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So Thighmaster spokeswoman Suzanne Somers doesn't like Obamacare and is kinda misinformed about it: http://blogs.wsj.com/experts/2013/10/28/suzanne-somers-the-affordable-care-act-is-a-socialist-ponzi-scheme/ quote:What will the Affordable Care Act mean for retirees?
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# ? Oct 28, 2013 23:33 |
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# ? May 27, 2024 03:01 |
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Vertical Lime posted:So Thighmaster spokeswoman Suzanne Somers doesn't like Obamacare and is kinda misinformed about it: I don't think there's any money at all in veterinary medicine, at least for the vets. Every one I've ever known has done it because they love animals, and they're all poor and they provide stuff at cost or below because they want to save everybody's dog or lizard. Suzanne Somers can eat a dick and then inject estrogen into her vagina twice a day while eating 300% of her RDA of vitamin c.
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# ? Oct 29, 2013 00:29 |
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quote:All of my husband’s cousins are doctors. Several have moved to the U.S. because after their years of intensive schooling, they want to reap financial rewards. My 75-year-old Canadian girlfriend was denied treatment because she was too old. She died recently, having been given palliative care. That’s all the system would allow. She was too poor to buy it herself? Way to go letting your girlfriend die and using her death to make a regressive political point Somers you horrible psycho.
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# ? Oct 29, 2013 01:40 |
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Vertical Lime posted:So Thighmaster spokeswoman Suzanne Somers doesn't like Obamacare and is kinda misinformed about it: This loving article is making my goddamn head explode into loving fire and poo poo and piss. Holy crap.
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# ? Oct 29, 2013 03:30 |
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So I've been meaning to post this for a while http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/happy-tale-cities-article-1.1483174Some rear end in a top hat posted:Mayoral hopeful Bill de Blasio has made “the crisis of income inequality” in New York a major theme of his campaign, arguing that “it must be at the very center of our vision for the next four years.” But the city’s inequality is more a sign of its success than a crisis, and, no matter how much you hope for greater equality world-wide, it is hard to imagine a successful city-level welfare state. They're seriously arguing that extreme wealth inequality is a good thing. What the Christ?
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# ? Oct 29, 2013 03:40 |
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Don't you understand that having money be intensely concentrated among a couple people leads to better everything? Have you not been paying attention to the modern Feudal Movement?
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# ? Oct 29, 2013 03:43 |
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If they don't have all that money where will it go? The poor? They obviously don't know how to invest it well!
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# ? Oct 29, 2013 03:50 |
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The Lenin misquote probably originates here: http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=a86eAAAAMAAJ I love it when people use fake quotes for people who are famous for writing a lot of poo poo and having a lot of contemporary stuff written about them; particularly when they lived a long time ago. When Google Books would have a primary source if it existed, or at least a secondary source that cites a primary source, it is SO easy to smack that poo poo down. She appears to have made up the Churchill quote herself. That one's bizarre. Churchill is one of conservatives' favorite sources for stolen legitimacy for conservative ideas; I didn't realize he was now an evil communist.
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# ? Oct 29, 2013 03:56 |
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I could barely read through the drat article it filled me with so much rage. Some Harvard rear end in a top hat posted:America lived through an era of idealistic mayors committed to righting injustices at the local level, and cities suffered an enormous urban exodus, especially of middle-class families. As voters turned to pragmatic manager-mayors, like New York’s Ed Koch and Washington’s Anthony Williams, their cities have gotten healthier. Which is pretty much, I do care about helping the poor and misfortunate as long as we don't actually do anything to help them.
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# ? Oct 29, 2013 04:03 |
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Haha it's amazing they don't understand the real reason conservatives oppose socialized medicine is the mirror image: "control your workers' healthcare, and you control your workers." Want a raise? Good luck without healthcare, now-unemployed scum!
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# ? Oct 29, 2013 04:22 |
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Under the outgoing system there were people who WOULD LITERALLY DIE if they lost or quit their job without immediately having another one waiting. Want to start your own business? I hope you start making money hand over fist immediately, grandma, else you ain't getting your dialysis or whatever. But free market capitalism is non-coercive.
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# ? Oct 29, 2013 04:41 |
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KomradeX posted:So I've been meaning to post this for a while http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/happy-tale-cities-article-1.1483174 He's not arguing that extreme wealth inequality is a good thing. He's saying that it's good that even though New York accommodates the very rich, it also accommodates the very poor. There are many jurisdictions in the NYC metro area that do not accommodate such a broad range of income levels.
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# ? Oct 29, 2013 05:50 |
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Nice Davis posted:He's not arguing that extreme wealth inequality is a good thing. He's saying that it's good that even though New York accommodates the very rich, it also accommodates the very poor. There are many jurisdictions in the NYC metro area that do not accommodate such a broad range of income levels. NYC "accomodates" the poor? What exactly does that mean?
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# ? Oct 29, 2013 06:16 |
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VideoTapir posted:NYC "accomodates" the poor? What exactly does that mean? That it's a lot easier to survive on $15,000 in NYC than in Hempstead? It's not like it's easy, and it's not like it's a good thing that our minimum wage allows such low annual wages at a full time hourly job, but it is a good thing when local governments don't artificially raise the price of housing by reducing the housing supply through zoning laws. And New York has a service level that outpaces pretty much every suburban jurisdiction. e: Glaeser isn't saying "it's good that some people are abjectly poor", he's saying "there are people that are abjectly poor, and thank god at least one city in the NYC metro area is willing to accommodate them."
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# ? Oct 29, 2013 06:21 |
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Have you tried living in NYC on 15k a year? Or god forbid less? That poo poo is in no way loving easy. And even if it is easier than somewhere else it is because of the little remains of what passes for the "welfare state" in the City. But what's this rear end in a top hat got to say about that, "I share Bill de Blasio’s passion for the less fortunate, and he is right that the mayor must represent all of New York — rich, middle-class and poor alike. But the best way for a mayor DeBlasio to care for the city is to focus on getting the basics of city government right, not to try to run an ever-larger local welfare state." So yes he is saying wealth inequality is a good a thing.
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# ? Oct 29, 2013 06:42 |
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KomradeX posted:Have you tried living in NYC on 15k a year? Or god forbid less? That poo poo is in no way loving easy. Now try doing it in one of the Nassau Towns. Or any of the Westchester places. Or the NJ suburbs close up to NYC.
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# ? Oct 29, 2013 06:44 |
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KomradeX posted:Have you tried living in NYC on 15k a year? Or god forbid less? That poo poo is in no way loving easy. And even if it is easier than somewhere else it is because of the little remains of what passes for the "welfare state" in the City. Yes, that's exactly what I said. KomradeX posted:But what's this rear end in a top hat got to say about that, "I share Bill de Blasio’s passion for the less fortunate, and he is right that the mayor must represent all of New York — rich, middle-class and poor alike. But the best way for a mayor DeBlasio to care for the city is to focus on getting the basics of city government right, not to try to run an ever-larger local welfare state." So yes he is saying wealth inequality is a good a thing. If you took any amount of time to become familiar with Glaeser's work, you'd know that he's an almost relentless proponent of reducing regulatory barriers to providing new housing in New York City. Housing costs remain one of the biggest burdens on the poor, and allowing the supply of housing to increase lessens that burden. I know it's fun to feel righteously angry, but using that anger to mischaracterize someone's argument isn't a very admirable tactic. e: For instance, in Triumph of the City Glaeser doesn't argue that Dharavi/Kibera/Rocinha are ideal landing spots for everyone. But he does argue that these slums provide opportunities for upward mobility that rural villages do not. It's the same with the poor neighborhoods in Queens and the Bronx. It's not ideal that many hardworking people are people, but it is reality that many hardworking people are poor, and it's better for those people to be able to locate in a city with transit and affordable housing than a suburb that has minimum parking requirements and maximum densities and no transit and all sorts of other anti-poor land use and transportation policies. pig slut lisa fucked around with this message at 07:00 on Oct 29, 2013 |
# ? Oct 29, 2013 06:46 |
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No I'm not familiar with his work, since this op-ed of his is the first I've ever heard of him. But when he writes something like this, "But the best way for a mayor DeBlasio to care for the city is to focus on getting the basics of city government right, not to try to run an ever-larger local welfare state." He's out right saying don't help the poor through increased taxes and social services.
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# ? Oct 29, 2013 06:56 |
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KomradeX posted:No I'm not familiar with his work, since this op-ed of his is the first I've ever heard of him. But when he writes something like this, "But the best way for a mayor DeBlasio to care for the city is to focus on getting the basics of city government right, not to try to run an ever-larger local welfare state." He's out right saying don't help the poor through increased taxes and social services. I would agree with Glaeser that "reducing regulatory barriers to affordable housing" is a better first step for a mayor than "increasing simplistic wealth transfers" because the former is less of a zero-sum exercise. But I'm glad you've at least acknowledged that you don't really have a full idea of what he's advocating!
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# ? Oct 29, 2013 07:02 |
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Nice Davis posted:I would agree with Glaeser that "reducing regulatory barriers to affordable housing" is a better first step for a mayor than "increasing simplistic wealth transfers" because the former is less of a zero-sum exercise. But I'm glad you've at least acknowledged that you don't really have a full idea of what he's advocating! What regulations are blocking affordable housing? I don't understand what these magic barriers consist of that are preventing everyone from having cheap housing is it lead paint?
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# ? Oct 29, 2013 07:22 |
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socialsecurity posted:What regulations are blocking affordable housing? I don't understand what these magic barriers consist of that are preventing everyone from having cheap housing is it lead paint? Primary zoning regulations that limit housing density. Here's a recent publication on the uniqueness of the single-family zoning district as an American invention that limits developers' ability to meet citizen demand for dense, walkable neighborhoods: http://jpe.sagepub.com/content/33/3/292.full.pdf Now obviously NYC isn't plagued by SF1 zoning, but a lot of its suburbs are! And even in NYC, anti-density regulations prevent the most efficient utilization of transit-rich lots.
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# ? Oct 29, 2013 07:26 |
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That "simplistic wealth transfers" may mean that a child can eat or that rent can be paid seems to mean little I guess. It doesn't really matter if he's advocating for cheaper housing for the poor if he's also advocating for not increasing services for the poor, since while providing shelter is nice, cutting section 8 housing and other local services hurts more. Since I'm sure most people will take food in their stomachs over housing in Westchester.
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# ? Oct 29, 2013 13:44 |
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Nice Davis posted:I would agree with Glaeser that "reducing regulatory barriers to affordable housing" is a better first step for a mayor than "increasing simplistic wealth transfers" because the former is less of a zero-sum exercise. But I'm glad you've at least acknowledged that you don't really have a full idea of what he's advocating! Wealth transfers are not a zero-sum exercise either. And regardless of Glaeser's views on affordable housing, he's still a bit of a poo poo, really. The whole article is a disingenuous argument to the effect that giving poor people more money is somehow bad for them. quote:If the next mayor wants to make New York City more generous to the poor — a worthy if difficult goal — he should at least recognize that this will attract more poor people to the city and may ultimately make the city more unequal. quote:Make New York City’s public sector far more generous to those at the bottom, and it will attract more poor people. Attract more poor people, and inequality will grow. See, if we reduce economic inequality, that would just lead to more economic inequality! And anyhow, inequality isn't that bad anyway, we should be proud of it! quote:New York’s inequality is extreme. Manhattan is the most unequal big county in the U.S., and the New York area is the country’s seventh most unequal metropolitan area. The Bronx and Brooklyn are more unequal than 90% of America’s more than 3,000 counties. Also if we spend more money on the poor, that would just piss off the job creators quote:Progressives can plausibly imagine creating a far more expansive American welfare state that taxes the rich more and spends more on the poor. Many of the rich might choose to earn a little less and relax a little more, but few would flee the country. In any case, it's not about being poor, it's about being able to bootstrap your way to being rich! quote:The bigger question, the more important one, is not how much inequality exists — but whether there is mobility for people on the lower rungs of the economic ladder. Because the market fixes everything, which is why education should be organized like high-end dining: quote:Constant competition and innovation are great urban virtues, but these advantages disappear when public monopoly replaces private entrepreneurship. Imagine how mediocre food in New York would be if it was provided by a single public canteen. But that is exactly what we’ve done for our schools. My colleague Roland Fryer has found that many New York charter schools have achieved outstanding success. Poor and middle-income New Yorkers alike would benefit from more competition in education. The guy may have reasonable views on housing, but he's still a neoliberal rear end in a top hat.
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# ? Oct 29, 2013 14:17 |
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botany posted:Wealth transfers are not a zero-sum exercise either. I agree with this, and I don't think "zero-sum" was the most accurate term for me to use. What I meant was more along the lines that deregulating density controls is a way of increasing real wages (by increasing the housing supply and lowering housing prices) without taking a single dollar out of anyone's pocket. botany posted:See, if we reduce economic inequality, that would just lead to more economic inequality! And anyhow, inequality isn't that bad anyway, we should be proud of it! There are a lot of state and national factors contributing to economic inequality. It is far more within the power of a municipality to ensure that it is an attractive place to live for people of all economic classes than it is for the same municipality to equalize incomes. I don't see how it can be a bad thing to be proud of one's city for being a place that attracts the poor. If someone who's poor goes to the considerable time and expense to move to a new place, that's probably because they see it as a good value proposition. To say otherwise is to be mad at the New York of the early 1900s for attracting European immigrants, Detroit and its auto factories for attracting rural Southern blacks, and today's United States for attracting Latin American immigrants seeking a better life. botany posted:Because the market fixes everything, which is why education should be organized like high-end dining: I agree with you that his educational policy recommendation here is weird and dumb.
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# ? Oct 29, 2013 14:48 |
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Glaeser's a great guy, sure he is against government engaging in anti-poverty programs, but did you know that he wants to make Gilded Age-style tenements legal again? So think about THAT.
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# ? Oct 30, 2013 17:24 |
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KomradeX posted:So I've been meaning to post this for a while http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/happy-tale-cities-article-1.1483174 To the right, income equality literally means "take all the money from all the people and spread it around until everyone has an equal amount". They have subsequently been taught to fear this because it must mean that people who support it want to take all your money and give it to poor lazy slobs. They are incapable of thinking about what it means beyond that, because it fits the caricature of those dumb tax-and-spend Democrats they've held in their feeble little heads for so long.
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# ? Oct 30, 2013 17:30 |
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30.5 Days posted:did you know that he wants to make Gilded Age-style tenements legal again? So think about THAT. This is in no way an accurate interpretation of the deregulation of density controls. In many places, it's not possble (due to regulation) for developers to construct housing at a price point that the poor can afford. How does this help the poor?
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# ? Oct 30, 2013 18:14 |
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30.5 Days posted:Glaeser's a great guy, sure he is against government engaging in anti-poverty programs, but did you know that he wants to make Gilded Age-style tenements legal again? So think about THAT. Yes, who can forget Glaeser's seminal work "Throw Out the Fire Code (And the Plumbing Code Too!)"
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# ? Oct 30, 2013 18:32 |
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Being for making "affordable" housing for the poor is great but is sort of undone when you think that we shouldn't expand and better fund programs that directly help the poor. The guys a neo-liberal shithead. But that was apparent when I saw he was an American economist.
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# ? Oct 30, 2013 18:54 |
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So some people I know are sending around this article, talking about how it proves libertarianism is great, when to me it just makes libertarian look as bad as it always has. My brain almost locks up though trying to figure out how they can see positives here. Can anyone offer a cogent refutation or even explanation of these arguments? http://mises.org/daily/6573/The-New-York-Times-Got-Libertarianism-Wrong-Yet-Again quote:Amia Srinivasan has overlooked one of the key themes of Nozick’s book. It isn’t just that he finds it “difficult to say” that you deserve what you get in the market. He doesn’t say it at all. A theory of justice in which people were rewarded in accord with morally non-arbitrary characteristics would be a “patterned” theory. Nozick takes great pains, evidently lost on Srinivasan, to distinguish such patterned theories from his own historical theory. In his account, you get what you are entitled to, a very different matter. quote:Srinivasan’s remaining problems for Nozick rest on an elementary confusion. Nowhere does Nozick say that the structure of libertarian rights exhausts morality. Rather, rights tell us when force or its threat may be permissibly used. It is not at all the case that anything you are free to do, according to this structure of rights, is morally permissible. Neither is it the case that moral obligation is confined to freely chosen commitments; again, Srinivasan wrongly conflates moral obligations and enforceable obligations. It would, I suppose, be too much to ask Srinivasan to have a look at Invariances, Nozick’s last book; but if she could steel herself to do so, she would find there a detailed discussion of the place of coercion within morality. Some of this I don't understand just because I'm not well versed in Nozick. But other bits just seem like the kind of logic sociopaths use. "Oh, it doesn't matter if we have morals. The guy who came up with libertarianism isn't talking about morals. Therefore we don't have to bother with them."
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# ? Nov 5, 2013 03:31 |
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Nozick is dumb because he thinks physical force is the only kind of coercion, when in reality poverty and death by starvation is just as powerful.
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# ? Nov 5, 2013 07:09 |
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Ccs posted:
Amusing fact about Nozick. Later in his life he recanted, basically saying 'poo poo, I didn't realise how hard poor people had it. Keep in mind that all that that lovely Mises site is saying there is "our theory of justice has absolutely loving nothing to do with morality.". The argument advanced there is quite literally 'sure, our theory of justice is going to gently caress over the poor, but justice and morality are super different, and you're entitled to your money because of reasons.' I'd like to say that there's more to libertarian philosophy than this, but even brilliant philosophers like Nozick ultimately have their arguments resting on peculiar axioms. Srinivasan in the Times is asking libertarians whether they're willing to live with the consequences of their philosophy - she's saying look at how this turns out, you loving greedy shits! The libertarians are essentially replying with "It doesn't matter how things turn out, only that they're just." Most theories of justice are to some degree moral, or at least have some bearing on the way we think things should be. Libertarian justice puts forward the belief that justice and morality are two different things, and more importantly only one of those (justice) is something we should enforce via the state. Good outcomes are less important than their abstract theory of justice. This is how libertarians respond to this poo poo. Whenever they're told how sociopathic their beliefs are, they resort to 'but isn't justice the most important thing? Now, let's get back to discussing how all taxation is theft.'. It's a cowardly, prevaricating response that attempts to tear down Srinivasan's bona fides as a philosopher in order to not actually have to answer the question straight up. Because the answer 'I don't give a gently caress if the poor starve in the streets, provided the rich keep their money' is something you're going to want to cloak in as much verbiage as possible. occipitallobe fucked around with this message at 07:41 on Nov 5, 2013 |
# ? Nov 5, 2013 07:39 |
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Libertarians use a different dictionary than everyone else. The words look the same but their meanings are often very different.
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# ? Nov 5, 2013 09:16 |
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Ccs posted:
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# ? Nov 5, 2013 10:39 |
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Ccs posted:Some of this I don't understand just because I'm not well versed in Nozick. Don't cry yourself to sleep over it, he's a very lazy and shoddy thinker. His model of distributive justice only works if you assume that you start from an equitable point and his method for getting to an equitable starting point given the massive injustices throughout history is some hand-wavy "redistributive payments of some kind through some calculated method I don't really have details".
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# ? Nov 5, 2013 12:14 |
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This thing is related to the Incognito/Martin story in the NFL. If you're not familiar with the story, here are some links that might help: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3580737 http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9939308/richie-incognito-jonathan-martin-miami-dolphins-bullying-scandal http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/11/you-dont-want-to-fight-an-nfl-lineman-stop-talking-like-you-do/281161/ http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/11/richie-incognito-and-the-banality-of-supermacho/281203/ http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/11/how-to-be-one-of-the-guys/281296/ http://www.reddit.com/r/nfl/comments/1q6rg1/official_incognitomartin_megathread/ Short version: Miami Dolphins player Jonathan Martin recently came forward and said that teammate Richie Incognito was being a gargantuan piece of poo poo as part of some "hazing" bullshit. Some other NFL players, many of them anonymous, have defended Incognito's actions because uuuuugggghhhh. Former Dolphins player Lydon Murtha wrote an editorial defending him: http://mmqb.si.com/2013/11/07/richie-incognito-jonathan-martin-dolphins-lydon-murtha/ quote:Martin was expected to play left tackle beside Incognito at guard from the start, so Incognito took him under his wing. They were close friends by all apperances. Martin had a tendency to tank when things would get difficult in practice, and Incognito would lift him up. He’d say, there’s always tomorrow. Richie has been more kind to Martin than any other player. http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/9926139/richie-incognito-miami-dolphins-used-slurs-messages-jonathan-martin quote:Multiple sources confirmed to ESPN that the following is a transcript of a voice message Incognito left for Martin in April 2013, a year after Martin was drafted: Yes, when I want to get to know someone better, I leave death threats and use racial slurs. quote:That’s where Incognito ran into a problem. Personally, I know when a guy can’t handle razzing. You can tell that some guys just aren’t built for it. Incognito doesn’t have that filter. He was the jokester on the team, and he joked with everybody from players to coaches. That voicemail he sent came from a place of humor, but where he really screwed up was using the N-word. That, I cannot condone, and it’s probably the biggest reason he’s not with the team right now. Odd thing is, I’ve heard Incognito call Martin the same thing to his face in meetings and all Martin did was laugh. Many more worse things were said about others in the room from all different parties. It’s an Animal House. Now Incognito’s being slandered as a racist and a bigot, and unfortunately that’s never going to be wiped clean because of all the wrong he’s done people in his past. But if you really know who Richie is, he’s a really good, kind man and far from a racist. Hahaha sure. Meanwhile, other players have different opinions on this "good, kind man": http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/11/08/cam-cleeland-victim-of-hazing-aghast-at-martin-reaction/ quote:“I’m not afraid to say that he was an immature, unrealistic scumbag,” Cleeland said. “When it came down to it, he had no personality, he was a locker-room cancer, and he just wanted to fight everybody all the time. It was bizarre beyond belief.”
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# ? Nov 9, 2013 18:53 |
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No, you see, calling people racial slurs is funny because
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# ? Nov 10, 2013 05:43 |
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Incognito is his real last name?
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# ? Nov 10, 2013 06:41 |
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Entropic posted:Incognito is his real last name? Christ I feel like I'm watching the Daily Show episode covering this again, which for its part felt like I was just reading TMZ. If there were ever a group of people who felt like the rules did not apply to them (only to inevitably discover that they do), it's football players.
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# ? Nov 10, 2013 07:09 |
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# ? May 27, 2024 03:01 |
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But wait, there's more! Another former NFL player, Nathan Jackson, defends Incognito: http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/richie-incognito-2013-11/ quote:Through the TV screen, Richie Incognito looks like the big jerk. But we don’t understand the context, intent, or perception of the joking that goes on in that locker room, or whether it was perceived as joking in the first place. The voice-mail in question sure sounds like a joke, albeit a bad one: It allegedly involves Incognito using the N-word and offering to poop in the dude’s mouth. Thankfully, Ta-Nehisi Coates is there to call him out: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/11/richie-incognitos-accidental-racism-an-apologia/281320/ quote:The thinking here is unfortunate. If I am found on camera inveighing against "hook-nosed Jews," to call myself "unlucky" would be deflection and self-serving understatement. The word "unlucky" presumes that virtually all adult white men can be found, at some point, in full on Michael Richards-mode and those of us who shame them for it are the real culprits. quote:The limits of using work-place friendships to analyze something that happened outside of the workplace, are evident in Jackson's notion that "friend of the family" is the ultimate statement of fraternity. White people who actually spend time around black people--not black individuals whom they know from work, but black people with their families, in their communities, with their parents--will quickly notice that using "friend of the family" actually isn't a barometer of closeness. I'm black and I don't call even some of my best friends friend of the family. They, unlike me, are offended by it. Black humans, like most humans, are different from each other. But to grasp this, you must have to have relationships with black humans that go beyond your job. Read TNC's article. It's good, like all of TNC's stuff.
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# ? Nov 10, 2013 19:55 |