My modest entry:

3 Little Pumpkins by day...

http://i301.photobucket.com/albums/nn69/dystopianfuturetoday/pumpkins2-1.jpg

...by night..

http://i301.photobucket.com/albums/nn69/dystopianfuturetoday/pumpkin4.jpg

This one is into Bauhaus....

http://i301.photobucket.com/albums/nn69/dystopianfuturetoday/pumpkin1.jpg

rules schmoolz..

http://i301.photobucket.com/albums/nn69/dystopianfuturetoday/rulesschmoolzpumpkins.jpg

If I recall, Bush pushed for the bailout. Here is the Fox News article.

Yes, I am aware of this. It's a disgrace, more so than if a Democrat president initiated it. Bush was a liberal with a few conservative tendencies.

I've never been offered a job by a poor man, have you? Unless you're a vote-buying politician, you shouldn't overly concern yourself that someone else has more than you, nor blame them. Economics is not a zero-sum game.

I don't see your point at all here. People do not want to tax the rich more, they just want repeal the tax breaks that Bush implemented.

You may not want to tax the rich more, the socialists dream of nothing else. And raising taxes on the middle class and poor too. I'm here to tell you that repealing the rather modest Bush tax cuts will do nothing--NOTHING--to help the economy nor fill government coffers.


Unless you know otherwise, over the ENTIRE lifespan of these tax breaks, the economy has been on a downhill. How can you justify them then?

The problem goes back to spending more than we have, always will. I don't see how you can single out the tax breaks as being the single source for economic woes.


Remember this is tax breaks over income only, if the rich invest their money into their businesses, they are never taxed on that money anyways.

The profits are taxed. What I mean by 'zero-sum game' is this: socialists believe in order for someone to win at economics, someone else must lose. It's balderdash. Wealth is created not when the slices of pie are "more balanced" but when the pie itself grows larger.

"If you had found a very flexible licensing model, in which the burden for the innovation of the world wide web had been shared across the whole user community in a very fair and reasonable manner, with without a modest contribution for everyone for this wonderful innovation, it would have enabled enormous investment in turn in further basic research."

Well that wasn't too hard.

@jmzero: "Imagine a situation where nobody can afford food"

Precisely. The absolute amount of wealth/resources/whatever is much more important than the percentages involved. We're currently living in a society that has more income inequality than ever before, and yet lower hunger than ever before - from what I heard, America isn't tracking death by starvation any more since it so rarely happens - 120 deaths in 2004. (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_people_die_from_starvation_each_year_in_America) This is absolutely amazing in a country with 300 million souls in it, and unprecedented in human history.

>>"Most people won't get mad if one person is richer than them and can have golden toilets and they have "whatever else they want" (which is ridiculous - we're imagining a place where people have all they want?)"

I meant that somewhat flippantly, and somewhat seriously. There's a certain point after which incremental gains in money does not buy any more happiness, and the point is around $60k-$75k. This the point where you can afford food, a house, a car, health care, take the occasional vacation, and so forth. I'm not saying they're buying golden toilets, but the point is, people that achieve that relatively modest level of wealth no longer have to worry about all the really shitty parts about being poor (and I've been there - it sucks) and can instead be happy or sad based on whatever else in life is going to make them happy or sad.

If our poor hit this level of affluence, then there won't be a single person, outside of the anarcho-communists that seem so popular on forums like these, advocating for the overthrow of the social order.

Hell, look at China as an example of how rising affluence lets people overlook (actual, real) problems with their society, instead of pretend problems like income inequality.

@ShakaUVM: "How? If all the poor suddenly earned $60k a year in constant dollars and could afford all the health care, food, and whatever else they wanted, do you think there's going to be "social consequences" because Warren Buffet and his friends made an extra billion that year? No, there wouldn't be."

Most people won't get mad if one person is richer than them and can have golden toilets and they have "whatever else they want" (which is ridiculous - we're imagining a place where people have all they want?). Though, to be fair, some will. Some people will be (and are) mad that someone is making a billion dollars, especially if they don't do much work.

More generally, imagine the opposite ridiculous analogy. Imagine a situation where nobody can afford food. Later, 40% of the population (say, ones with blue eyes) can afford food while everyone else gets only a modest increase in income. Do you think the green eyes are going to be happy because, oh well, they're making as much as they did before? Of course not. They're going to see themselves as getting poorer while the blue eyes are getting richer, and they're going to be mad and want to steal food.

There's factors involved in how this plays out - very important ones are:

1. How significant are the amenities one class gets that the other doesn't (obviously food, housing, electricity are going to make more of a pinch than "rich people drive nicer cars").
2. Does the division of wealth feel arbitrary and permanent? Do people feel like they might one day move into the richer class? Do they feel the rich have "earned" their position?
3. How does the population break down? Is there small percentages of outliers, or is there a clear division between haves and have-nots?

So yeah, it's not simple (and wouldn't happen in magic world where people have everything they want and where prices for goods didn't change relative to each other), but it's not a non-existent problem. I don't think the US is close to serious social problems, but with a little prodding it could be and "revolution" isn't the first step. There's also "tipping points" that may come up. For example, if poor people begin to generally feel like a "good education" (the kind that gets a job, which at times raises in price much faster than CPI) is only possible for rich people, that's going to be bad. Right now there's a sense that anyone can work hard and progress - if that feeling evaporates you're going to get more labor unrest and support for radical populist politicians.

Don't think that could happen? Look at history.

>> ^Yogi:

>> ^rougy:
Because capitalism just isn't the same without a little friendly torture.

Not just "not the same." You can't do it...you have to "Shock" the system. According to the "Shock Doctrine" at least...good read.


It's on my list.

Saw a documentary a while ago about how Friedman and the Chicago school of economics influenced Pinochet and the atrocities in post-Allende Chili. Made my blood boil.

Hardcore capitalists have some kind of fundamental resentment toward the working class and any gains that they may make, however modest.

Is one's political philosophy an inner "moral code" or is it a function of where you sit on the economic ladder? Is it coincidence that the wealthy are conservative and largely Republican and the poor are largely liberal and Democratic? If you reversed the economic standing of a group of one versus the other, would that change their political view? Do the poor who win lotteries usually go a spending spree or immediately set about philanthropy and working for social justice? How far down the economic ladder does entitlement stop? If we are a truly a world community, should the US citizen living at the poverty level give up their cell phone so that a child can eat in Rwanda? After all, isn't that person at the US poverty level still earning in the top 10% of world income earners? Isn't that person uber-rich to the child in Rwanda? The group on the bottom will always look up at the next class above and think they're "greedy" for their excesses, however modest they may be. In the end, the world economy is driven by individuals pursuing their personal and separate interests. To paraphrase historian Will Durant on what lessons we learn from history, concerning economics, "freedom and equality are sworn enemies.......the greater the freedom, the greater the economic disparity in the classes, until it creates such tension that wealth is redistributed by legislation, or poverty is redistributed by revolution."

For these bombs in the middle of the road, wouldn't it be safer to just pack explosives around it, back up 100 yards, and light the fuse? Best case you tear apart the bomb and break the fuse. Worst case you set the main explosive off and do modest infrastructure damage (although less than if the bomb had simply gone off as originally intended).

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

>> ^Yogi:
>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
I love it, when women have sex, they are whores. No one even mentioned the men using the site, sexist fucks

No when they have sex for Money they're whores. Also I think most of the criticism about this video is that they have to in this richest of all nations sell their bodies for an education. That's fucked up no matter how you slice it.

Not an education, but debts. She isn't fucking a teacher to get accepted, she is fucking for money, period. It would be akin to her getting into debt from buying a car that she needed to get to a job she wanted, and fucked on the side to pay for it. @NetRunner Strawman on freemarkets is pretty classy too. Because women shouldn't view sex as an empowering act, the should be shameful of any sexual experience outside of pure love. Because all of us here sell our bodies to the jobs that we love, unequivocally. Women fucking is a holy experience, give me a break. If a person could make a living off of fucking, eating, or shitting, more power to them...it is what your body would rather be doing.


Lemme try and make a more full statement, since my succinct snark clearly rubbed you the wrong way.

Mostly my point was that everything in this video is good news from the perspective of a free market fundamentalist. The scarce resource of quality education gets a price set by market forces -- a high price. It commands those prices because it's a valuable investment in human capital which investors (students) can expect to get a sizable return on over their lifetime. In order to acquire capital to make this investment in their own human capital, enterprising young women are leveraging their existing assets (namely, their "assets") through free and voluntary positive sum exchanges (i.e. prostitution). Now we have an even further advancement brought to us by the wonders of the free market -- some enterprising guy who helps facilitate these positive-sum voluntary exchanges by helping connect sellers (of pussy) and buyers (of pussy) for a modest fee. Another positive-sum voluntary exchange! Society as a whole has been made richer through all of this.

Now to people who aren't free market fundamentalists, this situation all seems wrong. Education shouldn't be something each individual has to pay for, it should be something society collectively decides is a good investment to make in its citizenry as a whole. We should pay for it by collecting taxes from everyone, but with most of the burden falling on those most able to pay (mostly rich old men, who might otherwise rather spend that money on prostitutes).

I don't know about other people, but I generally see working a job as being a form of slavery. I'm paid, but I wouldn't care about being paid if I didn't need to pay for things I need. Money and capitalism is just one arbitrary way to allocate resources, and there's no particular reason to blind ourselves to the reality that most of us would do something else with the time we're currently working if we didn't have to pay the bills for the things we need. We ultimately acquiesce to this arrangement because of coercion -- you can't get food from the Supermarket (or get land to grow your own food) without money, at least not unless you want to be arrested.

So my take on prostitution is that if you really do need to become a prostitute to get by, it's a form of rape. Technically it's consensual sex, but it's tainted consent.

If it were purely a recreational activity that you happen to make some money off of, I say no harm no foul. Hell, even if you decide you want that to be your primary source of income because you love the work, more power to you.

But if you wind up with a lot of young women weighing their dignity against the impact of college on their entire future, then I think we're asking them to make a sort of Sophie's choice that they shouldn't have to make. And worse, this guy is putting that Sophie's choice in front of as many young women as he can, in order to make a buck. It's disgusting.

And you can't deny that this is the shape of a society ruled by free market ideology. Everything for sale, nothing sacred, and nobody thinking about anything but personal material gain. It's not utopia, it's sick.

Tastes like bacon!

In reply to this comment by soulmonarch:
>> ^hpqp:

Now that's a Modest Proposal.
>> ^deathcow:
capture and feed the rich to the poor... watch how long it takes for policies to change



Soylent Green is rich people.

>> ^hpqp:

Now that's a Modest Proposal.
>> ^deathcow:
capture and feed the rich to the poor... watch how long it takes for policies to change



Soylent Green is rich people.

Now that's a Modest Proposal.

>> ^deathcow:

capture and feed the rich to the poor... watch how long it takes for policies to change

Aaaand guess how many of these right-wing conservatives are against?

/Captain Obvious

>> ^peggedbea:

this is how you decrease the number of abortions:
1. free comprehensive, scientifically sound, sex education to all
2. readily available, easily accessible, very affordable, guilt-free access to contraception in every community
3. counseling
4. streamline the adoption process to make it an actual option to EVERY sane, loving adult with the means to care for a child. i'd adopt a 3rd baby in a heart beat if it didn't cost $40k and they let single women of modest income do it. i have the means to support another child, but i don't have $40k laying around.
5. make health care a right
6. revisit public policies that actually alleviate poverty
7. equal pay for women
8. make legitimate vocational schools as affordable as community college and/or offer more grant-eligible vocational programs within community colleges... i know from experience that learning a trade can offer as much opportunity for single mothers as it can for any young man.
guess how many of these abortion-preventing solutions planned parenthood has a hand in???

@longde

Negotiation skill and knowing how to make people like you are part of performance in a free market. How to Win Friends and Influence People was published in 1936, so anyone who hasn't read it can blame themselves and the sub-culture they grew up in. It's not a coincidence that Hollywood's sometimes-highest paid actor is so smart about proactivity and likability.

If pay discrimination was really the case, wouldn't even modestly skilled business administrators fire all non-discriminated workers to cut down on their largest expense, labor costs?

this is how you decrease the number of abortions:

1. free comprehensive, scientifically sound, sex education to all
2. readily available, easily accessible, very affordable, guilt-free access to contraception in every community
3. counseling
4. streamline the adoption process to make it an actual option to EVERY sane, loving adult with the means to care for a child. i'd adopt a 3rd baby in a heart beat if it didn't cost $40k and they let single women of modest income do it. i have the means to support another child, but i don't have $40k laying around.
5. make health care a right
6. revisit public policies that actually alleviate poverty
7. equal pay for women
8. make legitimate vocational schools as affordable as community college and/or offer more grant-eligible vocational programs within community colleges... i know from experience that learning a trade can offer as much opportunity for single mothers as it can for any young man.

guess how many of these abortion-preventing solutions planned parenthood has a hand in???