic, there's at least one tycoon i can think of and probably a lot more that came from broken homes, families, communities, etc. Alan Sugar for example.

But either way, they have been given protection by the country, permission to go wherever they like within that country, safety from strangers, and countless other things during their entire life. The cars they bought and the fuel they put in them were all a part of the system run by the country. You pay your due. Besides all else it's just good business sense. The richer the country is, the better off everyone is; business improves. No one's buying anything now we're in a recession, and that's cos certain people got too obsessed with giving less back. And that goes not just for paying tax, but little things like when the government raises a duty on something, companies make the consumer pay for it. Despite posting billions and billions of profit, the price of the product absolutely HAS to go up 5p to pay for the increase on duty. Or if there's a shortage - price goes up, never comes down yet presumably the shortage doesn't last forever.

I'm not being naive; i know that's how the world works, but if nations and huge corporations and banks can't work together, help each other out and share the benefits (let alone obey the law) then how on earth can they expect average people to do the same in society?

Props to futurama for provoking thoughts though, eh?

Well said. I couldn't have added anything better.

>> ^NetRunner:

The purpose of the question wasn't an invitation for people to deliver a wish list, but instead a rhetorical questioning of what more he'd have to do in order to get certain people to say he's doing a good job as President.
On that score, bobknight didn't say "more" jobs, he just said jobs three times, as if Obama has delivered none, which is obviously wrong. As for less debt, I find this request amusing. Bush inherited a huge surplus and a booming economy from Clinton, and turned it into trillion dollar deficits and the worst economic expansion since WW2. Obama inherited a trillion dollar deficit and the biggest recession since the Great Depression and has already reversed the trend (deficit is shrinking, and employment is increasing).
So what more do people want before they admit he's doing a good job? The answer given, as always, is "fix all the messes created by Republicans in one term despite lockstep opposition from Republicans."
The real answer, however, is nothing.
>> ^BoneRemake:
Bob did not say anything about his track record, Bob was stating what he wants.
More jobs and less debt. you two would be stupid not to want the same thing.

>> ^bobknight33:

How about Jobs, Jobs jobs Jobs and less debt


In a recession, the two are mutually exclusive. Go read up on your Keynes.

Congress refuses to enact a real stimulus package because of the huge deficit--one that they created--and offers no suggestions other than tax cuts, which do little to stimulate demand and increase the deficit. Back in 2000, we should've been increasing marginal rates rather than cutting them. If that'd been done, we'd have lots of breathing room for real stimulus. Know-nothing simplistic people like you are the problem, and have nothing to do with the solution.