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Messages - More Than Mortal
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2341
« on: February 17, 2016, 11:25:52 AM »
yet gets tons of money from the people she would be cracking down on. I simply don't believe her.
Cracking down on who? The banks? So I guess we live in a world where Dodd-Frank didn't happen and breaking up the banks is a swell idea. Oh wait, we don't.
2342
« on: February 17, 2016, 11:13:18 AM »
What other option do we on the left have, though? I'm certainly not voting for Hillary
Why? Her proposals are vastly superior to Sanders'.
2343
« on: February 17, 2016, 11:06:06 AM »
But government in healthcare is something that Republicans simply disagree about. There is no compromise to be made.
ACA is basically a conservative proposal that came out of the Heritage Foundation in the 1980s. And, of course, Romneycare.
2344
« on: February 17, 2016, 11:04:20 AM »
Daily reminder that the Sanders campaign tried to list six single-payer systems to prove they had inherent savings over the current US system, and three of them were multi-payer.
And this is the kind of bungling incompetence people vote for. The man is literally the Ron Paul of the Left.
2345
« on: February 17, 2016, 10:50:33 AM »
Regarding healthcare, what's our other option than universal healthcare? Here's the thing, though. Nobody disagrees with universal healthcare. Everybody wants universal healthcare, and when they say they don't it's because they're confusing "universal" healthcare for what Sanders is proposing. Universal just means everybody has coverage; what Sanders is proposing is single-payer healthcare, the systems we find in the UK, Scandinavia and Canada. What else can we do so that the average American isn't one doctor's visit away from financial ruin? The ACA has already done this; medical bills alone, by law, can simply not be enough to cause bankruptcy. OT: Hopefully the Sanders supporters will come out of the woodwork and try to defend that UMass hack.
2346
« on: February 17, 2016, 10:33:31 AM »
Policy Five: Incentivise marriage. Are there not already incentives for marrying?
I know the tax code is pretty friendly towards marriage at least in Britain, and I'm pretty sure some kind of incentives exist in the U.S. one as well, but I have to question their efficacy given how family structure has been changing over the past three decades or so.
2347
« on: February 17, 2016, 10:31:31 AM »
SCOTUS is not very influential on a larger scale, but still worth paying attention to.
Care to elaborate?
2348
« on: February 17, 2016, 10:15:08 AM »
are not intrinsically linked
I never claimed they were intrinsically linked. My point is that you are never going to remove religion from marriage at the aggregate level totally. Even if the world is 100pc atheist, I'm fairly confident we'll still be having marriages in Anglican churches and shit.
2349
« on: February 16, 2016, 10:17:15 PM »
So yeah, you can take the religion out of marriage.
So are we just going to pretend that the modern incarnation of marriage isn't totally different in a consequential way to what has come previously, and that religion absolutely is a massive part of the institution in its current form?
2350
« on: February 16, 2016, 12:07:22 PM »
Sounds like Gary Johnson is your candidate
lol
2351
« on: February 16, 2016, 10:55:21 AM »
Policy Three: Increase spending on infrastructure and R&D.
When did you change your mind on infrastructure?
I wouldn't say I've changed it so much as come to understand it better. I was never opposed to more infrastructure spending per se, and I was always vaguely aware of the shortfall in infrastructure spending at the time. Mainly, it was skepticism of government's ability to pick out infrastructure projects, now the evidence I've seen suggests that we have to try regardless.
2352
« on: February 16, 2016, 10:53:01 AM »
America has no problem breaking up families policy wise.
Heh, ending the War on Drugs was going to be my sixth policy.
2353
« on: February 16, 2016, 10:48:24 AM »
"It's okay if people die, so long as they disagree with me".
And why not? We're a very tribal species.
It's more salient if the disagreement is a fundamental life-or-death clash of values, such as jihadism and Western-Enlightenment culture, rather than a liberal and a conservative. The man made undoubtedly good rulings, he also made undoubtedly bad ones, and ones that were ambiguous. Such can be said of all the other justices. The man also significantly influenced constitutional law. Disagreeing with the man for some of his opinions and rulings is not a warrant to celebrate his death.
2354
« on: February 16, 2016, 07:41:10 AM »
U.S. policy in terms of immigration is more humanitarian HAHAHA
prioritising things like the reuniting of divided families HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I'm saying the priorities are weighted that way; I'm not saying the U.S. is successful in having a particularly humanitarian immigration policy, merely that the way in which it was designed turns the focus away from bringing in high-skilled labour. Looking at the consequences, U.S. immigration policy is pretty shitty on both economic and humanitarian grounds.
2355
« on: February 16, 2016, 06:16:17 AM »
Why should marriage be incentivized?
Yo.Changes in family structure - notably a doubling of the percent of families headed by a single woman - can account for a 3.7 percentage point increase in poverty rates, more than the entire rise in the poverty rate from 10.7 percent to 12.8 percent since 1980.
2356
« on: February 16, 2016, 04:27:10 AM »
Get rid of gerrymandering I haven't seen a significant enough argument on any level which would justify expending political capital to remove gerrymandering. Invest more in education and stop cutting teachers salaries Why spend more money before pursuing structural reforms like giving more autonomy to secondary schools, increasing parental choice and switching to performance-based pay for teachers. All of these things have significant empirical backing, at least as far as my experience with the literature goes.
2357
« on: February 16, 2016, 04:06:37 AM »
Just then I was willing to end it all, now I feel...fine, kinda.
I know the feeling, man. It's weird. I remember a night not too long ago when I was lying in bed thinking "I'm ready to die, I don't want to live any more". This after having a perfectly agreeable day and then going on to wake up feeling fine. I know it's incredibly difficult, but when you have such impulses try and tell yourself that they aren't rational, that it doesn't make sense for you to be feeling like this. It sounds cliched and worn-out, but it works if you can pull it off; convincing yourself that what you feel doesn't make sense is one of the first steps in terms of recovery. And I have to remember that I probably wouldn't be here if it weren't for a chance phone call two years ago. I've forgotten the date I tried to kill myself, hopefully with time I'll forget the month too. Life can seem like--and often is--a long, dark and winding road. You just have to remember it's better than straying into the forest. Shoot me a PM, if you ever feel the need to.
2358
« on: February 16, 2016, 03:56:04 AM »
This does not help me achieve my goal of cutting firewood for zee winter.
It does if somebody else has a comparative advantage in wood-cutting 
2359
« on: February 16, 2016, 03:19:18 AM »
Don't fix minimum wage
What?
2360
« on: February 16, 2016, 03:16:46 AM »
Good, one less old white guy in power so we can get the ball rolling.
Be quiet, racist pig.
2361
« on: February 16, 2016, 03:15:09 AM »
Do "economists" have any facts to back things up or do they just study trends all day lol
"I don't understand economics so I'm going to make a snarky comment about the people who do". Democrats and Republicans are closer to each other on policy questions than they are to economists. If there's an issue with policy, it's probably because people like you don't pay attention/don't understand what is going on.
2362
« on: February 16, 2016, 01:28:35 AM »
I'd hope "decrease military spending" would be the corollary to policy #3.
That would depend on whether or not you can find a way to decrease military spending without harming international influence or the ability to emerge successfully from a conflict. The evidence I've seen suggest that we can, but in principle I have no issue with defence spending at ~4pc of GDP. Entitlements are a much bigger fiscal beast that need confronting.
2363
« on: February 16, 2016, 01:03:51 AM »
Good riddance.
"It's okay if people die, so long as they disagree with me".
2364
« on: February 16, 2016, 12:41:58 AM »
but isn't it already easy?
Not compared to, say, Canadian procedures. U.S. policy in terms of immigration is more humanitarian, as opposed to economic, prioritising things like the reuniting of divided families over accepting highly-skilled labour. Specifically in terms of universities, it would be beneficial to automatically award foreign STEM graduates with green cards; there are also other potential policies floating around, such as the Dream Act and Startup Act.
2365
« on: February 16, 2016, 12:23:57 AM »
I'm not saying the nuclear family is bad, but that time is coming to a close.
History is not directional. Bad trends should be fought wherever they are found, and if there's one hill worth dying on it's definitely the nuclear family.
2366
« on: February 16, 2016, 12:20:53 AM »
Scalia as himself [. . .] was a scumbag That's even less convincing. Not only is it ludicrous to try and consider him as an individual distinct from his role as a justice--since that pretty much defines anybody's life after occurring--but here is a man who was capable of putting political differences aside for the sake of fulfilling relationships with people as far away from him as Christopher Hitchens, has been a defining character in the development of jurisprudence and studying the constitution and who was able to rule as he thought the constitution demanded he rule as opposed to how his personal opinions would have him rule. "Oh should we allow child abusers and pedophiles to be protected now?"
The point he was making was that it's not up the Supreme Court to determine which minorities deserve protection. He brought up paedophiles to illustrate the point, calling them "a deserving minority" precisely because nobody loves them and how much outrage it would cause if the situation were altered. Do I agree gay marriage should be legal? Of course, but it's not the job of the Court to make it so.
2367
« on: February 15, 2016, 11:32:33 PM »
Not sure if these kinds of threads are appropriate in Serious, but a mod will see it eventually.
Either way, in terms of advice I wished I had gotten sooner. . . Well, I wish somebody had told me that it's not a good idea to think of yourself as the central character of other people's narratives. I think we all do it, to some degree; we're always concerned whether people are looking at/thinking about us, and what kind of judgments they're passing. For me, however, it was (is) more of an issue with narcissism as opposed to self-esteem.
You make a great point tbh. It's best to think of yourself as a part of someone else's story and how you'll affect them instead of how they;ll effect you.
I think the best way to frame it would be "Worry about yourself", to put it very simply. It seems like people ought to be more introspective and think about how they can fit into the world better, rather than merely expecting the world to be better for them.
2368
« on: February 15, 2016, 11:26:08 PM »
It's time for another one of those threads, except this time I thought I'd spice it up. This will not be just a bunch of individual lists of ten policy proposals that we all think would work, allowing us to pat our backs with undeserved satisfaction that we've managed to list ten talking points.
Instead, there will be ten policy spaces in the OP. I will contribute five just to get the ball rolling, but basically your job is to get your policy on the top ten list. Accordingly, I will question and criticise your proposals. I also encourage everybody else to criticise both the original proposals and other users' proposals. If you defend your policy well-enough, it will get a spot in the OP. If you like, you can also just nominate a policy for removal and justify your decision.
They must also be actual policies, not bullshit vagueness like "Transition to a socialist economy".
Policy One: Abolish income and payroll taxes, replacing them with progressive consumption and property taxes.
Policy Two: Transition social security towards private, mandatory and regulated retirement savings accounts.
Policy Three: Increase spending on infrastructure and R&D.
Policy Four: Make it easier for high-skilled immigrants to come, work and live in the U.S.
Policy Five: Incentivise marriage.
Policy Six:
Policy Seven:
Policy Eight:
Policy Nine:
Policy Ten:
2369
« on: February 15, 2016, 10:54:30 PM »
Not sure if these kinds of threads are appropriate in Serious, but a mod will see it eventually.
Either way, in terms of advice I wished I had gotten sooner. . . Well, I wish somebody had told me that it's not a good idea to think of yourself as the central character of other people's narratives. I think we all do it, to some degree; we're always concerned whether people are looking at/thinking about us, and what kind of judgments they're passing. For me, however, it was (is) more of an issue with narcissism as opposed to self-esteem.
2370
« on: February 15, 2016, 06:32:25 PM »
Sucks, but the guy was a fucking scumbag.
Yeah man, it sucks that he defended your right to face your accuser in criminal proceedings, burn the flag and not be punished under unclear laws. What a fucking scumbag.
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