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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
On a slightly amusing side note, I have a friend who I'm 85.3% sure is liberal, who's claiming that they're supporting Trump as a lesser evil to Hillary's corruption. Meanwhile, I'm a Republican and I'm voting for Hillary as a lesser evil to Trump.
Leviticus 19:34@Bonsai Forest About The Digital Divide: You are onto something, but I don't think you have it yet... so let me help.
Manufacturing jobs have been replaced by outsourcing and automation. Let's accept that statement as fact for now. Currently, the service sector still exists... There are physical stores in towns where people can work for minimum wage. Even something like Walmart still provides some amount of jobs to a town, even if it is minimum wage jobs and even if they destroyed the local businesses in the process. Now consider Amazon, the largest Internet retailer and one with no physical stores. If everyone bought everything off of Amazon, there would be less service sector jobs available for people. Certainly, there are warehouses around the country which holds Amazon products, but there are fewer Amazon Warehouses than there are Walmart Supercenters, and the entire set of Amazon Warehouses need less employees overall than the entire set of Walmarts need overall. In addition, since those Amazon Warehouse jobs are ones that don't face people, they are at greater risk of automation than Walmart Supercenter jobs. In essence, Amazon's success comes from them being able to effectively outsource and automate service sector jobs like Walmart was able to effectively outsource and automate manufacturing jobs.
As another example, consider the death of Blockbuster Video and what they were replaced with. Blockbuster Video had physical locations each with people on staff all for the purpose of renting videos. Netflix relies on a person's Internet, lacks a physical location, and has enough people on staff to make sure Netflix runs properly. On the other end is RedBox, which doesn't rely on a person's internet and has physical locations, but they are glorified vending machines, requiring only enough people to fix broken vending machines and to stock the machines with videos. Both Netflix and RedBox employ less people overall than Blockbuster Video, but their more efficient models that took humans out of the equation killed Blockbuster Video. This is what outsourcing and automating the service sector looks like... Front-facing people replaced with vending machines and digital catalogs.
edited 6th Jul '16 10:51:57 AM by GameGuruGG
Wizard Needs Food BadlyPotatoes: pretty much every major politician is theoretically guilty of at least a few offenses, up to an including crimes against humanity when you get to major military and state officials. If you start prosecuting people at the top, it's only a matter of time before an opposition party takes power and starts using hithertoo unenforced laws to purge political enemies and/or dissidents. At least, that's what they claim would happen.
edited 6th Jul '16 11:03:10 AM by CaptainCapsase
Obviously, any police shooting — or any shooting in general — should be thoroughly investigated and appropriate action taken depending on the results of that investigation. But the investigation should happen first, and the court of public opinion is not the appropriate venue for criminal investigations. Even stuff that looks clear-cut can be incredibly misleading without context. It doesn't even happen deliberately, it's just that different points of view have access to different information and see events differently. That's why we do investigations in the first place.
If it turns out that the officers were never in any danger and never had any reason to think they were and they decided to shoot the guy for funsies anyway, then that's murder and should be prosecuted as such. But we have an entire justice system for answering those kinds of questions. Let it work instead of calling for heads on spikes based on a single piece of evidence.
That the officers were never in danger is evident from the behavior of the officers themselves. The one holding the gun draws his weapon slowly, without any sense of urgency, after the cry of, "He has a gun!" goes out. He then points it at the suspect's chest and holds it there for a few seconds. Nothing changes. Neither the cops nor the suspect move. Then, after a few seconds pass, the gun goes off.
Like, at first I thought it had been an accidental misfire. Maybe the officer squeezed the trigger too tightly or something. But four bullets later, that is clearly incorrect. If the officers were in danger, they wouldn't have calmly sat on the suspect for several seconds and then casually shot him 4-5 times.
Also, the fact that the gun was in his pocket, not his hand, means it is completely irrelevant to this shooting. It was an excuse, not a reason.
edited 6th Jul '16 11:03:38 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.One of the few times I've said aloud: What the fuck are you doing, Hillary?
Ugh. This is a terrible idea, for God knows how many reasons.
New Survey coming this weekend!That's not practical, One because people a being forced to do this so as to keep doing their jobs, so there would be no deterant effect. Two because the number of people involved (not just former Secretaries of State but also other people at state) would leave the state department gutted. Three the law isn't even meant to be used for this kind of case but is instead for more serious deliberate situations.
They'd just end up with a bunch of not-guilty verdicts.
Care to name any? More specifically do you care to name any that don't involve your personal hatred of Sanders?
edited 6th Jul '16 11:22:57 AM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranWhat's so noble about making people pay out of pocket for public college? Few other Western nations do. Are we so eager to line the pockets of student lenders?
edited 6th Jul '16 11:21:00 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Well, currently we seem to have too many people going to college. That's why the cost of college education has increased so much, because the demand is so high. And its why so many college graduates are working menial jobs, because the more people who have a college degree, the less having that degree is worth. So making it easier for people to go to college could be counterproductive.
When college is seen as a requirement for a white-collar job, and white-collar jobs are the only places where you are likely to find enduring middle-class lifestyle security, then it's not hard to see how the circumstances get assembled.
If you don't solve the college tuition problem and don't solve those other problems, you're condemning everyone who isn't wealthy enough to afford college out of pocket to a lifetime of student loan repayment. There are multiple angles, of course, but doing nothing is not a sustainable option.
College loans are a parasitical wealth transfer from the middle class to the wealthy.
edited 6th Jul '16 11:36:10 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"That's sort of the insidious part of degree inflation, though. A bachelor's degree is seen as the only way of getting a good job, so everyone tries to get a bachelor's degree. But if everyone has a bachelor's degree, then having one doesn't make you any more qualified in an employer's eyes than anyone else. So instead they give the good jobs to people with master's degrees, and all the people with bachelor's degrees end up doing the same jobs that used to be done by people with high school degrees.
At the very least, the current setup of student loans in much of the US can flat out ruin someone's life. And, at the very least, everyone should have the option of going to university or college without being saddled with debt, because who knows how many people in lower income areas have the talents to do something amazing in a field that requires a university degree?
You can set academic entrance standards for college entrance, obviously, although there would have to be some system in place to prevent upper-class kids from gaming the system by buying private tutoring to pass the exams.
edited 6th Jul '16 11:38:14 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"This has nothing to do with Sanders, so I don't know what the fuck you're going on about. And, if you haven't noticed, my distaste of him isn't without merit, as I've explained God knows how many times, but whatever:
Administration: This is its biggest hurdle. Running a program like this would be a nightmare of Federal Student Aid (FSA). Size and scope is massive. Over 20 million people complete a FAFSA for aid, annually, and FAFSA is relatively simple compared to this.
Thresholds: ok, so it's got an $85k cut off to start. Would this be measured though the FAFSA; A form that can be completed using estimated data? Someone could think they qualify and then update the form and/or be selected for verification and suddenly you're at $85,001 and you're not longer eligible. Is it the AGI? Income earned from work? The questions never end, and when they're do answered, they branch off into more questions. Most policy proposals HAVE to have a stopping point.
Determining whats covered/costs: How much would be covered and what? If they will allow for tuition up to X dollars you can bet ALL schools will reach that amount and get all they can. If the Fed won't cover fees, guess what will go up?
Private push back: Private schools, especially smaller D2 and D3 schools will raise holy hell to stop this. This would more or less destroy smaller schools. Why would anyone pay for a private school with low name recognition when a free option is available? They will pressure the House and Senate (though lobbying and direct contact with Reps) to stop this in its tracks, not to mention even the Elite Ivy League would fight this. Even with the massive amount of student aid they give to prospective students, only a select few will pay for an Ivy League education when they can get what they want "free" of charge. To most, the connections and networking won't be worth it, as they'll see the state schools as "good enough." After all, most people are happy at having stable 70k a year income, so you're gonna reach the point of diminishing returns.
Most importantly: NOT EVERYONE NEEDS TO OR SHOULD GO TO COLLEGE. This is why I wish vocational programs were more emphasized to learn valued trades, and the minimum wage was raised, (by region, not all across the board $15, pure insanity). We have inner city K-12 schools that are hanging on by a thread, and it's not just simply funding, but the culture surrounding it, and we're still talking about College when we have a good percentage of Americans that are in shitty public education systems.
I'm annoyed she's stooping to pie-in-the-sky not gonna happen in a million years plans. It was gross when Sanders did it, and it's Gross here.
edited 6th Jul '16 11:47:44 AM by TacticalFox88
New Survey coming this weekend!![]()
There's lots to address in that post, but one blatant fallacy you're engaged in is the idea that there is any inherent value to private educational institutions that merits preserving them against public competition. Studies have shown a negative correlation between attendance at private colleges (post-high school) and net income (including debt service) after graduation. In other words, the increased income realized through attending such a school is more than offset by the increased debt load taken on by the student.
If they aren't working, why exert any effort to save them?
Education, including secondary education, meets all the criteria for a public function: inelastic, uniform demand and exclusionary profit incentives.
edited 6th Jul '16 12:08:36 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

It's somewhat irrelevant what the FBI says, as politics in a democratic society is a popularity contest and even being accused of a crime can have negative repercussions. For example, a person suspected of 12 murders and found not guilty every time would still be considered suspicious (many people would assume they're guilty of something bad). This can be weaponized.
edited 6th Jul '16 10:40:54 AM by Protagonist506
Leviticus 19:34