163780 pts ยท February 19, 2013
Because we didn't let them secede and then conquer them as a foreign nation, which meant we let them keep a bunch of their political structure and identity in place. We should've let them leave, then invaded and treated them as newly conquered territory.
But I thought Democrats never do anything and they're just as bad as Republicans? Aren't both sides the problem?
And it's so clear when he does too, because his rambling gets even more incoherent.
I don't think I ever said "people should have to work every minute of their life to survive". Also, we're absolutely not in a technological stall - today's world looks meaningfully different from 10,20, and 40 years ago. There are certainly failures of the economic system we have, but there's no economic system that doesn't include "work or die" at some basic level.
Yup - that's why we have economic systems where we need people to not only work for themselves, but we need everybody who can work to work even harder to support people who can't work, otherwise they die. Whether it's capitalism with welfare and charity, socialism, feudalism, or anything else, we still need a lot of people to do a lot of work so that people live - without work, we die.
I don't think I'll ever be able to describe to young people how much my world changed when I heard a second plane had hit the other tower.
huh? I'm not sure what in my comment history would make you think I support him.
I mean, at one point he did I expect
If he couldn't read he wouldn't need a teleprompter
The most likely reason Biden didn't do much with them was because legally, there isn't much to be done. The files we've seen aren't significant enough to secure convictions, and likely not even enough to secure indictments, and again - you're trying to prosecute crimes that happened decades ago, where the physical evidence is lacking and witness memory is spotty. The Epstein case was bungled in the 2000's, and we're still paying for it. 2/2
The alleged crimes (not alleged as in "may not have happened" but as in "what people are accused of doing") are over 20 years old, some over 30 years old. There are very few cooperating witnesses, including the victims, and many of the victims have credibility issues (a common problem with our system). It's not legal (or moral) for the government to release evidence publicly that serves no purpose but to harm someone's reputation - if they can't indict and convict, they can't release. 1/2
This is good! It's a really good sign that Georgia is able to do this. Even better would be defeating all 0 anti-lgbtq bills.
(and despite it being likely in my political favor I - and most reasonable people - still oppose it because I don't want a political system where I win regardless of democracy, I want a democracy where democratic principles are popular)
Ironically, the SAVE act likely stops more MAGA votes than non-MAGA votes.
And yet people will *still* find ways to blame the Democrats for this.
Who loses, though? The inventory's insured, the buildings insured, the company loses profits and the workers who worked there lose jobs. The company can survive a warehouse loss, can warehouse workers survive a few months without pay? If it's widespread enough, it just means everything gets more expensive. Just pull a Luigi - it's faster, more direct, and less harmful to workers.
Sure, so they'd file income taxes and get a few thousand for doing so. And their filing would be really easy. There's no legal requirement to file taxes but there's also no legal prohibition.
"needs" is quite narrow. You don't need privacy, you don't need food that tastes good or is varied, you don't need entertainment, you don't need education. All you need is ~2000 calories of rice and beans a day, 6 hours of sleep, and 16 hours of work.
Most people wouldn't get it in a lump sum, since it would just change tax calculation. Anybody working a W2 job wouldn't notice much. Current standard deduction is ~16k for single filers. Median marginal rate is 15%, so a relatively cost-neutral (actually progressive) change would be to change that to a $2,500 tax credit, which would benefit anybody below median at the cost of anybody above median.
The insanity pre-dates Trump, and will outlive him, but Trump focused it all in one direction. When he dies, they'll start moving in many directions again and be much less effective of a bloc.
Fascist regimes are, thankfully, are almost all cults of personality and they don't tend to survive the deaths of their leaders. There have been notable exceptions, but we're not quite at North Korea levels of danger.
The Dems have actually improved a lot, in my lifetime. It's been *really* hard though, because they've fought the Republicans every step of the way and been blamed for everything the Republicans do. The Republicans get treated like a natural obstacle, not responsible for its actions, while the Democrats are expected to be the only adults in the room.
In this video we can see her dancing to the left of the screen. This is because going wide right would've triggered Buffalo fans.
Okay, but do you think it has a better or worse chance than creating an entirely new UBI system? You're right that it would be tough to pass, but the comparison isn't "tax credit vs. nothing" but "tax credit vs. UBI". Doing nothing is still the most likely, but a tax credit would be much easier to pass through (and require less expansion of bureaucracy)
There are two different and related things here - our economic systems let us expand beyond the basic "everybody has to farm/hunt/forage to survive" and we've never had an economic system that didn't mean "we need people to contribute value to the system so that everybody can survive". The basic economy is "everybody farms/hunts/forages". Specialization let us do things like have some people make clothes because farmers could grow enough food to cover weavers' needs.
Do you think you'd rather work for minimum wage or be an enslaved person?
Okay, but that's the default state of the world for every living thing. There's no economic system where we don't need people to work - does that mean that everybody for all of history has been a slave?
Again, if they can't tell friend from foe, and simply treats everything like a foe because "it could be possible", are they *really* the people you want in charge of weapons? Any car driving past a military base *could* swerve into it and be packed with explosives. Does that mean that every car driving past a military base is a legitimate target for destruction?
What do you think slavery is?
Plus, it would have minimal impact on current revenues and outlays while providing an on-ramp to increasing it as the economy requires.
Because we didn't let them secede and then conquer them as a foreign nation, which meant we let them keep a bunch of their political structure and identity in place. We should've let them leave, then invaded and treated them as newly conquered territory.
But I thought Democrats never do anything and they're just as bad as Republicans? Aren't both sides the problem?
And it's so clear when he does too, because his rambling gets even more incoherent.
I don't think I ever said "people should have to work every minute of their life to survive". Also, we're absolutely not in a technological stall - today's world looks meaningfully different from 10,20, and 40 years ago. There are certainly failures of the economic system we have, but there's no economic system that doesn't include "work or die" at some basic level.
Yup - that's why we have economic systems where we need people to not only work for themselves, but we need everybody who can work to work even harder to support people who can't work, otherwise they die. Whether it's capitalism with welfare and charity, socialism, feudalism, or anything else, we still need a lot of people to do a lot of work so that people live - without work, we die.
I don't think I'll ever be able to describe to young people how much my world changed when I heard a second plane had hit the other tower.
huh? I'm not sure what in my comment history would make you think I support him.
I mean, at one point he did I expect
If he couldn't read he wouldn't need a teleprompter
The most likely reason Biden didn't do much with them was because legally, there isn't much to be done. The files we've seen aren't significant enough to secure convictions, and likely not even enough to secure indictments, and again - you're trying to prosecute crimes that happened decades ago, where the physical evidence is lacking and witness memory is spotty. The Epstein case was bungled in the 2000's, and we're still paying for it. 2/2
The alleged crimes (not alleged as in "may not have happened" but as in "what people are accused of doing") are over 20 years old, some over 30 years old. There are very few cooperating witnesses, including the victims, and many of the victims have credibility issues (a common problem with our system). It's not legal (or moral) for the government to release evidence publicly that serves no purpose but to harm someone's reputation - if they can't indict and convict, they can't release. 1/2
This is good! It's a really good sign that Georgia is able to do this. Even better would be defeating all 0 anti-lgbtq bills.
(and despite it being likely in my political favor I - and most reasonable people - still oppose it because I don't want a political system where I win regardless of democracy, I want a democracy where democratic principles are popular)
Ironically, the SAVE act likely stops more MAGA votes than non-MAGA votes.
And yet people will *still* find ways to blame the Democrats for this.
Who loses, though? The inventory's insured, the buildings insured, the company loses profits and the workers who worked there lose jobs. The company can survive a warehouse loss, can warehouse workers survive a few months without pay? If it's widespread enough, it just means everything gets more expensive. Just pull a Luigi - it's faster, more direct, and less harmful to workers.
Sure, so they'd file income taxes and get a few thousand for doing so. And their filing would be really easy. There's no legal requirement to file taxes but there's also no legal prohibition.
"needs" is quite narrow. You don't need privacy, you don't need food that tastes good or is varied, you don't need entertainment, you don't need education. All you need is ~2000 calories of rice and beans a day, 6 hours of sleep, and 16 hours of work.
Most people wouldn't get it in a lump sum, since it would just change tax calculation. Anybody working a W2 job wouldn't notice much. Current standard deduction is ~16k for single filers. Median marginal rate is 15%, so a relatively cost-neutral (actually progressive) change would be to change that to a $2,500 tax credit, which would benefit anybody below median at the cost of anybody above median.
The insanity pre-dates Trump, and will outlive him, but Trump focused it all in one direction. When he dies, they'll start moving in many directions again and be much less effective of a bloc.
Fascist regimes are, thankfully, are almost all cults of personality and they don't tend to survive the deaths of their leaders. There have been notable exceptions, but we're not quite at North Korea levels of danger.
The Dems have actually improved a lot, in my lifetime. It's been *really* hard though, because they've fought the Republicans every step of the way and been blamed for everything the Republicans do. The Republicans get treated like a natural obstacle, not responsible for its actions, while the Democrats are expected to be the only adults in the room.
In this video we can see her dancing to the left of the screen. This is because going wide right would've triggered Buffalo fans.
Okay, but do you think it has a better or worse chance than creating an entirely new UBI system? You're right that it would be tough to pass, but the comparison isn't "tax credit vs. nothing" but "tax credit vs. UBI". Doing nothing is still the most likely, but a tax credit would be much easier to pass through (and require less expansion of bureaucracy)
There are two different and related things here - our economic systems let us expand beyond the basic "everybody has to farm/hunt/forage to survive" and we've never had an economic system that didn't mean "we need people to contribute value to the system so that everybody can survive".
The basic economy is "everybody farms/hunts/forages". Specialization let us do things like have some people make clothes because farmers could grow enough food to cover weavers' needs.
Do you think you'd rather work for minimum wage or be an enslaved person?
Okay, but that's the default state of the world for every living thing. There's no economic system where we don't need people to work - does that mean that everybody for all of history has been a slave?
Again, if they can't tell friend from foe, and simply treats everything like a foe because "it could be possible", are they *really* the people you want in charge of weapons? Any car driving past a military base *could* swerve into it and be packed with explosives. Does that mean that every car driving past a military base is a legitimate target for destruction?
What do you think slavery is?
Plus, it would have minimal impact on current revenues and outlays while providing an on-ramp to increasing it as the economy requires.