But can you really prove it? Unless the group of people you are trying to exhume are undoubtedly the primary cause of your troubles, you must place the blame on underlying problems within society.
Perhaps you should just know better than to assume people would be that logical about it. The immigration issue is largely an emotional issue and people hardly know the facts.
Why do you think they're coming into your country in the first place? Did it ever occur to you that, maybe, the place they're coming from was terrible? What if you lived in a place where you didn't feel safe, where your family didn't feel safe? Would you not want to leave for greener pastures?
You and I can agree on that all we want. That yes we would seek out greener pastures. But that argument doesn't carry any weight with most people against immigration. Ideally it should. It would be nice if we could all just say, yes, they're just seeking out better opportunities for themselves so we should let them into our country as much as they want.
I live in the US and I don't ever want to see our borders closed. Immigration is inevitable, whether it be illegal or legitimate, and I don't think people really understand that. It doesn't matter how much money you invest into putting 30 meter fences along the border, people are still going to get in, whether you like it or not.
I agree that immigration is inevitable. But that doesn't mean it still needs to be heavily regulated. But you're right. Building walls is hardly a solution. The reason more security along the border appeals to so many people is because a wall with security guards and guns, those are tangible things. They are things people look at and see an immediate result of their taxpayer money.
The long term more permanent solution to this problem is one that doesn't promise immediate results. So when politicians and policy makers talk about immigration reform, people want immediate solutions to the problem now. A bigger wall in their minds would be that immediate solution. Our own economic policies though are what is really making most immigrants come over to the U.S. to work. Even to an extent our foreign trade policies.
Adjusting those policies is what really helps to alleviate these issues but they take a long time to implement and a longer time before people start seeing results from them. And they are also usually politically unpopular.
Obviously. The problem is however that it's not "hmm, our schools aren't doing too well. Could it be that there is one, or several, fundamental flaws in how the current system is structured?", but rather "hmm, our school aren't doing too well. How about we give you 10 million extra?".
I do understand your point. It's not just a matter of throwing money at the problem, but really figuring out the underlying issue that is causing a myriad of problems. Ultimately though the solution would probably still involve funding somewhere along the line. Whether that mean cutting funds or adding to them. But governments do tend to waste money with blanket solutions that involve simply using more money, yes.
Whether this is a marketing problem from our parties, or our media only focusing on numbers, or something else, I don't know. But it feels weird when politics only seems to be about adjusting numbers here and there. Though come to think of it, it's not that surprising. The only reason our "right" parties defeated the "left" last election is because they emulated the left so well they basically took over their entire program.
While politicians quote numbers and figures a lot, they really don't understand the true numbers behind solutions. They'll make a flimsy case using some random statistics and then decide on a policy more on a political basis rather than a mathematical solution. Then it's really up to the administrators to crunch the numbers.
What I'm saying is, and perhaps this is a natial difference, politicians often get very nitty-gritty. Should we lower that tax by 1%, should we increase that tax by 2%, should we give funds to that type of school, should this policy make it so bus drivers have to have breaks every 2 hours or whatever. When pressed about why, we may get some nebulous answer about how Sweden is suppoesd to be a land of knowledge to make us competitive in the future.
Take our schools. We have a problem here with quality dropping steadily in the last 10 years (seems like everyone has), but instead of saying "why is there a problem" they say "how much money do we need to fix it?"
I suppose I understand. But money, at least indirectly is pretty much the only way government can solve anything. I mean, to take just about any idea and implement it into policy requires money. So even if some deeper soul searching takes place and a government gets to the heart of the matter as to why a thing is the way it is, to fix that problem is still likely to cost money. And government's money all comes from taxes. I do sense what you're getting at, though.
I find that politicians, debaters and similar never talk about the deeper underlying concepts of where they want society to head or how to get there, it's all tax number-crunching, but is this the plan?
Politicians and debaters? I'm a bit confused. Like are you saying that government should be outlining how society should be and their plan to get there? Personally, I find that's mostly all politicians do. They speak in rhetoric and idealism to the point where nothing makes sense to me. Few politicians are ever more pragmatic and speak more of how things really are. When they're thinking in numbers and working with empirical facts, this to me is when they're at their best.
I mean, you can't be so pragmatic though as to be nihilistic. Some of us HAS to start to ask, shouldn't things be this way or that way. But obviously things are being shaped by ideals. I just don't think an ideal should be the definitive model for how to proceed in society. But I'm not sure I understood your point here anyway so I best just not get too deep into it until I think I understand further.
Faced with the everpresent problem of dooming a certain percent of the population to be poor no matter how much we advance technologically, is education the only way we see out of it?
Well, no I guess not but you gotta admit education is a pretty damn good solvent. And even if you don't feel education is gonna solve everything, you still gotta admit there is a lot of the world that still needs way more education before you can seriously ask if there's a better way to solve things like poverty and what not.
Minimum wage in the U.S is relative to the state. Washington state, my state, has the the highest minimum wage at $8.55 an hour. There is also a federal minimum wage at around $7.00.
I'm not going to complain about my state's minimum wage; it's at a preferable level for me.
Yeah, Washington is pretty sweet. You're damn lucky to live there. I wanna get my Master's there.
Pension initially begun as a system that took care of those that were still alive, but couldn't work any longer. From this initial purpose it's evolved into a sort of "reward". Nowadays a large portion of people live far beyond 65 and lead active lives until well beyond 70 and 80.
The problem is that in most western countries the amount of pensioners is increasing while the amount of working age people is decreasing. This is creating a huge strain on governments' budgets and societies.
As such, increasing the retirement age will be necessary.
Another possible solution is to make social security a means tested thing. You know, maybe only give money to people who really need it? But that's an extremely unpopular idea here too. Cause everyone that works pays into social security. So by the time they retire, even if they planned out their own retirement, they want to start getting that money back cause it's their money.
I can understand this and I can't. I mean, I'm not so certain I'll be smart enough to have my retirement plan all figured out. But I may have to anyway because by the time I'm old enough to have social security I there may not be anything left in the fund.
Sadly my country(Australia) is run by Union loving morons who piss money up the wall, suck the life out of government assets(and then sell them off to make their budget look good) and waste 40billion dollars on a Broadband network that does not even have a proper business case to encourage investment from the major telecommunication companies. Not to mention the fact they want it to run to every corner of the country where 90% of Australians live around capital cities and those who live outside cities would have little use for such a system.
Are you referring to like internet as a public utility? That's becoming a greater issue here in the U.S. where people are wondering if the government should begin to provide the internet the way it does public television and radio and have us pay for it with our taxes. I see both good things and bad things about that.
And yet we have a lack of trained nurses and doctors and a public health system that is very underfunded, we have a pathetic education system that is currently having millions pumped into it with little tangible benefit to the students (i know this because i work on the building projects they have funded).
It's sad how inaccessible health care is becoming to so many people. And the thing about nurses, it's very hard to get into nursing schools. The reason why is because there aren't a lot of nursing instructors because there isn't a lot of money in being a nurse instructor at a college. If you have nursing skills you're more likely just to be a nurse, not a nurse educator. And thus colleges have to make nursing applicants be competitive with each other even though so many people who don't make it into nursing school would have easily gone on to be great nurses.
Then you got doctors. Sure they make a lot of money, but they can only really say they do after they pay off their massive amounts of student debt. The average doctor here by the time he finishes medical school can easily have up to 200 thousand dollars of student debt. Crazy.
It angers me more that our liberal opposition leader has poor leadership traits and a stupid disagreement between the liberal party wound up with him replacing a very competent candidate for the last federal election.
I'm curious about this if you wouldn't mind explaining it more.
A high minimum wage is an absolute must. Whoever says otherwise either hasn't lived with an extremely tight budget (i.e., earning minimum wage), or has in the past but now thinks that "poor people are poor because they don't work hard".
I currently live on a very tight budget. I'm not making miminum wage, but I'm not making much more than it either. I'm not sure what you consider to be a high minimum wage. It's usually adjusted according to inflation and the current cost of living. Ideally, it should be higher than just what is the proportional increase I guess. It would be nice even if companies could file for specific minimum wages depending on what their own projected incomes were. Like if a company like Wal-Mart which makes record profits should have to pay a higher minimum wage than say a small locally owned business, that would be good. But these kinds of principles simply don't fly where I'm from.
Likewise, the tendency of the length of the work week (and of the entire working career) should be to go down, because, as with wages, there are always people desperate enough that they'll work themselves to death just to earn a wage. And if there are enough desperate people around, other people will have to start to work as hard as them if they want to have a job.
I'm sorry but I'm still confused on this point. Maybe what we COULD agree on is that people should still work as much as they want, but start getting overtime pay for fewer hours. So say, if you work more than 35 hours a week instead of 40 you start getting overtime pay. That's how it is in most European countries, isn't it?
But I don't see how it's the fault of the desperate wage earner that other people should have to start working so hard as well. The desperate people aren't raising the bar. They're just filling a labor void. I think the situation is different across the world though and really depends on how you look at it.
In the U.S. for example, some people argue that illegal immigrants who work really hard and long hours are taking people's jobs away. Jobs like the ones in service industries. So if anything, those desperate wage earners here might make it harder in some ways to find work, but they don't cause any of us to have to actually work harder. It's not like my boss would ever come up to me and be like, "Greg, why can't you work as hard as Paco over there who slaves all day keeping the bathrooms here clean?" I have a different sort of job than Paco though. But if I'm working the same job as that desperate wage earner, then the only thing I gotta work harder at is getting a better job than that guy. If I'm not working the same job, then there's really no problem.
That was the comparison I was making between minimum wage and weekly work hours. I think societies should always strive to go in the direction of higher minimum wages and fewer weekly work hours. This would be very easy with a better distribution of wealth, but of course you can't use that expression.....comrade.
I guess no argument here. Yes, society should strive to go in the direction of lots of things. Don't get me wrong. I'd love it if in the U.S. 35 hours counted for full time. I can't imagine how you'd reverse the clock on this though. Here we've been functioning on the 40 hour work week for a long time and companies are trying to cut costs everywhere now as it is. They try never to pay their workers overtime and making a 35 hour work week, they'd probably be unwilling to scale back hours of their operation just to save the overtime compensation.
It doesn't seem we're really in disagreement over things here. You're just seem to be trying more to say how things should be when I'm just saying I think this is how things actually are.
Um, yes it should. You can't force people not to work. Unless there's just no work to do. Like at my job sometimes there are hours available for overtime. But if there is none, I can't just make myself come into work even if there's no work to do or my shift is already covered.
But even aside from my one job, I can go ahead and work other jobs too if I want. And that's the way it should be. Well, that's the way it is.
If some people are willing to work a lot, and are completely free to do so, then after a while it will be expected of everyone else (if you want a job, that is),
I'm confused. You're saying if people are free to work, then it will be expected of everyone else. But then you say if I want a job, that is. So then what's the problem? If that's only the situation when I actually want a job, then that's a good thing.
and that's how we got into the situation we're in (where you have to work your arse off just to make a decent living).
I'm not sure I see the connection you're making here. Like are you just referring to how many hours a person has to work a week until they are considered full time employees with full time benefits? Cause then I could see what you're getting at. Cause in the U.S. that is how many hours you need to work to be considered full time and you don't get the same benefits if you work less than that. And as things stand now, most companies would never consider, say, 35 hours a week to be full time in the U.S.
Why do you think there's a minimum wage? It's so that desperate people (who are willing to work for next to nothing, because it's better than nothing) don't drag the wages to sub-human levels.
Right. So minimum wage is a good thing. It's protecting people to an extent by guaranteeing they can't earn less than a certain amount. If you want to argue that the minimum wage is too low, then yeah I'd agree with that. But the only alternative to a minimum wage is none at all. I mean, you can increase the minimum wage but it will still be a minimum wage.
Societies as a whole should be progressing towards more leisure time, not more work time.
Well it should all be about choice. If the individual wants to work more then they should be able to. But it would also be nice to feel you don't have to work 40+ hours a week just to make ends meet.
Funny how this has evolved. I don't know under which circumstances the age of 65 was decided upon inthe US, but over here the retirement age was set to 65 in a time when people rarely lived beyond 70. So the government figured they could sponsor people's pension until they died. And nowadays people often quit before 65 and live until they're 80... :rolleyes:
I think it was a combination of life expectancy science and what the current population projections were at the time. They sure didn't count on the baby boom after the war though.
And the thing about being 65 at least here anyway is that a lot of people still want to work at that age. Either they want to or still can't afford to retire.
Indeed. There's a way to calculate mathematically an optimal or near optimal solution to a specific problem. The problem is that there's a long list of interconnected problems, and political reality dictates that the optimal solution is often not possible to implement.
The best way for a politician in the U.S. to commit political suicide is to talk about messing with social security. Raise the retirement age two years? Blasphemy! Even though today's 65 year old is much healthier than a 65 year old was back in the 1940's. This is why I'm all for term limits on Senators and House members. If they are limited to serve say only three or four terms, then during their last term they can enjoy doing what is smart and not just what is popular. What is popular is never what's smart.
Indeed! I think USA shouldn't be the only country to pay the costs of space programs, but with ESA and Japanese, Indian and Chinese equivalents, the progress looks like US citizens won't be the only ones paying the price.
Space exploration is more than a useless hobby. A huge array of practical solutions came from it. And once a cheap enough way to reach orbit is invented, there's practically limitless sources of metals and almost all other resources (well, besides oil perhaps) on moons and planets in our solar system and beyond. Not to mention understanding other planets and moons brings us genuine understanding of our own.
If we understand the processes that made Venus -- not called without a reason Earth's "twin planet" -- the overheated hellhole that it is today, we can battle global warming much more efficiently.
Or what about the fact that there may be an entire ocean underneath the frozen surface of Europa? Or also, we've discovered that life can thrive in the harshest environments. Like snottites that exist in caves with an atmosphere PH level of 5. Or the tubeworms in the deep ocean that have entire colonies around volcanic vents. Just learning about that stuff we can expand our parameters for the search for life in our own solar system. They've even found flourishing microorganism in the tiny air bubbles of ice caves. I mean, this stuff matters. It's sad that just enough people in government don't think so though.
Eh, don't get me talking about astronomy and stuff like that. I'll get way off topic.
Indeed. The governments support several badly functioning companies to "protect the jobs", while in the long run letting the inefficient ones go bankrupt is best. In short term there might be less jobs available, but in the long term there will be new jobs in better companies.
Again, that's politics getting in the way of the smartest solution. But your officials there also don't want to risk their political careers by snubbing out a bunch of jobs. Even if it's what's best for the country later on. I mean, no one wants to pay the price for anything. We know how to fix so many things. And it's not just the politicians' faults for refusing to take the risks but everyone's fault for being unwilling to pay the price now.
Also in retrospect, it would've been the cheapest option to not let the first bank fail (Bear Sterns). Letting the first one to fail caused other more healthy players troubles and eventually led the US government in a situation where it had to bail more banks out. If they had bailed Bear Sterns out, probably more would have been in troubles as well, but much less as the financial market itself would've taken care of the more healthy players.
I will never fully comprehend the financial meltdown of 2008. All I'm certain of is that it's scary stuff how precarious the world economy really is.
Of course sales tax is a huge income for governments. In Finland it's as large as all forms of income tax combined. However, I wouldn't really say it's regressive, because rich people tend to buy more expensive things. It's a difference whether you pay 19 cents of VAT on a 1 euro can of cola or 9,350 euros on a 50,000 euro car.
In the U.S. anyway it's considered a regressive tax but then we have larger gaps between socioeconomic classes than Finland does. Sales taxes here are also at the discretion of states. So some areas in the U.S. don't even have a sales tax. But I also say it's regressive because if a family with an income of 20,000 a year is paying a sales tax all year long on the groceries they are buying, overall the amount paid in taxes is still affecting them more than the family that buys the same amount of groceries but earns 150,000 a year. Like, there's no proportional difference of taxes paid for goods, yet income taxes are determined more on how much money is made. But even then only up to a certain point. And beyond a certain amount the amount of tax paid plateaus.
Actually such a system is barely used anywhere. Most European countries have a progressive tax system, but a flat rate tax with a deduction as I detailed would be the best alternative according to many theorists and common sense.
The solutions to many problems from taxes to social security are all mathematical. Mathematically we already know how to fix our social security system. What prevents implementing the number solution though is sheer politics.
An opposite example would be scientific breakthroughs -- they benefit more than the people inventing them -- which is why governments tend to pay subsidies, to reward companies for these beneficial third party effects.
Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Scientific research should be awarded especially if people are benefiting from it. But practicality to any kind of research takes time to reveal and is often lost on the public anyway. As is shown by what is kind of happening to the space program in the 21st century. I think it's something that's still worthwhile. And in the U.S. NASA used up at most like two percent of the annual budget. But to most people this cost was still wholly unjustified for what we got out of it.
You're right, I personally wouldn't be one to badmouth bureaucracies, since I think it is the most effective way to run government administrations. It's mostly ignorance, people in general don't necessarily even know what bureaucracy is.
Well to a lot of people government is just government. Period. But to people with such a simple minded view I can only ask, what's the alternative?
While that all is true, the point I tried to make with Alitalia is that right now there are far more airlines than is needed. There is overabundance of airlines compared to the passengers. This has led airfares down so low, that many of the world's airlines operate on a net loss.
Capitalism works through creative destruction: the least effective and worst entities go bankrupt. So my criticism was mainly about governments not letting these ineffective players go bankrupt, but instead subsidize them heavily on taxpayer money.
There are subsidized airlines? Gosh I never even realized that. I mean, we have a lot of subsidized industries in the U.S. and I remember when Delta Airlines successfully filed for bankruptcy. But I still wouldn't think it'd be an industry that would ever need subsidizing, even despite most airlines' pathetic attempts at reducing their costs and maximizing profits.
Yeah places like in the EU have way too much redtaping and regulation of their industries. The governments protect industries that actually could afford to fail.
It's more true in the EU in general :P. I think US has handled this sector much better than the Europeans. It's mostly historical reasons that led to this, but there's little need to recite them.
The U.S. though still suffers plenty of disadvantages as a result of its success in capitalism and privatization. Many would probably argue with that though. But I do think we're too afraid of socialistic policies. And when we do seem to put it into practice it's done so in the most botched up way possible. Like with all the bank bailouts back in 2008.
It's not the rich taxation has the biggest effects on. It's upper middle class of income. But as I already said, actually poor people should be taxed less. As an example, everyone could earn 1,350 tax-free, and then they paid 30% of the income above that. In this example, someone earning 2,000 a month would pay 195 as taxes (10% of their income). Then someone earning 5,000 a month pays 1,095 (21,9% of their income). And eventually someone earning 1,000,000 would pay 299,595 (29,6%).
You're also just talking about income taxes. There are regressive taxes against the poor as well such as sales taxes. Many people don't even realize that they easily sometimes pay more each year in sales taxes than income taxes. Taxes on things like food and gas should be much lower while luxury items should have a way higher tax on them. Yep. I'm talking about a luxury tax. I mean, it's a good way to generate income and people who are rich enough expect a sales tax to be paid on that new yacht anyway. So just tack on a bit more of a luxury item tax and that's an easy source of income to the state.
A flat tax rate system can be turned into a dynamic progressive model by introducing a number of money a person can earn before it begins to be taxed. In this example it was 1,350, which resulted in a progressive model.
Don't many European countries enjoy this kind of a system? I know this would never happen in the U.S. Sadly.
When an external body decides what someone needs and doesn't need, there's a problem. Who is to say who needs what?
While this is mostly true, I'm not against all forms of paternalism. I think sometimes it's good for a government to tell its people what it needs and what it shouldn't do. Why? Because people are generally ignorant and will consume or borrow anything. I mean, the U.S. government started creating new laws that made borrowing money for people more difficult. This is a good thing. Cause lots of people want loans for things they can't really afford. So the government stepped in and said, "No, sorry, you can't buy EVERYTHING on credit." Now all the government has to do is follow its own example and stop increasing our national debt by spending on credit.
I distrust governments because at the end of the day their heads are politicians.
There's nothing wrong with distrusting government. I only wished people understood a little bit more about government when they badmouth bureaucracies since that is one of the only functioning parts of government. The way I see it is in government you got the politics, law, and administration. The latter is the bureaucracy that actually puts government into practice and gets things done. That's all I was saying on that. I've constantly had to defend bureaucracy in my political science classes when a bunch of self-righteous idealistic classmates would grandstand on how eeeevil bureaucracy is. I ain't saying it's infallible, but bureaucracy would be doing a lot better if it wasn't so constantly hindered by politics.
Voters don't necessarily vote based on rational opinions.
That's somewhat of an understatement. The average voter is highly uninformed. But by voter here I just mean all who are eligible to vote. I guess I should give more credit to those who actually do vote. But in U.S. politics anyway there is a cycle that takes place between politicians and voter demographics. That is, politicians do not try to appeal to many age groups because they know they're not going to go out and vote anyway. And say, younger voters do not vote because they feel the politicians aren't out there representing them.
I'm cynical about voting anyway. The voting that matters most here anyway is local elections and people hardly get involved in those but that's where people's vote counts the most. Our daily lives in the U.S. are far more affected each day by local politics than what is happening on the national level.
Big lines are drawn by the politicians, and executed in practice by bureaucrats. I have nothing against bureaucrats, who are almost always highly skilled professionals.
This highly depends on the situation. Many government jobs and services are outsourced to private companies. Some municipalities like to pool together their own money and pay private companies to either take out their garbage each weak or plow their snow. This practice is in opposition with regionalism where instead of an entire region having the same services paid for by all taxpayers regardless of income with equal services received, communities form their own tiny enclaves of government that they all pay into and basically shop around for their services that otherwise would have been provided by the government.
How about an airline owned and run by the government? One that gets infinite money from the owning government and runs on net loss? Maybe not (see Alitalia, owned largely by the Italian government).
Keep in mind though that the commercial airline industry is already one of the most heavily regulated industries in the world. Taxpayers have little tolerance for planes falling out of the sky. So in some respects the government does control that industry with all its heavy regulations. And they do a good job of it too. Flying these days is safer than ever, albeit still a shitty experience otherwise. LOL
I just mean that I distrust the government to be any more effective than a private corporation in the same sector. In fact, governments are almost always less effective than privately run corporations.
I would agree with this. At least to the extent that a lack of privitization in an industry stifles competition and innovation. Now I've never lived in a European country myself, but I have talked with several Europeans who loathe many of the public sector industries and wonder why they're not in the hands of private companies. This is even becoming increasingly true in the education business. But despite the U.S. having on average better higher education than other countries, I still think the other countries got it pretty sweet with the tax-payer funded higher education. I say this because college in the U.S. is becoming increasingly expensive and even harder to get grants and loans for. Thus again making a thing only as good as one has access to it. It's similar to the health care system in the U.S. Yeah we got awesome health care industries here, but if you don't even have access to it, how good can it be? And in that case you'd be just fine with going to some government funded clinic to get whatever you could out of it.
As such, I personally think that government should be limited to doing duties that aren't possible to produce any better by a private corporation. That does include public schools IMO. Not necessarily airlines (as one example).
I'm sure this sentiment is definitely more true over there in Finland. But hey, at least you guys got Nokia. :happy:
So what you're saying is, is that people think they will have to go to another doctor to get free treatment? Is that what will happen? Or will it be like here (Belgium) where you pay the doctor like 25 euros and he gets the rest payed by the government?
Tax issues aside, they're afraid that the government will dictate what doctors they are allowed to have access to. Which is what private insurance companies do anyway.
I'm not american (see my location), and I don't trust any government :P.
You're crazy. I love government. I just hate politics and politicians. But actual government in practice consists of trained bureaucrats who are highly skilled and work in the adverse environment that is politics. I myself am training to become a bureaucrat and I love what government is capable of.
I've never understood the fuss around Obama neither, why is everyone against affordable health care? Any American who would like to explain that to me?
I can attempt to answer that.
There is an argument really headed by conservatives that government paid health care would limit a person's choice in health providers. This is a stupid argument for a couple of reasons.
For one thing, many Americans don't even have access to preventative health care. So why would anyone be picky about what doctor they saw if it was just for a routine medical check up? Or say you needed to go to a gastro-intestinal doctor because you had a bad ulcer in your stomach. How picky are you really going to be about who you see to treat that infliction? But people against government funded health care have successfully scared people into the idea that if they choose this form of heath care, then they can't decide which doctors to go to.
This is doubly stupid because even private insurance companies will only allow you to go to specific doctors who are under their system anyway. So no matter what insurance you go with, your choices are limited based on what your insurance is willing to send you to. But basically people may have a family practitioner and that is only their doctor because years ago that's where their insurance companies said it was okay to go. But people think with government funded insurance you're gonna be sent to some dank ghetto clinic with poor lighting in the basement of some building. But gosh, even if that WAS the case, is that still not better than nothing? If the government is willing to let me go to a clinic for free and get some preventative care done, is that not better than worrying about a specific doctor later when I have some acute illness that could have been prevented?
I find it especially funny when Conservatives ask government to get "out of their lives" but, in reality, if "Big Brother" wasn't there to regulate the things that protected them, they'd be begging for government involvement.
If you want to equate conservatives with Republicans basically which is fair to do, I learned in public admin classes that it's a statistical fact that overall Republican presidents have created more new agencies than the Democrats. These agencies aren't free. They cost tax dollars to operate. And it's a simple fact that Republicans expanded government way more than their opposition ever has.
@Veggie50: actually, the population of developed/'comfortable' societies has plateaued and has even started to decline a bit; on the other hand, populations of 3rd world countries continue to grow unchecked. I think it's safe to assume that if all countries had the same level of comfort, their populations would follow the same trend.
This is absolutely true. So much in fact that many European countries are concerned about having a labor crises in the next 25 years if not sooner. But yeah, the correlation between affluency and birthrate is very high. Poor people just love making babies more than wealthier people. I've always found that interesting.
You and I can agree on that all we want. That yes we would seek out greener pastures. But that argument doesn't carry any weight with most people against immigration. Ideally it should. It would be nice if we could all just say, yes, they're just seeking out better opportunities for themselves so we should let them into our country as much as they want.
I agree that immigration is inevitable. But that doesn't mean it still needs to be heavily regulated. But you're right. Building walls is hardly a solution. The reason more security along the border appeals to so many people is because a wall with security guards and guns, those are tangible things. They are things people look at and see an immediate result of their taxpayer money.
The long term more permanent solution to this problem is one that doesn't promise immediate results. So when politicians and policy makers talk about immigration reform, people want immediate solutions to the problem now. A bigger wall in their minds would be that immediate solution. Our own economic policies though are what is really making most immigrants come over to the U.S. to work. Even to an extent our foreign trade policies.
Adjusting those policies is what really helps to alleviate these issues but they take a long time to implement and a longer time before people start seeing results from them. And they are also usually politically unpopular.
Siaynoq's Playthroughs
While politicians quote numbers and figures a lot, they really don't understand the true numbers behind solutions. They'll make a flimsy case using some random statistics and then decide on a policy more on a political basis rather than a mathematical solution. Then it's really up to the administrators to crunch the numbers.
Siaynoq's Playthroughs
Siaynoq's Playthroughs
I mean, you can't be so pragmatic though as to be nihilistic. Some of us HAS to start to ask, shouldn't things be this way or that way. But obviously things are being shaped by ideals. I just don't think an ideal should be the definitive model for how to proceed in society. But I'm not sure I understood your point here anyway so I best just not get too deep into it until I think I understand further.
Well, no I guess not but you gotta admit education is a pretty damn good solvent. And even if you don't feel education is gonna solve everything, you still gotta admit there is a lot of the world that still needs way more education before you can seriously ask if there's a better way to solve things like poverty and what not.
Yeah, Washington is pretty sweet. You're damn lucky to live there. I wanna get my Master's there.
Siaynoq's Playthroughs
Siaynoq's Playthroughs
I can understand this and I can't. I mean, I'm not so certain I'll be smart enough to have my retirement plan all figured out. But I may have to anyway because by the time I'm old enough to have social security I there may not be anything left in the fund.
Are you referring to like internet as a public utility? That's becoming a greater issue here in the U.S. where people are wondering if the government should begin to provide the internet the way it does public television and radio and have us pay for it with our taxes. I see both good things and bad things about that.
It's sad how inaccessible health care is becoming to so many people. And the thing about nurses, it's very hard to get into nursing schools. The reason why is because there aren't a lot of nursing instructors because there isn't a lot of money in being a nurse instructor at a college. If you have nursing skills you're more likely just to be a nurse, not a nurse educator. And thus colleges have to make nursing applicants be competitive with each other even though so many people who don't make it into nursing school would have easily gone on to be great nurses.
Then you got doctors. Sure they make a lot of money, but they can only really say they do after they pay off their massive amounts of student debt. The average doctor here by the time he finishes medical school can easily have up to 200 thousand dollars of student debt. Crazy.
I'm curious about this if you wouldn't mind explaining it more.
I currently live on a very tight budget. I'm not making miminum wage, but I'm not making much more than it either. I'm not sure what you consider to be a high minimum wage. It's usually adjusted according to inflation and the current cost of living. Ideally, it should be higher than just what is the proportional increase I guess. It would be nice even if companies could file for specific minimum wages depending on what their own projected incomes were. Like if a company like Wal-Mart which makes record profits should have to pay a higher minimum wage than say a small locally owned business, that would be good. But these kinds of principles simply don't fly where I'm from.
Siaynoq's Playthroughs
I would assume it also only goes up in Portugal?
I'm sorry but I'm still confused on this point. Maybe what we COULD agree on is that people should still work as much as they want, but start getting overtime pay for fewer hours. So say, if you work more than 35 hours a week instead of 40 you start getting overtime pay. That's how it is in most European countries, isn't it?
But I don't see how it's the fault of the desperate wage earner that other people should have to start working so hard as well. The desperate people aren't raising the bar. They're just filling a labor void. I think the situation is different across the world though and really depends on how you look at it.
In the U.S. for example, some people argue that illegal immigrants who work really hard and long hours are taking people's jobs away. Jobs like the ones in service industries. So if anything, those desperate wage earners here might make it harder in some ways to find work, but they don't cause any of us to have to actually work harder. It's not like my boss would ever come up to me and be like, "Greg, why can't you work as hard as Paco over there who slaves all day keeping the bathrooms here clean?" I have a different sort of job than Paco though. But if I'm working the same job as that desperate wage earner, then the only thing I gotta work harder at is getting a better job than that guy. If I'm not working the same job, then there's really no problem.
I guess no argument here. Yes, society should strive to go in the direction of lots of things. Don't get me wrong. I'd love it if in the U.S. 35 hours counted for full time. I can't imagine how you'd reverse the clock on this though. Here we've been functioning on the 40 hour work week for a long time and companies are trying to cut costs everywhere now as it is. They try never to pay their workers overtime and making a 35 hour work week, they'd probably be unwilling to scale back hours of their operation just to save the overtime compensation.
It doesn't seem we're really in disagreement over things here. You're just seem to be trying more to say how things should be when I'm just saying I think this is how things actually are.
Siaynoq's Playthroughs
But even aside from my one job, I can go ahead and work other jobs too if I want. And that's the way it should be. Well, that's the way it is.
I'm confused. You're saying if people are free to work, then it will be expected of everyone else. But then you say if I want a job, that is. So then what's the problem? If that's only the situation when I actually want a job, then that's a good thing.
I'm not sure I see the connection you're making here. Like are you just referring to how many hours a person has to work a week until they are considered full time employees with full time benefits? Cause then I could see what you're getting at. Cause in the U.S. that is how many hours you need to work to be considered full time and you don't get the same benefits if you work less than that. And as things stand now, most companies would never consider, say, 35 hours a week to be full time in the U.S.
Right. So minimum wage is a good thing. It's protecting people to an extent by guaranteeing they can't earn less than a certain amount. If you want to argue that the minimum wage is too low, then yeah I'd agree with that. But the only alternative to a minimum wage is none at all. I mean, you can increase the minimum wage but it will still be a minimum wage.
Siaynoq's Playthroughs
Siaynoq's Playthroughs
And the thing about being 65 at least here anyway is that a lot of people still want to work at that age. Either they want to or still can't afford to retire.
Siaynoq's Playthroughs
Or what about the fact that there may be an entire ocean underneath the frozen surface of Europa? Or also, we've discovered that life can thrive in the harshest environments. Like snottites that exist in caves with an atmosphere PH level of 5. Or the tubeworms in the deep ocean that have entire colonies around volcanic vents. Just learning about that stuff we can expand our parameters for the search for life in our own solar system. They've even found flourishing microorganism in the tiny air bubbles of ice caves. I mean, this stuff matters. It's sad that just enough people in government don't think so though.
Eh, don't get me talking about astronomy and stuff like that. I'll get way off topic.
Again, that's politics getting in the way of the smartest solution. But your officials there also don't want to risk their political careers by snubbing out a bunch of jobs. Even if it's what's best for the country later on. I mean, no one wants to pay the price for anything. We know how to fix so many things. And it's not just the politicians' faults for refusing to take the risks but everyone's fault for being unwilling to pay the price now.
I will never fully comprehend the financial meltdown of 2008. All I'm certain of is that it's scary stuff how precarious the world economy really is.
Siaynoq's Playthroughs
VAT?
The solutions to many problems from taxes to social security are all mathematical. Mathematically we already know how to fix our social security system. What prevents implementing the number solution though is sheer politics.
Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Scientific research should be awarded especially if people are benefiting from it. But practicality to any kind of research takes time to reveal and is often lost on the public anyway. As is shown by what is kind of happening to the space program in the 21st century. I think it's something that's still worthwhile. And in the U.S. NASA used up at most like two percent of the annual budget. But to most people this cost was still wholly unjustified for what we got out of it.
Well to a lot of people government is just government. Period. But to people with such a simple minded view I can only ask, what's the alternative?
There are subsidized airlines? Gosh I never even realized that. I mean, we have a lot of subsidized industries in the U.S. and I remember when Delta Airlines successfully filed for bankruptcy. But I still wouldn't think it'd be an industry that would ever need subsidizing, even despite most airlines' pathetic attempts at reducing their costs and maximizing profits.
Yeah places like in the EU have way too much redtaping and regulation of their industries. The governments protect industries that actually could afford to fail.
The U.S. though still suffers plenty of disadvantages as a result of its success in capitalism and privatization. Many would probably argue with that though. But I do think we're too afraid of socialistic policies. And when we do seem to put it into practice it's done so in the most botched up way possible. Like with all the bank bailouts back in 2008.
Siaynoq's Playthroughs
Don't many European countries enjoy this kind of a system? I know this would never happen in the U.S. Sadly.
While this is mostly true, I'm not against all forms of paternalism. I think sometimes it's good for a government to tell its people what it needs and what it shouldn't do. Why? Because people are generally ignorant and will consume or borrow anything. I mean, the U.S. government started creating new laws that made borrowing money for people more difficult. This is a good thing. Cause lots of people want loans for things they can't really afford. So the government stepped in and said, "No, sorry, you can't buy EVERYTHING on credit." Now all the government has to do is follow its own example and stop increasing our national debt by spending on credit.
There's nothing wrong with distrusting government. I only wished people understood a little bit more about government when they badmouth bureaucracies since that is one of the only functioning parts of government. The way I see it is in government you got the politics, law, and administration. The latter is the bureaucracy that actually puts government into practice and gets things done. That's all I was saying on that. I've constantly had to defend bureaucracy in my political science classes when a bunch of self-righteous idealistic classmates would grandstand on how eeeevil bureaucracy is. I ain't saying it's infallible, but bureaucracy would be doing a lot better if it wasn't so constantly hindered by politics.
That's somewhat of an understatement. The average voter is highly uninformed. But by voter here I just mean all who are eligible to vote. I guess I should give more credit to those who actually do vote. But in U.S. politics anyway there is a cycle that takes place between politicians and voter demographics. That is, politicians do not try to appeal to many age groups because they know they're not going to go out and vote anyway. And say, younger voters do not vote because they feel the politicians aren't out there representing them.
I'm cynical about voting anyway. The voting that matters most here anyway is local elections and people hardly get involved in those but that's where people's vote counts the most. Our daily lives in the U.S. are far more affected each day by local politics than what is happening on the national level.
Big lines are drawn by the politicians, and executed in practice by bureaucrats. I have nothing against bureaucrats, who are almost always highly skilled professionals.
This highly depends on the situation. Many government jobs and services are outsourced to private companies. Some municipalities like to pool together their own money and pay private companies to either take out their garbage each weak or plow their snow. This practice is in opposition with regionalism where instead of an entire region having the same services paid for by all taxpayers regardless of income with equal services received, communities form their own tiny enclaves of government that they all pay into and basically shop around for their services that otherwise would have been provided by the government.
LOL, yeah I don't think anyone would argue a private industry should head the Environmental Protection Agency.
Keep in mind though that the commercial airline industry is already one of the most heavily regulated industries in the world. Taxpayers have little tolerance for planes falling out of the sky. So in some respects the government does control that industry with all its heavy regulations. And they do a good job of it too. Flying these days is safer than ever, albeit still a shitty experience otherwise. LOL
I know, I know. I was kidding about that as well.
I would agree with this. At least to the extent that a lack of privitization in an industry stifles competition and innovation. Now I've never lived in a European country myself, but I have talked with several Europeans who loathe many of the public sector industries and wonder why they're not in the hands of private companies. This is even becoming increasingly true in the education business. But despite the U.S. having on average better higher education than other countries, I still think the other countries got it pretty sweet with the tax-payer funded higher education. I say this because college in the U.S. is becoming increasingly expensive and even harder to get grants and loans for. Thus again making a thing only as good as one has access to it. It's similar to the health care system in the U.S. Yeah we got awesome health care industries here, but if you don't even have access to it, how good can it be? And in that case you'd be just fine with going to some government funded clinic to get whatever you could out of it.
I'm sure this sentiment is definitely more true over there in Finland. But hey, at least you guys got Nokia. :happy:
Siaynoq's Playthroughs
You're crazy. I love government. I just hate politics and politicians. But actual government in practice consists of trained bureaucrats who are highly skilled and work in the adverse environment that is politics. I myself am training to become a bureaucrat and I love what government is capable of.
All conspiracy theories aside, of course.
Siaynoq's Playthroughs
There is an argument really headed by conservatives that government paid health care would limit a person's choice in health providers. This is a stupid argument for a couple of reasons.
For one thing, many Americans don't even have access to preventative health care. So why would anyone be picky about what doctor they saw if it was just for a routine medical check up? Or say you needed to go to a gastro-intestinal doctor because you had a bad ulcer in your stomach. How picky are you really going to be about who you see to treat that infliction? But people against government funded health care have successfully scared people into the idea that if they choose this form of heath care, then they can't decide which doctors to go to.
This is doubly stupid because even private insurance companies will only allow you to go to specific doctors who are under their system anyway. So no matter what insurance you go with, your choices are limited based on what your insurance is willing to send you to. But basically people may have a family practitioner and that is only their doctor because years ago that's where their insurance companies said it was okay to go. But people think with government funded insurance you're gonna be sent to some dank ghetto clinic with poor lighting in the basement of some building. But gosh, even if that WAS the case, is that still not better than nothing? If the government is willing to let me go to a clinic for free and get some preventative care done, is that not better than worrying about a specific doctor later when I have some acute illness that could have been prevented?
If you want to equate conservatives with Republicans basically which is fair to do, I learned in public admin classes that it's a statistical fact that overall Republican presidents have created more new agencies than the Democrats. These agencies aren't free. They cost tax dollars to operate. And it's a simple fact that Republicans expanded government way more than their opposition ever has.
This is absolutely true. So much in fact that many European countries are concerned about having a labor crises in the next 25 years if not sooner. But yeah, the correlation between affluency and birthrate is very high. Poor people just love making babies more than wealthier people. I've always found that interesting.
Siaynoq's Playthroughs