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+--- Thread: Celebrate (/showthread.php?tid=12928)
Celebrate - Kaden - 11-06-2008
Baldwin Glendale Wrote:See. That argument works to a point. I'm the most generous person I know. You need gas, I got ya. You need food. I got ya. My friend in College right now, his parents aren't getting a paycheck soon, I took him out to eat today. Got him some basic stuff.
I'm lucky to have a stable house hold, when me myself am broke, from a recent payment accident via my bank. I bought my friends 5 medium pizza's last week for lunch. My treat.
I earn my money, but I budget out what I can throw around, for myself and stuff.
o.0
Completely not what Orion was talking about.
Celebrate - Vad - 11-06-2008
Raditzu Wrote:o.0
Completely not what Orion was talking about.
I was rebutting the rich person argument. That people can't help the fuck out.
Sorry I was unclear. Thats my bad.
Celebrate - Lucifer - 11-06-2008
I'd rather have a job than a handout, perhaps that's an old fashioned view.
I don't know what it's like there, but here unemployment benefits have done nothing but create a class of people lower than your historical peasant.
They live for their weekly handout, and can survive on it more than adequately, having their eight kids on their council estate just to sap more benefits from the state.
This is why people are getting in such an uproar here about immigrant workers, who'll actually work for peanuts, because they're not used to living in such a baffling situation where they can earn as good as minimum wage by doing nothing at all.
The most virtuous thing a government can do is teach its poor what it means to starve. Then you'll see how much unemployment there really is. Then the government will know how they really need to help. The inert deserve to suffer.
As for increased taxing of the rich, that's absurd. Go and dig up tax burden statistic for whatever part of the world you live in and you'll see that to be so.
Celebrate - Super Buu - 11-06-2008
There is a definite problem with benefits in the UK. The thing is, if you take away benefits because some people abuse it, you then fuck over the people that are genuinely trying to get back on their feet with the help of benefits. But even as a mostly left-winger, I think we need to be more stringent with them. By all means help those living on the streets, but people who live in relative comfort thanks to benefits and are making no attempt to become self-sufficient need a boot in the ass.
Really I think, hands down, the biggest priority in our current system should be education. You solve that and you solve a hell of a lot of other problems in the long-term, including employability.
Celebrate - Lucifer - 11-06-2008
I'd agree with you about education, not even education at the bottom level, education at the top level too. The number of Mickey Mouse universities offering, I dunno, degrees in professional de-lousing with film studies, is saturating the undergraduate job market with graduates who are no better (but will still be given priority).
The increase in qualification at degree level is totally disproportionate to the pitiful levels of GCSEs people are attaining, and this, I think is what's fucking over the would-be working classes.
Celebrate - John Doe - 11-06-2008
How about this? If you don't get a high school diploma by the time you are 21, then get the fuck out of America. I highly doubt that people would quit school then. >=D
Celebrate - Super Buu - 11-06-2008
Biggest problem in the current education system is that it's a meat grinder. You just throw everything in and cook it as one big slab of meat. They really don't accommodate variation much (which I can understand because it's difficult, but it's still got to change).
Start off wide, with lots of tasters in various different subjects, and then let the student narrow down their choices/specialise at their own pace. The fact that in the UK many secondary schools force you to take subjects like music for three years before you can eliminate it is ridiculous, especially when you have zero interest in it. On the flipside, why make us wait until later to take certain subjects or specialise in them if we know already we want to do them?
Fuck grouping classes by year altogether, and fuck the stigma attached to going back a year (in France, this does not exist and there's usually a lot more age variation in teaching groups). Sometimes people develop slower or faster, and trying to 'normalise' the rate of learning is going to bore the quicker kids into apathy because they're learning nothing, and the lessons will be so far ahead of the slower kids that they simply can't grasp what they're being taught.
The system right now with 'sets' in the UK is retarded. Lower sets don't even try to advance your learning, they just assume you're here because you're dumb and give you a packet of crayons to do your sums with whilst the teacher waits for the lesson to end.
Celebrate - Sage - 11-07-2008
@Lucy: I hope you weren't replying to me with your post. If you were, I may have misstated what I wanted to say.
I support a tax shift that makes it easier for the poor to make money. BUT:
I agree that those of us who do work shouldn't have to pay the way for those layabouts who draw a welfare check without the intent to ever go out and find a job.
Celebrate - Dehan - 11-07-2008
Uno Wrote:How about this? If you don't get a high school diploma by the time you are 21, then get the fuck out of America. I highly doubt that people would quit school then. >=D
I read an article on yahoo earlier this year(I think I posted it in Kame House I'll search later) about New York having programs dedicated towards high school students who dropped out or need more time(an extra year or whatever) to get their diploma. It had me going O_O at the ages. I don't remember it being refered to as a GED program or anything just a diploma.
All I could do was shake my head. I do agree about this fucked up edumacation system the US has. Fuck it. They need to scrap it and rebuild. It's really just...dum. No b at the end, dum.
Celebrate - Pinky - 11-07-2008
Minoshia Wrote:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/06/09/ST2008060900950.htmlThe problem with Obama's "tax cut" is that the bottom 45% of income earners have zero or negative tax liability. That means they essentially pay no tax on their income or already get a check from the government. You can't cut something that doesn't exist. What Obama intends to do for the people that already don't pay taxes is give them a bigger hand-out. It's not a tax cut: it's socialist welfare. He intends to make more people believe that they are entitled to the fruits of others' labor while lowering the ceiling down to 200k/year which actually isn't that much - a single skilled laborer can easily earn over 100k/year today, and in a two-worker household that has any worthwhile investments in stock, bonds or land they'll quickly run into Obama's new Wall Against Achievement.
Washington Post article showing, in a pretty chart, differences between McCain and Obama proposed tax policies. Trickle down fiscal policy vs. bottom up fiscal policy.
As for the people that actually do pay taxes, by all means lighten their burden. Our tax system already punishes those who willingly accept responsibility for their lot in life too much as it is, and we don't need any more of that. What we need is to start cutting entitlement programs which are the largest tax burden in our nation - the tax dollars spent on social security, medicare, and medicaid could enable us to run the war against terrorism forever and still manage to pay off our national debt. With McCain's tax cuts he would have actually cut taxes on people that have a real tax burden: the people that earn more get a larger cut because they earn more. By letting people keep what they earn it promotes effort and work and productivity, and it only punishes sloth and lethargy which is the natural order of things. If you don't earn anything, you don't get anything.
Celebrate - Cain - 11-07-2008
You want to take away medicare and social security when your grandparents have been pooling into it their whole lives so a war we don't need to be in can be funded?
Its somewhat common knowledge that the terrorist attacks could've been prevented.
Celebrate - Pinky - 11-07-2008
Cain Wrote:You want to take away medicare and social security when your grandparents have been pooling into it their whole lives so a war we don't need to be in can be funded?This post is nonsense.
Its somewhat common knowledge that the terrorist attacks could've been prevented.
My grandparents are dead.
I did not actually say to get rid of the programs, although I think it would be for the best. We're spending 200 billion a year on a two-front war in the middle east, and we're spending 650 billion/year on social security. Social security alone amounts to a six-front war that we're waging against our own economy that's predicated on the assumption that people are so stupid that they can't plan for their own retirement so the government has to do it for them.
Whether or not 9/11 (or whatever you're talking about) could have been prevented is irrelevant.
Celebrate - Cain - 11-07-2008
How do you rationalize a daily death toll over helping people scrape by with a few menial benefits?
And it was pretty obvious the statement meant 9/11.
Celebrate - Pinky - 11-07-2008
Cain Wrote:How do you rationalize a daily death toll over helping people scrape by with a few menial benefits?Claiming that masses are starving to death in America makes for a nice stump speech, but the facts don't support that. Maybe you should educate yourself on poverty in America before saying more on the subject.
And it was pretty obvious the statement meant 9/11.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/bg1713.cfm
Celebrate - Cain - 11-07-2008
The daily death toll was about the war.
There are food banks that do a pretty good job of feeding the destitute and missions that provide a roof over a person's head. Lucifer noted earlier some people take advantage of this system. I'm not debating that. But there are some people that have broken their backs their whole lives while paying into the current system. I'm debating tearing down something that rightfully should support the mentioned hard workers.
Celebrate - Pinky - 11-07-2008
This is a horrible world: war is necessary: get over it.
Social security is not tenable.
"In 1950, there were 16 workers per one putting money into the system—which means that when somebody retired, there's 16 workers contributing to that person's retirement. Today there's 3.3 workers contributing for each beneficiary. And when youngsters retire, it's going to be 2.1—two workers per beneficiary. In other words, the burden of paying for retirees is increasing on workers."
—President Bush, February 10, 2005
http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/ib208
Social security was not designed to deal with the kind of population dynamics we have today. More people are living to retirement, and more retirees are living longer. It's not a question of whether or not to put an end to the system, it's a question of whether or not we wait until it implodes and we're left with nothing but a giant tax burden.
Celebrate - Lucifer - 11-07-2008
Seems to me the biggest question mark you face in terms of entitlement spending is Medicare. I think social security is nowhere near such an issue.
Social security seems to be founded on some very bizzare principles that don't really seem to have national welfare as their chief concern.
I have no idea of the feasibility of cutting these things, so I really couldn't really comment on how they could be improved though.
I find our own National Health Service woeful, and have railed against our own social security system quite enough. I think when Labour are disposed of once and for all after the next general election we'll be able to see a brighter future for this country.
Oh and Bra, I wasn't replying to you specifically, I got what you meant, I was just contributing my two cents to the thread in general.
Celebrate - Super Buu - 11-07-2008
Lucifer Wrote:I think when Labour are disposed of once and for all after the next general election we'll be able to see a brighter future for this country.
I wish I had your optimism.
The way I see it, if Gordon Brown wins the next election, we're fucked. If David Cameron wins the election, we're really fucked.
Either way I need to get the hell out of this country before 2010.
Celebrate - Lucifer - 11-07-2008
I really dislike David Cameron.
I think the most important thing we can do is ditch Labour so that our politics can get their shape back, we can take it from there and I think if cards are played right the Conservative party will be able to get their edge back.
Five more years of Labour would be intolerable, so at the moment Cameron's the way to go. Both parties need to take a firm step back from the centre of the political spectrum before I'll be entirely satisfied things are getting on track though.
Celebrate - Juno - 11-07-2008
I'm a conservative. I disagree with President-Elect Obama's policies. But he is now my president, so I will support him in his endeavors.
However, just for the sake of conversation, I'll throw my opinions out there on some things.
Taxes - Personally, I don't want the money I work to earn going to some lazy bum who sits in his box not even making an attempt to clean up his life. Just sayin'. Oh, and the definition of socialism, for all of you claiming that those of us who call Obama a socialist are kooks, is "a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole." Basically, people giving up their crap so the government can redistribute it evenly. Sound familiar?
War - The War in Afghanistan is neccesary. We were attacked. We can't just sit back and relax. The war in Iraq, on the other hand, was poorly fought, mishandled, and probably unneccesary. But we're in ther now, so we have to finish what we started.
Healthcare - Socialized healthcare sucks. People will have to wait in line for hours and days. Also, Obama says he'll get us the type of healthcare that government officials get, which is a great plan, except for one loophole: we've got to pay for it. And it's pretty dang expensive. And with the gov't taking our money and handing it out like raffle tickets how are supposed to pay for it?