If my confusion confuses you, no wonder communication has broken downOriginally Posted by Dreadnaught
If my confusion confuses you, no wonder communication has broken down
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
But the programs do benefit them, you're forgetting about trickle-up effects resulting from the security of the middle class. (the poor are shafted in all realities, no need to waste our time with them)
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
I was saying "right back at ya".
Which I was addressing? Or did you meant to criticize simply posting a smilie?
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Presumably the poor get that same benefit, especially since most crimes get committed by the poor against the poor.
Hope is the denial of reality
http://www.barackobama.com/free-bump...TICKERS_SIGNUP
free obama bumper stickers. rather lame designs, especially the pseudospanish one.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...atic-herd.html
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...=sunday-review
A bit simplistic, but provides a good overview of the various voting blocs composing the two main parties. People who assume that one or both parties is composed of a homogenous group with identical interests should have a look.
Hope is the denial of reality
At least the CBO is a relatively transparent "bludgeoning" tool. They're required to name and footnote all sorts of things, from requests to assumptions, and models used for calculations.
I'm less concerned about the CBO than the main credit-rating agencies.....whose math and 'footnotes' are on the fuzzy side, yet are used as quasi-government approval for trillions of dollars of investments. They find their way into so many other "assumptions", including what's considered investment grade for mutual funds and pension funds, and what has government protection (PBGC, SIPC etc)
How can you call public Education, Health, and Infrastructure 'corrupters that benefit the few'....when those are the very things that helped the US, and every other developed nation, make so many advancements for so many people? Maybe you missed my point, or I wasn't clear about what "trickles down".Agree to disagree. The things you listed are great corrupters that promise heady things and often deliver stasis and benefits for the few. Hence, government as the ultimate trickle-down system.
The private sector business has different goals, and different constituents, than a government. Business seeks profits, including shareholder profits. Private equity and venture capital seeks the same, even if that means downsizing, closing, firing, voiding pension plans and health benefits. They view it as "creative destruction", and figure their profits will...eventually....trickle down. Somehow, somewhere.
That's some pretty magical thinking, when we know they also employ accountants and tax attorneys to find the tax loopholes, in order to pay between 0-15 % in federal taxes. Taxes that are meant to fund the military, national infrastructure projects, R & D in medicine-physics-aerospace, federal grants for university education or community development, etc. It becomes magical pink pony thinking, knowing that most of our K-12 Education is funded by local and state property taxes, by district lines, and property valuations.
Governments and public entities don't operate like private businesses, and for good reasons.
Do the footnotes of an analysis really matter when you can just blog "Hurf durf the CBO sez this" on your factcheck site? Of course not. This is why the CBO is actually often a tool of partisan warfare.
Hence, heavy skepticism toward politicians who manipulate or exploit CBO numbers for their own agenda. The mere fact that it can be "played" by both sides, might signal its true non-partisan nature.
Yes, we should have the greatest respect for the numbers which are the most openly manipulated.
And still they feel the need to make up numbers, if they can also have actual numbers they want generated by the CBO?
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
Very rarely are numbers just "made up", there's very different ways of generating numbers.And still they feel the need to make up numbers, if they can also have actual numbers they want generated by the CBO?
Quite frankly any numbers made from a static view of taxation are BS pure and simple. Changing tax rates changes people's behaviour - that's known and the reason why we have 'sin' taxes on certain products and zero taxes on others ... yet all of a sudden on trying to calculate the impact we pretend that changing rates won't change behaviour? Garbage and all we know it.
And the problem is that fallacy is not "neutral" in view of left-or-right, it results in a massive bias to the left.
It;s not that I disagree with you here, the point is (for me anyway) not about numbers in facts, because as you say you start with certain assumptions to get certain numbers. I'm more worried about the actual facts that are misrepresented, even simple ones.
To quote my earlier post:
So, if you ask me: Saying someone is wrong because he has different numbers than you? Meh. Saying someone is wrong because he has no source whatsoever for his numbers, or uses actual numbers but completely out of context? Yes, he is wrong in that case. And if you start misquoting people (quoting Obama who was quoting McCain, for example..), you're just being a dick.Yes, that. I.do realise that (esp long term) economic predictions are a useful tool, as long as you keep the conditions and rules it uses in mind, and not suited that well for fact checking.
Simple facts however, can be checked. Also, I do think that if you claim numbers like this you should have some source. So, fair enough that you disagree with the CBO, but a) don't claim it says things it doesn't say (lie) b) if you use different numbers, have some source, and don't pull them out of your ass (not a lie, but fantasy). Oh, and don't claim people or memos or bills say things they (specifically) don't say.
I mean, if Obama is the communist spawn of Satan they think he is, surely they don't need lies, right? Or is he actually not as bad as they say?
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
How different would the CBO's numbers be if they used dynamic models?
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
As Rand said, static modeling tends to support left-wing arguments calling for higher taxes to fund government programs. Dynamic modeling tends to support more right-wing ideas, like having lower, simpler and more stable tax rates that allow long-term revenue growth.
EG, the "Bush tax cuts" of the early 2000s cut dividend/capital gains taxes, which the leftists/the press deemed as "cuts for the rich". In fact, the aggregate share of tax revenues the US government got from "the rich" increased in the mid-2000s. A lot of factors went into that, including a real estate boom. But another important factor is more companies paid higher dividends, which led to more money flowing to the government. Rich people tend to own more shares in public companies than poor people, so the actual tax revenue increase from upper-income households went up.
Static revenue counts see the Bush tax cuts as a straight revenue loss, when the reality is far more complicated. Which doesn't mean I endorse the tax cuts per se, but I think some of the subsequent tax revenues don't support the static scoring methods.
http://news.yahoo.com/bob-woodward-b...151043612.html Obama doesn't come out looking good.
Hope is the denial of reality
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...g.html?hpid=z2
Lying about the context of his own mother's death: stay classy Barack.
Hope is the denial of reality
Didn't think you'd mind, I thought you said making up stories is okay as long as you are a politician with an agenda?
I would think they could find issues to lie about that don't reveal them as terrible human beings.
Hope is the denial of reality
because dumping millions into advertisements that blatantly lie to old people so you scare them into supporting you is what non-terrible human beings do
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
"We have the votes. F--- 'em,"
Yeah even in the UK I've seen online those Democrat videos lying to old people. One particularly pleasant one sticks in mind where an old lady in a wheelchair is thrown off a cliff by a stereotypical GOP WASP.because dumping millions into advertisements that blatantly lie to old people so you scare them into supporting you is what non-terrible human beings do
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
Speaking of Ryan actually ...
It's hilarious in how bad it is
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
I don't know if it was shown on TV or just made for YouTube but either way anyone who claims that one side is whiter than fresh snow while the other is blacker than pitch is either ignorant or worse. They're all at it.
It was meant as a local TV ad (digital age, ha) for a small number of markets. It also wasn't endorsed by any politicans. Fringe groups always put out crazy shit, this one has appeared stuck on granny ever since Sarah Palins death panel remarks.
Now, if you're trying to compare a presidential hopeful to this...group. Be my guest.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Right so fringe groups are perfectly above the fray and can do whatever they want and you'd not complain? So you had no issues and never got upset with the swift boat vets for truth?
I mainly consider them something that should be kept out of the fray in a serious discussion. I vaguely remember making fun of swift boat with Loki in some manner over at Atari.
You don't see a problem in dismissing a politican's behavior because an unrelated group of possibly unstable people act the same way?
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Tee hee
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
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