patrick.net

Matt.BayArea says

I'm not even going to bother contesting any points in this thread. There are just so few people who are even trying here. Instead, I'm just going to join in and point out that republicans eat babies (that's why they hate abortions - cutting into food supply) and libruhls are trying to redistribute the wealth so no one has much power - that'll make it easier for them to dismantle our democracy-like political system and replace it with a big brother totalitarian society. On that note I'm going to stop reading these rants and go eat dog food.

Dog food made from republican babies is the best, but since liberals haven't been successful in redistributing the wealth, it's unaffordable to most of us. Nomograph says

Show me one country where cab drivers earn the same as doctors. Just one.
Anybody? Beuller?

Somewhere there's a MD/Cabdriver who could show you - but he's busy causing heart attacks with his driving and then reviving his customers.

Matt --

Hang in there. There are some interesting people who write for these forums, people you would never "meet" in the physical world. Some you will disagree with but that's okay -- if you don't like their ideas then you have to ask why yours are better? Some you will agree with and perhaps for reasons you had not previously considered.

So that's the deal: People bring ideas and you get to pick and choose which -- if any -- you find interesting and worthwhile.

Patrick,
What is the fatal flaw in the Demoncrat party?

Nomograph says

TMAC54 says

Cab Drivers make the same income as Doctors in SOCIALIZED countries.

Show me one country where cab drivers earn the same as doctors. Just one.

Anybody? Beuller?

Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery -- Jane Austen

lmao. That's funny

Nomograph says

TMAC54 says

Cab Drivers make the same income as Doctors in SOCIALIZED countries.

Show me one country where cab drivers earn the same as doctors. Just one.

Anybody? Beuller?

Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery -- Jane Austen

Actually the cab drivers often made/make more than the doctors. It's a common phenomenon for countries in the process of transitioning from centrally planned economy to market economy. It happened to Russia (and the other 14 soviet republics of the former USSR), Poland, Romania, Slovakia, China, Vietnam, etc. etc. It's happening right now in Cuba and North Korea. The cab industry simply get freed up before the medical industry. When tax and regulatory burdens are removed, the industry prospers and workers in the industry suddenly become much better off. As simple as that.

The common saying was actually: the wielder of barber's blade is making more money than the wielder of the surgical knife.

OurBroker says

So that's the deal: People bring ideas and you get to pick and choose which -- if any -- you find interesting and worthwhile.

I just wish it wasn't always a lib vs republican thing. It doesn't matter what the subject starts out to be, it always resorts to that. And of course the personal attacks aren't appreciated.

But there are some very interesting people here, and some who might possibly be.

"When tax and regulatory burdens are removed, the industry prospers and workers in the industry suddenly become much better off. As simple as that."

Like when? Airline pilots and flight attendants saw their pay plummet after airlines were de-regulated:

http://www.jstor.org/pss/2524940

In contrast, medicine, one of the most regulated industires in America, has the highest salaries and lowest unemployment rate of virtually any industry in America. The AMA ensures that there is never an over-supply of doctors by restricing the number of med school graduates, thereby ensuring that wages remain high. Do you really think specialists would be making $300 and $400k a year if the supply of docotors was determined based on the free market demand instead of one group with veto power over every med school in America?

What do you think would happen to physician salaries if medical school regulations were eliminated tomorrow and anyone with enough money could start their own medical school?

HW:
when you say medicine, you mean doctors? RN's get paid fairly well depending upon the job (nursing home not so much, hospital yep), while LPN's joke that their title is "low paid nurse."

The workers who do the most physical work are paid the very least - nursing assistants. CNA's are paid shit wages; one could argue that all they have to do is pass a course thats a few months long. But they do the most hands-on work and are paid the least.

Just sayin'

HousingWatcher says

Like when? Airline pilots and flight attendants saw their pay plummet after airlines were de-regulated:

Which formerly centrally planned economy country transitioning to market economy would that be? Can you read context at all? or just interested in context-free circle jerking?

HousingWatcher says

In contrast, medicine, one of the most regulated industires in America, has the highest salaries and lowest unemployment rate of virtually any industry in America. The AMA ensures that there is never an over-supply of doctors by restricing the number of med school graduates, thereby ensuring that wages remain high. Do you really think specialists would be making $300 and $400k a year if the supply of docotors was determined based on the free market demand instead of one group with veto power over every med school in America?

What do you think would happen to physician salaries if medical school regulations were eliminated tomorrow and anyone with enough money could start their own medical school?

Thank you for repeating the points that I have been making: the high cost of medicine in this country is the result of government regulations restricting supply while goosing demand. Also keep in mind that the real earning of doctors (that they can keep) and hospitals are declining thanks to the rapidly rising cost of financing medical education and financing medical equipment and buildings. When there is a government enforced monopoly allowed to seek economic rent at the expense of the rest of the society, it's the banksters who eventually win as the "arms merchant" financing the acquisition of those rent-seeking positions.

In any case, back to the original point. The taxation and regulations in the formerly centrally planned economies were referring to the price caps and wage caps that the governments imposed on all workers, from doctors to cab drivers to barbers. . . a phenomenon that may well be coming to these shores for doctors soon BTW. As market economy experiments took place in those former soviet-style countries, the barbers and cab drivers had their wage and price caps removed first and were allowed to sell their service to the highest bidder, before the doctors saw similar liberty.

I'm not sure that general labels such as "socialized" mean much in a lot of places.

Having been to Romania, Serbia and Bulgaria my sense is that whatever layer of political organization had been in place or is now in place is secondary to cultural drivers.

Official salary scales don't mean anything when much of the economy is based on barter. It may be that on paper a doctor is paid as much as a cab driver but in reality "gifts" for doctors are likely to be rampant.

Speaking of "gifts" it's great to be a border guard.

>>>"Trying to combat corruption, Bulgaria has started using computerized scheduling to assign its border guards to different posts randomly every few hours. Romania has taken steps, too. In the past year, it arrested 248 border guards and customs officers, some of whom were accused of collecting as much as 5,800 euros, or about $8,240, in a single shift."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/world/europe/04border.html

In the first few minutes of the movie Borat they show his alleged home village in Kazakhstan. The scenes were actually shot in Romania. You can find a lot of villages like that. Take a careful look at those scenes.

OurBroker says

It may be that on paper a doctor is paid as much as a cab driver but in reality "gifts" for doctors are likely to be rampant.

The economy has to be developed enough for the local patients to have money to pay "gifts" to doctors. That usually happens at least a decade or more after the reforms begin. In the first decade, the cab drivers benefit from the fact that the cab riders are often foreign investors, who do not patronize local doctors in the run-down former soviet country. That's why the doctors' first response is to get out of the country. That's why there are so many Russian and Ukrainian doctors in places like Lybia.

Reality --

Have you actually been to these places?

OurBroker says

Reality --

Have you actually been to these places?

Yes. Quite a few of them, both before and after the Berlin Wall came down.

Good. Then you're aware of the systemic poverty found in many areas.

For instance, we asked one family we were to meet what we could bring as a token of the US. They asked for children's aspirin.

OurBroker says

Good. Then you're aware of the systemic poverty found in many areas.

For instance, we asked one family we were to meet what we could bring as a token of the US. They asked for children's aspirin.

That request probably has more to do with the long-suffering people's utter despair with the bureaucrats running their home country. After decades of bureaucratic machination, the people have lost all faith in what the bureaucrats can do. Infant formulae (i.e. substitute for mother's milk) made by western companies are also very popular in those places, partly because the adults have given up on themselves but place (and misplace) all their hopes on their children. Little do they realize that mother's milk is far superior to any infant formula . . . and Children's asprin is just regular asprin diluted with sugar-water and color dye.

Access to generic medicine like Asprin is actually very easy in those countries. Medicine was freely available and abused in the former soviet system because they were incredibly cheap. Antibiotics abuse was especially prevalent. Of course, the production quality, and especially packaging, was always questionable. Who knows, the asprin pills from local government-run drug factories may indeed contain enough lead to destroy the children's nervous system, simply because the whole local infrastructure was built from copying the west in the 1920's and 30's, and hence still using more than half a century old lead pipes.

After visiting a few of those countries, a common theme emerged quickly: they were all like time capsules that froze whatever the state of human development was when the local "communist revolution" took place . . . with some critical components replaced by later cheaper and ill-fitting substitutes to keep the whole system going.

Social Security and Medicare are unsustainable at the current rate. Republicans and some Democrats are good enough with math to know that some serious reform needs to be done, otherwise we pay for the deficits through hyper-inflation in the long run.

I would propose the government just runs Social Secuirty and cut Medicare, and give money to the poor elderly and disabled.

Ron Paul has said he would cut the military budget and focus on making Social Security sustainable. I personally, prefer privatization because I am not going to be collecting my Social Security since I am working overseas.

What a bunch of crap - making idiotic comments about Republican positions on things that DON"T exist.Typical democratic spin - railing against positions that are not held by the right. Build a straw man and then burn the straw man.

Yagenrok says

What a bunch of crap - making idiotic comments about Republican positions on things that DON"T exist.Typical democratic spin - railing against positions that are not held by the right. Build a straw man and then burn the straw man.

It would help if you actually stated the positions that you think are strawmen

marcus says

Wow, that looks a lot better. Thanks Leo. Is that the full size version ?

Yeah, that is the full sized. I was working with the first background image that I found on Google.

If you post a larger blank background I could drop text on it.

"when you say medicine, you mean doctors?"

Yes, I was referring to doctors. Nurses typically don't fall under the cateogy "medicine" since they cannot practice medicine (ie: they can't write a prescription). Nurses would be under "healthcare."

Dan8267 says

Gen X ended the propagation of racism by simply rejecting the idea of it. Gen X was not raised by the boomers. We were raised by television as latchkey kids. Gen X kids were largely ignored by their boomer parents and as such did not adopt the ideologies and prejudices of that generation.

Word. Though many Gen X'ers (such as myself) were raised by Silents.

OurBroker says

Official salary scales don't mean anything when much of the economy is based on barter.

That's very true although it isn't nearly as efficient as having a currency/medium of exchange.

In China there are no mandates for car insurance. So what happens when there is an accident? Well one ends up paying the other. Supposedly they don't move during a hit and run because it means they lose a license for life
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_of_the_road_in_the_People's_Republic_of_China

Bartering can be funny that's for sure. I recommend anyone bring a calculator for that purpose. Online radio personality Lazlow stated during a trip to Turkey he got his girlfriend to imply that they had a kid that needed an operation in order to gain sympathy to lower the price..I guess it worked.

Reality says

So more of the people making $300k-$1mil whose money would otherwise enter the local economy at restaurants, dry cleaners and etc. would now see the money going to the federal government to pay for wars and TBTF banksters. Any wonder why real productive jobs are destroyed in this country? and the unemployed young men and women are suited up to be uniformed mercenaries overseas and possibly soon used here too?

People are hesitant to start businesses when the economy sucks. Hence "Cash on the Sidelines" phrase.

High taxes actually push investment in new and existing businesses, since to take out the money as profit is subject to those High Taxes.

Reality says

They perpetrate it by floating myths like the Government-God. "Social Security Trust Fund" is a highly effective device for war profiteering.

But it wasn't always so. The deficit problem truly began around 1980.

Taxes are at record-lows, they are much lower than what they were just 30 years ago when the country was at the peak of it's power. Tax Cutting on the rich hasn't trickled down to the middle and lower classes in the forms of high paying jobs.

If low taxes create jobs, where are they?

Reality says

A people believing in that line will see the tax raised, and see another 9-11 like event to stop cutting into the military. As Rumsfeld said in recent interview, every time military spending is on the chopping block, Americans would see another major war.

You may be on to something here.

OurBroker says

Having been to Romania, Serbia and Bulgaria my sense is that whatever layer of political organization had been in place or is now in place is secondary to cultural drivers.

Ah, Bulgaria, I was in my 20s and spent a summer in Sofia and Varna. Good memories. :)

Veliko Turnovo is a place right out of Lord of the Rings.

And holy crap can they drink, Rakia for breakfast? Too much for me.

thunderlips11 says

If low taxes create jobs, where are they?

We need to give "DIGITIZED GOVERNMENT " time to work.

Taxes today are currently lower than they were under the administrations of Socialist presidents George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Dwight Eisenhower.

Under Eisenhower, unemployment was lower than it was today despite a top tax rate of 91%.

thunderlips11 says

spent a summer in Sofia

I knew her

TMAC54 says

thunderlips11 says

If low taxes create jobs, where are they?

We need to give "DIGITIZED GOVERNMENT " time to work.

Yes, we need to develop an AI that can run our government. Replace all those career politicians with an automated solution.

leoj707 says

Yes, we need to develop an AI that can run our government. Replace all those career politicians with an automated solution.

Thanx Leo.
Read my thread here under Misc. "DIGITIZE GOVERNMENT". submit some more ideas. We should make it easier to oust criminal deceptive leaders.

I completely believe they will vote republican. Dud you see the TIME cover cu of Perry's face. Old woman and younger love to vote for attraction. Idiots. They hate the black man president and are oblivious to any
'wrong doing' (term is way weird) by republicans. Just like many voting for GWB, they wanted to give the to big banks everything. Remember how our country used to feel about 11 years ago? It felt strong. Now?

KILLERJANE says

Old woman and younger love to vote for attraction. Idiots.

Since the inception of television, the better looking candidate has been elected all but once. If not looks, Charisma, Confidence wins out. (see Stanley Milgram expirement) During political oratories most people stop listening and only here, blah blah blah blah blah. Which does not really matter when those same leaders flip flop after achieving their goal.

leoj707 says

If you post a larger blank background I could drop text on it.

That's okay. I don't need a larger one that much, it's not worth it. I just thought if you had a larger version.

Thanks again Leo. I will be trying again to put it on reddit again when it's timely. I even have a perfect heading: "stay corrupt my friends."

(only makes sense if you are familiar with the tv and radio ads. He says, "stay thirsty my friends") )

>>>stay corrupt my friends.

That's great.

You have to like the Dos Equis guy, the most interesting man in the world. He lives in the Bronx.

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2011/02/07/110207ta_talk_paumgarten

I like that he bowls overhand....

I think we should outsource both Wall Street and Federal operations to offshore locations. You could beg a guy in Mumbai to send you your SS check. And live-chat with "Murray" your 401K manager in the Philippines. Why not? It would lower costs, and we seem to expect that in everything else these days.

thunderlips11 says

People are hesitant to start businesses when the economy sucks. Hence "Cash on the Sidelines" phrase.

The "cash on the sidelines" phrase never makes any sense. Whenever someone buys a stock or buys a piece of machinery, the seller of the stock or machinery gets the cash! So "cash" is always there, just pass from one person to the next.

What's really changed is the degree of leverage. When expectation of return is uncertain, the degree of leverage is reduced. High taxation and expectations of tax raises in the future causes expected return to drop . . . then people become less willing to leverage and invest.

High taxes actually push investment in new and existing businesses, since to take out the money as profit is subject to those High Taxes.

That doesn't make any sense at all. Tax is collected on past returns (in the past quater or past year). New investment or investment in existing business does not reduce tax burden per se. Nobody buys new equipment for tax avoidance per se without expectations of future returns . . . and higher tax rates reduces that future return.

Taxes are at record-lows, they are much lower than what they were just 30 years ago when the country was at the peak of it's power.

30 years ago, the country was going through the painful cures of a decade-long stagflation. While the explicit tax level as percentage of GDP has stayed more or less constant since the end of WWII, at about 20% give-or-take. The current record deficit level means that the actual government bite on the economy is the largest ever since the end of WWII.

thunderlips11 says

Dan8267 says

Gen X ended the propagation of racism by simply rejecting the idea of it. Gen X was not raised by the boomers. We were raised by television as latchkey kids. Gen X kids were largely ignored by their boomer parents and as such did not adopt the ideologies and prejudices of that generation.

Word. Though many Gen X'ers (such as myself) were raised by Silents.

Homo Economicus. Like Bigfoot, reported to exist in fantasy books, but never seen in the wild.

True, and thankfully I was raised by two from the Silent Generation. However, the latchkey existence I think applied to even us Gen X's who were fortunate enough not to have Boomer parents. It was a consequence of the dual income necessity that permeated the 1980s. Sometimes I wonder how today's parents have the time to be "helicopter parents".

shrekgrinch says

Also, Gen X and Gen Y are the generations what will have to clean up the Boomers' mess, too. Racism is part of that mess.

If by "clean up" you mean wait for all the old racists to die, then yeah. That's the racism is going to end. That's the way all bad ideas end: with the death of the last asshole holding on to them. Science advances one funeral at a time, and so do social issues.

m1ckey6 says

Patrick can we stick with your area of competence and talk about housing prices?

Nah, this is too much fun.

Anyway, Democrats have been too prissy about standing up for the rights of working people, and about our obligations to each other as a society. Someone's got to do it.

Patrick I have contact with the inner workings of CA politics and I can assure you that not caring about the working class and the poor is equal opportunity between the parties. The Democrats talk about this more because one of their sources of cash is PUBLIC union money. Talk to a union organizer about people in the PRIVATE sector - they couldn't care less because they have to battle for worker's rights.

From the inside looking out it is hard not to see partisan people as intensely foolish and gullible.