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Shalebridge Cradle posted:I don't have an article but the really simple answer is that taxes are on profits, any money invested in the business are not taxed. Having a higher corporate tax rate discourages companies from holding onto large sums of money, since a large amount of it will be taxed, and instead reinvest it since no money is lost. If you make capital investments, you can still owe lots of taxes even when your cashflow is seriously negative. This is because you can only count depreciation as an expense in limited amounts so you will still have "income".
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May 25, 2012 05:38
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If you're talking about changing taxes by a couple percentage points then in most cases the impact will probably be minimal. Certain right wingers have promulgated this notion that corporations are super sensitive to minute changes in the tax code and will unleash their productive energies as soon as marginal rates drop a couple percentage points. We wouldn't want to simply take that argument and flip it: "you're right, the tax code is the solution, we just have to raise taxes!" Whether you're raising or lowering chances its unlikely that a swing of a few points will have a huge impact on corporate decision making given all the other issues that entrepreneurs have to be calculating. This isn't to disagree with the idea that raising corporate taxes could spur investment under the right circumstances (though that is the kind of too perfect solution in economics we should always be sceptical about), I'm just noting that you should keep the entire exercise in perspective.
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May 25, 2012 15:37
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I am currently discussing with some libertarian guy but I am severly lacking in sources in order to bring a discussion forwards. He's currently saying that the reason why the EU-economy is in bad shape is because of the market regulations imposed by the states affected and by introducing a completely free market system, you will guarantee a safe recovery and a progressive economy. How do I reply to this? And I remember someone having some statistics which shows economic statistics on how countries with a social-democratic state fares far better than countries with a more liberal economy. And how the economy goes much better with a Democrat in power rather than a Republican. Anyone knows?
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Jun 2, 2012 21:52
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King Zog posted:I am currently discussing with some libertarian guy but I am severly lacking in sources in order to bring a discussion forwards. He's currently saying that the reason why the EU-economy is in bad shape is because of the market regulations imposed by the states affected and by introducing a completely free market system, you will guarantee a safe recovery and a progressive economy. Ask him to explain how the economies of Germany and the Scandanavian states are doing so well. Tell him Greece was a clusterfuck that had very little to do with regulation and a lot more to do with corruption, same with Italy. Not sure about Spain but I suspect the same. The economies of northern Europe are doing just fine, and they were the most left wing ones the whole time.
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Jun 2, 2012 22:11
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King Zog posted:And I remember someone having some statistics which shows economic statistics on how countries with a social-democratic state fares far better than countries with a more liberal economy. And how the economy goes much better with a Democrat in power rather than a Republican. Anyone knows? I seem to only have things that relate to inequality which may be lost on your friend.   Intergenerational Social Mobility:The United States in Comparative Perspective (spoiler: the US worse than Norway when it comes to social mobility)
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Jun 2, 2012 23:45
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internaut posted:Intergenerational Social Mobility:The United States in Comparative Perspective (spoiler: the US worse than Norway when it comes to social mobility) 
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Jun 2, 2012 23:55
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Strudel Man posted:...is Norway particularly bad for social mobility or something? Right wing people tend to think left-wing countries like Norway and Sweden have poor social mobility. In fact this is not the case.
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Jun 3, 2012 00:56
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King Zog posted:I am currently discussing with some libertarian guy but I am severly lacking in sources in order to bring a discussion forwards. He's currently saying that the reason why the EU-economy is in bad shape is because of the market regulations imposed by the states affected and by introducing a completely free market system, you will guarantee a safe recovery and a progressive economy. Ask him to define his ideal 'free market system' as proposed. It's likely the response will be 'property and contracts, force, theft, fraud'. Ask him which types of property (intellectual, land ownership, private property, possession, environmental property rights, zoning, public areas etc.) Ask him exactly what constitutes fraud and how severe it needs to be if we are to devote resources to prosecuting it. Ask him if there is any limit to contracts that can be enforced between individuals (e.g a murder-suicide pact, slavery, child labour). Also limited liability laws are a great one. If he doesn't support those then we're looking at a return to the 19th century in terms of development. If he does, then you can apply similar 'risk protection' logic to safety nets, consumer protection, safety testing etc. This may sound belaboured but the whole point is that his premise is glib and incoherent.
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Jun 3, 2012 03:28
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I've been having a number of spirited debates on race with my husband, who is a white guy who grew up in a midwestern suburb. He is of the belief that racism is overblown, etc. He concedes that racism exists, but these are isolated incidents that need to be addressed at the level found, rather than a systemic problem. He takes great offense at the idea of white privilege. Finally, he believes that black people talking about how they experience racism personally is not good evidence for racism existing, because they are conditioned to be oversensitive and look for racism everywhere  His big thing is that all of these problems are due to class and not race.Anyway, I did send him Tim Wise's article but there are a few things I could use some help on: 1) A book recommendation on white privilege/systemic racism--he's more inclined to read a book than a blog post 2) He's a history buff and he points out that other minority groups do not have the same level of poverty and generally do better. I countered with immigrants generally having the money to come over and therefore they have a leg up, but he insists that the Chinese in the 20's came over with nothing. I don't know how to address the argument that other minority groups show more climbing out of poverty due to their work ethic (if this is even true), and therefore it's behavior and not systemic racism that keeps black Americans down. 3) More resources for me that dispel the idea that class accounts for most of the social injustice rather than race. I try to highlight examples as often as I can when they come up--like we went to a really chic restaurant for our anniversary and I pointed out that we both have the privilege of never feeling like we would be unwelcome or othered at such an expensive place due to our skin colors. He replied that he doesn't think a hostess or waiter would care about skin color, only dress code. All of these examples are so trivial and easy to handwave away so I get nowhere. He's a smart guy but hoo boy what a huge blind spot when it comes to race. I've learned a lot from these forums and I hope to pass on some insight.
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Jun 26, 2012 14:11
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The best recent explanation I've seen for white privilege is this one, basically because it deliberately avoids using the word "privilege": http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-the-lowest-difficulty-setting-there-is/ quote:Okay: In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is. On the whole though this is an issue that it's extremely difficult to shift people's minds on because it's a question of identity and self-worth; just like nobody ever admits they're wealthy, nobody ever admits they're privileged. We're all yorkshiremen. The best strategy might be to approach the problem laterally; go out and do actual charity/service work in poor communities so he sees directly how the other half lives. That kind of personal experience can shift mindsets in a way no amount of reading can. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 14:48 on Jun 26, 2012 |
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Jun 26, 2012 14:45
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quote:Our bloodlust coupled with our intelligence is what gave us the guns that let us kill that bear, and each other, with ease. Many major inventions are geared towards conflict. Those that aren't will find a purpose there eventually. Cars weren't invented for war. Yet war vehicles there are. The plane was not invented for war. Yet bombers there are. Bows weren't invented for war. Yet archers there are. Nuclear fission wasn't invented for war. Yet nuclear missiles there are. Humans take things that aren't meant for war and turn them into tools of war, and never the other way around. I proposed to him that humans are not inherently greedy, lovely creatures but it's a result of our society. He's arguing it's the other way around. I asked him to define what success means in regards to civilization means, and what he means by civilization. He also said we reached the top of our food chain with our bloodlust, not intelligence. This was the response I got. I don't know poo poo about anthropology so I don't know how to respond to this. Any help is greatly appreciated. And yes, this is the same person who denied white privilege exists.
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Jul 7, 2012 21:11
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Just don't even bother getting into human nature arguments. Also he's argueing that might makes right, which is pretty far into morally suspect territory.
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Jul 8, 2012 02:22
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I definitely avoid it whenever I can. It's hard though when I'm trying to talk about the positives of leftist political systems (socialism in particular) and their main argument is "human nature"
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Jul 8, 2012 04:18
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TBQH appeals to human nature are like a bad appeal to some half-assed theological concept
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Jul 8, 2012 04:21
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CorkyPorky posted:I proposed to him that humans are not inherently greedy, lovely creatures but it's a result of our society. He's arguing it's the other way around. I asked him to define what success means in regards to civilization means, and what he means by civilization. He also said we reached the top of our food chain with our bloodlust, not intelligence. This was the response I got. I don't know poo poo about anthropology so I don't know how to respond to this. Any help is greatly appreciated. And yes, this is the same person who denied white privilege exists. I can help, I speak libertarian... Man is inherently self-interested. Naive self-interest expresses itself as selfish behavior, and enlightened self-interest expresses itself as altruism. A major aspect of 'being enlightened' is knowledge that 'we're all in this together', that we have to overcome the 'prisoner's dilemma', and that we have to avoid the 'tragedy of the commons.' Which is to say, there were some real physical constraints that affected the evolution of Humanity. We all exist in the same universe - you don't get a different universe than me when you're born. The prisoner's dilemma (along with the 'problem of other minds') is 'baked in' to our hardware. The commons has certain traits, and amid those traits is the fact that a large enough group of selfish, mindless consumers can exhaust a resource. And it's harder to see the danger point in an ecosystem than it is in a rock quarry. Because of these evolutionary forces, humans developed as social creatures. We are biologically predisposed towards the formation of normative grammar. Language and empathy are baked in (though there are various glitches that can happen). We naturally form families, and tribes, and nations, and (when conditions are met) nation-states. We live in a human-hive. But the 'social contract' itself is a myth. Hume's objection holds - 'I ain't signed poo poo.' Privilege fits into the narrative so: The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. For most of history - arguably even today, for most people - life is nasty, brutish and short. Subsistence farming is the status quo for a great many people for a great majority of time. At certain points, though, civilizations formed. Athens is one example. After kicking Persia's rear end on the high seas (or some such), the other city-states pledged a hundred years of tribute to Athens. This allowed all the (rich, male) citizens an unusual degree of privilege. Three things emerged: 1) Childhood - when you're subsistence farming, children are treated as miniature adults, and work alongside you in the field. With privilege comes schooling, socializing and play. 2) Romantic love - when you lack food security, you marry for economic reasons, not romantic. 3) Philosophy - people that work in the fields don't have much time to read or study, so they can't 'stand on the shoulders of giants' (so much as they must rely on the urban legends, old wives' tales and conventional wisdom of their limited social network). And it's not like you 'trade fields' and meet dozens of people working a field to live. In the greek marketplace, a much more engaging conversation was occurring. Advances in communication are always followed by major, revolutionary steps 'forward' (subjective judgement, but I'm confident your interlocutor and I could reach a consensus understanding on that valuation). Important conversations that continue today began in that marketplace. There have been other such marketplaces throughout history, around the world, in many different languages. So there are two major forces at work for every human, and for every 'co-operation' of humans. The first is competition - zero-sum game economics. The second is cooperation - which is NOT zero-sum. Humans were cooperating LONG before they reached the degree of privilege necessary to sustain romantic love, childhood, and philosophy. And our ancestors were competing longer that they've been cooperating. We reached the top of the food chain because of the combination of our 'desires' (not bloodlust) and our ability to cooperate in an intelligent fashion. But primacy doesn't matter in judging which one will ultimately 'win' (which I'm taking to be the point of dispute). And anyhow, asking which one is 'dominant' is framing the question wrong. Naive self-interest is the default. We know how to develop an infant into a productive, healthy member of society. Affording them a necessary degree of privilege is a prerequisite for that. There is a real danger in poverty, as it does reduce us to animals. It is the cause and outcome of all wars. So it's not a battle between cooperation and competition, or our 'human' side and our 'animal' side; it's a competition between poverty and privilege. Cooperation affords privilege. Privilege tends to spread. With privilege comes power. And power doesn't come with knowledge or wisdom. A lot of challenges the leaders of the world have faced were novel, at the time they faced them. And not all leaders have been 'enlightened.' Given this reality, where do we go from here? Do we all hoard ammo in the hopes that we might somehow outlive everyone else? Or do we acknowledge the challenges ahead of us and start working with people to figure out solutions - and a plan? From there, turn it to a discussion of what that plan should be. Sustainability will be a tough sell, but it doesn't contradict any of his core beliefs. The social contract you're just going to have to give 'im - it won't derail things to do that, and he'll be quite persistent and not the least bit convincing (he'll resort to ad homs) if you question it. Discussions of top-down and bottom-up architectures will prove lengthy and interesting. Trying to actually design a system that is sustainable, you're ultimately going to have to punt on. That conversation needs to happen between a lot more than just 2 people.
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Jul 8, 2012 13:05
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CorkyPorky posted:I proposed to him that humans are not inherently greedy, lovely creatures but it's a result of our society. He's arguing it's the other way around. I asked him to define what success means in regards to civilization means, and what he means by civilization. He also said we reached the top of our food chain with our bloodlust, not intelligence. This was the response I got. I don't know poo poo about anthropology so I don't know how to respond to this. Any help is greatly appreciated. And yes, this is the same person who denied white privilege exists. This doesn't really make a lot of sense. [e] His argument not yours, I'd have to take some time before responding too. He's picking countries that exist, regardless why they were founded or how much help they had from allies or whether or not they had a good impact on civilizations around them. Also if the USA is important so is France, since it wouldn't be around as it is without French ideas. (I'm not just talking military help. Ideas.) Since a few major civilizations have fallen by chance, like the way history would have gone differently if Native Americans had happened to develop smallpox resistance before the Europeans showed up, and he's not listing civilizations he's never heard of but were very important in their time, he's basically saying that things he's heard of are important. The "we reached the top of the food chain with bloodlust, not intelligence" one is kind of silly to me. Crocodiles still eat humans today all over the globe. Crocodiles have brains the size of walnuts. Crocodiles are not hunted in huge campaigns because human bloodlust is not as great as human intelligence. And being at the top of the food chain is useless without intelligence because bloodlust alone makes you wipe out your resources and starve (if the passenger pigeon weren't extinct, a lot of American famines would have gone differently.)
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Jul 8, 2012 14:16
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Sorry if I've missed this somewhere, but does anyone have a cogent summary of what the PPACA does and does not do lying around? It'd be useful.
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Jul 8, 2012 17:49
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Uglycat posted:Good argument Rose Wreck posted:Another good argument I would have never thought of these. Thank you very much for these cogent arguments! I'll throw those arguments out there and, if you guys are interested, I'll post the response. Also thank you to lancemantis and Orange Devil. I used both of those as well, but got no response. Ah, well.
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Jul 8, 2012 18:51
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Please show the results of you making Uglycat's argument with your Facebook opponent if you get one.
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Jul 8, 2012 19:57
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End Of Worlds posted:Sorry if I've missed this somewhere, but does anyone have a cogent summary of what the PPACA does and does not do lying around? It'd be useful.
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Jul 8, 2012 20:37
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baw posted:Please show the results of you making Uglycat's argument with your Facebook opponent if you get one. quote:A very interesting read. I don't necessarily agree with everything said, but there are some good points. However. Importance is measured by... Well... Being important. A side effect of being important is everyone has heard of you. I simply listed the most commonly known. And lets not forget that France, up until about the 1820's, was also quite violent, if we're to use one of your examples of history. I told him that yeah just because it's been like that doesn't mean it has to be like that. I think I'm getting ready to just (if possible) amiably agree to disagree with him. He's usually pretty thick and is one of those people who thinks he always knows what he's talking about, haha.
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Jul 8, 2012 23:14
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He's halfway right, he's just failing to realize that the relevant conflict in his life is almost unquestionable going to be the ceaseless war between economic classes, not some idiotic imagined clash of the civilizations. War, conflict, and enemies - foreign or domestic - are a prop for the powerful men in society to keep their power and expand it. That is why its so deeply ironic to hear people carrying water for these imperialist scumbags. The policies that they think are helping their "side" win the clash of civilizations are actually the same set of policies that are being used to lower your standard of living. He cites the example of Rome in Gaul. What he fails to realize is that the Roman conquest of Gaul lead directly to the bloody civil wars and the end of the Republic. Foreign conquest didn't make Rome strong, it tore apart its valued political traditions, ushered in decades of bloodshed, and allowed a tyrant to seize power. Basically your friend is an idiot. He benefits from the success or failure of his side in about the same way a dedicated sports fan benefits from their team winning big. Beyond the nebulous sense of fulfilment he gets, he's essentially trading his support away for free to people who would hold him in contempt if they could be bothered to even contemplate his existence. So yeah, your friend is a sucker. I guess you could argue against him, but why? He'll just move on to some equally dumb idea on a different part of the political spectrum. His criteria for greatness are meaningless. In the long run we're all dead, that is what matters. From any meaningful perspective, none of these wars and battles and other great monuments are any more meaningful than a five year old stubbing his toe. Your friends sad attempts to create some semblance of meaning out of the pointless shifting of lines on maps is pathetic. He doesn't live in Athens. He isn't at risk of having his land looted and his wife raped. Anyone talking about that clash of civilizations poo poo in the 21st century is an idiot, full-stop (and by the way if you talked seriously that way in the 20th century you weren't an idiot, per se, but you were a Nazi or one of their intellectual fellow travellers).
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Jul 9, 2012 02:41
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Anybody got any good sources on the declining marginal value of money? I'd like an authoritative source on the issue and Google is only turning up Yahoo Answers and the like both in support and opposition to the idea.
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Jul 9, 2012 03:07
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Ohio State BOOniversity fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Jan 2, 2017 |
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Jul 13, 2012 08:41
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I spend a lot of time dealing with stupid people on my hometown newspaper website and ran into this post:quote:I can't remember which issue of Automotive News contained the article, but I read it myself. The auto czar (can't remember his name) made the statement that "he'd drive down the street, and see a gleaming Honda dealership, and a shabby Chrysler dealership, and he just couldn't 'understand' why it was allowed to stay open." There is no way Steve Rattner said anything like that. It just seems impossible, right?
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Jul 13, 2012 09:23
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So I came across this article about marginal tax rates and small businesses: http://www.slate.com/articles/busin...proposals_.html I have a coworker whose dad owns a fairly large "small" business with I think a couple million in revenue, and I posted the article on Facebook to essentially bait him, because he's said the same crap that article says about higher taxes making him not be profitable yadda yadda. Well he commented with this: quote:While technically accurate regarding marginal tax rates and whatnot, there are a lot of other factors for owners for C-Corps that are not addressed here. For example, while health care premiums that C-Corps pay for employees can be deducted, premiums that the company pays for the _owners_ often have to be counted as _income_ for the owners. There are many more examples of things like this that will very much effect the bottom line of many corporations and require them to drastically cut back. It sounds like bullshit to me. Even if the statement about premiums for owners not being deductible, how the hell can insurance premiums be enough of a burden to cause you to drastically cut back?
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Jul 17, 2012 16:14
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So the winds of facebook have been blowing a lot of libertarian/crypto-objectivist memes my way lately, and one in particular that really bugged me was a photo of what I assume is Orville and Wilbur Wright, standing in front of what I assume is the 1903 Flyer. Obama is photoshopped in and captioned, "You guys didn't build that!" I've seen a lot of stuff lately that's memetically similar to this, where some semi-mythological event like the first voyage of the 1903 Flyer is taken out of its historical context, and given as an emotionally-salient example of someone doing something all by themselves, thereby supporting the vaguely-related meme that taxes are theft (or whatever idiot thing facebook libertarians are advocating this month). Does anybody have a punchy response to this kind of thing? I can do all right in long-form conversations, generally in-person ones, where I can basically parrot Rawls, talk about fairness in various hypothetical situations, point out similarities between those situations and real life, etc. On facebook, though, the conversation tends to wander and get circlejerky, and any point that takes longer than a paragraph to make is lost in the shuffle.
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Jul 17, 2012 17:15
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FISHMANPET posted:So I came across this article about marginal tax rates and small businesses: How in gently caress does the insurance premiums for the owners constitute enough income that it affects the financials of the corporation? No matter how he messes around with it, he has to admit that it is highly unlikely that a higher tax bracket will result in lower income. He's just upset that taxes don't work the way he wants them to in his head. I've had another friend try to give me an unbelievably tortured scenario involving the AMT to try and prove it's possible to make less income by moving into a higher tax bracket.
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Jul 17, 2012 21:35
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ejstheman posted:So the winds of facebook have been blowing a lot of libertarian/crypto-objectivist memes my way lately, and one in particular that really bugged me was a photo of what I assume is Orville and Wilbur Wright, standing in front of what I assume is the 1903 Flyer. Obama is photoshopped in and captioned, "You guys didn't build that!" Tell your friend that Orville and Wilbur totally didn't have years if not decades of other attempts to base their designs off of, including at least one successful unmanned prototype someone else did, and of course they didn't rely on research provided to them by the Smithsonian(a public institution) which they specifically requested. Yep, they just decided to put together a plane one day and their Protestant Work Ethic magically made the details irrelevant.
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Jul 17, 2012 21:40
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Zeitgueist posted:Tell your friend that Orville and Wilbur totally didn't have years if not decades of other attempts to base their designs off of, including at least one successful unmanned prototype someone else did, and of course they didn't rely on research provided to them by the Smithsonian(a public institution) which they specifically requested. Do you have a source for the Smithsonian thing? That's too choice not to post.
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Jul 18, 2012 12:10
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ejstheman posted:Do you have a source for the Smithsonian thing? That's too choice not to post. http://siarchives.si.edu/history/exhibits/documents/wrightmay301899.htm They also decided to do their flight tests in Kitty Hawk, NC based on weather data that they requested from the U.S. Weather Bureau.
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Jul 18, 2012 12:57
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Phlag posted:http://siarchives.si.edu/history/exhibits/documents/wrightmay301899.htm I posted both of these, and the letter from Mark Twain to Helen Keller on the subject of originality, and a brief line of argument about how a functional society is the stable base on which we each can build our own individual endeavors, and it actually worked, or at least, it worked as well as one can expect. The guy said he regretted posting the image, although he attributed that regret to the fact that Obama was misquoted and not to the fact that the image's argument would fail even if Obama really had said "You didn't build that" about people's private businesses, and not about the infrastructure they used. We ended up staying facebook friends and both agreeing that at least we're not loving Republicans, so although I'm obviously not going to convert someone to being a hardcore anti-capitalist in 30 minutes of facebook posting, I think it was good that I responded.
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Jul 18, 2012 20:24
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Phlag posted:They also decided to do their flight tests in Kitty Hawk, NC based on weather data that they requested from the U.S. Weather Bureau. Keep in mind, to this day pretty much anything that is giving you weather information is probably doing so based on data the government gave them for free. Also there's a variation of that image involving Steve Jobs holding an iPod, and that's hilarious since it's blatantly true that he didn't make that, or possibly someone actually believes he was down in the lab hacking together a prototype. Steve Jobs, a man famous for marketing poo poo that other people came up with. Zeitgueist fucked around with this message at 20:33 on Jul 18, 2012 |
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Jul 18, 2012 20:31
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How do I deal with the idiots claiming that all the blue states (Michigan, NY, Cali) have major problems due to democrat rule, while the major red states (Texas) are booming? I know they're wrong, it's just difficult to argue against such simplistic thinking.
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Jul 19, 2012 05:12
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Don't most red states get more back from the federal government per taxpayer than blue states?
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Jul 19, 2012 05:14
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Does anyone have any data on what other countries' single payers systems pay doctors for procedures, and also what the average quality of care in other countries is, if there is even a way to measure that? And I would venture to say that most red states are much more suburbanized, and probably have fewer regulations of all kinds, even less unionization than normal, and a lower quantity of government services. I know minimum wage in most red states is no higher than federal. Unfortunately they probably don't consider those things pluses. icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 07:33 on Jul 19, 2012 |
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Jul 19, 2012 05:21
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icantfindaname posted:Does anyone have any data on what other countries' single payers systems pay doctors for procedures, and also what the average quality of care in other countries is, if there is even a way to measure that? You would probably be best to check out the respective regional threads. There are certainly doctors, nurses, and other healthcare staff posting in the UK thread. From my own second-hand knowledge, I am certain that dentist and GP practices are paid by complex and diverse procedures (that include the provision of Enhanced Services like flu immunisation or local support groups) but the doctors themselves are paid out of that allocated funding. Hospital doctors and such are salaried. Health outcomes between countries are measured by, and can be viewed at, http://www.oecd.org/ It is worth bearing in mind that individual countries primarily measure certain outcomes according to a) their own capacity to diagnose and b)) the diagnostic criteria that they employ. Both of these differ dramatically between ountries. When politicians compare cancer rate or whatever between countries they are being extremely duplicitous.
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Jul 19, 2012 09:28
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I'm a member of a Norwegian political discussion group on Facebook, and it's been flooded by Norwegian libertarians lately. I want to come up with arguments against this guy(translated by me): "USA har vedtatt 70 000 reguleringer det siste tiåret. USA har verdens mest kompliserte skattekode, og har et større forbruk i staten enn alle andre land. Kapitalismen ble avskaffet da FED (verdens verste sentralbank) ble innført. USA er et primaeksempel på hvordan en stor stat gir særrettigheter, monopolregler og reguleringer, skrevet sammen med big business. Å tro at MER stat er løsning på crony-kapitalisme blir som å si at vi trenger flere pedofile i barnehagen for å få bukt med barnemisbruk." Bolding is my additions to the text. If there are any Norwegian goons who could translate this better than me, please go ahead because I'm horrible at translating  "The United States has adopted(not the right word, not sure what else to use. Taken use of?) over 70 000 regulations in the last decade. USA has the world's most complicated taxation system, and has a bigger expenditures within the state than any other country[in the world]. Capitalism was abolished when the FED(Federal Reserve, The world's biggest central bank) was introduced. USA is the prime example on how a big state gives privileges[to certain companies/businesses], monopoly rules and regulations enwined with big businesses. To believe that MORE state-regulations is the solution in crony-capitalism is to say that we need more pedophiles in kindergardens to deal with child sexual abuse" King Zog fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Jul 19, 2012 |
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Jul 19, 2012 16:25
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oswald ownenstein posted:How do I deal with the idiots claiming that all the blue states (Michigan, NY, Cali) have major problems due to democrat rule, while the major red states (Texas) are booming? Texas is not booming for anyone outside the bourgeoisie - it has the highest percentage of minimum wage jobs, and is among if not the highest in people lacking health insurance. You'll find that most "booming" red states follow the same metric - economic success for the top only.
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Jul 19, 2012 16:31
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King Zog posted:I'm a member of a Norwegian political discussion group on Facebook, and it's been flooded by Norwegian libertarians lately. I want to come up with arguments against this guy(translated by me): Government regulations don't have to support massive corporations. They often do in the US because obviously these corporations have used years of money and power to get laws written in their favor. A "regulation" is neither good nor evil inherently. There are good regulations. There are bad regulations. Painting all of them with the same brush is stupid. For example, the Glass-Steagall Act that was passed in the 30s to regulate banks and prevent another great depression was good regulation. Repealing it (done under Clinton) was one of the leading causes of the housing bubble and the financial crisis. Other examples of good regulation would be environmental laws that prevent companies from dumping toxic or radioactive waste everywhere, or pharmaceutical regulations that attempt to prevent companies from selling poison as medicine (or selling a placebo as medicine. Unfortunately, "attempt" is a key word here). Capitalism hasn't been abolished in the US--that's an absurd claim. Rather, the capitalists have just gotten very powerful and very good at controlling the government. Any unregulated system of capitalism will gain regulations that favor the powerful elite--because that's what they do. History has shown this. Government and economics aren't separate. When it's in a capitalist's economic interest to control the government, they will. Lobbyists in the US, for example, have an absurd return rate (in some instances 22000%!). Remember, capitalism used to be totally unregulated. What did that get us? Horrid working conditions, long work weeks with no overtime pay, abuses, brutality, and pollution so bad in some places rivers were catching fire.
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Jul 19, 2012 18:13
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