“Building a new stadium down the street does not work unless (Ron) Lancaster spilled some DNA in the lot where they’re going to build the new stadium,” he added. “You have to refurbish (Mosaic Stadium). You’ve got to can all new ideas you might have and use the sacred ground. Fenway did that and that is why Fenway is loved. The new Yankee Stadium isn’t the same as it used to be.”
The former Boston Red Sox and Montreal Expos pitcher will not be running for the vacant mayor’s position in Regina later this year. With his opinion on the new stadium, he wasn’t sure he would garner many votes anyway. But that is nothing new to the former member of the Rhinoceros Party. Lee ran on the Rhino ticket in 1988 for president of the United States. Not surprisingly, he didn’t make the ballot in a single state. He said one of the high-ranking members within the party gave him a six-pack of Molson Canadian and asked him to run for president.
“I adhered to their funny philosophy,” Lee said. “My campaign slogan was ‘No guns, no butter. They’ll both kill you.’ And I only campaigned in federal prisons where I knew they couldn’t vote, and I only accepted a quarter in campaign contributions.”
With it being an election year in the U.S., Lee said he is all in for the re-election of Barack Obama.
“The only time (Mitt) Romney opens his mouth is when he needs to change feet,” Lee said of the Republican nominee. “If Obama does lose this, which I can’t see happening, then it’s because of a lady in Florida who works for Jeb Bush and Diebold, the voting-machine company. If Obama even comes close to losing this election, it’ll be fraud.”
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OK, now add in the value of housing subsidies, healthcare, food stamps, heating assistance, free cell phone, subsidized internet, etc., etc.
The current system creates massive disincentives to work low-skill, low-pay jobs, since every dollar earned often costs the person a dollar in benefits.
I seem have missed the "why" of this statement along the way. Recap? Holding onto your already slanted terminologies just for fidelity's sake, what exactly about "too many people on the dole" makes the country "rot?"
That stuff doesn't go away automatically just because you get a job. Plenty of low wage working people get food stamps, housing assistance, etc. Yeah, some benefits would go down, and expenses would go up, but in your hypothetical, you're still looking at a couple hundred more in cash per week.
And yet, there's no stampede to fill low-wage jobs, despite 10 percent unemployment. Strange, no?
And yet, there's no stampede to fill low-wage jobs, despite 10 percent unemployment. Strange, no?
Joe's right. We need to raise the minimum wage.
Why would we need to raise the minimum wage? According to 'Misirlou,' minimum-wage jobs already pay a lot more than sitting at home collecting government benefits.
Of course there is. You just don't want to see it because it interferes with your preferred narrative. You see stories all the time about some hotel advertising 20 openings for maids and bellhops, and there are hundreds lined up around the block to apply. We had that thread here a few weeks ago about the Padres job fair and how many people paid $500 a pop for a better chance at a low wage job.
########. I never said that. Why are you such a congenital liar? I was responding to your hypothetical that one would be better collecting $500 a week in welfare than working 40 hours for $600. $600 per week is well above minimum wage. It's $15/hour.
I would hope we would have agreement on this principle -- that it is better for people and society for people to work for $20 an hour than be given $20 an hour on the dole. If we don't, I'm not sure there's much point in bickering over the more controversial parts.
If your vision of society is GE, McDonalds, WalMart, Google, Apple, Goldman Sachs and the other bulge brackets, and the US Federal Government running everything while everyone else lobbies and otherwise prostrates themselves to them, and bickers over their leftovers, we have fundamentally incompatible visions.
We're going in circles here. This discussion got started because 'hokieneer' claimed that low-skill jobs are going unfilled, with employers advertising "higher than minimum wage."
That was a story about young people (foolishly) paying $500 for a chance to get a (bad) job in an industry that's perceived to be glamorous. It's not really an applicable example to the discussion about working at McDonald's vs. collecting gov't benefits.
I would have too, and I'm surprised at the Republicans in this thread (Joe, Good Face) readily admitting that they'd rather sit at home and cash government checks than work for the same amount of (or even MORE) money. I thought those were the types of people that Republicans hated, not the types of people that Republicans are.
Are you nuts? In #5803, barely 15 minutes ago, you said:
My hypothetical provided exactly $100 in extra cash per week, before a long list of expenses related to working (daycare, commuting costs, taxes, etc.). I also never used the word "welfare." Government benefits have gone way beyond simple welfare checks.
I take very, very few agreements "on principle." I tend to ask why. It's sort of my schtick. I realize it's an article of faith in most of America that the "protestant work ethic" is sacrosanct and that humanity is somehow lessened if it's not spending its finite breath in this cosmos performing "productive work," but I'd like to see a good explanation of why that is the case. If Wil Wheaton shows up with a replicator tomorrow and can magically turn out food, clothing and all the goods necessary for human existence by the wave of the singularity's magic wand, why exactly would humanity need to "work" instead of living a life of communal liesure?
I have not proposed a vision of society so far. I've asked you to provide some sort of argumentative heft to support your assumptions about work and the value of human life.
Neither Republicans nor libertarians "hate" people who make rational decisions.
And excluded $100 per week in EITC.
edit: And as was pointed out, the maximum unemployment benefit is $336 per week. So, 700-336-some additional expenses = a couple hundred more cash per week.
Someone pointed out that there are help wanted signs up, and that becomes "evidence" to you that being on government assistance is a better deal than working.
Unemployment benefits are temporary, they're capped, and they're determined based on your previous earnings.
It is hard finding work out there right now. Where I live, when a Walmart hires, there are people lined up to apply for that job. There's a glut of people willing to work for free, employers are abusing/circumventing internship regulations, so you have people literally working for free doing jobs someone should be getting paid for, all for the promise of a job that isn't there.
You make up numbers and then use them to inform your opinions on the choices unemployed people have to make. This is not a worldview informed by empirical evidence, but by fantasy.
EITC creates a work disincentive at $1,000/month. Since $600/week yields more than $1,000/mo., I don't see how this was a "gotcha."
Of course, coming from someone who, two weeks ago, didn't know people had to qualify for Social Security and Medicare, this isn't very surprising.
At the very least, so that everyone has a fundamentally similar stake in the society. Some people would still want to work even if the replicator came out -- people run marathons and triathlons for free when they could sit on their ass instead (and stay fit and healthy with much a much smaller investment in time and effort). TR's Strenuous Life appeals to a lot of people, as it should.
The reasons people strive and work extend far beyond need and necessity.
(As an aside, these things have really nothing to do with the Bible, protestantism, and religion in general -- at least not essentially. You throw that strawman up consistently.)
Good grief. The maximum unemployment benefit is $336/week. Now add in the value of housing subsidies, healthcare, food stamps, heating assistance, free cell phone, subsidized internet, etc., etc.
Add $336 plus the value of all of the above and you don't get "a couple hundred more cash per week" by working a low-paying job.
I'm beginning to think that, like most people who ##### about people on public assistance, Joe doesn't actually know any.
OMG TEH WELFARE QUEENZ
That's a good argument for not refusing to let people work if they so desired. Of course, at that point I'd say they were more artisans than workers, and the activity more art than work, but if you want to hold the term work, fine. I run and lift and do CrossFit routines. I play softball and occasionally try to remind myself what the guitars hanging on the wall are for. In a post-replicator world, how is that activity notably different from "work" for people who's hobbies and fun happen to be...I don't know..spreadsheets* or something?
*We'll call these post-scarcity, post-necessity spreadsheet workers "Szymborskis"
And what's to be done with the product of their effort? Do they get to keep it post-Replicator?
In a post-replicator world, how is that activity notably different from "work" for people who's hobbies and fun happen to be...I don't know..spreadsheets* or something?
That was just an example. Post-Replicator there would still be Steve Jobs types and Bill Gates types and they'd strive to create. They didn't strive to create pre-Replicator because of need or necessity.
Isn't Kehoskie on record living in Mexico. He has no idea what he's talking about outside of what the cartels pay him to mule #### across the borders.
Why wouldn't they get to keep it? Hell, they could even sell it on a "artisan made" crafts fair circuit or something. Or they could shoot it into a star somewhere. Doesn't matter. They want to make something, *make something.* The point is that in a future society where production is mechanized to the point where *human labor is not required to create the essentials of human survival* there is no reason for people who DON'T want to work to have to work. They could go fishing. Or meditate in the high desert in a peyote induced haze. Or sell bottle-cap art on Etsy. Why would that be a bad thing?
Yeah I agree. If I could hypothetically get a no strings attached "basket of goods" equivalent to the amount I could purchase/produce in a 40 hour work week, and it was enough where my family and I could live on, and hypothetically there was no way I could acquire more skills/education/training to eventually earn a bigger basket of goods, then why ####### waste my life working? The thought of having all that time to explore my own interests, passions, hobbies, etc is intoxicating. Of course the realistic key here is not being able to acquire more skill/education. Most people who enter the workforce at low-wages with no skills or experience, move up from there, which in turn increases their lifestyle.
I have worked at least part time since I was 16, full/part time during college, and 40-50 hour weeks since, and I really like my current job. Before I was 16, I would routinely spend my summers working around the house and neighborhood on lawn/garden care & projects, usually for next to nothing pay. I have no qualms about work, and I enjoy it at times, but there are lots of greater things I could be doing with my limited existence.
EDIT: I probably should have framed my response in the post-replicator example, not the handouts example, but the same principle applies.
Sure. I have no idea how the existence of post-scarcity and post-need would make "strive to create" folks less. They just don't get to charge anything but the value of their art when they create.
Indeed. Although just to clarify, my sitting at home cashing gummint checks was predicated on me being in essentially the same situation as the guy I know. Since I'm not actually in his situation, I personally would try to find another job as quickly as possible.
No, they just pretend they exist.
The Replicator is, I'm sorry to report, sinking swifly into a boggy morass of irrelevancy.
Very little human labor is "required to create the essentials of human survival" now. We passed the point where people had to work to survive a long, long time ago.
Why wouldn't they get to keep it?
Then they should get to keep it pre-Replicator. You could even make an exception for providing everyone a baseline "essentials of human survival" and still have plenty left over from the current tax haul.
Same for me with my hypothetical on the last page. I was only talking about the choices facing low-skilled workers in an economy that values them less and less and with a government that often makes the choice to work less and less rational.
Here's an interesting idea. Modern Americans* already live in a post-scarcity environment. That's why the markets are so desperate to keep us believing we have to have the next bright shiny bauble in order to be complete. Sure, you can feed you and your kids, but you're not a real man without an iPhone 5.
Capitalism.
*duly noted that due to a lot of complex currents of history, race, cultural and religious assumptions, the United States is aghast at the idea of admitting we're in a post-scarcity moment and distributing the basics to everyone without having them "work for it."
You set up a system where baseline food, clothing and shelter is provided by the common purse, for the common good and you'll see a lot of people line up to support your "no taxes but the ones that pay for these common baselines."
Capitalism.
This is axiomatic. JK Galbreath ("The Affluent Society") covered this territory 55 years ago. Capitalism manufactures the needs and desires for its output. Why do we put up with it? So people can be employed.
And why must people be employed. To buy "needs and desires" with the coin of the realm.
Convenient.
Of course rational decisions exist. Would you rather be savagely beaten to death with a tire iron in the next five minutes or eat a delicious cookie?
Humans are nowhere near wholly rational creatures, but we have our moments. Depending on the circumstances, it's perfectly rational to choose to collect (x) and not have to work as opposed to collecting (x)*(y%) and having to work.
General Herkimer FTW.
Would you rather be savagely beaten to death with a tire iron in the next five minutes or eat a delicious cookie?
What kind of cookie? Because some of those ones with the nuts and cranberries and seriously awful, and I'd have to consider the tire iron.
I am not part of any "we" so grousing. I love teachers and think they deserve every penny they get. The fact that your kids are unteachable, self-centered idiots isn't their fault.
Gaelan's going to yell at you.
He can't, he might just leave UK high and dry.
Not in NY. I've collected $455/wk. And you can get over $500 in NJ and CT.
Way to show that Mohawk Valley pride!
***
That's what I get for taking their numbers at face value. I should have borrowed a page from their book and demanded a citation.
Most TANF grants are less than that per month (35 of 50 states for a family of three).
Adding in SNAP (food stamps), gets a family of 3 to less than 80% of Federal Poverty Line (18,530/year).
Other than that, sure, I bet a lot of people get $500/week in welfare.
Not possible. Human nature means there's never enough. We always strive to have more than the next guy.
That's why we have 5000 sq ft houses, and $10,000 watches and $100,000 cars. No one needs those things, but people always want something better to show their status.
My business consists of providing pieces of archival paper covered with images of old football program covers and other visual ephemera that nobody had previously thought of converting into posters. If people only bought what they really need I'd be living off dividends and Social Security.
The genius of capitalism is developing "needs" that were previously unrecognized, and the scourge of capitalism is when "needs" become inflated to the point where they become an addiction that puts people who couldn't really afford those "needs" in permanent debt. Finding the proper line between those two equally true propositions is the trick.
The only person who said anything about "$500/week in welfare" was 'Misirlou,' when he misrepresented my earlier hypothetical.
***
(EDITED to remove a friendly joke re: #5846 that was liable to turn into another 500-comment copyright discussion.)
"Human nature" is whatever people did last generation, repeated to their children as if that's the only thing that's ever happened in the history of the world.
If it was previously unrecognized, it was not a need. The genius of capitalism is prodding the lizard brain into eating everything in sight, and then convincing the monkey brain that you can't eat all of that without paying for it first.
"Human nature" is whatever people did last generation, repeated to their children as if that's the only thing that's ever happened in the history of the world.
People have been striving for status for 100,000 years. It's innate.
That's not human nature-- it's capitalist anthropology masquerading as such. Herbert Marcuse made Sam's point in An Essay on Liberation in 1971.
It was true long before capitalism was even an idea.
Man has been trying to accumulate more land/wives/cattle/whatever since the dawn of time.
If you say three times the witch comes out of the mirror and kills you?
Yahtzee!
Don't let the well documented anthropological record that shows that your assumptions are ingrained and cultural rather than natural and animalistic get in the way of your article of faith there, buddy.
That's because accumulation and consumption have typically been linked with status. They don't have to be, and there are areas of American life where they aren't -- academia, e.g.
It is true that the quest for status is innate to human nature.
No.
You're just making stuff up. Some men, in some societies, under some conditions. It's not a universal human trait to want to have more than your neighbor. If it was, no one would ever voluntarily give things to their needy neighbors. Capitalistic anthropology privileges evidence that suggests human are fundamentally competitive, because it suits the capitalist worldview. Another anthropological view can select different evidence to suggest that man is fundamentally cooperative, rather than competitive. Both are wrong, because they're universal accounts of human nature that ignore the specifics of the conditions where those traits manifest.
Giving it away signifies that they have it to give away. Many people are quite showy and insecure about this signal, and thus quite showy in their alms-giving. Thus, the names on buildings, endowments, etc.
It can-- if they exist in a society that accords value to the individual for conspicuous acts of charity. That's not a universal feature of human societies. The expectation that one gives away surplus can simply be engrained in the social structure, without affixing a reward to the action. You can just as easily negatively stigmatize the signification of accumulation.
It wasn't that long ago that the working class rejected signs of conspicuous consumption.
Oh, c'mon. It's evolutionary. The guy who strove to have more stuff was able to support more kids, and make sure those kids didn't starve during famines, etc.
The "pre-modern slacker" who sat around his hut, doing just enough to survive in good times, died when there were bad times, and his kids died too.
Humans evolved in a world where death was one bad harvest away.
That you think of these as the primary options is very telling.
Social Darwinism? I'm not surprised, but that's the best you've got?
Grasshoppers and ants. I remember that fable...
Then why has it never been the primary ethos of any society that has survived?
Sure, we can imagine it happening -- it just never happens.
My intention was not to misrepresent, but I used "welfare" as a shorthand catch all phrase to encompass all the government benefits you were claiming this hypothetical unemployed person would get. If you felt slighted, I apologize. But I think it was pretty clear that I was referring to the $500/week someone would receive in benefits regardless of how it is categorized and sub-divided.
You're partially correct here, and I'm partially wrong. I was assuming they would get the maximum benefit of $5100, when in reality, they get only $3100, or $60/week. For a family of 4 to get the maximum benefit, they could make up to $21,800 per year.
So, to go back to the hypothetical, $500/week to not work, $336 of that is unemployment (cash), and $164 some other sort of aid (is that a better word?). Working for $600/week = $660 cash plus probably a lesser than $164 per week in other aid. Even factoring in some additional expense, that still works out to a couple of hundred more per week for working this hypothetical $15/hr job over not.
Wait, that doesn't seem good enough.
Not quite yet.
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*damn you and your dumbed down HTML interface, Furtado
So the fact that the Nazis lost means they never existed? Thus fascism is against "human nature?"
Don't modern stone age level societies like the bushmen and Australian aboriginals have little to no concept of private property? or has Hollywood lied to me again?
It was an ethos in our society not that long ago, it just wasn't the ethos of the ruling class. Hell, in a lot of communities conspicuous displays of wealth are still frowned upon, especially if people in the community think that you're displaying the wealth in order to elevate yourself above others.
Projecting the social norms and mores of post-industrial consumer society back onto the whole of human existence is the height of laziness.
If it was previously unrecognized, it was not a need.
Perhaps you didn't see the quotation marks there, but I guess you could reduce our needs to tight pussy, loose shoes, and a warm place to shit. No need to get all fancy about it.
The genius of capitalism is prodding the lizard brain into eating everything in sight, and then convincing the monkey brain that you can't eat all of that without paying for it first.
You're forgetting that it's crackers to slip a rozzer monkey the dropsy in snide. That's elementary zoology that I thought they'd even taught you back in Allbenny.
Shoes are overrated.
Not down there in hookworm country, they ain't.
Down there you're about as likely to find shoes as you are a tight #####.
I know this has already been covered, but this is small-mindedness at its absolute basest. It's also wrong. Even if you said "everyone always wants more than they have", which alone isn't true, the idea that the base reason everyone would want more than what they have is to show up their neighbor is plain ridiculous.
You didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.
I love this talking point. It's like wearing a flag that says "I'm stupid and can't read for comprehension!" It's a good social signifier.
Guys who could rape and pillage did pretty good, too. That is also striving. But it's coercion!
Women are just another category of "more stuff."
I love this talking point. It's like wearing a flag that says "I'm stupid and can't read for comprehension!" It's a good social signifier.
I'm not sure which wins the prize, its willful ignorance or its complete lack of originality, but it seems to be about the best they can come up with these days.
The Romney-Ryan campaign has completely written off any thought of winning the election by winning the middle. They are fully, completely and ONLY engaged in an attempt to draw out the base in as high of numbers as possible. This is the impetus behind the "no one ever asked if I was born here" joke from Romney. It's the impetus behind the blatant lies underlying the "welfare" ads. It's the impetus behind the convention in its entirety. Team GOP has run the numbers and decided they can't win by tacking back to the center. Their only hope is in drumming up the wings of the GOP and turning out the crazy, the stupid, and the racist.
There are no men like me. Only me.
I can hardly wait.
This amused me.
Google says Photoshopped.
Robert Frank, no conservative by any stretch, has written extensively about this notion of relative wealth versus absolute wealth.
For example:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/business/darwin-the-market-whiz.html
So today I got a flyer in the mail from the NRA in support of Connie Mack IV (son of Senator Connie Mack III and great grandson of the Tall Tactician), who is running for Senator against incumbent Bill Nelson. On the one side, a nice bright picture of a smiling Mack, with the headline "Who can we trust with protecting our freedoms? The answer is clear--Connie mack"
On the other side is a blurry, scowling Bill Nelson tinted in dark blue. He looks a little like Frankenstein's monster. It kind of looks like this picture, the top one, only darker and more sinister. The tag line is "Call Bill Nelson at XXX-XXX-XXXX and ask him why he opposes our constitutional freedoms." Now, I know both sides do this, show distorted pictures of the enemy, but this is the worst I've ever seen. Nelson barely looks human. How could I vote for such a creature?
this is a pretty big reach for quite a few reason...
A. the tax code it suggest manage the near impossible feat of becomming even more complex than the current onces assuming you must differentiate between luxury spending and essential spending.
B. people who make more money are more likely to be able to save more of their money... duhhhhh... so effective tax rate is likely to do the exact opposite of what he article is trying to purpose.
C. a tax code that overly encourage saving does what exactly? I can see that it'll bring down overall consumption which hardly seem like a good marco economics argument.
Personally, the flaw is not as much in the tax code as in the ability to actually enforce it in the way it was meant to be. The solution would be to create a cloud where all your income and expenditure datas can be actively traced and compiled VIA programming, that'll both save a huge deal of useless IRS accessores and leave a very limited margin for evasion.
(however, the inevitable cry against big brother is predicatable. so that is unlikely to work either.)
Is there anything he won't lie about?
Social Darwinism? I'm not surprised, but that's the best you've got?
No, no, no, actual Darwinism. Survival of the fittest in the 100,000 years man existed pre-civilization.
Now you can strive to better yourself individually, or as a family, or as a clan, or tribe (cooperation and sharing are also a innate part of human sharing) but people who didn't strive and work hard to get more resources for their "group" (however they organized themselves) simply would not survive and reproduce in the same numbers as those who did.
Same reason John Edwards lied about ####### around.
Is it? Saying "I ran the 2008 Boston Marathon in 2:59:40" is "easily verifiable", but saying "yeah, I once ran 26.2 miles in a little under 3 hours", doesn't disproving that fall into the "trying to prove a negative"? (which isn't to suggest it wasn't a stupid thing for Ryan to say - if he actually did run a sub-3:00 marathon, he should have just gone ahead and said which one so folks could verify it)
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