What on earth are you talking about?
Do you believe the government dictates your vows? What "rules"? You just cannot grasp the concept of no fault divorce or prenuptial, can you?

I guess you never planned on kids or shared assets. If you do, not having a marriage means you almost certainly will pay for them for 18+ years but won't have many rights to be in their lives, and may lose your rights to any assets if she grabs first. Uncle Sam is in your relationship, married or not....without a marriage contract, he makes ALL the rules and you have no say.

My brother paid well over a hundred thousand dollars for his divorce in Texas that in my state would have cost under $10K and you congratulate him? You are one strange person.

Again, your perception, not based in fact since the 60's. You assume women take off time to raise the kids and take care of parents and assume fathers don't take paternity leave or have obligations outside work. How 50's. You start from a false position that men work both harder and better, but you have no data to back that up. It certainly hasn't been my experience, I've seen women in the workplace working harder and longer for less pay, sacrificing just like their male counterparts if not more, putting off having families until it's too late while men can have kids long after normal retirement age, putting themselves in dangerous situations where those with power over them have opportunities to abuse that power and abuse those women in ways that rarely happen to men. These aren't exceptions, they're the norm.

Um...so since you admit many women outearn men and the trend reinforces that, meaning soon women in most catagories will out earn men and have more to lose, you admit you're wrong in your position now, right? Of course not, I expect you will still start from a point that hasn't been correct since the era and sexual revolution, early 70's at latest.

No, many of the studies I've seen compared people in the same exact positions in the same industries, even same companies, and women consistently get paid less for the exact same job and hours, and women rarely work less today, and just as often out work their male counterparts knowing they are often token hires not valued by the bosses so have less job security. If I recall correctly, 80% of job losses due to Covid were women, and the men are getting rehired faster. I think you are thinking of some studies from the 80's that made those assumptions and accusations. Comparing apples to apples, women still get shortchanged and as often as not overworked.

Bullshit. You said you would immediately dismiss any woman who has...
"Long dating history? Too much risk
Tends to have short relationships? Too much risk
Likes attention? Too much risk
Single mother (non-widow)? Too much risk
Any mental issues (depression, bipolar, narcissist, anxiety, etc)? Too much risk
Older (why you still single...)? Too much risk
Likes to party? Too much risk
Drinks? Too much risk"

And again, prenuptial. Do you not know what they are? Specify what you expect and agree, and you walk with exactly what you agreed to, no government rules or split involved. Geez. You speak as if you had never heard of them.

Most divorces may be initiated by the woman (if that's true, I expect it's just another assumption) because their husbands are more likely to break their vows first, but are not willing to pay to end the marriage, including penalties for breaking the marriage contract, and we're too dumb to get a prenuptial (or got one that spells out harsh penalties for cheating). Yes, I am assuming men cheat on their spouses more often than the reverse, because men are wired that way.

You are not more likely than not to face a divorce, because it's unlikely any woman meeting your criteria would give you a second thought, and you need to get married to get divorced.

I bet if you show your significant other this thread your 20 year relationship will be in big trouble, or at best enter a long dry dark spell. Women don't like men that believe wholeheartedly that all women are just lessers, leeches that take more than they deserve or even could give back and destroy you whenever they think it serves them. It's probably a good thing you aren't married.

Laws and family court aren't as you describe. Maybe when you enter the 21st century you'll recognize that. The rules of your marriage can be whatever you agree to, including the specifics of the split if it ends.

It's a sad thing you can't grasp that a codified, delineated, agreed to partnership is almost always better, more fulfilling, and has many benefits cohabitation lacks.....almost always unless one or both of you are total douchebags.

He wants to steer away from the cliff.

Hillary leaks flat out tell her truth that she want globalize and no boarders.

Her ideology will continue the lowering of the American standard.
Less pay and less jobs.

I'm sorry, but that is an oversimplification too great to just allow you to apologise for and continue on with the point.

To suggest a narrative in which all Thatcher did was close a few factories and blame the communities for being too lazy to fend for themselves or find a new job is not only naive and ignorant of all the facts, but incredibly insulting to people from those areas.

An apology for oversimplifying? I personally think you owe one to the hard working people of northern mining towns that were not only made redundant by Thatcher (with no other jobs available), they were victimised by her and then blacklisted so that they would not be able to find work again - some have only been vindicated in the past few years.

The only redeeming aspect of your frankly disgusting ideas about deprived areas in the UK is that you are clearly not in possession of the facts. Lazyness? The miners were the backbone of this country, the WORKING class - you know? Steelworkers lazy?

To some people in this country there has been no recovery, they are more in debt than ever, they have less job and home security, they are depressed, there is no future and it doesn't even seem like their kids will be able to do any better. David Chameron appears on the TV and tells them we're all doing better and the recovery is going great and they laugh at him... THEY'RE USING FOODBANKS TO LIVE. Their families eat by the grace of generous community members who donate food... in 2016....... in the United Kingdom, ex-fifth largest economy in the world. Recovery!? That's how the recovery was FUNDED!!! By taking money from the poorest and most desperate in the form of cuts and austerity! They're using foodbanks right now so that you can claim the UK had a recovery. Disabled people committed suicide because they felt as if they were a burden, because they were scared and saw no hope, all so that people could claim we had a fucking recovery. But the average person is no better off and the debt that Osborne made such a big deal about has increased. He's missed every target he made for himself and redefined poverty so that the statistics looked better!

And that isn't BECAUSE of brexit - that was before brexit. Many people are blissfully ignorant of how some people have to live their lives in this country, especially those most influenced by the Westminster bubble. Politicians and political commentators have completely misjudged the mood of the nation; that led to brexit, that has led to Corbyn who in fact has been the ONLY man in parliament to be making these points.

And they think he's no leader? When he goes to work every day he has to deal with around 400 people spitting abuse and doubt at him. He stood in parliament with hundreds of them jeering him and faced them down and made the democratic will of hundreds of thousands of people (who were not in attendance) felt. He is the only man who looks like a leader right now, the only one who looks like he knows what the hell to do.

What Obama did was disgraceful. A few hundred or few thousand is one thing but 5 million is reprehensible. That's 5 million less jobs for the poor. Tomorrow their children grow up and take your job. That boarders on treason.

@bobknight33 it seems your viewpoint rests on the fact that minimum wage should be an "entry level wage where one can better oneself [..] to ask for a higher wage."

At least in my country, a lot of the time the vast majority of jobs vacancies are in places that deal with minimum wage - fast food, supermarkets, that kind of thing - because they usually deal with the "basics" that people can't do without. Hence basic, menial and minimum wage for minimum stress at work.

The people who are in better jobs over here have seen a lot of similarly positioned people get sacked so they know they've got to keep hold of their job. Everyone's been cutting back, there's less jobs, and those jobs are tightly held by people with better experience. And then, when better jobs become available, you have lots and lots of low experienced workers applying alongside a select few who used to work - who's more likely to get the job?

Finer points aside, i'd love everyone in the thread to agree that there are a whole bunch of people spending a whole lot of money at walmart - and every other scary-large company. If that money is not cycling around between people then it's stagnating somewhere and doing nobody any good.

Take soccer here in england for example. Soccer players are paid something like £20 000 per week at every top team. A lot of them are actually between £40 000 and £120 000 per week but let's talk approximate. Now look, we should all be able to see that a person couldn't possibly hope to spend that much money. If you want to go to a match, let's call it £40, 60 000 people are giving £40 to go and watch, so that's £2 400 000 and let's say it all goes on wages. Well what's happening is this entire wad of cash is ending up sitting in a bank account somewhere, because this guy can't physically go out and redistribute this cash, spending his money in the normal way and keeping the economy moving and the money spreading.

It's not just footballers and i'm sure we can agree to some extent that this can be seen in a lot of places - a select few are in positions allowing them to amass huge fortunes they can't possibly use.

"Trickle-down" has not worked, it isn't trickling anywhere, they've got the cracks sealed up. Maybe we should be thinking about "trickle up" - if cost us less to watch a soccer match, metaphorically speaking (as in cheaper bills, higher wages, less stagnation at the top), maybe people might feel less stressed, less scared, more generous, more free, the world might be a better place so that services would be better, people would be more dedicated at their job to improve because they stand to earn more, less stress less violence, more money less crime, etc. Is there something to that perhaps?

The problem is it's hard to interject whilst it's all ongoing and say "you're taking this cut, you're taking this cut, all this money is going here, just trust us the world will be a better place." It's not fair to suddenly tell people what they do is only worth half of what it was yesterday. But between the top and the bottom what you have is a rich billionaire smoking a cigar whilst some child in the poorest neighbourhood is sat in 5th-hand-me-downs on a filthy carpet listening to his mother selling her body? That's a guess, i don't know how to best represent poverty, but take any example you like. If the rich person was stood directly next to the baby he'd probably feel outraged and help, but there's a lot of smoke and mirrors that stand between him helping every baby that is every born in the future, because warlmart suddenly can afford to double their lowest wages by halving some of their highest.

To conclude - i don't think minimum wage is as you suggest.

it's like a child trying to talk at the grownup table. IIRC she was exactly the same in her days on Politically Incorrect. She'd double down on these insane positions, and everyone else would be wtf? you are provably wrong and she'd just continue talking over everyone.

Bill Maher was absolutely correct in last week's show. You cannot have a civil discussion if you cannot agree on basic facts. This was demonstrated in his opening interview with her. The jobs report says that a higher than expected number of jobs were added (still lower than it needs to be, but increasing all the same) which Bill was arguing for, and Christine argues that jobs actually decreased. The report says that unemployment dropped from 8.3 to 8.1 but somehow there are less jobs.

When you have this level of spin and partisanship, you simply cannot have a constructive process. There has to be some fundamental things everyone agrees upon and when you have two political structures disagreeing over even the most trivial things.

When our credit rating got dropped. It had nothing to do with the debt itself, that commission that dropped the rating specifically cited the inability of congress of getting shit done and the level of political bickering and shenanigans.

The president has fuckall to do with that. We keep focusing on the Executive Branch when the real power is in the Legislative.

The nation does not turn on a dime. Like the guy said in the show. This magic metric of "four years" is a completely shitty way of measuring success or failure. Shit at that level does not take effect overnight and lasts for years, if not decades.

Defending free market policies today is a little daft. It is quite clear that leaving equality or mutual interest to the free market doesnt work in the majority of cases. To put it simply, in theory it all sounds great, but in reality most systems are not true free markets. For instance, there usually is little to no competition keeping the wages at "almost the same level as the value of the production". This is due to sluggishness of workplace mobility. People dont want to change jobs and do so rarely. There are plenty of reasons for that such as economic downturn (less jobs), lack of knowledge or courage to change, geographical limitations and in general the hassle of finding a new job which in all cases is a major hurdle. Also, companies set wages at similar levels as other companies, preferably below them, not above. They can do this exactly due to the sluggishness of mobility. This means that wage increases grow much slower than production value, and will over time stay more and more behind.

Last but not least, wages and worker rights are usually fought over not by government but by unions, which are specifically not government-based. Naming the weakness of politics doesnt change that having no protection is also not good.

As always it is best to walk the middle road here. Free market economics has its moments to be sure but it needs to be tempered by intelligent social rules. If you take a look at the "best" countries in the world to live in, various studies show that for instance the Nordics are extremely loved, and they all have free market economies tempered by social policies.

I cannot help myself. Time for a rambling rant...

Why would a society that is so capitalistic in nature look to the government for job creation? What happened to the invisible hand of the market? (These are sarcastic and rhetorical questions btw)

There are fewer jobs for so many reasons that have nothing to do with government inaction.
eg: HP to layoff up to 30,000 staff

These layoffs are proposed because the company profit to employee ratio is less than Apple or Google. This is a crazy reason to layoff people. Wouldn't it be better to try and drive up revenue rather than cut jobs? What would you like the government to do about something like this?

Personally I think that exporting of raw materials and outsourcing of manufacturing and services should be made illegal! However that would mean that we would be paying a lot more for those goods and services that we enjoy at child labour prices today. That would turn that little WalMart smile upside down.

It is certainly true that through civil projects the government could create jobs but that would increase either taxes or the deficit (or both). Alternatively they could reduce taxes for all, giving people and businesses more to spend (oooh, probably not a good idea with that multi trillion dollar deficit sitting there and that massive military machine that needs constant feeding).

I agree with GenjiKilpatrick, if you want to spur the economy and see an increase in the number of jobs look to yourself; inovate, create, sell, expand, hire. Don't sit back waiting for someone to open a door for you.


>> ^bobknight33:

Nice graph. I'd would not call it a MILESTONE. But it does not do enough. What about all those who stopped looking? Those people are not counted and unemployed. They still need jobs.
You must live in a glass bubble. There are less and less jobs to be had.
I drive all around the western half of North Carolina - Every month I see another shop close here and there. It has not stopped. It is sad to see.

I feel for you that you don't understand reality but just what the Party puts out as "truth"


>> ^NetRunner:
@bobknight33: http://www.barackobama.com/jobsrecord

You're right, he hasn't been a good jobs president. He's substantially reduced government employment. Unless you had some other suggestion for how he could create jobs?

>> ^bobknight33:

Nice graph. I'd would not call it a MILESTONE. But it does not do enough. What about all those who stopped looking? Those people are not counted and unemployed. They still need jobs.
You must live in a glass bubble. There are less and less jobs to be had.
I drive all around the western half of North Carolina - Every month I see another shop close here and there. It has not stopped. It is sad to see.

I feel for you that you don't understand reality but just what the Party puts out as "truth"


>> ^NetRunner:
@bobknight33: http://www.barackobama.com/jobsrecord

Nice graph. I'd would not call it a MILESTONE. But it does not do enough. What about all those who stopped looking? Those people are not counted and unemployed. They still need jobs.

You must live in a glass bubble. There are less and less jobs to be had.

I drive all around the western half of North Carolina - Every month I see another shop close here and there. It has not stopped. It is sad to see.


I feel for you that you don't understand reality but just what the Party puts out as "truth"




>> ^NetRunner:

@bobknight33: http://www.barackobama.com/jobsrecord

Over the last 4 years I have seen store front after store front close up. Every month another store closes. The car lots carry less and less stock. This Country is winding down, not up.
There may have been pockets of growth such as solar and car industry. But for the rest of us things are worse. There are less jobs and the dollar buys less. Even after trying to buy his way out of this mess by borrowing Trillions and spending Trillions more. We are worse off.


This is Failed leadership.

I somewhat agree, but I think that if drug possession and sales laws were enforced uniformly across demographics, you'd see those stats equalize quickly. Drug enforcement alone accounts for most of the 'criminality' on record anyway.>> ^Jinx:

I think even if you could remove the bias from the law enforcement etc you'd still see more black criminals than any other ethnic group. I don't mean to suggest that black men are somehow genetically predisposed to becoming criminals, just that if you're black you're more likely to be growing up in poverty where there is a culture of crime. Meanwhile the income gap widens, the jobs thin and go overseas, half your friends enlist and become a legionnaire for an empire that doesn't give a shit about them (maybe they'll earn their citizenship?), and the other half justify their crime on the basis society isn't just to them.
Not that I don't believe that there is bias among those responsible for arrests and convictions, just that I don't think their bias is entirely baseless. Racist perhaps, certainly lazy and definitely not doing anybody any favours in the long run. Yo lets lock this kid up for Mari possession so when he comes out he'll have even less job prospects but a few contacts from his jail time.
I've no idea why that Republican tries to deflect onto car accidents. Yes, they are equally tragic and certainly worthy of attention, but this Trayvon case is a PERFECT case study of the race issues in America and I'm glad its getting attention. He did make a pretty good point though, it seems America has this sort of dichotomous ideologies where its always "us vs them". Blackvswhite, RichvsPoor, DemocratvsRepublican. I think some jump to defend Zimmerman EVEN though deep down they know its wrong purely because defending him is consistent with their ideology. Probably goes the other way too, to an extent (although not so much on this issue I feel...).

I think even if you could remove the bias from the law enforcement etc you'd still see more black criminals than any other ethnic group. I don't mean to suggest that black men are somehow genetically predisposed to becoming criminals, just that if you're black you're more likely to be growing up in poverty where there is a culture of crime. Meanwhile the income gap widens, the jobs thin and go overseas, half your friends enlist and become a legionnaire for an empire that doesn't give a shit about them (maybe they'll earn their citizenship?), and the other half justify their crime on the basis society isn't just to them.

Not that I don't believe that there is bias among those responsible for arrests and convictions, just that I don't think their bias is entirely baseless. Racist perhaps, certainly lazy and definitely not doing anybody any favours in the long run. Yo lets lock this kid up for Mari possession so when he comes out he'll have even less job prospects but a few contacts from his jail time.

I've no idea why that Republican tries to deflect onto car accidents. Yes, they are equally tragic and certainly worthy of attention, but this Trayvon case is a PERFECT case study of the race issues in America and I'm glad its getting attention. He did make a pretty good point though, it seems America has this sort of dichotomous ideologies where its always "us vs them". Blackvswhite, RichvsPoor, DemocratvsRepublican. I think some jump to defend Zimmerman EVEN though deep down they know its wrong purely because defending him is consistent with their ideology. Probably goes the other way too, to an extent (although not so much on this issue I feel...).

I haven't read anything on individualism being a root cause of poverty. I did a quick google search and found a couple things. One is the idea of "survival of the fittest", that those in poverty do it to themselves, and it's the individualist ideology that tells everyone "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" and as a result those who cannot receive no help. Is that the complaint against individualism?

If so, I completely understand that a self-centric position on society would most likely create an environment where poverty could easily manifest and consume the less-to-do of society. I do think some will allow it to happen to them, while others will resist but their current station in life (specifically class) won't allow them to escape poverty. A couple bad financial decisions and the banks won't make it easier on you. The poor are usually in the financial position where they receive higher interest rates they cannot afford, while the well off with good credit receive lower intrest rates. It seems unfair.

I do believe charitable actions would be higher in an individualist society. We already live in a nanny state which is counter to the individualist society. Sure, the majority of spending tends to go to defense spending, but that doesn't mean we don't currently have excessive social programs already in place to catch the fringe of society. And still we have poverty. Lots of it.

What happened? The government has its hands deeply embedded in the private economy, and restrictions and regulations are steep for startup entrepreneurs, while the larger corporations enjoy crony-capitalism. Translation: regulations and restrictions create a tilted playing field where larger corporations can easily succeed with less competition, thus less jobs are created by budding entrepreneurs. So the number of workers goes up while the number of job creators goes down. Eventually we could all be working for the big corporations, and with less competition they could lessen benefits such as health or vacation pay, they could easily lower wages, and they could then extend the expected work week from 40 hours to something like 100 hours. If that sounds farfetched, I can tell you from first hand experience I've seen this exact thing happen to an industry I know very well. And when I say big corporations, I mean major parent companies that buy large businesses. For instance, let's take the advertising industry. One parent company could own almost all of the major companies in that industry, so if you complain about the 100 hour work week and loss of vacation benefits, your chances of receiving another job in that industry are cut to almost zero. I've seen it. And they do illegal shit like tell women not to get pregnant.

This kind of corporatist entitlement is bad. And we got here through regulations, through a regimented government nanny system that is counterintuitive to free markets. And this makes it very hard on people to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps", which is what all individualists claim to want of people around them. How can you pull yourself up when you're essentially a slave to corporations? I don't know. But it's not getting better. The nanny system, in my opinion, is making it worse. The more we ask for, the less we get. And I say this because I see a very real connection between system created to help us (welfare) and regulations that help big business. I see it as being connected. Poverty perpetuated by big business and bankers.

If we could peel back the regulations and restrictions on industry, we would see a growth of jobs. We'd see a decline in corporate dominance. Most restrictions or regulations are created to stifle competition, not help the consumer, mind you. From there, I'd like to think people would generally do better, have better lives, and contribute charitably to others. Poverty will never be stricken from the planet, but we certainly could do more to help those in our community. That's where it starts. And when people feel they pay into a nanny system, they feel less generous to help those in front of them. I know, I see it every damn day in LA.

Thanks for explanation.

It seems that you only want to acknowledge the bad side of regulation, without looking at its benefits. And, it seems as though you want to ignore the historical context of current law. Shall we go back to the Robber Baron days? Or child labor or sub-human working conditions?

While regulations do restrict entrants into a market, they also restrain companies that would put the public good behind a profit.

>> ^blankfist:

@<a rel="nofollow" href="http://videosift.com/member/longde" title="member since April 8th, 2009" class="profilelink">longde. The first thing to understand is corporations don't want free markets. Competition is the enemy of big business. Competition creates an atmosphere for lower prices on goods and services and typically creates higher competitive salaries because companies want the best people when they have to compete against other companies. And, in order to pay the higher salaries and lower the price of their goods and services, a company's profit tends to be less but sustainable as long as they're providing a great service or good that consumers want. Because of this it would tend to keep the CEO-to-worker pay margin closer if the company is to be profitable at all.
Contrast that with the current CEO-to-worker pay margin where the average CEO makes roughly 300 times the amount of the average worker. Why is that?
Because corporations want to close out the market so they have less competition. They can do this by using government to put stringent regulations on their industry, thus ensuring smaller businesses are unable to compete. By closing out the market they only have to compete against, say, ten different corporations rather than hundreds of smaller businesses, and therefore the competition is artificially lowered and thus there's no incentive to lower prices for goods and services. Also there will be more competition amongst the workers now that there are fewer jobs, and therefore salaries will be considerably less. This means business profit margins are much higher, and therefore they can pay themselves 300 times the average worker in their company.
Even minimum wage and employer healthcare plans ensure smaller businesses cannot compete with big business. They simply cannot afford it, and therefore less jobs are created because of it. And those people who are out of work would probably work for less than $7/hr at the moment, but that would be illegal. So unemployment goes way up. Eventually we'll all work for corporations as there will most likely be no other jobs left.
The libertarian solution is to remove regulations and restrictions from the market that continue to tip the playing field in favor of corporations. It's not a perfect solution, but it's a lot better than the crony capitalist system we currently have. Libertarians understand that things like health care and minimum wage and protective regulations sound really good and necessary, but unfortunately it simply destroys competition and employment opportunities.