You could tax the rich out the ass, take all corporate profits and still not be even close to solving the debt issue. You are a fool to believe otherwise.

Comparing the USA to other counties is a moot point. Who cares about other countries. Each country solves its own issues. What look towards Greece and Spain as model socialized societies? Fuck that they are a sinking ship. Germany is the most financially secure country and that's because of their thrift.


Obama is the most leftest liberal this country has ever had. To make his presidency worse he has turned his back on Israel and given the wink and nod to the radical Muslim brotherhood to rise up and take over some countries in the middle east.

Domestically had has done shit except given everyone a large personal tax called healthcare. Everyone will have to pay up. Employers will bail out of providing insurance and we will have to pay it all.

Jobs What jobs The US is running negative. More jobs are lost than created. His policies have failed.

The unemployment would be a lot higher if they counted those who have stopped looking altogether.

A lot the money he has given out were to state labor unions and to useless failed green jobs.


>> ^RFlagg:

This. No matter what Fox and Rush and all the other screw over the working class so 1 or 2% of the population doesn't have to pay an extra 3% tax people say, Obama isn't a Liberal. He campaigned as one, but aside from bringing this country in line with every other country in the world except the communists and Islamic ones by ending Don't Ask Don't Tell (which even McCain said he would support when the military said it wanted to end it, but then didn't support it when they asked), he hasn't really done anything liberal.
I love how some on the right say even Liberals don't like Obama... yes, because he isn't the liberal people voted for, he's a centralist/left leaning Republican, at best a far right leaning Democrat. Now how much is Obama's fault is hard to tell. It could be he is a far right leaning Democrat, or he could just lack the balls to stand up the Republicans (likely), or he could be a victim of the promise the Republicans made when he won in that they would never negotiate and never give in and never let him win, that they would do everything they could do make sure his Presidency was a failure (even more likely).
I.

I'm very confused. Let me get this straight...

You're gonna blame the repeal of Glass-Steagall (a law that REGULATED financial markets) on Barney Frank who voted AGAINST the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which is the legislation that repealed Glass-Steagall?! You do realize you're basically making effectively a socialist argument, right?! You're saying the repeal of Glass-Steagall was intended to help the poor, but it didn't. Glass-Steagall is fundamentally socialist, so you're saying repealing it hurt the economy?!

Other than the fact you got the critical detail of Frank voting against Gramm-Leach-Bliley wrong, I completely agree with you.

In respect that job reports have been disappointing, you didn't address what every objective report about the stimulus bill says it created jobs, and those jobs did go to lower and middle class people. There's a disappointment it didn't do more than it ended up doing, but it DID create/save jobs in the short run, that's undeniable. Extension of unemployment benefits helped the poor and middle class. I could go on and on. You're seriously gonna fight this point?! Ridiculous.

Every company Obama visited and showed as a good example folded, huh? Let's see some proof. I want to see everyone of these companies, and what happened to them. You don't get to throw idiotic statements like this out without proof and expect not get called out on it. You're full of crap on that.

Oh, so if the jobs went to people you blanket don't like, it didn't do any good? LOL! Nevermind they're poor and middle class jobs, those very people you said weren't helped. I don't blame you. Those fat cat teachers and other civil servants, robbing the country blind with their gross underpay and what not! BTW, state employees are not all union members. There are in many states laws against state employees unionizing. Minor detail really...

So you're talking about "real Socialist" countries, not the fake ones I described. Are they more left than us? YES! You then mentioned we've gone "too far to the left" and the pendulum swing of a correction is coming to smite us! Are you suggesting the UK, France, and Britain were smited by the wrath of the free market gods for being too socialist? How have they managed to avoid the smite?!

As to the US education system today. First off, I'm glad you agree with me that universal public education system did coincide with the rise of the US as an economic superpower. You do at least seem to understand attacking that point is pretty pointless. But that also means you lost the argument. We had undeniably the world's best education system during that time, and it was a socialistic program in nature. Do we have the best education system now without question? No. What changed? Not the public mandate. Not the fact it's still mostly gov't operated. That's the same. Therefore, it's undeniable that you can have a top notch gov't run public education system.

Need more proof?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/dec/07/world-education-rankings-maths-science-reading

What do you notice about the countries with the best education systems? Oh wonder of wonders, virtually all of them have gov't operated public education systems! How do so many evil socialist programs work so well?! Hmmm, maybe it's because sometimes, socialist ideas work the best, and maybe you should open your mind a little, look at specific things, look at data objectively, and apply socialist or capitalist solutions, whichever work the best? I know that's apparently revolutionary for you, but it's called "effective problem solving".

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

Amazing how all leftists are criminally corrupt, all of them, apparently. Just because you're a leftist, it automatically means you don't care about the people.
Of course not all of them are corrupt – just most of the ones in political office. However, that is more endemic of being a politician than a leftist as the GOP is corrupt to the core too. I’m sure on some level even the corrupt political leftists believe they ‘care’ and are ‘helping’. But their method of helping is a poison pill destined to kill the supposed beneficiary. For example… Barney Frank thought he was helping the poor by pushing to repeal Glass-Steagall. In Frank’s fuzz-filled brain, he helped the poor get “uffodubble howsing”. But the result of his policies speak for themselves. The poor were NOT ‘helped’, and the nation’s financial stability was ruined by leftist plans for making banks give out loans to people who could not afford them. The left’s method of ‘help’ almost universally manifests in the form of inefficient, expensive, wasteful, freedom-killing big government programs which inevitably crash, burn, and make things worse than any leftist ever DREAMED life was like without their ‘help’.
Obama's big gov't spending doesn't do anything for the poor and middle class. You mean, except saving jobs when the economy tanked, the vast majority went to the poor and middle classes. Other than that... LOL...
That’s why every month the US has “unexpectedly high” unemployment figures. It’s why every job report for the last 3 years has been ‘disappointing’. It’s why every company Obama visited on the stump as a ‘shining example’ for jobs has folded. There are multiple reports that prove Obama’s stimulus money has gone almost entirely to labor unions, or state governments (and thence, THEIR unions) who supported him. In short, like a typical Chicago thug, he used the stimulus as political payola “walkin’ round money”. Jobs for the middle class & poor? Maybe 1 for every million bucks.
Leftist governments do not help with wealth distribution?! They just make it worse? I'm sure that's happened on occasion, but that's generally patently false.
I’m talking REAL left government – socialism. History has proven that leftist political philosophy’s ultimate end is wealth concentration at the top of government with the ‘people’ in utter poverty such as Soviet Russia, North Korea, Cambodia, Cuba, et al. What you are talking about are not really socialist governments. They are capitalist with socialist programs IN it (sort of the mirror image of China’s “socialist with capitalist programs”). The US ever since FDR has not been so much a ‘capitalist’ society as much as it is just another European-style capitalist with social program left-leaning government. The New Deal, the Great Society, and so many other leftist programs have routinely and regularly siphoned wealth from the middle class and used it to conduct failed social experiments. For the last 20 years or so, the US has gone further and further left in terms of spending and economic policy.
For example….universal public education and a progressive income tax coincided with the rise of the US as a global economic superpower as those first generations of publicly educated people came of working age.
Like all socialist systems, it starts well but ends badly. Remember Orwell's "Animal Farm"? Look at the US education system today and tell me it is “working wonderfully”. It is one of the most expensive in the world, while at the same time one of the least effective. Universal education is great. PUBLIC universal education? Not so much – and mostly BECAUSE it is a ‘socialist’ program. Open up a voucher system and let people choose the school, which will increase competition and lower costs.
Now - I don’t disagree with the underlying premise of your position. A pure capitalist freedom isn’t good either. Freedom is the best choice, tempered with a distant set of standards. I don’t have a problem with government mandating universal education, or even with it establishing some basic, simple standards. However, the pendulum has swung too far in the ‘socialist’ direction, and we are due for a correction. However, the people who benefit from the social system (government & unions) are responding as predicted to pullback, and would rather blow up the system than give up their power and money. Such is the end result of socialism, alas.
The founding fathers had it right. It is best to leave such matters at the state level where the people have more control and there is more accountability. The federal government should serve as ONLY a place where people can go to redress grievances (abuses). Central systems are fine when they are distant, have little power, and serve as little more than a final authority to appeal to, or as a repository of advised (but not REQUIRED) standards. The ‘system’ should be about 5% centralized and 95% local. Right now the US is more like a ‘45% federal, 55% local’ government and it is coming apart at the seams.

@blankfist ahh, so it's not the right to organize you oppose, but the right of free speech you oppose?

Are you saying that organizations don't have the Constitutionally protected right to spend money on political advertising or lobbying? Or maybe you just think organizations who exercise that right in ways you don't approve of must be destroyed by any means necessary, including via the exercise of state power?

Unions are voluntary organizations in this country, just like corporations are voluntary organizations. If you don't want to work in a union workplace, go work somewhere else. If you don't want to work for a corporation, go work somewhere else. Hell, if you hate Microsoft's overuse of exclusivity agreements, you can choose to work someplace that refuses to enter into an exclusivity agreement with Microsoft.

According to libertarians, what you shouldn't do is go to the government and ask them to take away Microsoft's right to negotiate exclusive agreements with their customers, right?

Why ask government to outlaw the union's ability to negotiate exclusive agreements?

Wow. ^Great debate. Very serious about that. I always like informative arguments.
My understanding is that in 1972 Kennedy gave the right to collective bargaining to federal employees and that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights views collective bargaining as a basic human right, but I have a couple of basic questions.
State Employee Unions bargain with elected officials for pay increases and pensions, correct?
Don't State Employee Unions and Non-State Employee Unions have a sympathetic relationship where some unions will join the strike of another union?
State Employee Unions spend millions of dollars on funding the elections of pro-union Officials and have LARGE voter bases that they can pull from, correct?
Couldn't it be said that in states like Illinois, New York and California, which have some of the highest numbers of Union labor and also have the highest levels of debt, the current fiscal issues facing those states are, in part, the result of poor bargaining with the Unions by elected officials that had it in their best political interest to be helpful to the Unions? I would hope that Unions would not be allowed to negotiate with an elected official or employee of the state, but I think that unlikely. I don't know.
I suppose that it could also be said that the State politicians should have kept their hands out of state employee pensions. I'd be interested in knowing where the pension money went to.
In a private company if an employer robs his employees pension doesn't he go to jail? Can we go back and jail the politicians that robbed state employee pensions? Also if a private company robs the employee pension, don't they usually go under? What does that mean for a state that can no longer pay for pensions? Can't get water from a stone, right?

I like gwiz' suggestion of an built-in mechanism better, both for positive and negative badges.
Having it as an invocation is just asking for abuse.

I do think, however, that there are subtler, friendlier ways of encouraging good behavior.

In the longer term, I also think that the best way to scale up the Sift while keep coherence and quality, is to allow differentiation and self-regulation of sub-sifts.

Colonial frontier -> independent states -> federal union, something like that. [edit], it's a good cure for imperial overextension.

Value-laden badges do not promote differentiation.