You can’t be that dumb.

1) these rich people pay our “leaders” to write unfair tax code so they can not pay taxes. Legalized by Republican pushes to allow unlimited corporate donations and bribes. In many cases, they DO in fact write the code, then hand it to those “leaders”.
2) these “leaders” writing tax loopholes for the super rich, all Republicans, are also rich people, legislating for personal gain.

If the top 1% made 80% of all income, they underpayed by more than half if flat tax were the law or in any way fair. In the 50’s, the time period conservatives want to return to, the top 1% paid 91% tax rates, and America was booming. Today it’s actually <24% and you whine.
How much did they pay AFTER their last massive tax cut, much less than 40%….not that I’m taking your word for those statistics, you are hardly a trustworthy source, the actual number in 2018 is 37% of personal income taxes, which ignores a lions share of non income taxes we all pay.

If you count ALL federal taxes, they payed <24% of taxes collected.
Their highest income tax rate for the rich was +-25% (before deductions, exemptions, loopholes, tax heavens, etc), 66% less than in the 50’s. Under Clinton they paid almost 40% income tax (not 24%), and the economy was again much stronger and growing much faster.

Edit: it was possibly the highest share of that portion of federal taxes paid by the top 1% since 1982, although your track record indicates that’s also a huge exaggeration, but if it’s even remotely true that would be because they took (not really earned) that much more income, not because they paid a higher percentage of earnings. In the 90’s they paid 40%, not today’s 25%…yet today they pay more….can you understand what that means? It means they take almost twice as much “income” as they did in the 90’s when the economy was strong.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/fact-check-richest-1-dont-pay-40-of-the-taxes.html

Republicans are ALL stupid people who do not think, proven every time they are forced to think and realize they have everything backwards. You idiots think Covid is a fraud, the election was stolen, and CRT in grade school is a thing.

Such a nonsensical blatant red herring. They often do “just write a check to the irs” btw. I’m not rich, but I don’t take deductions I legally could because I want to pay my share, not weasel out of it. That’s called being patriotic, not attacking congress and shirking any and all civic duties.
Pushing for a fair tax code, unlike Republicans who plan to raise taxes on anyone making under $250k AND end social security, Medicaid, Medicare, and any other social safety nets they can think of, is not just the ethical and moral thing, it’s the only sane economic move based on ALL economic history ever.

Right, stop wasting, like billions wasted on useless monuments to failure (Trump’s failing fence), trillions more on stupid failed trade wars, billions on political stunts like blockading the border (Texas), trillions to try to fix the disastrous Covid (lack of) response thanks to insane mismanagement and the removal of safeguards, billions to fight the non existent CRT in grade school nonsense…etc. you are ecstatic to waste billions-trillions on idiotic Republican nonsense with absolutely zero return for the money, not complaining once while Trump tried to double the debt in 4 years (nearly succeeding), but not on programs that keep the poor from turning to crime because they have literally nothing to lose, or start to fix our crumbling infrastructure, you call that pork. 🤦‍♂️

So fucking stupid, bob. Delusional, dumb, prejudiced, and always wrong. You must be playing the character of ignorant moronic trumptard, no real human being is this deluded or dumb. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, you are like a clock specifically designed to NEVER show the correct time….you actively avoid being truthful.

That's why I said "assume", and listed the "parameters" etc... if the hiring commission is for that type of video, then it's a fail. Is that not reasonable?

Conversely, if the commission is to just make a cool video for marketing, then it's a win if you like it Different assumption, different purpose, different perspective. I have no problem with that.

To me, the "corporate" guys seem/might not be that happy about the execution, but the Drone Racers Team sure are ecstatic. I can understand that, of course, it's a rare opportunity for them.

I take professional photos for architects (banks, high-end restaurants, retail & offices, etc). They set out what I need to capture: furniture, electrical outlets, height and space relation... all need to be in-frame, properly and neatly placed; garbage & plants, office supplies hidden, staff out of the picture, etc...i.e. parameters. Photos that I give them are often different from what I would take in the scene from an artistic perspective. Perhaps that warped by perspective on this video.

Your video, Pug Spins In Ecstatic Circles After Mexico's World Cup Win, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

This achievement has earned you your "Pop Star" Level 179 Badge!

While I'm ecstatic that even (some....enough, but barely) Alabama Republicans appear to have limits to acceptable behaviour from their representatives, it's pretty embarrassing and disheartening that even a gun toting clan prosecuting good old boy only won by <1% against an anti American, anti constitution, anti separation of church and state, serial child abuser, but I've never been a team player.

Sounds like an exercising in rearranging the furniture on the Titanic to me.

In a world where discrimination and separatism is qualitatively and quantitatively on the rise, people in charge must be ecstatic that they can appease people without having to do anything meaningful that might piss off the extremists on the right, or "shareholders". And people are so used to being told that change is only possible through incremental adjustments that they'll eat it up like candy and think this is progress.

"People people people, if you're going to call someone a filthy tranny and throw fast food at xem on public transport, at least use the proper pronoun when you verbally abuse xem."

When there's a hole in the boat and you're taking on water, the least of your concerns should be about what language you use to describe the in-rushing water or shape of the hole, nor arguing over the colour of the material you use to repair it.

I'm sure some people will see this as a victory. Until next time they apply for a job and not get hired due to transphobia. And the manager of the company, with a gleam in their eye, begins the rejection letter with 'Dear bun/bunself', then sniggers to themselves and says "fucking trannies."

What I'm trying to say was summed nicely in a tweet i saw the other day:
ALTRIGHT/NEO NAZI: your all going to the gas chambers!!!
NEOLIBERAL: you're*

If this is the extent of what activism is able to achieve, i should say that the establishment/elite have won by pacifying and declawing the protesters. It's no longer about breaking the shackles of oppression. We can't go around breaking shackles everywhere - think of the effect on the economy? And what about people getting hit by shrapnel? No, instead the LGBTQ community will be given multi coloured chains, the black community will be given slightly longer chains, and we'll pad the shackles with silk so that everyone is much more comfortable. Don't complain about the concept of being chained, instead complain that your chain is not as nice as the next guy's chain.

It's as though the great struggle of protest and civil disobedience has been taken over by the liberal intelligentsia, and the worst kind of discrimination faced by a 20 year old middle-class university student with rainbow coloured dreadlocks and a nose piercing is the letter they receive about their student loan that begins "dear sir/madam". So they go out and march about it and think they've made progress when they get their own pronoun. In their life, in their experiences, they are treated equally in other respects, so they think they ARE fighting inequality.

But for the working class male or female transsexual who gets filthy looks and a seat isolated by themselves on public transport, to travel to their entry level job where they've been skipped over for promotion for not looking the part, or getting the right level of respect from the trans-phobic staff, getting snide whispered comments from customers about the size of their hands, getting abuse yelled at them as they travel to have a night out at the ONLY trans-friendly bar within a 20 mile radius....... I get the feeling that receiving a letter with the correct pronoun isn't exactly going to change their fucking lives.

To remove a weed, you go for the roots. Some wanker calling you him/her when you prefer bun/bunself is not the root of this problem. The problem is that they are trans-phobic, not the language - which is just the tool they use to discriminate against you. To change the language and think that you've won is a bit like redefining room temperature and claiming you've warmed everybody by a few degrees.

If you march for equal rights, fair pay, fair treatment then people are going to see that and join your protest because they also want those things. Those things will solve the problems faced by the trans community, feminists, masculinists, minorities alike! And through common goals and by supporting each other en masse for simple, unified goals like EQUALITY, progress will be made, change will happen. It is a concept called solidarity and seems to be going out of fashion, but our grandparents knew.

The objective for the establishment is to drive a wedge between groups of people so that their demands are more manageable, and they can be turned on each other. Feminists, masculinists, LGBT, everyone... can't you see how better off you'd be marching together for common values that lie at the core of what every human wants?

Wall of text, sorry... and I know it looks like i'm being insensitive. So congratulations, genuinely, for getting someone to use your preferred pronoun if that makes you feel better. But whilst people have been fighting tooth and nail to get their own pronoun (in civilised settings only), we've suffered huge leaps backwards in freedom and tolerance behind their backs whilst they were bent over intently concentrating on the finer detail of what their ideal equality looks like.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

20 minute walk/bus/train for me + wife and doggo, I must be ecstatic. ;-)

As always, my views are just a layman's perspective with no claims to expertise.

@RedSky

You correctly point out the intent of the reform, to stop fractional banking which they diagnosed as a primary driver of volatility within the financial sector. They want to revert back to a system where the banks were intermediaries the way you described it: deposit leads to loan, in this case at a maximum ratio of 1:1, no leveraging.

Unlike the current system where bank deposits are mostly created by banks themselves -- the act of lending creates deposits. In fact, deposits are liabilities of the banks, not assets. Reserves are assets, but they are only traded between entities with accounts at the central bank. And, in normal times, are provided quite freely by the central bank in exchange for other assets.

Anyway, "Vollgeld" places the ability to create money exclusively in the hands of the central bank. Controlling the amount of money in circulation was a concept most central banks were eager to drop during the '90s, since it never worked. Demand for credit is volatile, central control is inflexible, even if they could somehow quanfity the need for it ex ante -- which they can't. Hell, they can't even do it ex post. You can't quantify the need for additional money beyond what's already in circulation if the central bank's action set the conditions for a dynamic development in the first place. You can't know in advance what increases in production need to be financed, you can't know how demand for liquidity evolves over time. The quantity theory of money was buried for a reason, it ignores reality.

Anyway, I applaud the proponents of Vollgeld for pointing out the dysfunctionalities of our fractional reserve system as well as how questionable it is, ethically, to hand over so much power to a small cabal of financial elites. In fact, I'm quite ecstatic to hear them point out that a nation with a sovereign, free-floating currency does not need to finance deficits through banks -- how very MMT of them. Go OMF!

But their proposed solutions are a fallback to "the market will stabilise itself if left alone, a completely independant central bank will keep the quantity of money in circulation at just the right amount". This hands-off approach resulted in absolute devastation whenever it was applied. They want to turn the state into a regular economic subject that has to adapt to the amount of money currently in circulation. It's (the illusion of) control by technocrats, where you get to disguise policies against the masses as "economic neccessities". Basically the German Eurozone on steroids.

As for the absolute independence of the central bank: you are right, that is not strictly part of the Swiss Vollgeld initiative. But it's what almost every proponent of Vollgeld within the German-speaking circles argues for, including major drivers behind the initiative. Can't let politicians have control over our central bank or else they'll abuse it for populist policies.

They are true believers in technocrat solutions, completely seperate from democratic control.

PS: I cut down my ranting to a minimum of MMT arguments, given that many people see it as just a different sort of voodoo economics.

Edit: Elizabeth Warren's 21st Century Glass Steagal Act strikes me as a rather promising way to solve a great number of problems with the financial industry without going back into the realm of monetarism.

I'd be ecstatic if only they acknowledged the work of Keynes, but even that seems too much to ask...

I know I'm excited that they've gone this far. They could hang it up from here and I would still be ecstatic about the season. It looks like clearing the roster and starting over may have been the right move.

I'm ecstatic that he no longer has to worry about the Life sentence. I'm surprised though. I think someone in that court feels some pity for him.

Yeah but it's a fake uniting to me. So check this out, when a new government is formed the controlling party writes a speech for the queen and she reads it and yippie new government. Nobody asks her if she understood what she said or if she believes it, rightly because it's utterly fake. This is along the same lines as Ronald Reagan. He grew up reading what rich guys would tell him to say, so he did the same thing as president. He was credited with this big surge of the Republican party, everyone all ecstatic about the whole thing but after his presidency no reporter bothered to go ask him about anything. No one interviewed him about this stuff because it was known that he doesn't know anything about it, he's not in charge.

It's basically the same with Bush, president for 8 years, big republican gains under his presidency, world shaking effects. You have to struggle to find an interview with him, or something he's written about that means anything. So we've turned our presidency into a sort of Royalty, and that's why it's completely pathetic.

>> ^doogle:

Show looks electrifying.
Definitely has me buzzed.
No revolting at all.
I hope it really sparked people's interests.
Certainly enlightening.

There was something in the air that night.
I left feeling quite ecStatic.

>> ^maestro156:

>> ^packo:
take a look on index mundi
% of people below poverty line in hungary is 13.9%
for the US, its 15.1%

I looked on Index Mundi but I didn't see what they used for a definition of "Poverty Line". What I did see was that their reporting of Per Capita GDP (Purchasing Power Parity) was US 48,000 and Hungary 19,600. I suspect that the poor Hungarian would be ecstatic to be a poor American. And the poor American would probably be appalled at the living condition of their "equal" in Hungary.
To the original poster, I'm no Republican, but I fully support his freedom to buy this advertisement and speak his mind to whoever wishes to listen. I also support your right to speak _against_ his points. But I cannot support your desire to _silence_ him.


You seem to misunderstand me on a VERY specific issue. I DO NOT care if this man screams at the top of his lungs what he believes, that is his RIGHT to do so IN the U.S. of A.. However, the part I DO have a problem with is a little law that was passed by our buffoons in charge that deals with a little issue you may have heard of before called, "Citizens United". A group of individuals that used this law of unlimited money in campaign measures, that over time lead to this very ad and the fact that it could be produced, bought, and then given to outlets to run at a price by a single person, a BILLIONAIRE with a CAUSE.

His cause I CAN ASSURE you was not to let you know the perils and evils that socialism can lead things too. Hell, putting more money in history classes can teach us that socialism is at best a double-edged sword. Much like our "democracy". If he cared THAT much he would focus on education and children as they are our future and ultimately our next policy holders, decision makers, and our curse unless we find a "true" way out of all of these issues.


I will allow you to figure out what his endgame or true motive may be, in fact it MAY BE two things, but it certainly isn't what he so vividly talks of in his ad. Fear.

>> ^packo:

take a look on index mundi
% of people below poverty line in hungary is 13.9%
for the US, its 15.1%


I looked on Index Mundi but I didn't see what they used for a definition of "Poverty Line". What I did see was that their reporting of Per Capita GDP (Purchasing Power Parity) was US 48,000 and Hungary 19,600. I suspect that the poor Hungarian would be ecstatic to be a poor American. And the poor American would probably be appalled at the living condition of their "equal" in Hungary.

To the original poster, I'm no Republican, but I fully support his freedom to buy this advertisement and speak his mind to whoever wishes to listen. I also support your right to speak _against_ his points. But I cannot support your desire to _silence_ him.