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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
I think it's the bureaucrat in my heart that feels that way, like voting ID laws sound to me as perfectly necessary for a democracy. Like using the driver's license as a substitute for your voting ID feels entirely wrong to me, even if it is sensible in the US context...
Speaking of which, with initiatiatives like opt-out voting registration at the DMV being proposed by democrats, the republican use their "small government" spiel to close the DMV offices en masse...how are democrats responding to that? Also, what about people that can't drive, how are they registering to vote?
Just imagine what we could do if we took half of the military budget and applied it to the real problems of life.
And how the fuck do we convince the average person to think that way?
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Yeah cause state hospitals like Penn Hurst provided the best care around.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YG33HvIKOgQ
If you can prove this won't happen again then I might be persuaded on the issue.
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How does that even work?
Wouldn't it make more sense to have higher taxes so you could have more money to pay off the deficit?
edited 9th Sep '15 10:42:23 AM by Skycobra51
Look upon my privilege ye mighty and despair.Autism is hard issue, especially since there's so many factors that may cause autism, including how old the parents are.
I'm pretty much stumped on this. Like you'd have to try to erase all the factors that may substantially increase chance of autism.
You've got to be in good health. The moms especially have to eat healthy before and during the pregnancy. Dads should be similar before doing their contribution. So pretty much avoid accidental pregnancies.
Then, the environment while carrying the baby cause there's environmental triggers.
Then there's link between the older parents and autism - like wtf. The odds right now pretty much gives women only between 20 and 30. Older sperm is also a risk factor due to mutations but it's easier to freeze sperm unless freezing also somehow does some damage cause there's studies suggesting that IVF doubles the chance for autism.
Plants are aliens, and fungi are nanomachines.I think that discussion has the risk of going very off-topic. I was hoping to bring up the political implications of having a very large adult disabled population who can't get or keep jobs (that includes the brilliant so-called "high-functioning" individuals with college degrees and skills), and having to take care of them forever if no-one will hire them.
The problems with having people who are likely to end up homeless, being mistreated and eventually jailed when they act out.
Society is gonna have to pay for something at least:
- Paying for them to be in prison.
- Paying for the cleanup of any crimes they commit and/or health issues they end up getting hospitalized for.
- Paying for them to be in an institution.
- Paying for them to be taken care of in a personalized, individualized way.
- Giving them a job (and with hiring potential being essentially "(perceived reward) minus (perceived risk)", they are unlikely to be hired).
@Bonsai: Yes. It's Republican magical thinking at work - cut taxes on the rich, and they'll be able to spend their money and drive the economy by investing and conspicuous consumption.
It's been standard Republican ideology since Reagan that you can cut the deficit by cutting taxes on the rich. Here's David Brin's summary of how it works.
- if the federal budget is in surplus, cut taxes on the rich, because it's their money, not the government's, and there will henceforth be no rainy days.
- in times of peace, cut taxes on the rich, because government has lower priority in peacetime.
- in times of war, cut taxes on the rich, because... well, this one never made sense even by conservative logic. Indeed, this was the first time in US history that the clade of uber-wealth demanded ever-increasing state largesse even while the nation was under deadly threat.
Taxes serve two main functions in a sovereign currency issuer:
- They provide a baseline demand for the currency by requiring that the government be paid in it and nothing else. This demand is backed by the threat of force.
- They allow for redistribution of wealth without creating inflationary pressure as would occur if the government printed money without any revenue.
To the individuals and businesses being taxed, they seem like a dramatic imposition: "You're taking my money and giving it to other people! The gall!" However, from a macroeconomic standpoint, they are just ways to move money from one place to another.
There is a third, very important use that is neither macroeconomic nor fiscal: they act as incentives. By taxing different things at different rates, the government drives behavior.
The question, "How high should taxes be?" is properly answered: "As high as they need to be to accomplish their function." It is a Mathematician's Answer, of a sort, but it happens to be a correct one.
edited 9th Sep '15 11:51:37 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Skycobra; you're talking like asylums or the streets are absolutely the only two options. When talking about "enhanced care options" things like nursing homes for the disabled should be an options. Granted, there's some fuck awful nursing homes out there, and that's a problem with oversight, in general having a living space and regular nursing care in the same place seems to be a good solution to the fact that there's people with health issues that need regular, daily care. There's also the option of live in nurses and the like that would help in many cases.
If, you know, we could actually get the taxes raised to pay adequately for any of these services. But the options aren't limited to two awful things. At all.
@Vandro; I think I got my first voter registration form while I was in high school. But that was over ten years ago. Also, I was part of a registration effort during last year's gubernatorial campaign; we just sat at a table at a community college and tried to get young people to come to us. We didn't get many people to come.
And I repeat that shutting down DM Vs is a fucking stupid thing that's done in such a way as to disenfranchise minority voters. Why would you support a party that's specifically doing that?
edited 9th Sep '15 1:30:34 PM by AceofSpades
And the answer, of course, is that society, having decided that it is worthwhile investing resources into supporting these non-productive individuals (a utilitarian decision valuing their lives more highly than their economic contributions), is therefore obligated to allocate resources adequately to that task.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"and the tend to get (a reputation to be)haunted rather quickly.
like seriously. there is a lot of them
DMVs exist for the primary function of facilitating automobile regulations by: conducting driving exams and issuing licenses; maintaining vehicle registration information; collecting fees.
Since driver's licenses (and, less commonly, "walker's IDs" — photo identification given out in lieu of a driver's license) are official ID for almost all government-related purposes, DMVs double as points of issue for official photo ID. They also collect voter registration information, register organ donors, and similar miscellaneous functions.
To shut them down means that you need to provide alternative facilities to achieve all of those functions.
To the extent that it exists, nearly all documented cases of in-person voter fraud consist of people who are not eligible to vote (in most cases due to felony convictions) attempting to do so, mostly in error rather than intentionally.
edited 9th Sep '15 2:29:16 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I operate on principles, not motivations...Why are you all talking voting fraud, it is as you said a non-issue. When I say Voter ID laws should be I mean that the moment you are voting-elegible(which to me means:the moment you become a legal adult US citzen as the only prerequisite) the state should provide you with it.

"Bad ideas don't go away just because they're bad. They go away because they've been replaced with something better."
In this case, though, it's looking like the bad idea was replaced with nothing.