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Boywhiz88 posted:The closest you would get is the chart that breaks down ROI for government spending and shows that SNAP provides a return of 150%. 1. It was 1.73, not 1.50. 2. The numbers were a product of a 'macroeconomic simulation,' rather than directly from real-world data. It's probably roughly accurate, but shouldn't be taken as gospel. 3. They were not, strictly speaking, describing a return on investment. Rather, Moodys.com (the organization that produced those numbers) was calculating the effect on GDP of a dollar's worth of various policies. 'Investment' is a broad enough concept that it probably still qualifies, but it's important to be aware that this isn't a case of the government getting back nearly double the money it puts into SNAP. A copy of the original source is here, third page. Popular Thug Drink posted:A more concrete example would be infrastructure. The government spent money to build the highways, which then allowed new growth and development which would eventually return in a higher tax base. Functionally it's the same as a huge software company producing their own framework for other firms to use and generate revenue, some of which would eventually end up back in huge company's pockets. Strudel Man fucked around with this message at 20:15 on Mar 4, 2014 |
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Mar 4, 2014 20:00
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Popular Thug Drink posted:A more concrete example would be infrastructure. The government spent money to build the highways, which then allowed new growth and development which would eventually return in a higher tax base. Functionally it's the same as a huge software company producing their own framework for other firms to use and generate revenue, some of which would eventually end up back in huge company's pockets. That's actually very different. Read about the railroad era of the 19th century and you'll see that all sorts of insane shenanigans end up happening when you let businesses control the infrastructure with no rules in place. Part of the reason we have a national highway system now and not a private one is all the bonkers poo poo that went on 150 years ago. If you let private interests control and construct infrastructure you can bet that they'll abuse it for profit. Similarly you can look at the phone system. While society had progressed to the point that not having access to a phone made existing in modern society difficult to impossible, or at the very least severely limited what you were capable of accomplishing, not everybody even had the possibility of getting a phone. It's also beneficial for emergency services that everybody have a phone as it gets messages of disasters happening out faster. This is a huge deal in cases like wild fires, which you want to respond to as fast as freaking possible. Yet "every community is wired to the phone network" didn't happen until the government twisted AT&T's arm and forced them to do it. Of course, what we've seen over the years is instances where telecommunications companies have wired everything up but are still abusing the system for profit. Cell phone companies, for example, were caught colluding with each other to keep monthly subscription fees artificially high. When it comes to the internet you see companies like Comcast setting it up so they're the only show in town and you can either have internet through Comcast, a company notorious for being extremely lovely, or none.
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Mar 4, 2014 20:03
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My dad is the exact same way. He grudgingly agreed that spending on infrastructure is an investment, but maintained that "most" of the money the government spends is wasted on vague, undefined things. That conversation started because he said "if you subtract government spending which isn't real economic activity, the economy has negative growth," and as we got into it I realized that the discussion is pointless because he has a huge emotional investment in free market ideology. He's actually become a walking crazy e-mail forward. In our last phone conversation, he told me that Obama's administration is lawless and dictatorial and it's become very scary. No, not because of assassinations, spying, domestic surveillance, or any of that but because...the IRS is giving tax credits for insurance to residents of states that refused to set up ACA exchanges  I'm kind of starting to worry about all this pointless anguish. It can't be healthy.
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Mar 4, 2014 20:07
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Investment is a type of spending. That makes no sense to try and say one is different than the other, unless they actually focus on spending that doesn't yield any sort of cash flow in the future, which I guess you argue what SS is.
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Mar 4, 2014 20:11
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VitalSigns posted:My dad is the exact same way. He grudgingly agreed that spending on infrastructure is an investment, but maintained that "most" of the money the government spends is wasted on vague, undefined things. I guess old people and the military are vague, undefined things, cause there's like 60% of the federal budget right there between defense, SS and Medicare and the old people also on Medicaid.
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Mar 4, 2014 20:19
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Basically if you believe that government can't do anything good then you can redefine the term investment to exclude any possible action by our government. There are very few situations where the government actually does something for a profit as opposed to just recouping outlay costs with the hope of a little extra coming back for the general fund, or the government does something to produce private gain rather than public gain. If your core idea is that rent-seeking is the best way of managing resources then by definition you're going to get pissed at government. Strudel Man posted:I'd try to check out Hoover Dam specifically. I imagine their revenue from sales of electricity is probably broken down somewhere. True, but I see this going something like: -Government built Hoover Dam, producing large economic benefit -Private industry could have done the same, so your point isn't proven -Well, why didn't or doesn't private industry do this more often? -Because government imposes burdensome regulation on business, because reasons or -It would have been more effective to reduce taxes for the cost of Hoover Dam, and let private industry efficiently invest that money
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Mar 4, 2014 20:28
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DoctorWhat posted:"Government doesn't invest, it spends". This is going to be really difficult to argue against because it's a barely formed idea. I might try something like "In a small city, an insurance company spends X dollars to buy a 'free' fire alarm for every one of its customers. They expect to save Y dollars because this will reduce the severity of fires. Is this spending or investment?' "In a different city, the local fire department spends X dollars to buy a 'free' fire alarm for every house and business in its area of responsibility. They expect to save Y dollars because this will reduce the severity of fires. Is this spending or investment?" If you could get him into a position where he's saying something like "A government is capable of investment, I just think they're really bad at it." You've made progress.
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Mar 4, 2014 20:35
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:This is going to be really difficult to argue against because it's a barely formed idea. A lot of the time free market true believers are impossible to get to shift even that small amount. They just know that private businesses can do literally everything better.
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Mar 4, 2014 20:42
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ToxicSlurpee posted:A lot of the time free market true believers are impossible to get to shift even that small amount. They just know that private businesses can do literally everything better. You might be able to do something like, let's imagine a town with a robust business community that's had a real problem with fires because the nearest fire department is in a different county. The Chamber of Commerce collectively wants to do something about it. The problems that they've run into are that none of the individual business owners have enough free capital to get started on their own and that they're having a hard time figuring out a manageable business model. Just keep going down this road while loudly saying, "No no, this is totally different from government, this is just a Chamber of Commerce project."
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Mar 4, 2014 20:51
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I hate that the railroad failure happened in the UK (changing public to private) because it was a great example of how horrid private companies are at managing public infrastructure but when you talk about poo poo in the UK or eurozone people's eyes just glaze over and they start mumbling poo poo about homogony or greece.
silicone thrills fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Mar 4, 2014 |
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Mar 4, 2014 20:58
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Ladies, gentlemen - I'd like to share with you a harrowing descent into madness from a libertarian trying to argue that treating gays as equals is the equivalent to slavery. As an aside, wasn't there a goon posting in this thread not too far back about their father having these weird about libertarianism and a bizarre fixation on "force"? I think I feel their pain  Linked because it's huge: http://imgur.com/KH61TIO
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Mar 4, 2014 21:03
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Taaaaaaarb! posted:Ladies, gentlemen - I'd like to share with you a harrowing descent into madness from a libertarian trying to argue that treating gays as equals is the equivalent to slavery. As an aside, wasn't there a goon posting in this thread not too far back about their father having these weird about libertarianism and a bizarre fixation on "force"? I think I feel their pain You need to re-do your image. It's only 167 pixels wide, which makes it totally illegible. Maybe use a browser plugin like Fireshot?
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Mar 4, 2014 21:09
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*beaten
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Mar 4, 2014 21:10
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DoctorWhat posted:Hey the D&D helps D&D D&D thread seems to have vanished so I'll ask here: A bit old but here: http://complexdiagrams.com/2009/01/clarifying-a-graph/
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Mar 4, 2014 21:17
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Cat Army 
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Xarthor posted:You need to re-do your image. It's only 167 pixels wide, which makes it totally illegible. Maybe use a browser plugin like Fireshot? So you're saying imgur has limitations - intriguing I'll give this Fireshot a try. One sec...
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Mar 4, 2014 21:19
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Just had this gem pop up on my news feed. Such great friends I have.
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Mar 4, 2014 21:25
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Tell them to "Do the MATH" about states wasting money on drug testing. Didn't Oklahoma or somebody lose a shitload of money when they tried that?
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Mar 4, 2014 21:46
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PUGGERNAUT posted:Didn't Oklahoma or somebody lose a shitload of money when they tried that? Florida, and the governor turned out to be somehow connected to the testing company. 
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Mar 4, 2014 21:48
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Florida. Lord Voldemort pushed through drug testing for all welfare recipients. He owns most of the drug testing places in Florida. Nope, not corruption at all. (He can get away with it because legally, he and his wife put them in his wife's name)
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Mar 4, 2014 21:48
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menino posted:Has anyone tried to teach the new method? Can it be done within a reasonable timeframe versus the old method? Parents Against Common Core just go All of us that had reduced lunches weren't morons and would have been able to handle it (actually, I had free lunch). Man, for how "progressive" this forum claims to be, you guys really look down on and think less of those of us that actually grew up poor. We're not the idiotic victims we're constantly made out to be here. Odnet fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Mar 4, 2014 |
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Mar 4, 2014 21:55
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over anything that's remotely new for ARE CHILDRENS, but I can see a 2nd grade teacher with a 80% reduced-lunch class looking at that and going 'gently caress this'
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I really goddamn hate seeing the "If you like your plan, you can keep it." Complaints they just seem so shallow and just disingenuous
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Mar 4, 2014 21:55
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Doesn't the TVA provide some of the cheapest energy in the country?
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Mar 4, 2014 22:02
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KomradeX posted:I really goddamn hate seeing the "If you like your plan, you can keep it." Complaints they just seem so shallow and just disingenuous Never a better time to bring up single-payer. You want to talk about healthcare? Sure, let's talk about how half-assing our reforms to appeal to Conservatives with a right-wing generated reform proposal from the 1990s has created a mess of a system out of a BIG mess of a system we used to have and how every other first world nation covers everybody for less per person and with roughly equivalent (and sometimes better) quality and availability of care, and do it for less cost per person than we do. I know those are all communist countries and whatnot and America is a special snowflake so we can't do that though. 
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Mar 4, 2014 22:08
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PUGGERNAUT posted:Tell them to "Do the MATH" about states wasting money on drug testing. Didn't Oklahoma or somebody lose a shitload of money when they tried that? The Florida drug testing program was fabulously successful at funneling state funds into the pocket of the governor and his friends through the drug testing company he owned. That was, after all, the goal.
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Mar 4, 2014 22:11
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 Getting upset at a Cliff Notes book for the AP History exam. Nice.
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Mar 4, 2014 22:16
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PUGGERNAUT posted:Tell them to "Do the MATH" about states wasting money on drug testing. Didn't Oklahoma or somebody lose a shitload of money when they tried that? Money doesn't matter. They just blatantly despise the poor and figure drug use or laziness must be the only thing keeping them back.
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Mar 4, 2014 22:19
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SaltLick posted:
US History: Preparing for the Advanced Placement Exam Yes, clearly this is In The New History Books. Jesus Christ, it's right there on the loving page 
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Mar 4, 2014 22:24
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ProperGanderPusher posted:Money doesn't matter. They just blatantly despise the poor and figure drug use or laziness must be the only thing keeping them back. There's a lot of assumption that poor people are poor because they're all lazy shits that do drugs and drink and gently caress all day and that's it, as if unemployment only exists because that percentage of people just refuses to work or isn't looking hard enough or something. In live in PA and a lot of people were pushing for the drug testing thing here too. For a while, anyway. It seems that it died down after word got out that Florida is so corrupt they should build monuments to the levels of corruption they've attained and the program cost like 20 times what it saved. Whoops! Here in PA they also instituted a program where you were REQUIRED to go down to the job center and look for jobs a certain amount of time and, if you were collecting unemployment, go actively search for jobs. This is even if it was temporary unemployment because your job vanished for a few months for some reason or if you were taking time out to get new training because your job literally doesn't exist anymore. Like, you could sort of get unemployment and some money to go learn a new trade or something but the state still forced you to hunt for jobs. The whole thing changed unemployment exactly "not a single loving bit."
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Mar 4, 2014 22:34
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Amused to Death posted:I guess old people and the military are vague, undefined things, cause there's like 60% of the federal budget right there between defense, SS and Medicare and the old people also on Medicaid. That can't be true because 60% of the budget is actually Obamaphones.
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Mar 4, 2014 23:06
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Mornacale posted:You've already heard several people in this thread (and I'll add to them) pointing out that the second method is actually extremely similar to shorthand ways that we do mental arithmetic, and how it points toward other useful skills for real mathematics.
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Mar 4, 2014 23:14
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One of my high school friends, the one I posted about some months ago who was on foodstamps but was "getting off because my husband and I can go hungry, as long as the girls are fed!' is on another tirade. This is about how lazy people are in the pharmacy, because she was told 3 hours of a wait time to pick up her medicine....only to watch the tech grab a bottle, drop it in a bag, and bring it over to her at the register at the time the tech said. "Three loving hours for THIS you lazy goddamn" etc etc etc... How dare some tech make her wait when all he had to do was that! Her order should have been filled in less than 5 minutes if they weren't all doping it up in the back! When I told her that perhaps that 3 hour window accounted for a dozen or two dozen more people who had placed their orders and not opted to wait around, she ignored me and refuses to reply, save to everyone else on her FB page echoing how lazy people are and how you need to take pride in your work. "LAZY PEOPLE WITH JOBS ARE ALMOST AS BAD AS LAZY PEOPLE WHO REFUSE TO LOOK FOR WORK." We used to work retail together. She now works from home, with a cushy job as an eval worker: she tells people what they do wrong all day. Sorry, she tells them how to IMPROVE while telling them how much they suck at their jobs. In the space of a few years she has forgotten everything that sucks about retail, and customers in general.
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Mar 4, 2014 23:37
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PerniciousKnid posted:I'm pretty sure Sally from Peanuts has been complaining about New Math for about fifty years. I guess nothing ever changes. Tom Lehrer too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIKGV2cTgqA
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Mar 4, 2014 23:44
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Guavanaut posted:Tom Lehrer too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIKGV2cTgqA This is fascinating to me because the way I was taught (born '87) to subtract is the way he was making fun of, and I had to pause and re-watch to see how the gently caress he did it in the "well the way we were taught" part. And I don't ~get~ how he's working through it He starts out, "three from two is nine..." ...what? He also (obv) way way overcomplicated the method he was complaining about I don't know how else one would do it aside from 1) Can't subtract 3 from 2 or 7 from 4 so you I "borrow" from 3, which is now 2 1.25) 4 is now 14 1.5) 2 has to borrow from 14 so 14 becomes 13, 2 becomes 12 2) 3 from 12 = 9 3) 7 from 13 = 6 4) 1 from 2 = 1 ANSWER: 169 Waffles Inc. fucked around with this message at 00:09 on Mar 5, 2014 |
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Mar 4, 2014 23:59
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Waffles Inc. posted:He starts out, "three from two is nine..." Subtracting 3 from 2 in a column gets you 9.
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Mar 5, 2014 00:08
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The Dark One posted:Subtracting 3 from 2 in a column gets you 9. Like, does it loop back around the digits or something, like a mileage meter in reverse? 1, 0, 9?
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Mar 5, 2014 00:10
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VitalSigns posted:The Florida drug testing program was fabulously successful at funneling state funds into the pocket of the governor and his friends through the drug testing company he owned. Lies and slander. He didn't own it anymore. His wife did.  All this hate for Rick Scott, Best Governor.
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Mar 5, 2014 00:17
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Waffles Inc. posted:This is fascinating to me because the way I was taught (born '87) to subtract is the way he was making fun of, and I had to pause and re-watch to see how the gently caress he did it in the "well the way we were taught" part. And I don't ~get~ how he's working through it All these complaints just boil down to "well in my day when we had to do X we just loving did it without faffing around with complicated methods" which bugs the hell out of me because the only reason anyone believes that is because they've become unconsciously competent. Like this guy: The Dark One posted:Subtracting 3 from 2 in a column gets you 9. You're doing it right now, stop pretending like this is obvious.
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Mar 5, 2014 00:29
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Renaissance Robot posted:All these complaints just boil down to "well in my day when we had to do X we just loving did it without faffing around with complicated methods" which bugs the hell out of me because the only reason anyone believes that is because they've become unconsciously competent. Like this guy: It's like this code:
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Mar 5, 2014 00:34
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Renaissance Robot posted:You're doing it right now, stop pretending like this is obvious. I didn't say it was obvious. He acted like it was gibberish.
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Mar 5, 2014 00:34
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It is gibberish and it's hard to explain without diagrams! So I provided a diagram. Please observe it.  The New Math is much better though.
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Mar 5, 2014 00:35
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