It's funny how the people of the other side of the coin like to say they are for smaller government & deregulation like they go hand in hand. Basically, mergers are a right-wing cause. Thank the republicans for fucking your futures, outsourcing your jobs, deregulating to an extent that corporations have the rights (if not more) of an individual and are able to create monopolies thereby screwing the middle class more and more every single day.

What we need is strict regulation, new laws and a new labor movement. I used to be alright with rich folk (like my parents) but now that I've seen the upper-class piss and shit all over the middle & lower classes I am all for CLASS WAR. Fuck them.

Good point, but stupidity and lack of education often go hand in hand, and some cultures are tailored around preying on functional societies. The point is, a proper risk evaluation wasn't done when considering immigration. Ideology above all reason. Tragic really.

Populist opponents of liberal immigration laws use foreign aid as an alibi, but even that is ruled by ideology and opportunism. Only fair trade works. (not the hippie brand - actual trade with proper wages being the rule)>> ^hpqp:

You're amalgamating two quite separate things: terrorism and crime. The latter has everything to do with lack of education (including basic civic behaviour sometimes), of money, and/or is a result of immigration with purely criminal intent (yes, that exists too). The former, however, needs only nationalistic or, in this case, religious ideology to be its fuel. Most (if not all) recent Islamist terrorists have come from middle-to-upper class families, have usually been well educated and had no "criminal gain" (i.e. $$) to be made from their actions.
>> ^Smugglarn:
You make the same mistake as the media in Sweden and Norway; labeling all immigrants and refugees as "foreigners". The problem with terrorism, crime, rape etc is fairly specific to different ethnic and religious groups of refugees: Somalis, Iraqis, Albanians etc. Not all of them, but they are dramatically over represented. I happen to know a an MP that is of Iraqi descent, but she is an atheist and I would guess from, if not upper class, then upper middle class. So that would be dominating factors, but knowing that - importing violent, uneducated fanatics?
The right wants cheap labour. The left wants votes to bring down the right. The middle and lower classes lose - including a lot of immigrants that have done nothing but being well mannered citizens of a secular democracy.
Oh, and do not think for a minute integrated immigrants feel sympathetic with the criminal element. Only left wing stooges do that - often in the media.
>> ^Yogi:
So now foreigners can't even be trusted in countries because they have bombs and they're there to blow up people? Even if it turns out to be a foreigner how the fuck do you two explain all the foreigners that day who DIDN'T blow anything up? The country is full of fucking morons and only a very select few of them post here, remember sifters there's tons of motherfuckers who actually think like this.
Also why does anything even genuine sentiment on Twitter sounds like you're being an asshole?
"I fear that many 100s could be dead. Poor poor poor guard that worked in the first floor. ,"

You're amalgamating two quite separate things: terrorism and crime. The latter has everything to do with lack of education (including basic civic behaviour sometimes), of money, and/or is a result of immigration with purely criminal intent (yes, that exists too). The former, however, needs only nationalistic or, in this case, religious ideology to be its fuel. Most (if not all) recent Islamist terrorists have come from middle-to-upper class families, have usually been well educated and had no "criminal gain" (i.e. $$) to be made from their actions.

>> ^Smugglarn:

You make the same mistake as the media in Sweden and Norway; labeling all immigrants and refugees as "foreigners". The problem with terrorism, crime, rape etc is fairly specific to different ethnic and religious groups of refugees: Somalis, Iraqis, Albanians etc. Not all of them, but they are dramatically over represented. I happen to know a an MP that is of Iraqi descent, but she is an atheist and I would guess from, if not upper class, then upper middle class. So that would be dominating factors, but knowing that - importing violent, uneducated fanatics?
The right wants cheap labour. The left wants votes to bring down the right. The middle and lower classes lose - including a lot of immigrants that have done nothing but being well mannered citizens of a secular democracy.
Oh, and do not think for a minute integrated immigrants feel sympathetic with the criminal element. Only left wing stooges do that - often in the media.
>> ^Yogi:
So now foreigners can't even be trusted in countries because they have bombs and they're there to blow up people? Even if it turns out to be a foreigner how the fuck do you two explain all the foreigners that day who DIDN'T blow anything up? The country is full of fucking morons and only a very select few of them post here, remember sifters there's tons of motherfuckers who actually think like this.
Also why does anything even genuine sentiment on Twitter sounds like you're being an asshole?
"I fear that many 100s could be dead. Poor poor poor guard that worked in the first floor. ,"

You make the same mistake as the media in Sweden and Norway; labeling all immigrants and refugees as "foreigners". The problem with terrorism, crime, rape etc is fairly specific to different ethnic and religious groups of refugees: Somalis, Iraqis, Albanians etc. Not all of them, but they are dramatically over represented. I happen to know a an MP that is of Iraqi descent, but she is an atheist and I would guess from, if not upper class, then upper middle class. So that would be dominating factors, but knowing that - importing violent, uneducated fanatics?

The right wants cheap labour. The left wants votes to bring down the right. The middle and lower classes lose - including a lot of immigrants that have done nothing but being well mannered citizens of a secular democracy.

Oh, and do not think for a minute integrated immigrants feel sympathetic with the criminal element. Only left wing stooges do that - often in the media.

>> ^Yogi:

So now foreigners can't even be trusted in countries because they have bombs and they're there to blow up people? Even if it turns out to be a foreigner how the fuck do you two explain all the foreigners that day who DIDN'T blow anything up? The country is full of fucking morons and only a very select few of them post here, remember sifters there's tons of motherfuckers who actually think like this.
Also why does anything even genuine sentiment on Twitter sounds like you're being an asshole?
"I fear that many 100s could be dead. Poor poor poor guard that worked in the first floor. ,"

Yeah exactly. What can our politicians do for us to help rebuild the American Dream? Let's take out another astronomical loan, this time from India! This time give it to the lower-class and the lower-middle class. Let's experiment. I know what I'll buy with the money! - a plot of land and a tiny home in Canada.

That way if the lower and middle classes move out the upper-class will get what they want. They won't have to pay us these expensive $12/hr jobs. And they can sit in their offices picking their noses erm managing some guy who can't even understand in some other country. America will just be a country of managers, just the way they want it. District Managers managing Senior managers managing assistant managers managing part time assistant managers managing the managers somewhere else who are doing the same damn thing except over there, there will probably be someone doing some god damn work!

I've noticed that mostly managers seem like they're official, doing "important" things but a lot of them are just listening to other people talk - all day long. Conference calls, blah, blah, sitting on their asses. Lazy asses I tell you.

I can't stand to watch the show myself, for exactly that reason, it's just too painful!!!

I could reply that it's sending up the (apparently lower!) middle class copying the upper classes, particularly the same ones sent up by Monty Python in the election special sketch (it's spelled Raymond Luxury Ya-ch-t, but it pronounced Throat Wobbler Mangrove), but I think that's getting a bit far from the original point... so I won't

Anyway you could well argue that, as an Antipodean, what the heck would I know about England? And you'd have a pretty darn good point.
In reply to this comment by schlub:
I think in Hyacinth's case, she's just being an obnoxious twit. I don't think it's just an English thing
>> ^oritteropo:

The main character is named Hyacinth Bucket, but insists it's pronounced "Bouquet".

I'm definitely on the guy's side and appreciate his leak - but he should have known that nothing can stop our military's corrupt power, they will stop at nothing in order to "try" to control our minds in order to control the world's resources in our favor (and in "our favor" I mean the upper-class (and they don't need help - the lower and middle classes need serious help because the "trickle-down system" is total bullshit)). His leaks will do nothing in order to correct or make the military humanly ethical. And that goes for our citizens as well. Yo livin' in a police state... well, unless you live in or hang out in a fancy neighborhood.

@JiggaJonson

People socialize assortatively and my environment, Silicon Valley, tends to brain drain the rest of the world. In that sense, individuals create their own environment regardless of what's happening elsewhere.

It's not uncommon here for people without college degrees to outperform people with advanced degrees from the best schools, and you can learn most things for free on the internet anyway, so people here aren't impressed with those who rely on educational or cultural determinism. (Personally, nothing gives me more satisfaction than outperforming kids from the lazy upper-class track who have had countless things I never had.)

you're half right, bobknight33. Close the corporate loopholes (but that will never happen because deep down both left and right want them)

But the Flat tax is anything but fair, Do the math and you'll figure it out. Just because it's called "fair tax" doesn't mean it's fair. Giving everyone the same tax rate is yet another giveaway to the rich. Progressive tax is the only real fair way to go because the business owners and the rich utilize gov't services far more than a low or middle class person ever will..so since they use more gov't services, it's only fair that they pay more.

Simple fact of the matter is that a "fair" tax rate for a upper class person or business is anything but fair for a lower/middle class person. a fair tax rate for a lower income person applied to everyone simply wouldn't bring in enough revenue to pay the bills even if Republicans had their wet dream of axing all entitlement and art programs, they wouldn't have enough for defense either I'd wager.

Closing the corporate loopholes is the only thing I've ever heard that both proponents of the left AND the right can agree on, but it simply never happen because the people at the top (both left and right) have grown fat from the tax breaks from those loopholes.

If you want to get serious about fixing the budget. As others have already said, nothing should be sacred, everything should be on the table to be cut...but that also means that raising taxes should not be the taboo it currently is. If it's ok to cut spending, then it's ok to bring more money in.

Small gov't is not efficient goverment. Efficient government is efficient gov't. Efficiency has nothing to do with size.

They had me at 'fuck the upper class'.

As an American raised on British comedy (Python, the Goodies, Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Eddie Izzard, Ricky Gervais....) it appears that the strain of snobbery still runs deep in the English psyche. There seems to be a sense of entitlement among the upper class that its fine to be horribly rude to those you consider to be less educated. While the Cambridge-Oxford educated Python's took the upper class to task for this, I wonder if Ricky Gervais, who has working class roots, has affected this as a social climbing technique. He is very funny, and obviously very intellegent, but he is unbelievably cruel to Karl, and other people he considers to be friends. The woman and last man that Karl talks to treat him with the contempt that I find offensive.

A clan system? Like Afgahnistan, Irak, Libya, Saudi Arabia... need I go on?>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

>> ^Truckchase:
>> ^ridesallyridenc:
Truckchase, you're right. With regard to your last two paragraphs, I think we are more similar than I may have thought. At least with respect to our perceptions of the problem. Our individual ideas of how to address the problem, however, may be divergent.

Man do I appreciate that; this is why I love the sift! I really mean it when I say I'm open to ideas. The initial thought of my "solution" makes me ill at first glance, but I've thought about this one for a long time and haven't yet come up with any other way to stem the tide in our lifetime. I do think we'll eventually get a shift against the immense corporate and personal power of the ultra-huge and ultra-rich as the mainstream populous is denied what has been promised to them, but often we humans take generations to see what has right in front of our face. My real fear is that by the time the US citizens wake up and see what has been going on, it'll be too late and we'll be a severely dis-empowered country with a heavily entrenched ruling upper class.
That said I do think there is certainly a need for workforce stimulus as you have laid out. Balancing the two concepts is the exceptionally hard part... apathy is the mortal enemy of progress.
Edit: replaced "can't" with "haven't yet"

In my friends sci-fi, never to be, movie; the villain, through gene manipulation, became a world financial powerhouse. He was able to manipulate the world with this power, and the device of his power...a teleportation machine. Using this device, similar to the fly, he could modify himself, and indeed, store backup copies of himself if things went bad. The hero's couldn't combat him, he was to strong and powerful. The hero discovered that each day if the villain was alive, the clone was destroyed. The hero thought of a plan to combat the villain...with himself! They were able to unleash the clone of the villain, and of course, both wanted to be top dog.
I bring this story up because I think it has a lot to deal with our current situation. Their are 2 types of ultra rich, those who earned it, and those who exploited it. The former are more common then the later, but the later is the bad apple that spoils the bunch for sure. More often than not, usually their rise to power isn't because of any real thing, but of being able to game the system in their favor. The current game in town is government regulatory bodies. They are able to be top dog because they can run anyone out of business with their "power" (money, and the government is their teleportation device . In many cases, if you had other "villains" running around, they would be hard pressed to gain unchallengeable power. I have yet to be exposed to a "natural" monopoly spare ones dealing in raw earth resources.
I think one of the main problems you face if you wish to level the playing field with regulatory bodies is distributed costs, concentrated benefits. You can't gain much political capital to fight the unfair sugar tax all US citizens incur, the financial drain is just to small to get motivation to fight. That "tax" results in, if memory serves, a 4 billion dollar "subsidy" to the sugar growers of America. If you are a sugar company, it just makes since to pass laws like this. The same goes for any other US company. When you are talking billions of dollars, you can't NOT be in Washington...no matter how "legal" it is. If the drug war has taught us anything, when billions of dollars are at stake, there isn't a wall high enough to stop the flow. You will never, ever end regulatory corruption.
Personally, I feel things like videosift could replace many of what we consider government responsibilities. With, I say, about 120 people talking about all the things that matter, you could protect yourself from companies known for food contamination, health trends, investing in your retirement, ect. Even things like labor unions might be better served through communities of people and not just of workers.
I think that the answer to many social problems can be solved if we look to our own evolution. It has been said that brain size is directly correlated to the size of the animal group members. If you extrapolate from monkey brains to our brain size, the perfect group size is around 130-200 people. Any system larger than this flies in the face of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. You can expect much suffering and exploitation in a system that goes away from this number. I believe this is the reason a person can feel alone in a city of millions of people, your brain just isn't ready to handle it. Communities might not be the most efficient way to run things from a logical stand point...but we aren't mostly logical. We are animals trying to be more than what we are. As a result, we have caused much suffering and hardship.
My new metal experiment is developing a sort of "clan" system. Managing powers of clans and rights and responsible thereof. I think it would be inefficient, yet, highly effective because it takes into account the general nature of mankind. Of note, labor unions are already along the lines of clan thinking, so my thought experiment is already playing itself out through the natural course of the market.

>> ^Truckchase:

>> ^ridesallyridenc:
Truckchase, you're right. With regard to your last two paragraphs, I think we are more similar than I may have thought. At least with respect to our perceptions of the problem. Our individual ideas of how to address the problem, however, may be divergent.

Man do I appreciate that; this is why I love the sift! I really mean it when I say I'm open to ideas. The initial thought of my "solution" makes me ill at first glance, but I've thought about this one for a long time and haven't yet come up with any other way to stem the tide in our lifetime. I do think we'll eventually get a shift against the immense corporate and personal power of the ultra-huge and ultra-rich as the mainstream populous is denied what has been promised to them, but often we humans take generations to see what has right in front of our face. My real fear is that by the time the US citizens wake up and see what has been going on, it'll be too late and we'll be a severely dis-empowered country with a heavily entrenched ruling upper class.
That said I do think there is certainly a need for workforce stimulus as you have laid out. Balancing the two concepts is the exceptionally hard part... apathy is the mortal enemy of progress.
Edit: replaced "can't" with "haven't yet"


In my friends sci-fi, never to be, movie; the villain, through gene manipulation, became a world financial powerhouse. He was able to manipulate the world with this power, and the device of his power...a teleportation machine. Using this device, similar to the fly, he could modify himself, and indeed, store backup copies of himself if things went bad. The hero's couldn't combat him, he was to strong and powerful. The hero discovered that each day if the villain was alive, the clone was destroyed. The hero thought of a plan to combat the villain...with himself! They were able to unleash the clone of the villain, and of course, both wanted to be top dog.

I bring this story up because I think it has a lot to deal with our current situation. Their are 2 types of ultra rich, those who earned it, and those who exploited it. The former are more common then the later, but the later is the bad apple that spoils the bunch for sure. More often than not, usually their rise to power isn't because of any real thing, but of being able to game the system in their favor. The current game in town is government regulatory bodies. They are able to be top dog because they can run anyone out of business with their "power" (money, and the government is their teleportation device . In many cases, if you had other "villains" running around, they would be hard pressed to gain unchallengeable power. I have yet to be exposed to a "natural" monopoly spare ones dealing in raw earth resources.

I think one of the main problems you face if you wish to level the playing field with regulatory bodies is distributed costs, concentrated benefits. You can't gain much political capital to fight the unfair sugar tax all US citizens incur, the financial drain is just to small to get motivation to fight. That "tax" results in, if memory serves, a 4 billion dollar "subsidy" to the sugar growers of America. If you are a sugar company, it just makes since to pass laws like this. The same goes for any other US company. When you are talking billions of dollars, you can't NOT be in Washington...no matter how "legal" it is. If the drug war has taught us anything, when billions of dollars are at stake, there isn't a wall high enough to stop the flow. You will never, ever end regulatory corruption.

Personally, I feel things like videosift could replace many of what we consider government responsibilities. With, I say, about 120 people talking about all the things that matter, you could protect yourself from companies known for food contamination, health trends, investing in your retirement, ect. Even things like labor unions might be better served through communities of people and not just of workers.

I think that the answer to many social problems can be solved if we look to our own evolution. It has been said that brain size is directly correlated to the size of the animal group members. If you extrapolate from monkey brains to our brain size, the perfect group size is around 130-200 people. Any system larger than this flies in the face of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. You can expect much suffering and exploitation in a system that goes away from this number. I believe this is the reason a person can feel alone in a city of millions of people, your brain just isn't ready to handle it. Communities might not be the most efficient way to run things from a logical stand point...but we aren't mostly logical. We are animals trying to be more than what we are. As a result, we have caused much suffering and hardship.

My new metal experiment is developing a sort of "clan" system. Managing powers of clans and rights and responsible thereof. I think it would be inefficient, yet, highly effective because it takes into account the general nature of mankind. Of note, labor unions are already along the lines of clan thinking, so my thought experiment is already playing itself out through the natural course of the market.

>> ^ridesallyridenc:

Truckchase, you're right. With regard to your last two paragraphs, I think we are more similar than I may have thought. At least with respect to our perceptions of the problem. Our individual ideas of how to address the problem, however, may be divergent.


Man do I appreciate that; this is why I love the sift! I really mean it when I say I'm open to ideas. The initial thought of my "solution" makes me ill at first glance, but I've thought about this one for a long time and haven't yet come up with any other way to stem the tide in our lifetime. I do think we'll eventually get a shift against the immense corporate and personal power of the ultra-huge and ultra-rich as the mainstream populous is denied what has been promised to them, but often we humans take generations to see what has right in front of our face. My real fear is that by the time the US citizens wake up and see what has been going on, it'll be too late and we'll be a severely dis-empowered country with a heavily entrenched ruling upper class.

That said I do think there is certainly a need for workforce stimulus as you have laid out. Balancing the two concepts is the exceptionally hard part... apathy is the mortal enemy of progress.

Edit: replaced "can't" with "haven't yet"

you make a good point. the text does not specify. i liked the statistic because it is completely counter to the myth of the "welfare mom".

if i wasn't broke, i'd have 4 kids. even if that meant adopting the other 2. but i cant afford them, so i got my tubes tied at 22. noone makes a profit off of welfare. >> ^jonny:

In regards to your own judgements about trashy girls, I think you're being a little too hard on yourself. Empathy, compassion, and self respect do not require financial stability to be taught, nor do they require loving parents to be learned.
Middle and Upper class women have .8 more children than women living in poverty
Is that have as in "give birth to", or have as in "are raising"? As you note at the end, infant mortality is significantly higher among the poor. If it means the latter, then that statistic is probably skewed significantly by infant and child mortality. If it means the former, then I admit I am completely surprised and very curious how that could be in light of so much anecdotal evidence to the contrary. I don't mean the stereotype of "welfare mothers", but the historic tendency for people to have more babies when they live in a community with low child survival rates.