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@HistoryBuff
Governments are predictable.
Lol no they are not. Look at Venezuela.
Not to mention nobody predicted Trump was going to rock the boat for the established limousine elites in DC.
Iraq?
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@Greyparrot
Governments are predictable.Lol no they are not. Look at Venezuela.
dear lord, America is nothing like Venezuela. That is such a silly comparison.
Not to mention nobody predicted Trump was going to rock the boat for the established limousine elites in DC.
By making them all richer and cow towing to their will? Because that is exactly what he has done. Sure he talks a big game and does moronic things like declaring war on Iran, but when it comes to domestic policy, trump does exactly what the establishment republicans tell him to do. Maybe with some extra corruption thrown in.
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@HistoryBuff
By making them all richer and cow towing to their will? Because that is exactly what he has done. Sure he talks a big game and does moronic things like declaring war on Iran, but when it comes to domestic policy, trump does exactly what the establishment republicans tell him to do. Maybe with some extra corruption thrown in.
If That's your idea of a predictable government, I have some swamp land to sell you.
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@Greyparrot
If That's your idea of a predictable government, I have some swamp land to sell you.
i never claimed trump is predictable. He is a narcissistic child with the nuclear codes. What he is though, is predictably greedy and corrupt. If you can convince him something will benefit him personally, he will go for it. Whether it is smart, good for the country, or even legal, is completely irrelevant to trump. Since the corrupt politicians and billionaires want to make the rich richer, that is a really easy sell.
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@TheDredPriateRoberts
or, we could let people keep more of the money they earn?
The weird part here is that your tone of voice suggests that you believe I would disagree with you on this.
Lowes and Home Depot actually pay fairly decently.
Hahaha okay I'll need to watch myself when reading your comments from now on. Nearly laughed myself to death just now.
I worked at Home Depot for a year and a half. They don't pay minimum wage, but they sure as hell do not pay 'fairly decently".
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@Discipulus_Didicit
if you hear tone of voices you may wish to speak with someone lol if you don't read things I write as they are written they will come across wrong, it's just how I am, can't help it.
fairly decent is relative and location dependant so......
the point that I seem to have hidden is, jobs that actually pay minimum wage aren't as common as people think. In some states, cities, it has already increased, some with little to no success or benefit to those jobs.
someone did the math for inflation and the minimum would be like 9 something an hour, but again not every employer or job gets a cost of living raise, some get more or none at all.
but what I was suggesting is, rather than raise the minimum, perhaps spending and waste could be cut so people could keep more of what they earn, your take home is all that really matters, what you get to keep and spend. If the minimum goes up but the take home goes down, or costs go up and purchasing power goes down they would be worse off.
let them keep more instead of give them more makes sense to me.
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@TheDredPriateRoberts
someone did the math for inflation and the minimum would be like 9 something an hour,
Yeah 9-10 an hour sounds about right to me. That is the minimum in my state I already said I think 15 is too much.
And to answer your question 'who actually gets paid min wage?', off the top of my head the people that work at my gym have told me they get paid that much. I am sure a simple Google search could reveal more examples but I am getting ready to head to work right now myself.
perhaps spending and waste could be cut so people could keep more of what they earn, your take home is all that really matters, what you get to keep and spend.
I still don't see how that is incompatible with anything I have said.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
oh, I'm not sure I said you were wrong about anything, I certainly didn't mean to, just offering different ideas, just carrying on the discussion.
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@HistoryBuff
i never claimed trump is predictable. He is a narcissistic child with the nuclear codes. What he is though, is predictably greedy and corrupt. If you can convince him something will benefit him personally, he will go for it. Whether it is smart, good for the country, or even legal, is completely irrelevant to trump. Since the corrupt politicians and billionaires want to make the rich richer, that is a really easy sell.
lol, every 1st rate philosopher knows everyone has self-interest and greed and power corrupts absolutely.
This is old news.
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@TheDredPriateRoberts
Ah, okay.
Well this seems like a natural conclusion to said discussion. So what have we learned today in this thread about the crisis in the Middle East? We learned that we shouldn't work at Planet Fitness lol.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
that reply was.......awesome
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@Greyparrot
lol, every 1st rate philosopher knows everyone has self-interest and greed and power corrupts absolutely.This is old news.
So when you want to fight corruption, you should choose the most corrupt person you can find? You have some strange (and stupid) ideas.
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@HistoryBuff
How do you feel about corporate CNN's recent hit pieces on Bernie?
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@Greyparrot
How do you feel about corporate CNN's recent hit pieces on Bernie?
Wow, this clip puts me in a tough position. I think Tucker Carlson is toxic garbage wrapped in human skin. But I actually kind of agreed with him *shudders*.
Yeah their hit piece was REALLY obvious. I mean they ran a story that had zero supporting evidence. The target of the slander has a history that is the exact opposite of what they are claiming. The timing and the source of the story is super suspicious. CNN doesn't have much, if any, credibility remaining. I mean, i'm pretty sure they also said that Sanders (a jewish man) was anti semetic. They have no limit to how low they will go.
But to be clear, Fox and Tucker Carlson and just as bad, if not worse.
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@Greyparrot
I think they are killing 2 birds with one leak.
Did any other major outlet cover this like Tucker?
I hope the soap opera continues, the potential for great entertainment (at their expense) is high.
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@TheDredPriateRoberts
It's no secret that the DNC controls the state media coverage and the debates, and it's no secret the DNC wants Biden or Warren.
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@Greyparrot
It's no secret that the DNC controls the state media coverage and the debates, and it's no secret the DNC wants Biden or Warren.
I think they would be fine with most of the field. They tried pushing Kamela, that failed. They tried pushing Beto, that failed too. They are still trying really hard to push Klobochar, but that is also failing.
At this point, they want anyone but Sanders to win. I'm sure they wouldn't want Yang either, but there is no chance of that.
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@Greyparrot
I don't think Warren made herself look too good either, but imo that was also be design, given Biden's failing mental faculties he'd be the easiest to manipulate imo, the rest of them are the has beens that never were.
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@TheDredPriateRoberts
Trump will be the only impeached president re-elected to the office.
Nobody else will ever be able to pull that off again ever in your lifetime.
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@HistoryBuff
So because workers have some sort of leverage to bargain with, you see that as a multi-billion dollar company being powerless? They are incredibly powerful, they just don't have absolute power like they would prefer.
They are going to be bankrupted because they are forced to take ludicrous contracts with huge pension plans. That pension bomb is unsustainable and our unions have made our cars less competitive. Toyota also operates in the US, but they do so without unions and are obliterating us on multiple fronts.
The reality is very different from your fantasy unfortunately. Insurance companies have found that it is more profitably to co-operate with the medical companies and pay outrageously over priced costs for hospitals and drugs because they know they can squeeze it out of people anyway. When your choice is pay the cost or die, it doesn't leave people with any options.
Because insurance companies generally have monopolies for many areas of the state. If they had to compete for customers, they would have to either offer better prices or services.
Of course not, you get bargaining power. When you represent the entire US health insurance industry you have the power to negotiate better prices. When individual companies who have no problem squeezing the money out of their customers are in charge of it, the result is ridiculous runaway costs.
That is called price fixing. That isn't a good idea pretty much ever. Think of how price ceilings such as rent control have historically worsened situations and apply that to drugs.
The details would be highly important. Would the schools be obligated to take students who choose to use their voucher or could they refuse students? Because at that point it would be very easy for rich parents to make a donation to a school and get their child a spot while a poor person's voucher is refused. You would then see the exact same problems we have now where the rich just go to private schools and the poor have public schools.
So, worst case scenario, nothing changes. Best case scenario, less fortunate children can go to better schools and schools compete, thus becoming more cost-efficient and higher quality. Don't see why you are against that.
I have seen sources vary based on what numbers they are using. Here is a study showing that between 2010-2016, every single drug that was approved received government funding. This was over 100 billion dollars.
That is a significant sum, yes. Not when compared to how much private companies spend on R&D(5x the amount) https://www.drugcostfacts.org/public-vs-private-drug-funding
However, I am not particularly happy with my tax money propping up Big Pharma, either.
You are assuming a few things that would have to all work, all the time. 1) you assume that there are honest, trustworthy competitors. If they are all corrupt, which most of them are, then this wouldn't happen. 2) you assume the market would react. Companies are doing shitty things every minute of every day all across america. the "market" hears about a teeny tiny percentage of them. And even if the "market" hears about them, they can only react to so many stories. If there are 10's of thousands of companies doing shitty things every day, only a tiny percentage of those are going to receive significant blow back from them. It is much more profitable to be crooked. And if you get caught, you apologize, maybe pay off a few lawsuits for grieving families, then go right back to doing it again.The market cannot ever, under any circumstances, force companies to stop being assholes. They will continuous screw people over as frequently and as severely as the possibly can. You can punish a few of them for these actions. but people's attention spans are too short and there are just too many cases for it to ever be effective. The much better plan is to have strict regulations and laws in place that will severely punish them if they do shitty things.
That would depend. Conservative economics is all about competition and reducing barriers of entry into the market. It is very unlikely that there would be no person who was honest. The market does react. After the whole hot coffee McDonald's lawsuit, guess what? They changed their policies on coffee. That is why in lawsuits, there is this wonderful thing called "punitive damages" where you can sue for extra as a deterrent for that company and other companies to engage in unethical behavior. If you continuously engage in unethical behavior (as was the case with McDonald's), you are much more likely to receive punitive damages. The bottom line is what counts, yes, but bad publicity and enormous lawsuits hurt the bottom line drastically.
Regulations are a very nuanced topic, and I am not sure that making them "strict" just for the sake of it is a good idea. That is how you get low-competition markets that fail, lots of people lose their jobs, "government needs to step in".
General electric is a massive multinational conglomerate. They are reported to be the 4th largest corporate polluter in america. They have massive holdings in oil and chemicals. They have on many occasions been found to have caused massive contamination including one time they dumped more than 100,000 tons of chemicals from their plant in Waterford, New York.They invest in green energy with one hand to get some good publicity, while massively investing in pollution, poison and death with the other. This is a perfect example why "the market" can never hold these companies accountable. They will us their massive resources to publicize the handful of good things they do, while making huge amounts of money exploiting people and spreading poison. But that money buys alot of good headlines.
They are by no means perfect, but they have massively invested in turbine technology and other forms of renewable energy. They have also decreased their carbon emissions from their early 2000's levels despite their rapid expansion during that time.