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At 9/10/11 06:59 PM, Iron-Hampster wrote: There is only one historic record of the occupying force beating a nation that used Gorilla tactics:

Uhh, try Germany's conquest of France and Belgium, the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and the Phillipines, the fall of the various Indian tribes in North America, and the countless other instances that have been lost to history because the guerillas were wiped out.
Do you actually think that every single guerilla campaign has been successful? That lasting conquests only occur when civilians simply decide not to fight back?

The Americans won the revolution by changing how war was fought,

No, it was basically superior numbers, geographic advantage, and the French. All the decisive US victories were the result of pitched, conventional battles.

and many of the insurgents are forced to join yes, but a lot are also forced by their own inability to provide for themselves and their families.

Bullshit. The economy of Iraq is booming, and the Iraqi security forces are always hiring.

The only thing they can do is fight for money, this is also further outlining how we are killing innocents in a way that will only make matters worse.

Insurgents have been responsible for the majority of civilian deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq for the past several years. No one joins the insurgency to "protect" civilians from the US.

And it took the "spoiled brats" of the first world to start this war anyways, millions of people all over the world protested this war before it began and they were all ignored.

So? They don't give a shit about our security or national interests. They should be ignored.

At 9/10/11 07:01 PM, Iron-Hampster wrote: oh yea, and Saddam wasn't supporting the terrorists, he was actually trying to kick them out.

Which we only determined from post-war findings, and is totally irrelevant if you're trying to figure out whether a past event was justified.

At 9/10/11 11:46 AM, Warforger wrote:

At 9/9/11 11:43 PM, adrshepard wrote: Ask him if he has no preference in victor between his parliamentary republic and a fundamentalist Islamic insurgency.

Actually I think most people would rather just have the damn war end and not give a shit who wins, because either of those two are better than staying in a war.

Oh yes, the "peace at any cost" position. Sickening, but you're to say its widespread.
But I wasn't "asking" Americans.

At 9/10/11 01:15 AM, Iron-Hampster wrote: "hey, what do you think about America and all their sselfless efforts to secure your freedom?"
"About who?" as he is lifting his american flag... that's on fire.

It's not about making Iraqis like us. We could have never inflicted any civilian casualties or destroyed any buildings at all and they'd still be annoyed at our presence. Nobody "wants" us there, but the vast majority of Iraqis recognize that the country needs our support, and they care enough about what's at stake to put up with continued US involvement. It is by no means a pointless conflict to them, or to us.

At 9/9/11 10:41 PM, Iron-Hampster wrote: you mean people dieing in meaningless war.

Ask the average Iraqi if he thinks the conflict is meaningless. Ask him if he thinks his countrymen have died for no purpose. Ask him if he has no preference in victor between his parliamentary republic and a fundamentalist Islamic insurgency.

At 9/9/11 04:46 PM, Camarohusky wrote:

At 9/9/11 03:12 PM, adrshepard wrote: I suppose you were there reading over the shoulders of George Bush the entire time?

What do you mean by this?

I mean you must have had some personal involvement in the prewar discussion to make such sweeping declarations about a massively complex event. The average person's understanding of the buildup to the Iraq war is based on third-hand information; he wasn't personally involved, he hasn't talked to any of those who were, all he gets is the word from others farther removed from the actual proceedings, like news reporters and congressional reports.

Or you're just smarter than everyone in the intelligence agencies?

Now, I looked hard back then. I really did. Guess what I didn't find. A single agency supporting a military incursion into Iraq.

Of course you wouldn't. No government agency would ever make such a huge policy recommendation. Agencies are basically resources of information and expertise; they aren't independent entities that try to steer government operations. At least not on an organizational level. Think of what a scandal it would have been if the CIA came out and officially demanded an invasion.

Or do you think it would've been okay for Saddam Hussein to have weapons of mass destruction?

Yeah, but the trustworthy sources, the U.N. who had actually been looking for WMDs said that there weren't any. The only evidence of WMDs was some vague claims by people who were clearly looking for a fight.

You must be joking, or you must actually believe that the intelligence agencies are like white-collar sweatshops ruled by one man who decides and controls everything. THOUSANDS of people were involved in intelligence gathering and analysis. Despite the minor disagreements between agencies like the CIA and DIA on individual points, they came to the same general conclusions: Iraq very likely had WMDs and the capability to produce them readily; Iraq was actively trying to advance WMD development while disrupting UN inspection efforts and being as uncooperative as possible; Iraq had a relationship with Al-Queda that existed before and after 9/11.
This is what the president was told and what he acted upon. There's no dispute about that. If you doubt it, look up the senate intelligence committee report on prewar intelligence. They found absolutely no evidence of intimidation, steering, or concentrated manipulation (certain people weren't as precise in their language in tv interviews and the like) of the findings by the administration or anyone else.

Or, you could say I saw through what was being thrown at us. "Al Qaeda is in Iraq!" No they wren't. Saddam hated them.

Not enough to deny them safe harbor in northern Iraq, according to intelligence reports. Iraq hosted a substantial Al Qaeda presence before the 2003 invasion.

"WMDs are there!" How come the ultra-hawks were the only ones sayingf this amongst a littany of otherwise intelligent people saying the opposite.

Like who? No one said for sure that there weren't any, not even Hans Blix. I've read his relevant testimony. His position was no position; perpetual negotiation despite being screwed with multiple times. He couldn't say if there were any WMDs or not, and since neither he or the UN had any stake in the matter, doing nothing was the safest course.

Guess, what. Those were the two reasons put forth the the US people for why we should go there, and one was just false, and the other was paper thin.

You can't throw around words like "false" with matters this big. Do you mean "false" as in objectively untrue, as in a weatherman's predictions of sunshine when it rains instead? Or do you mean deliberately untrue, as in a weatherman predicting sunshine when he knows it will rain?

You can call it paper thin now, but the intelligence reports at the time said otherwise.

Now, I know you were very young at the time, but I remember a variety of phrases such as "you're either with us or against us!" and "not wanting to fight is unamerican!"...

I'm the same age as you, douche!

I do remember those phrases. I don't remember those accusations flying in Congress. Iraq wasn't a war launched by public referendum. The legislature voted to give Bush the power to conduct offensive operations. Months later, he exercised it and the war began.

At 9/9/11 03:12 PM, adrshepard wrote:

and undermined its own economic and military strength is also unfortunate.

Not really, considering the only conceivable significant economic effect could have been interest rate changes from financing, and these grew from 2003 and stayed constant until late 2007 when the financial crisis started to emerge.

Ignore this.
Yes, it did, like all wars, present economic opportunity costs.

At 9/9/11 09:41 AM, Camarohusky wrote: No it didn't. There wasn't a single convincing reason beore the war to go there. The Iraq War was rammed through in the face of major criticism based on a "you're a unpatrioct faggot" claim for anyone who opposed it. This sort of Brown-shirt tactic essentially shouted down the intelligent among us who pointed out how stupid and dangerous an Iraw War would be.

I suppose you were there reading over the shoulders of George Bush the entire time? Or you're just smarter than everyone in the intelligence agencies? Or do you think it would've been okay for Saddam Hussein to have weapons of mass destruction?

Those are pretty much your only choices.

How was it "rammed" by anyone? Who in particular voted for the authorization of force out of nothing but fear of being labeled unpatriotic?

At 9/9/11 02:30 PM, HRH-HenryIV wrote: Well the objective was to locate and capture weapons of mass destruction which were supposed to be in Iraq in massive quantities.

None were found.

So the answer is no.

WWII was justified because we won.
The Apollo program was justified because we succeeded in putting a man on the moon.
The atomic bombings were not justified because of a massive, debilitating storm months afterward.

What, you're not awestruck by these inspired observations? Aren't they true?

That the US also managed to delegitimize democracy in the Middle East,

Ask al-Sadr if he'd prefer going back to his mosque to hide from US troops or if he'd rather stay on as the leader of an influential political faction with substantial popular support.

gave Al Qaida a battleground to look heroic in

for a couple of years before the Sunnis realized how futile terrorist efforts were and turned against them.

and undermined its own economic and military strength is also unfortunate.

Not really, considering the only conceivable significant economic effect could have been interest rate changes from financing, and these grew from 2003 and stayed constant until late 2007 when the financial crisis started to emerge.
Loss of military strength is temporary, due to equipment breaking down and reaching soldier tour limits. In a few years the limits will have expired, the equipment replaced, and the military will have had a decade's worth of veteran personnel and tested tactics and strategies for fighting the next insurgency war.

At 8/31/11 08:05 AM, gumOnShoe wrote: And all we need is another Bush to declare a War on some inane idea he can't hope to fight

An "idea" didn't kill 3000 people on 9/11.

At 8/30/11 01:43 PM, Ranger2 wrote:

A few weeks ago Warren Buffett proposed an idea to solve the problem of our growing debt:
-If debt grows to 3% more than our GDP, all members of Congress are uneligible for re-election-...

What do you think?

Why stop there? Why don't we just get rid of representative government entirely? Politicians can't make the "right" decisions, and people are apparently too stupid to elect capable men to office, so let's just put all the power into the hands of one trustworthy, capable person who can do everything. Like Warren Buffet.

This is the logical result, and why he was joking when he said it.

At 8/28/11 11:36 AM, Camarohusky wrote: Ah yes because the tax less spend more philospohy of the hard right is a great fiscal agenda. They're supposed to be party of big business, yet they aact as if they've never even balanced their own checkbooks.

Are the "hard" right supposed to be different than the "far" right? Because the Tea Party, labeled as the extreme, doesn't support more spending.

Also, the OP picks some pretty strange reasons for his support. He is not going to get the Tea party to support tax increases simply by virtue of being a republican. The Tea party hates more than a few republicans already.
He believes in evolution. Big deal. It has nothing to do with policy.
Bush was elected governor of Texas and had executive experience too, but the OP still hates him.
The others, flat generalizations, are not worth going into.

At 8/23/11 03:12 PM, Chris-V2 wrote: I'm hoping the counter-revolutionaries do their thing and oust UN and western imperial corporations from Libya.

No one's putting a gun to the rebels' heads and demanding that they lease their resources to Western companies. If they don't want them around, fine. But then they don't need any of the West's foreign aid.

At 8/26/11 11:25 PM, Warforger wrote:

?????I'm not an anti-Israeli activist

Right...

No. You're weaseling my argument into something I wasn't saying at all.

You said "Latin America is probably the perfect way to deal with ethnic conflicts i.e. by getting the indigenous, African and White populations to mix which creates Latino's, hence why there isn't too much widespread racism there."
You suggest that racial mixing is the ideal way to promote racial harmony, and the casta system that was in place utterly destroys that idea. It didn't bring understanding and tolerance, only hatred between castes and social stratification. What you identify as a racially tolerant society today only came about through armed rebellion. No one intended that to happen, so there's no way you can describe the current racial environment as anything but a period of good luck paid for by centuries of intolerance and suffering.

What I'm saying is that the way it went down it became a unique racially blended society and that's more ideal because there aren't many ethnic conflicts that survived to this day.

When in doubt, resort to truisms. "If a people is racially homogenous, it won't have any racially motivated conflicts!" Great idea!

Correction, the caste system wasn't entirely based on race, the caste system in say India or Southern Africa is more racist than it is, but in the Latin American one if you were successful financially you were "Spanish" regardless of your parents, so again it was more determined by wealth than by actual racial heritage.

I have no idea what encyclopedia you read that from, but you've drawn the entirely wrong conclusion. I have no doubt there were a few wealthy mulattoes, moriscos, and mestizos who managed to get along with the other wealthy Spaniards, but it's just stupid to declare that the system wasn't based on race because of a handful of exceptions.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co mmons/d/dd/CastaSystemVirreinato.JPG
Note the differences in clothing between the top and bottom tier couples.

The words "chocolate" and "tomato" come from the Aztecs, as well as some food dishes. Let us all bask in the glory of surviving Latin American cultures!

Also numerous math concepts like the number 0 along with agricultural techniques and all....

Which Europeans had long since adopted from the Arabs and Indians. That is not a contribution. Same thing with whatever agricultural techniques you're talking about. Learning how to grow corn is not the same as discovering fertilization or crop rotation.

My insults are more accurate than your arguments.

No. They just further debase your arguments.

Every other word could be an insult and you still couldn't refute anything I've said.

At 8/25/11 09:38 PM, Iron-Hampster wrote:

First: Trickle down economics is basically where wealth distribution starts from top to bottom. The government has sort of been trying to force this to happen in a rather unnatural way. We have sort of been shifting our tax burden from rich to poor under the idea that rich people stimulate the economy more than anyone else.

No, the rich and well off already pay the lion's share of government revenues. The poor don't pay much of anything in terms of income-related taxes.

In a way, this is redistribution of wealth,

In a moronic way, maybe. It's not redistribution because people are keeping more of what they themselves earn, and not giving it to a third party for it to spend elsewhere.

Second: People in favor of trick down economics tend to be against labor unions. They believe people demanding higher wages takes more money away from their employers preventing long term growth.

That and they drive up the price of goods by distorting the labor market. The entire existence of unions depends on the fact that other people will do comparable work for less money.

Under true capitalism, if workers can strong arm their employers into giving them more things, both parties would be on their own.

That's already the case in nearly every business. The government only steps in when the industry, like commerical flight, is critical to the operation of the country.

Third: Our tax money is starting to pay for everything the rich are buying now. In a true capitalist society, the owner of the business would be 100% responsible for paying his workers...in 2007 a CEO made over 324 times as much as his low level workers, this figure has increased by 45% since then.

These sentences demonstrate how you know next to nothing about capitalism. It also shows that you have no understanding of one of the most basic business structures: the corporation. The CEO is usually not the owner; the board of directors are, as well as the stockholders. The CEO is paid to manage the company, and his salary is determined by the labor market, just like the company's "low-level" workers.

If that is the case, then why do they need more tax deductions to pay for these workers?

Totally wrong idea, but yes, the tax code should be reformed to allow fewer deductions for everybody, rich and poor.

Under true capitalism, they would have to fork all of the money they need to pay their workers out from their own pockets. They have the means to pay but refuse to,

Christ, have you even heard of the terms "gross" and "net"?

Fourth: Corporate Bailouts are being handed out to companies to stop them from going bankrupt,

Nope, not even close (unless you're talking about the auto companies). The bailouts were meant to prevent default, which would have resulted in the loss of hundreds of billions of dollars in securities and deposits.

however, these bailouts are packages of taxpayer money that are being handed off to people who CLEARLY have enough money in their bank accounts to pay for their own mismanagement.

The asset sheet of any major bank deals with figures thousands of times larger than the highest paid CEO.

why are we not mad that we are giving bankers money because they handed out mortgages to people they knew couldn't afford them?

We are mad; at the loan officers and the poor people who tried to sneak away with something way out of their league. But they wouldn't fall alone. Tens of millions of other people would suffer under your beloved "true capitalism."

At 8/22/11 11:30 PM, Warforger wrote: That's what I was referring to yes. It should be quite obvious since I said "earliest".

You, the frenzied anti-Israel activist, acknowledging the historical foundation and justification for Israel's existence as a nation?

I'm talking about an ongoing one.

I'm not, and neither were you until just now, trying to weasel your way out of your retarded assertions.

And that didn't really lead to genocide because those natives were still there

Oh, sure, they kept some for wives and slave labor, so it's not genocide. I guess the holocaust wasn't genocide, either, since there are still some jews around. Actually, I guess there's never been a genocide ever since not every single

in fact natives even had children with the whites themselves, causing a huge race mix,

A mix seen as a social defect in a RACIAL CASTE SYSTEM. Your entire argument is based on how people happened to rebel against it and therefore it was good because they were all mixed. The Spanish weren't hoping to be overthrown just so there could be a new society based on racial tolerance. Like all caste systems, it was a means of control over the lower classes.

No. Compared to what happened elsewhere it was MUCH better ESPECIALLY in the long run. At the very least the culture partially survived and was intergrated with the rest of the other cultures

The words "chocolate" and "tomato" come from the Aztecs, as well as some food dishes. Let us all bask in the glory of surviving Latin American cultures!

and to say that what happened is "the ideal method of racial integration" makes you a dumbass. I'm sorry, but there's just no way around it given the flow of garbage emanating from you.

Nice resorting to insults again have we?

My insults are more accurate than your arguments.

At 8/22/11 04:06 PM, lapis wrote:

If I can't criticise people from the past, why would I be able to criticise people from different geographical locations or even outside my own body?.... When he beats someone who made a critical remark about the loud music he was playing in the subway a bloody lip, who am I to say that that's 'wrong' or 'reprehensible' if "[m]orals are personal in nature", not having grown up in the same circumstances?

Let me clarify. Part of this has to do with perspective. Let's say you have two groups of people with different values yet they find the other's reprehensible. If they live on the other side of the planet and are totally isolated besides a general knowledge of the other. They may not like what each other does, but since there's no interaction it's entirely irrelevant. If the two groups are suddenly thrust together, with each one forced to see and live near what the other does, what was once only a feeling will probably turn to real conflict. The actual actions don't change, but actually seeing it makes it far more aggravating or disturbing to people.

When I voice my disapproval of an aspect of Muslim culture, it's nothing more than a mild sentiment about a group I have almost no interaction with. However, I still live on the same planet as them, I still hear about what they do, and from time to time I see real life examples of it (in this case, Muslim women walking around in body veils). But when I hear about the people of the past, there's no real connection. All of them are long dead. The consequences of their real actions is relevant; their morals and values only remain so long as future generations choose to preserve them.

I think it's morally degenerate and unforgivable.

I have yet to see a logical justification for you to be able to pass that kind of judgement.

Logic has nothing to do with it. I can't escape my own emotional reactions and moral beliefs through rationality. But I'm reacting to something that's real and ongoing, not something done and finished in the past.

Really? What it all boils down to is that the only practical thing that you see wrong with the establishment of such a Darfurian nation state is that it might bring "risks" for the US?

You asked for things that might influence the US's potential recognition of that state. I'm sure there are plently of obstacles local to those people themselves.

In my book, claiming that the only relevant arguments that I should contemplate before I rob an old lady are the potential profit on one hand and the risk of getting caught on the other hand boils down to nihilism. The same goes for international politics.

I don't think I ever said that international relations didn't reflect nihilism. In fact, I'd agree with you on that point completely. What got this started was your remark about allegedly immoral laws (like Jim Crow) enacted democratically. The greatest and simplest objection to this is that it implies you are inherently better than the billions of people who preceded you because your morality better reflects some timeless absolute. I won't say that my morality is the best that has ever and will ever exist, but it is mine, and I believe in it strongly enough to fight for it.

If the economic foundations underlying my country's security were to crumble, all I can cling to is that the morals that I've acted upon in my time will be repaid in action why whoever surges to dominance after us.

You yourself might, but the vast majority of people would not. Look at the Iraqis or the Afghanis. It's well within the US's power to rule over them, or even kill most of them. But that doesn't mean they give up and throw themselves to our mercy. They struggle onward, forced by pride that demolishes all reason. Look at Iran. Is there any real measurement that would objectively lead the people there to think their country is particularly powerful, relevant, or otherwise unique? Of course not. But that doesn't stop them from declaring "death to America," a democratic state, while simultaneously rioting for democratic reforms at home.

At 8/22/11 06:40 PM, Warforger wrote: Same could be said for pretty much every other nation's earliest years ESPECIALLY Israel.

Are you serious? You must be going back to biblical times because the war in 1948 lead to the death of only about 20,000 people, mostly soldiers in the armies of Israel and the Arab states.
Afterwards, the Palestinians were never enslaved, nor did they come under any persecution as severe and organized as the casta system in Spanish latin America. Refusing building permits and special perks for IDF Israelis doesn't remotely compare to involuntary servitude, forbidden education, and mandatory religious conversion.

That's not even that bad compared to say every other continent. By ethnic conflicts I meant actual conflicts that could lead to genocide, and the only one I could think of off the top of my head was Domincan Republic vs. Haiti

Well, gee, you must have fallen asleep during those history classes because you're forgetting about the Incans, the Aztecs, the Maya, and every other minor kingdom and people in Latin and South America that were absolutely crushed by the Spanish. Sure, disease did a lot of it, but the Conquistadores and missionaries finished them off, destroying their religion and culture and enslaving whomever was left.

All of those I mentioned have already lead to or probably will lead too (only unsure for Indians vs. Muslims really) crimes against humanity, now again if you could point me to a situation in Latin America that's like that other then the Dominican vs. Haiti one that would be nice.

You expect me to take part in some deranged pissing contest about which genocide was worse? Your attempts to downplay the near total destruction of every native culture in Latin and South America is absolutely absurd, and to say that what happened is "the ideal method of racial integration" makes you a dumbass. I'm sorry, but there's just no way around it given the flow of garbage emanating from you.

At 8/21/11 11:26 PM, Warforger wrote: Latin America is not like that, North America was though. Latin America is probably the perfect way to deal with ethnic conflicts i.e. by getting the indigenous, African and White populations to mix which creates Latino's, hence why there isn't too much widespread racism there.

Except for the earliest years when it was outright butchery, followed by slavery, followed by a rigid caste system based on racial heritage, not to mention the pervasive racial discrimination. This went on for a few hundred years before it was removed through armed revolution. Latin America undoubtedly has one of the worst histories of racial conflict in the world.

At 8/22/11 12:50 PM, lapis wrote:

Sorry, but what's the difference between "Can you honestly say that your morality and values are inherently superior to those who lived a hundred years ago, rather than them being products of the environment and culture you grew up in?" and the very essence of moral relativism?

No, it's an acknowledgement that morality is only relevant in the present. Morals are personal in nature, and it makes no sense to make judgements about the morality of the past using the morality of the present as a benchmark. At most, you can say, "by our moral standards, such and such people weren't very moral."
Moral relativism is when you can excuse anything, in other words not making any moral judgments about anything. For example, excusing the oppression of women in Muslim culture. I think it's morally degenerate and unforgivable.

Erm, but all the countries that voted about recognising Israel's existence as a state could do something, namely vote. And although you can't do anything to undo Israel's founding, you can still discuss whether or not it was legitimate because it may serve as a precedent

No it won't. A nation isn't going to act against its own interests because of what a bunch of dead politicians decided 60 years ago. Our government changes every few years. Direct policy reversals are not unheard of, and no one mandates consistency between administrations and legislatures over time.

When you decide, you have to take decisions like the ones regarding Israel into account. Remember, this is a big deal for the Chadians and Darfurians: all this affects the probability of a trade embargo or, and this is very important, a position on an IMF blacklist.

Both of those considerations involve more than the Chad and Darfur people alone. The US and other major nations will see potential risks and opportunities and act accordingly. Consistency with Israel's establishment won't be a concern. It shouldn't be a concern.

At 8/21/11 07:29 PM, Iron-Hampster wrote: a clip in that Jon Stewart video showed Bill O' Reilly calling the bottom 50% "moochers". might I ask what you think of the people who make it possible for me to get to work despite not yet owning a car? (bus drivers) or what you think of me, who makes little more than minimum wage yet paid an arm and a leg to take the course that allowed me to do what i do? (welding on school furniture)

I didn't say you or bus drivers were worthless. You aren't. But you, as a relatively unskilled worker, are far easier to replace than a college graduate.

my pay check REALLY reflect on my value to society? And say I suddenly got a huge raise, without changing my job at all, would i some how become "more valuable" to society?

Unless you're serving society in some other way (volunteering doesn't count in most cases, it isn't important enough for someone to do it for money), then yes. Generally, you wouldn't get a huge raise for no reason.

If so, in what way would I be more valuable to society? of course I would be able to spend more and help other people who need to make a living off me being able to spend once in a while, but the owner of my company making less total income as a result of that would cancel it out now wouldn't it?

No, because what you're contributing in work is more than what you are being paid. He uses your services to turn a profit and has enough that he can split it with you.

I guess i will be a no good stupid high school drop out moocher until i get my B ticket though... or at least as good as one.

Pretty much. I certainly am, a college grad working as a freight handler in a warehouse. I barely pay any income tax as a student (I'm taking other courses) and having such low income. But that's my own fault; it has nothing to do with rich people having a greater share of the nation's wealth.

At 8/21/11 06:10 PM, Knis wrote: Medicare & social security are also payed for primarily by the working & middle class. I'm fine if you cut SS & Medicare if you cut the taxes that are supposed to fund them.

That wouldn't be a bad outcome.

I'm sorry are you stating that someone who works in finance contributes more to our country than the guy driving the city bus?

Damn straight. Finance is hard. It takes a lot of effort, training, and intelligence to work in the financial system. Any retard can drive a bus. Finance workers need a lot of investment through education, training, etc. We can pick out all the bus drivers we want for free from high-school dropouts.

At 8/21/11 04:28 PM, lapis wrote: I can't argue against nihilism or moral relativism.

Good, because it's neither. It's reality.

But at the end of the day, when I see something like Christians being persecuted in Pakistan or hundreds of thousands people being killed in or kicked out of Darfur then I still want to say that that's "bad"

It is bad. But you can't do anything about it, and you can't be angry and outraged 100% of the time. And even when countries can do something, it's almost always prohibitively expensive or risky. I can't envision international relations operating any other way, and when there's only one way of doing things, there's no point to describing it as good or bad. It just is.

At 8/21/11 04:11 PM, djack wrote: Republican media

You mean Fox News and the WSJ? Cause that's about it besides radio.

but are in favor of eliminating tax refunds for the lower class and cutting social programs like medicare and medicaid each with only save/provide millions of dollars.

You're out of your mind. Medicare and medicaid eat up hundreds of billions every year. Combined with Social Security they constitute the majority of all government expenditures. Any meaningful reform would save tens of billions minimum.

The combined wealth of the lower 51% of Americans only totals up to about $1.4 trillion, if the government takes half of that it's the same amount as they could get with a minor tax increase on the top 2% of Americans.

Who contribute a hell of a lot more to this country than the lower 50%, which consumes the most social services and infrastructure costs. Limiting the size of their tax rebates at least to the point where no one can get more back than was withheld is only fair.

At 8/21/11 03:33 PM, lapis wrote: Right, but what motivated the countries that gave their recognition, and can we consider those motivations to have been legit?

Does it matter what their motivations were? At the end of the day, these countries' opinions are what matters. There's no absolute authority or standard, just a group of nations that can choose to acknowledge another nation or not. It's legitimate so long as these other countries want it to be.

I mean, you can defend anything done by a democratically elected government this way. Jim Crow laws? Perfectly legitimate because they were enacted in a democracy. But that still means that you can criticise the Jim Crow laws, which I think is analogous to what this thread is about.

Can we criticize them? Can you honestly say that your morality and values are inherently superior to those who lived a hundred years ago, rather than them being products of the environment and culture you grew up in?

You're not characterizing the article properly. After reading it, I didn't get the idea that republicans are fighting "extremely hard" for anything, only that some republicans are okay with letting the tax break expire. There's no indication that it's a mainstream republican position. If you're trying to expose "famous" republicans like...Rep. Jeb Hensarling, I guess you're on to something.

The issue of scope is important. Year-long tax cuts resemble a one-time rebate check rather than a long-term decrease, so people are more likely to save more of that money than they would if they expected a continued break for years to come.

If that other poster's figure of 700 billion dollars over ten years is accurate, then this tax cut would cost substantially more than that because it cost 120 billion dollars over one year.

At 8/12/11 10:28 PM, Warforger wrote: What if someone told you the immigration process was so bad that only the smartest most talented people make it through?

I'd say we're on the right track.

Seriously, does anyone want more unskilled poor people?

At 8/12/11 05:45 PM, EricSchmidt wrote: The main strain on the us economy are the old and the sick. Immigrants in the us are, on average, younger than the general population. Eventhose of retirement age are unable to recieve retirement benefits from the us government.

Something which liberals and illegal aliens want to change, and which will only gain momentum with larger influxes of illegal aliens. It won't be limited to retirement, either. Legalization will bring in a new swath of poor people dependent on social welfare to survive.

Immigrants tend to have larger families than most natove born americans thus they buy larger amounts of food and clothing.

Illegal aliens don't ship consumer goods to their home countries. The food and clothes isn't bought from US producers.

Because they dont apply for tax refunds or take full advantage of deductions they pay on average more taxes than native born americans

Whoa, there. First of all, you aren't even saying what you mean, which has to be that they pay more on average than equivalently skilled or employed Americans. Second, that is a hell of a claim to make casually since there's no real data on the economic activities of illegal immigrants (they don't like to take government surveys).

A simple solution is to allow open immigration(they cannot realistically be kept out anyway and INS is an expensive administration) and to create a tax penalty for employers who hire aliens.

You just said illegal immigrants purchase more and pay more in taxes than similar Americans. Now you want to work against that by discouraging anyone from hiring them?

A simple solution to the immigration issue is to let them all in (we cant realistically keep them out anyway)

Simple, and simple minded.

At 8/10/11 01:05 AM, Der-Lowe wrote: AD slopes downward because as income increases, there is a higher level of real money demand, and for real supply to expand, lower prices are needed.

I'm assuming this is an error. Lower prices are a result of increased production or reduced demand. Also, the term "real supply" doesn't make any sense, because a unit is still a unit regardless of prices, inflation, etc.

Supply slopes upwards because as prices increase, the real wage falls and businessmen are willing to hire more workers, therefore more is produced and output increases.

Right.

What I was saying specifically was that as the money supply expands and there is no full employment, then a monetary disequilibrium appears. For money demand to increase, the interest rate must fall, which causes more output, and at the same time, more output is needed so that money demand increases.

The last part of that sentence doesn't make any sense. In what you're describing, increased output is the result of a demand increase stemming from lower interest rates. Output isn't responding to money demand, but to demand for goods.

So at the same price level more output is needed to mantain equilibrium, ie the curve shifts outward. Since AS is upward sloping, the new equilibrium will be of higher prices and higher output.

Those are two different scenarios. Higher prices and output would occur along the curve. Shifting the curve to the right an equivalent amount would increase output but not the price level.

The theoretical relationship is clear; an increase in income will increase demand, which will raise the price level assuming a constant supply.

Here you fall into a contradiction: you're moving a variable (income) that you're saying it's staying fixed (constant supply).

I wrote incorrectly. I meant to say a stable supply curve.

Moreover, Price level and consumption determine inflation and growth tautologically: growth is the percentage change of income over time, and income is consumption, government expenditures, investment and net exports, whereas inflation is the percentage change over time of the price level.

That's not a tautology. Increases in consumption, or more specifically in the income that enables it in the forms you mentioned, represents economic growth (nominal). That is moderated by inflation, which describes the purchasing power of income.

At 8/9/11 05:30 PM, Der-Lowe wrote:

At 8/9/11 11:38 AM, SmilezRoyale wrote: My preference would be for the Federal Government to have spend several times more in the past than what it had actually done, and done so in a very short period of time, say, 4 trillion instead of 1 trillion At least to such a degree that if it failed, the plan's proponents could not have blamed it's failure on the plan being too modest. If it ended up being successful, that's just as good.

I agree, but the political system does not work like that, unfortunately in this case.

At 8/9/11 01:20 PM, adrshepard wrote:

At 8/9/11 11:02 AM, Der-Lowe wrote:

I think the theoretical relationship is muddy. What creates inflation is excess supply of money (excess demand of goods). Expansive monetary policy affects both income and prices (positively), but it is not that growth causes inflation, but that both inflation and growth may have a common cause (reading Durkheim pays off 3 years later).

I don't see how. The theoretical relationship is clear; an increase in income will increase demand, which will raise the price level assuming a constant supply. Even if technological advances increase production, they would still have to keep pace with income growth for there to be no inflation. I don't know Durkheim, but inflation and growth are reflections of price level and consumption, which reflect supply and demand. The empirical evidence as shown by your graph doesn't dispute that, it only suggests the same things aren't being held constant as in theoretical models.
The OP's idea would still lead to inflation barring some dramatic production increase of all goods.

At 8/9/11 11:02 AM, Der-Lowe wrote: That's true under normal economic conditions. Your central assumption here is that we are under full employment, therefore the economy does not expand when money is created and therefore households do not increase their quantity demanded for money.

I don't think he meant an increase in the money supply through open market operations so much as literally printing the bills and handing them out to people, taking banks and deposits out of the picture entirely. Charting real disposable income expenditures seems to match the CPI much better than the monetary base does, so a sudden increase in income would probably lead to the inflation everyone's talking about.

At 7/25/11 05:21 PM, fatape wrote:

At 7/25/11 03:50 PM, adrshepard wrote: Why not? The rest of society is paying to maintain that body, why shouldn't it benefit if you die during that time? Treat it like a mortgaged house.

Almost everyone before 18 has other people "paying to maintain there body". Dose that mean we should treat them like a mortgaged house?

We do. They can't vote or hold property, and the only instances where they can be separated are in cases of abuse, just like how a bank can't bulldoze a house with people still living in it unless it's foreclosed.

Actually we already do that it's called taxes and social assistance. A lot of people oppose both of those vehemently but they live in our society and have to follow said rules, religious people should not be any different.

But we don't take all of their wealth, even though the additional money would still do good. It's all or nothing when it comes to remains. You can't just take 30% of a body in organ taxes and expect the religious person to be satisfied that he at least has 70% of his remains left.

At 7/27/11 06:43 PM, Jessii wrote:

I'm not a guy tyvm.

Sorry, I don't frequent this forum much, and I don't check people's profiles for gender before responding unless it's somehow relevant.