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Seems reasonable. Saves money and people can get some needed exercise. Maybe they'll actually bump into each other getting their mail.

Well Feminism has a successful PR branch; Women's Rights.

At 5/8/14 12:20 PM, Camarohusky wrote: Ever notice the new trend of conversation when it comes to LGBT topics?

I would not credit them with what you describe. In every society the typical response to passing a certain threshold of deviancy is execution, in the case of the Muslim and African world, and incarceration in the case of [formerly] Soviet Union and East Asian countries.

In the west, you would lose your career, your reputation, and your respect if you step out of certain boundaries. The hesitancy to use full lethal force against people you think are evil [Be it because they are gay or because they are racists] is probably an act of culture and to a lesser extent, personal discipline.

But bear in mind that X calling Y an abomination and Z calling X an asshole in turn is reasonably symmetric in terms of the action and reaction. It's one person's verbal expression against another's.

Similarly If I admitted to being a homosexual and received disapproval from those I make this admission of. [From personal experience, if you're careful about the people you open up to you'll almost never have this problem but I digress] It might not be warm and fuzzy and nice that I received disapproval but again we're not dealing with

On the extreme end if I was walking around London in the year 2050 and admitted to being a homosexual, I would probably be hung or beheaded. In which case we are dealing with a very asymmetric response, a western person would look at that situation and condemn it as bigotry since one party is exerting far more of their own preferences than another. You wouldn't call me a bigot against the people trying to execute me since my so-called right to have or express a sexual preference does not include the right to also execute people who find my preference distasteful. Whereas, well... you get the idea.

The hazy middle is how *some* people retaliate against what they see as manifestations of evil calls of resignation, boycotts, etc. Someone says something you don't like, and therefore you decide that their career and reputation should be destroyed. This is less extreme than execution but is it reasonable?

But I hate the word bigotry. It hides the fact that tolerance is always and everywhere a finite commodity. Donald Sterling, Brendan Eich, and David/Jason Benham learned that the hard way. What makes the west perhaps more tolerant is the acceptable avenues are dealing with deviants. Killing a deviant is barbaric. Destroying them is not.

At 12/11/13 10:43 AM, Angry-Hatter wrote:

Nah, there's still some ground to cover. For instance, it seems counter intuitive to me that older people would be more aligned with the Democratic party, as the Gallup poll seems to imply, when exit polling from the 2012 election showed that the proportion of Republican votes increased as age of the voter increased.

People do get more conservative as they get older. But the baby boomers were an especially unusual generation.

At 12/10/13 11:54 PM, Camarohusky wrote:

At 12/10/13 09:21 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote: Males will never succeed in posturing as a victim group, not under any circumstances.

There's a reason for that.

Someone needs to take moral agency.

At 12/5/13 01:05 AM, Angry-Hatter wrote: Baby boomers are actually one of the MOST Democratic age groups in America.

That should have been the end of this thread.

At 12/9/13 11:05 AM, Camarohusky wrote:

Intelligence, and the lack thereof, exists in equal measure across all political lines.

A strange thing to say since most Progressives are eager to point out that self identified liberals have higher IQs than Self identified conservatives, at least as far as 'social issues' [so called] are involved.

That is, after they make it clear that IQ scores don't measure anything, social construct, flynn effect, yadda yadda yadda.

Males will never succeed in posturing as a victim group, not under any circumstances. So complaining about violations of one's rights is kind of a waste of time.

The "Communists" of the USSR imposed what they called Socialism. Hence the name. You Crush humanity under the heel of an iron dictatorship for 1000 years so as to transform human nature into a selfless being that loves all humanity equally and works for the common good.

Socialism as a term was being used in the way Marx described it. There are other definitions of socialism.

I also recall that the abolition of money and property in the absolute entirety were attempted in the early period of the USSR, and they failed. Attempts at total collectivization of agriculture resulted in Famines and hence the central planners were forced to, in effect, compromise with reality.

At 12/2/13 09:25 PM, Feoric wrote:

At 12/2/13 08:50 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote: You could just give the other 176.7 [And their imports] their own separate country. That would give them the power to impose their preferred legal regime in it's purest and fullest totality without so much as scratching the other 43%

That 176.7 number isn't static so I guess the shape of this country will have to change dynamically upon redistricting?

The current US States are already in a state of polarization as people leave states that are either too expensive for them to continue to live in, or states in which their votes are rendered irrelevant due to the current electoral principle of winner-take-all.

A Partition of the US Along red / blue state lines would still involve a far greater degree of voter satisfaction than what exists currently, but you could also do multiple partitions of regions on a county by county basis.

You basically carve out an area where voters of a given persuasion are concentrated. Natural migration that already occurs and will occur will take care of the rest, so there's no need for constant gerrymandering.

An example of this would be the creation of Pakistan and Bangladesh. The period leading up to and immediating following the partition was rather violent but on the other hand the mutual hatred between Hindus and Muslims is far greater than that of Red state and blue state people. Also the US isn't [yet] a 3rd world country.

I support such a law being passed in Russia, but not in the United States. The current government, and by my estimation, future governments, of the US are almost completely disinterested in persecuting terrorists' as they are understood in the minds of common american citizens. Russia's contact with Islamic militancy is more 'real', and I can only imagine the orgy of aquisition that would ensue if the government of this country could declare someone a terrorist, have them physically liquidated, and then have their family financially liquidated.

PBS is one of the only items on the federal Budget that I would strongly bet could easily fund itself through conventional television network means.

Of course the psychology behind federal budgets is rather interesting. Almost every item of federal spending can be lumped into one of two categories.

1. Areas that are acknowledged as wasteful but are regarded as too small and insignificant to bother cutting
2. Areas that are massive in terms of expense but are regarded as essential

At 11/30/13 10:31 PM, Camarohusky wrote: Why should 133 million Americans have the right to completely countermand 176.7 other Americans out fo little more than spite? That's letting 43% of Americans have a stranglehold on the entire country.

You could just give the other 176.7 [And their imports] their own separate country. That would give them the power to impose their preferred legal regime in it's purest and fullest totality without so much as scratching the other 43%

At 11/28/13 10:48 PM, Korriken wrote:

Are you saying that minorities are mindless machines who will blindly vote for whoever promises more?

::

Yes. Like I said before It's certainly true for first worlders, and given how much "better" democracy works in foreign countries, it's at least as true for them, and probably more so.

I hold the political acumen of the average white in fairly low regard, and it is no better than the political acumen of a third worlder, in terms of their short sightedness and their ability to only see the trinkets presented in front of them.

Odd, I say the same for most people in general. Also, don't be a racist. you're better than that.

If it's true for everyone it's true regardless.

As If I care about being called "Raciss" by you or anyone.

At 11/28/13 12:02 PM, Korriken wrote:

At 11/27/13 10:41 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

Except for one tiny detail; the Democratic party will likely never lose majority control of the government again. The democratic party may become reviled as a consequence of this health care law but no African or Mestizo will ever not vote for a democratic candidate, and they are, as it happens, the future of the United States.

oh really? None of them?

Five percent maybe?

Your claim that the Democrats will be in perpetual majority is not only naive and foolish, it's also shortsighted. People probably said the opposite after Carter and Reagan's presidencies. It's be easy to say that the Democrats may never hold power again after that, but it didn't take long for the power to shift back to Democrats, then back to Republicans, and now back to Democrats.

Will Hispanics ever vote for a republican that promises them less than what is promised to them by the democrats?
Will Africans?

I hate to say "This time it's different" -- But this time it is *genuinely* different.

I hold the political acumen of the average white in fairly low regard, and it is no better than the political acumen of a third worlder, in terms of their short sightedness and their ability to only see the trinkets presented in front of them.

Research is already being done into the possible biological causes for criminal behavior, both violent crime and non-violent crime. Sterilization for criminals may become superfluous if it becomes possible in the future to engage in negative genetic engineering against certain violent tendencies.

I don't believe in the rights of criminals per say with respect to punishment, but I do consider the possibility of a wrongful conviction to be a fair argument.

Here's a plausible workaround.

In the US Justice system currently [and i suspect in most developed countries] Most crimes do not go to trial, rather, almost all of them involve plea bargains. This is probably because in most instances of convictions, the guilt of the convicted is very easy to establish.

If and only if a convicted person pleads guilty to a crime, he can also agree to be sterilized in exchange for a shorter jail sentence. This option is only provided to people who plead guilty and is not mandatory.

In such a system no one is forcibly sterilized, but I suspect a great many, perhaps short sighted criminals, would take this option. In theory, the social dividends to getting these people out of the breeding pool would make up for the reduced sentences.

Two possible explanations:

1. Feminists do not actually oppose male Chauvinism, rather, they oppose Beta males whose supposed power and influence in society they feel is undeserved. If non-Muslim men all started to behave towards women the way Muslim men do, Feminists would be silenced.

2. Feminism is lower on the cultural Lefts Hierarchy than Anti-Racism.

At 11/22/13 01:00 PM, Korriken wrote:

At 11/22/13 10:25 AM, MOSFET wrote:

Yep. And I'm going to enjoy watching Reid squirm and squeal like a pig in heat when the tables turn too. "This is an outrage! This is tyranny of the majority to silence the minority!" hahaha.

Except for one tiny detail; the Democratic party will likely never lose majority control of the government again. The democratic party may become reviled as a consequence of this health care law but no African or Mestizo will ever not vote for a democratic candidate, and they are, as it happens, the future of the United States.

I suspect this change is partly a result of Reid's own confidence that his party is now the true inner party. Republicans have really nothing left but to tell their shrinking voter base that it's every man for himself, which in fact it is.

At 11/25/13 01:34 AM, GameChild214 wrote: Does anyone know why liberals are so hated? As a political insult it's become the polar opposite of being labeled "fascist". I honestly used to throw liberal around casually myself, but looking at the definition of liberalism it doesn't seem that bad to me. I will admit some liberals (such as feminist and atheists) can take it to far. But the definition of liberalism in this picture actually seems perfect to me.

Most people who are called or call themselves liberal are not liberals, they are progressives.

John S. Mill was a liberal. Barrack Obama is a progressive.

You will find very few people who read something by John Stuart Mill today and say "I hate this man and what he believes" Liberalism as it was had it's passionate haters back in the day when it actually threatened other political ideologies.

In the contemporary west, people who identify as conservative would read that definition, and if you provided them with that definition and purged it of the word liberal, they would likely consider themselves more validly described by it than a modern day liberal. [Except perhaps for the secular' bit.] -- And this is because, the three main political ideologies of the United States, as they are called [Libertarian conservative and liberal] are all descendants of that old and outdated definition of liberal you furnished.

But a more general answer to your question, people hate those that don't share their political views because a political opinion is not a *mere* opinion. If you support a political program or a law, anyone who shares a country with you will be forced to obey that law or be imprisoned or killed. There's nothing civilized about it, even when it is done "democratically". You may claim that such is necessary, but that won't stop people from hating you for it.

Socialism can either mean worker ownership of the means of production, state ownership of the means of production, or a generous welfare state. None of these have any direct input on scope and intent, which is essentially where right and left wing socialists differ.

The National socialist says "We'll have socialism in Greece, *and* Greece for the Greece"

The International Socialist says "We'll have socialism in Greece, and Greece *NOT* for Greece. Greece for Turkey. Greece for Tunisia. Greece for Lybia. etc. etc." Note that more often then not, this logic does not work in both directions. So Lybia and Turkey can keep their states but Greece has to lose theirs.

I'm inclined to sympathize with the national socialist over the internationalist.

At 10/4/13 02:24 PM, Camarohusky wrote:

At 10/4/13 12:35 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

Even if that were the case, what's the problem here? We should with hold necessary services because it happens to be welfare? Being unhealthy also isn't a perceived disadvantage. It's an actual disadvantage.

The problem is that the way that politicians want health insurance to operate needlessly perverts incentives. Everything you and the other progressives want out of health insurance could more effectively be achieved by allowing the discriminatory rates to be charged, and then subsidizing the premiums of those who are both poor and of poor health with high risk pools.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Tq1-5mcExQ <-- explanation of the cases of NY and Kentucky.

I carefully chose the words "perceived" because the young may be advantaged to the old in terms of their health but in terms of bearing large financial burdens, older people are far better suited than younger people, especially contemporaneously where access to well paying full time jobs among young people [with or without a college degree] is increasingly becoming a luxury. Much of the income inequality observed is, in fact, intergenerational.

In your first paragraph you seem to take the position that Guaranteed issue and community ratings with a mandate are 'Fine' because they achieve the same general goals as a health savings account. I could say by the same token that there's nothing wrong with fitting a pickup truck with barrels along the sides because it does the same job as an actual boat.

At 10/4/13 12:48 AM, Camarohusky wrote:
Generally, yes, but here, no.

I understand your point on the casualty side. A person who is at high risk of casualty gets a worse rate because in the ong run they take off more. (a drunk driver for example will pay higher car insurance.) However, health insurance acts like more than just a casualty insurance.

Well you said "Insurance" as one word.

Health insurance is like a combination of two things: a personal health savings account and casualty insurance. In all casualty insurances those without accident subsidize those with accidents on the idea that should an accident ever occur in their lifetime they will be covered too.

That's not why the young should be compelled to join. They should be compelled to join for the personal health saving program reason. In this way they can go to the doctor on the 'savings plan' of the money they put into their premiums themselves and the rest theoretically funnels into casualty.

It's not a health savings plan in any sense. The money the young put into the HI scheme is not reserved' for them but used up by those of higher risk in the immediate term. And when the younger generations become the older, high risk generations, their premiums are in turn subsidized by the younger generations, assuming

And again the name we give for a system that is explicitly designed to transfer income from one group that is perceived as advantaged to another group that is perceived as disadvantaged is called welfare.

With Life insurance people are generally encouraged to enter into the system early. And when young people buy into health insurance they are generally lumped together with other people of the same age, gender, and health specifications. [If the laws permit such "discrimination" to occur]. The premiums for younger members are low and remain low even as they age because the money that they put into it is being used for them. One could genuinely refer to such a system as a system of saving.

Even in a homogeneous risk pool you're going to have a majority of the claims coming from a minority of the people in the pool. [This is because, in technical terms, the probability distribution of losses is most always skewed to the right.] But those who end up utilizing the insurance and those that don't must be *generally* unaware of the fact that they are going to need it. This is not the same as taking people whom both the insurance company and the consumers know are high risk and mixing them with people who are low risk. In the former situation we know that a majority of claims [in dollar terms] will be made by a minority of policy holders, but we don't know who they are. In the latter case we do. If consumers are allowed to act on their knowledge of risks and insurance companies are not, that's the breeding ground for perverse incentives.

It's also worth noting that those who push for more widespread use of actual HSAs are, as far as i can see are among those whom respectable progressives consider intellectually distasteful.

At 10/3/13 02:00 PM, Camarohusky wrote:

At 10/3/13 01:47 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote: But the people who go from being voluntarily outside the health insurance scheme to being compelled to participate are clearly made worse off in this arrangement, the high risks benefit only at the great expense of the low risks. At *best* all you've achieved is a redistribution of costs.

Welcome to the world of... you guessed it... INSURANCE!!!

Not that you care, but You're talking to someone who is studying to become an Actuary. And nowhere was I ever taught that it is *inherently* good policy to combine high and low risks.

And what people who try to design insurance systems do is, whenever they are legally and physically capable of doing so, is to combine homogeneous risks to avoid what is called adverse selection. [Most forms of insurance that utilize actuarial principals do not require compulsory participation because premiums for a given person are meant to *generally* reflect their expected odds of needing some benefit payment.

http://www.actuaries.org/LIBRARY/ASTIN/vol36no2/589.pdf

You can sacrifice this structuring for the sake of social justice only so far before adverse selection noticeably kicks in. Many forms of underwriting are persecuted in the court of public opinion as being morally unfair. Actuaries have work-around which can deal with the possibility of adverse selection, but insurance was not conceived with this in mind.

A system which is *designed* to transfer money from low risk to high risk individuals goes by another name: Welfare. Welfare may or may not be a good thing but unlike Insurance, welfare is designed with the aforementioned transfer in mind. I therefore regard it as better to call it welfare and treat it as such.

In the case of health insurance if an actuary determined an individual was of extremely high risk and would therefore need to pay a high premium [if we're operating in the paradigm of health insurance instead of simply paying health care expenses with direct payments as they probably should] Instead of compelling younger heather people [many of whom may not be terribly wealthy at the early stages of their life] to pay higher rates, why not just subsidize the rates of the high risk members.

It achieves the same goals but involves less pain for younger people [generally] and causes fewer headaches for actuaries.

But I've made this point with you [I think it was with you, maybe with someone else] before. If you're going to consciously transfer income from

At 10/3/13 10:33 AM, Gario wrote:

At 10/3/13 09:44 AM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

One final thing I forgot to add is that *historically* the costs to the Federal Government of it's programs have almost always been less than what is originally estimated. E.G. Social Security, Medicare, Iraq and Afghanistan, etc.

And those cost differentials tend to widen with time [as one would expect given the nature of predictions]

I can't think of a major program where the opposite occurred. Politicians and bureaucrats have no incentive to over-estimate costs. Nobody gets a pat on the back after-the-fact for implementing a program that was actually more financially sound than what was originally thought.

But maybe you're more familiar with something of that sort than I.

At 10/3/13 10:33 AM, Gario wrote:

At 10/3/13 09:44 AM, SmilezRoyale wrote:
1. You'll insist that the only way to expand access to medical care is to increase coverage for expensive health insurance paying for expensive medical procedures. This in turn requires compelling the purchase of insurance that is too expensive for other people's tastes, and to have the Authorities fully or partially subsidize the exorbitance if the costs are too severe for the consumer.

2. Conversely, The only way to control costs total costs. [Costs borne by both gvt/taxpayers and by private citizens] is to RESTRICT access to health care.

But yes, go on with your moral posturing. We'll all be better off for it I'm sure.

Mathematically, since insurance companies base their prices off of the average expenditure per person involved in their insurance, the case is quite the opposite. The more people that are paying into the insurance coverage, the better the distribution will be overall, since the people that don't want to have coverage now are people that don't need to use it in the first place.

That means that the people that will now be getting health insurance are the low-risk people, which will create an average that is significantly cheaper than it is now, meaning that if more low-risk people have insurance, insurance for everyone will drop. Seeing that it's all going to be in effect soon, we can wait and see if the math proves correct.

Note that when I say "restrict access to health care" I am not referring to the proportion of the population that is covered but the actual health care itself. *AVERAGE* premiums for all members of a de-jure compulsory or de-facto compulsory risk pool are lowest when everyone pays into the risk pool and as few people as possible are being paid benefits.

If you have a pool of high risks you can lower the *average* premium that the people involved by pay compelling people who will likely not make use of the insurance to [As you've said] to effectively subsidize the high risks. But the people who go from being voluntarily outside the health insurance scheme to being compelled to participate are clearly made worse off in this arrangement, the high risks benefit only at the great expense of the low risks. At *best* all you've achieved is a redistribution of costs.

You are also operating on the assumption that forcibly combining high risks and low risks has no effect on the behavior of these groups. The insurance system by it's nature influences the behavior of health care consumers and health care providers [providers being doctors, hospitals, pharma, and producers of medical technology] -- Generally speaking insurance puts upward pressure on costs, but this upward pressure can vary.

the SOA estimates average health care costs increasing on net but by varying amounts , and both private and government employed Actuaries are estimating continued increases in the amount of money Americans spend on Healthcare.

http://www.soa.org/news-and-publications/newsroom/healthcare/default.aspx
http://www.ahipcoverage.com/2013/07/17/society-of-actuaries-aca-impact-will-vary-substantially-across-state-lines/

As I've said before the only two ideas that the current political dispensation allows us to discuss is the practice of lowering health insurance premiums by legally elevating participation [bringing down prices for some by spreading costs around] and the practice of lowering health care costs by legally suppressing demand.

At 10/2/13 09:34 PM, aviewaskewed wrote:

At 10/2/13 06:23 PM, hecticjon wrote: and yet you're not okay with less fortunate people having this luxury? that's quite selfish if you ask me.

One of the great head scratchers yes. Even the staunchest opponents admit you NEED health insurance,

You don't *need* health insurance, at least not in the same way that you need food, oxygen, shelter, practical transportation, etc. You won't die tomorrow without it. The most accurate statement of this sort that could be made is that one needs some mechanism to pay for health expenses, *when said health expenses become due*. For the last half century that mechanism has been primarily through health insurance. Part of the whole impetus for mandating the purchase of health insurance is because of a recognition on the part of the young that they don't *need* health insurance until they get sick which everyone knows occurs primarily at older ages. Health insurance at it's current price is for young people a lousy deal, especially in an economy which it is increasingly difficult for young people to get a decent living.

With that aside.

There's a mentality problem with Healthcare mentality about health care and health insurance is that...

1. The question of increasing people's access to health care generally and the question of people's access to health insurance is treated as *essentially* synonymous. And by essential I don't mean virtually or practically but that the former cannot ever be conceived as anything other than the latter. I.e. Health insurance and health care are one in the same.

Health insurance makes sense when paying for large, random, and catastrophic risks. It does not make sense when paying for small, and especially deterministic expenses.

We observe that much of the personnel and technology that is used in the regular healthcare industry is also used in Veterinary, Dental, and Plastic Surgery. Yet we also observe that 1. Annual price increases for these services are significantly below that of regular health care [E.G. plastic surgery's price inflation is below that of the annual inflation rate] 2. Insurance is seldom involved.

2. The 'Luxury' nature of healthcare as well as the legal regime that the entire healthcare system existed under [prior to ACA and beyond] is taken for granted.

If you're blind-sighted to these two things you're logical conclusions will be predetermined:

1. You'll insist that the only way to expand access to medical care is to increase coverage for expensive health insurance paying for expensive medical procedures. This in turn requires compelling the purchase of insurance that is too expensive for other people's tastes, and to have the Authorities fully or partially subsidize the exorbitance if the costs are too severe for the consumer.

2. Conversely, The only way to control costs total costs. [Costs borne by both gvt/taxpayers and by private citizens] is to RESTRICT access to health care.

But yes, go on with your moral posturing. We'll all be better off for it I'm sure.

First let's treat the issue of ethnic minorities separately from Sexual minorities, at least momentarily so i can deal with them one at a time. I cannot think of many functional societies which, ethnically speaking, consisted entirely of minorities. And by societies, I am speaking of geographies delimited by states. Ethnicities with separate states which exist in relatively close proximity to one another are not the same as ethnicities which share a state but cluster in geographic regions.

But when these societies do exist, what you're *not* going to observe is these minorities all voluntarily subordinating their own cultural identity in favor of some amalgamation. Not that groups will never borrow things they like from other cultures, but that they will *not* regard themselves as identical and interchangeable with all other minorities. The only groups that even attempt such a thing are whites, and certainly no other racial group is so stupid to follow our example. To put it plainly, no one living in such a multicultural society is going to be content with the status quo, and they will also do whatever they can to protect their identity as they perceive it.

Also notice that questions of culture are almost always inseparable from the geopolitical unit. The US as a national unit is not, territorially speaking, uniformly distributed. Parts of the US are vastly different from other parts. Yet largely due to television there is something of a 'national media' and hence a national culture. This culture could be perceived not merely as over-representing the majority race but more accurately representing a dominant sub-culture within the US.

But in *any* society that does not consist solely of minorities you are going to have a majority. And it is odd *not* to imagine said majority as being culturally and politically dominant in the given territory or country which they have majority status.

If I move to Japan, Why should I be bereft at the realization that the national culture is dominantly represented by the dominant ethnic group that occupies the territory. How just am I to demand that I as a visitor be given noticeable representation in politics and culture Not as a person but as an identity. I view this as akin to someone going to a vegetarian's house for dinner and being offended that no meat is being served.

The case of Blacks in the United States is somewhat of an exception. Since, at least those descended of slaves did not come to the United States of their own choice.

You could also extrapolate this logic to matters of conquest. Most territories as they exist now were not always controlled by the descendants of the majority population. There are plenty of examples of a minority culture overpowering and destroying another culture and in turn becoming the majority. [Can we learn anything from this?] I don't view this as reason to call advocacy of cultural sovereignty as hypocritical since to condemn one group for oppressing another is to admit that ethnic/racial/cultural dominance over a historically assessed region is a "just" principal. Moreover, most every group has transgressed against another at some point in their history, and, obviously, two wrongs don't make a right.

Of course if these minorities have not been completely exterminated, instead of engaging in a psychodrama over whether X group's cultural and political quota has been sufficiently met in a given society, simply allow the minority culture to have their own society. Since minorities tend to cluster in geographic areas, simply make that region a country of whoever controls it. [And perhaps next time be more careful about invading foreign lands or allowing mass immigration into your own]

Minority status is contextual. Everyone is a minority on planet earth, but that doesn't make you a minority in the places where it matters. Where does it matter? The geographical unit upon which major political decisions are made and also the geographical unit upon which relatively distinct types of culture emerge.

At 9/27/13 11:21 PM, Camarohusky wrote: No this is NOT a case of the private prison industrial complex (keyword for people who want to blame "the man" but have no logial way to blame him) going crazy. This is a case of a developed country (Russia and China are NOT developed) that has serious social problems both leading to first time offenses and to recidivism.

Do you have any data on what proportion of people are in jail for X and Y crime? Or any theories as to why the incarceration rate spiked *specifically* in the 1980s

At 9/28/13 06:15 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote: Total-Debt monetization is the equivalent of bankruptcy, otherwise no sovereign state could ever effectively default on it's debt [Sovereign does not include a state like Greece, so long as it remains in a monetary Union].

I'm not sure I follow you on your debt monetization bit. Our debt is an asset via t-bills. It is currently the world's most sought after and stable investment. Real interest rates are negative. Investors are literally paying the US federal government for the privilege to own our bonds. How is that equivalent to defaulting? Another point: we can effectively default. We're actually facing this very scenario right now, as seen in the shutdown thread.

http://online.barrons.com/article/SB50001424052748704097904577257030958775246.html

https://www.google.com/webhp?client=aff-maxthon-newtab&channel=t2#channel=t2&q=percent+of+new+treasury+debt+purchased+by+the+fed

Demand for the US Dollar is currently predicated on a number of factors. The economic weakness of all other foreign countries and all other foreign currencies will tend to strengthen the dollar. Tradition and US Hegemony also work in the currencies favor.

When the principal on the debt issued by the USFG comes due, the treasury can simply sell another bond to pay for it, but it *must* make the interest payments. The ZIRP we are currently going through means that , as you've alluded to, the government's borrowing costs are at an all time low. But this is also true of France. And when you're at rock bottom there's only one place left to go. And now the Us Federal debt is much more sensitive to a change in interest rates than it ever was.

I do believe that the deflationary pressures on the US Dollar are stronger than the inflationary pressures, and probably will remain so for some time.

I'm not sure what is meant by default in the context of a shutdown. The federal government has a presumed legal obligation to pay the interest on it's bonds, and it has a quasi legal obligation to pay the mandatory spending portion. [Though there is technically no absolute obligation since congress has the power to alter the laws and thereby alter mandatory spending] -- Failure to fund discretionary spending programs is not a default.

At 9/27/13 07:06 PM, Feoric wrote:

At 9/27/13 07:02 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote: If the program is good, then it's good. If it's bad, it will either cause harm or hasten the bankruptcy of the US Government

The United States government can never go bankrupt so this is not a possibility, neither is the GOP expanding the ACA as long as the Tea Party continues their coup of the Republican party.

Well Tea party people are stupid and don't realize that government expansion and whatever consequences ensue is in their long term interests.

Total-Debt monetization is the equivalent of bankruptcy, otherwise no sovereign state could ever effectively default on it's debt [Sovereign does not include a state like Greece, so long as it remains in a monetary Union]. The US Dollar's value is a function of it's demand as a reserve currency for foreign nations. In the current regime the US Government only needs to fund it's interest payments through taxes. It can rely on "imperial finance" to continually issue new treasuries whenever the principal on it's loans comes due, but it must finance it's interest payments through taxes.

If the federal reserve becomes the sole buyer of US Debt then you have the political prerequisites for hyperinflation.

And if the Federal reserve *could* become the sole buyer of US Debt with no real consequences then it would certainly do so, since it would mean that no level of taxation was necessary to finance USFG spending.