patrick.net

TwoScoopsMcGee says

Also, a good time to remind folks that not getting erections-on-demand into the 70s and 80s is called "Normal" and should not be covered by Part D.

Having insurance cover your viagra is kinda silly to me. It increases the insurance cost for everyone. Why would I want to pay for a horny dude's desire for a pussy? The next thing they will want is insurance to cover their needs for a whore.
Cant be sure, but i believe something like that exists in Sweden where a hospital paid a whore for a patients need to have sex

Dan8267 says

FortWayne says

High taxes and liberal policies have consequences

This is utter bullshit. People aren't having less sex or fewer children because of taxes. They are having fewer children because republican policies, particularly those from Ronald Reagan, have squeezed the middle class making supporting a family way the fuck harder.

In the 1950s, a time when taxes where way the fuck higher, a single income family could afford a primary home and a vacation home and eating out several times a week. Today it takes two incomes just to make ends meet, and that's without owning a second home. The difference is supply-side economics which devastated the middle class. You hero Reagan is the reason why people cannot afford to raise families anymore.

You are totally clueless Dan as usual. People today have to work a lot harder, and for less money. They have to struggle for housing in CA, they have to struggle to pay for education. And it's all because of the Democratic policies. Democrats socialize everything, driving everything down to lowest common denominator, and that makes everything expensive. Taxes are high, cost of living is high, but standards of living are down.

Solution is simple, tax reform that lowers tax rates and restores incentives for working people. But you communists/socialists don't want freedom, you want government to tax everyone into poverty to share in your misery of idiocy.

Feminists pushing women into work force, what do you think women are going to do when they are exhausted at the end of the day after work? Your team Dan, your team. Team epic failure.

And 50's weren't that great, there were years when people didn't have enough food to eat, this was post WW2 and mind you the rest of the world didn't produce anything because their factories were still bombed down.

FortWayne says

People today have to work a lot harder, and for less money.

This is a result of Reaganomics.

FortWayne says

They have to struggle for housing in CA

This is a result of not appropriately taxing land consumption resulting in land hording. Increase taxes on land and decrease taxes on income.

FortWayne says

they have to struggle to pay for education

Another failure of capitalism. It's not education that's unaffordable. You get that for free from the Internet, which holds virtually all of mankind's knowledge. You can learn anything in your underwear for free.

No, it's college that is unaffordable, and that's entirely due to capitalism. The solution is to create a single, national, virtual, public university. Yes, socialism is the solution to that particular problem. The cost per student per year would be under $100 because a virtual university scales. The more students, the cheaper it is per student. Costs are largely fixed unlike physical university. And without profit taking, it would serve society better and encourage learning and the development of skills.

FortWayne says

Democrats socialize everything,

No, they don't.

FortWayne says

socialize everything, driving everything down to lowest common denominator, and that makes everything expensive

You mean like the military, the largest socialist program we have, and the most expensive. Cut that and your damn taxes will go down, a lot. I've shown in another thread that if we cut the military by 90%, we'd still be in line with the biggest military spenders in the world, all but two of which are close allies and one of which is a most favored trading partner, and no income below $127,695/yr would be subject to the federal income tax.

You don't get to bitch about taxes if you support the majority of discretionary spending. You are the reason your taxes are so damn high.

And you foolishly ignore how much employers tax their employees before the government takes a penny. The typical employer is taxing at least a third of a person's wealth production and in many cases way more than half. That's more than the federal income tax.

FortWayne says

Solution is simple, tax reform that lowers tax rates and restores incentives for working people.

If you want to incentivize people to work then reform the economy so that lazy golf-playing executives don't take the lion's share of the working class's wealth production. Make total executive compensation equal to exactly twice the median income of all employees including outsourced ones.
FortWayne says

But you communists/socialists don't want freedom,

1. I'm not a communist and you have to be an idiot if you think I am after all I've written on the matter. You demonstrate stupidity every time you use those two terms interchangeably.

2. You are a bigger socialist than me. You just prefer to use socialism to benefit welfare queens in the military industrial complex, whereas I apply socialism to appropriate areas like infrastructure. In fact, I don't think I've advocated socialism for anything other than infrastructure (roads, power, sewers, police, fire fighters, education, Internet, health care, food, etc.). Nonetheless, the total dollars spent on socialist programs under my policies is less than the total spent on socialist programs under you policies because you would spend so much on warfare. So don't bitch about my use of socialism like a hypocrite.

FortWayne says

Feminists pushing women into work force, what do you think women are going to do when they are exhausted at the end of the day after work? Your team Dan, your team.

1. You clearly have no idea what my team is.

2. I have never stated that women must enter the work force. My position is that every individual should decide for himself or herself how much to work, where to work, when to work, and what to work on, and the pay is determined entirely by wealth creation and nothing else.

3. The reason women work today is that they have to. A single income is no longer sufficient to raise a family because after currency debasement wages have gone down. Any way you slice it, this is because of capitalism, the giving of all power over production and distribution to owners and letting them set the price of labor. Productivity has increased six fold since the 1950s, yet real wages are less. This is entirely due to capitalism, which does not reward productivity. Capitalism rewards one and only one thing, bargaining power, and the bargaining power of the working class has greatly diminished since the 1950s. That's the facts.

FortWayne says

And 50's weren't that great, there were years when people didn't have enough food to eat, this was post WW2 and mind you the rest of the world didn't produce anything because their factories were still bombed down.

That's the first true thing that you've said, but it's irrelevant to everything else in this discussion. The significance of that statement is that Keynesian economics is dead wrong about what ended the First Great Depression. It wasn't aggregate demand. It was lack of competition.

TwoScoopsMcGee says

Was this adjusted for Age? We have a large cohort of old farts; in the 70s, 80s,and 90s they were in their 20s-40s.

Let's face it, the boomers can't do it any more without 5 doses of Viagra, and many millennials stay virgins until they leave their high school rooms at 31.

Dan8267 says

This is a result of not appropriately taxing land consumption resulting in land hording.

Not true Dan. Plenty of empty land sits there owned by government where people aren't permitted to build because of zoning laws and hippies like you telling everyone that we are destroying mother nature. Cost of building is so high, not to mention it's complicated with all the rules and know how that most people just don't know where to even start. As usual Dan, you don't understand the issue.

Dan8267 says

Another failure of capitalism. It's not education that's unaffordable. You get that for free from the Internet, which holds virtually all of mankind's knowledge. You can learn anything in your underwear for free.

No, it's college that is unaffordable, and that's entirely due to capitalism. The solution is to create a single, national, virtual, public university. Yes, socialism is the solution to that particular problem. The cost per student per year would be under $100 because a virtual university scales. The more students, the cheaper it is per student. Costs are largely fixed unlike physical university. And without profit taking, it would serve society better and encourage learning and the development of skills.

Here I do agree Dan, solution is online education. Not a system controlled by old guard unions and bureaucrats with tenure who have all the incentive to keep their system going and prevent anything else from arising in it's place. You have a rare spike of logical thought, I'm almost proud of you... just try to keep this going.

I think my old aunt summed up this argument best: "If good people don't have babies, then only the bad people will have babies!"

So if you think you're of superior genetic stock, perhaps you should consider pumping out a few kids. Otherwise the world will be populated by whatever the low income crowd can generate.

Then again, raising children requires a parent to acquire a sense of selflessness, which is wa-a-a-a-aaaaay(Imagine Dr.Cox from "Scrubs" here rolling his eyes furiously) beyond people like Dan who is doomed to die alone and unmourned.

Because they are afraid cops will show up in the middle of the night through an unlocked front door.

Dan8267 says

Another failure of capitalism. It's not education that's unaffordable. You get that for free from the Internet, which holds virtually all of mankind's knowledge. You can learn anything in your underwear for free.

You can't get an education from the internet. You can get information from the internet and make yourself more knowledgeable, but real education comes from school and Universities.

FortWayne says

Plenty of empty land sits there owned by government where people aren't permitted to build because of zoning laws and hippies like you telling everyone that we are destroying mother nature.

1. That is not the reason land, and thus housing, is expensive in New York City or Florida.
2. It does not matter how much land there is. Demand will grow without bounds if land hording is profitable.
3. Eliminate rent seeking and tax land exponentially with total land owned, and you find the existing usable land is far more than sufficient to provide affordable, good housing to all.
4. If you think I'm a hippie, you're an idiot. Have you ever read anything I've written on hippies?

FortWayne says

Cost of building is so high

That's crap. The cost of buying a USED house built 20, 40, 80, 100 years ago is high. That's not due to building costs because nothing is being built. Nothing is being rezoned.

FortWayne says

. Not a system controlled by old guard unions and bureaucrats with tenure who have all the incentive to keep their system going and prevent anything else from arising in it's place.

That is just one of many reasons why virtualization is the way to go. However, it has to be socialistic. The government must own the virtual school. The school must be paid for by public tax dollars even though it's still dirt cheap compared to the status quo, so to encourage maximum use. The textbooks used must be public domain. No copyrights. No owners. No royalties.

It's cheaper to pay a mathematician one million dollars to write the definitive calculus book than to keep paying $80/yr for a book to a publisher. And there are plenty of subject experts that would gladly write a definitive text book for a measly one million dollars.

Put simply, capitalism fails at all infrastructure including education. Also, physical campuses fail at providing equal opportunity. Finally, people don't scale, and that includes teachers. So we need an education system in which the number of teachers is proportional to the number of courses, not the number of students, and virtualization is the only way to accomplish this. The down side is that all the teachers will have to get new jobs, but hey, making jobs obsolete is a good thing as long as the wealth isn't owned by a bunch of parasitic fat cats who didn't even create the automations.

FortWayne says

I'm almost proud of you... just try to keep this going.

I suspect the only reason you like my suggestion is that you want teachers to be fired because they are part of the enemy tribe, and you're all about tribalism.

I think virtual education is the way to go DESPITE teachers losing jobs because schools exist to serve the student and the student's needs take precedent.

Strategist says

You can't get an education from the internet.

Your statement is empirically false.

http://www.worldscienceu.com/

Dan8267 says

Furthermore, over 99.9% of your genetic code is identical to every human being on the planet.

A specious argument considering even 1 gene can make a huge difference and evolution works at the margin. There is in fact a huge variety of human beings.

Dan8267 says

When you add to that the inevitability of designer babies

The future is not inevitable. Designer babies may or may not happen. Civilization may collapse before they do, or they may remain a luxury that will be drowned in an ocean of non-designed lust babies.

It’s possible that all of civilization happened because of periods during which smarter people had more surviving kids. Relatively successful periods like Pax Romana may have bred legions of idiots that could only reversed through a thousand years of harsh misery. Unfortunately we now have a population of spoiled and self-centered narcissists who are way too lazy to pass on what they got.
They are in fact evolutionary dead-ends, and will be gone within what is an instant in the history of humanity, leaving the planet to hordes of more simple minded but fertile people.
History doesn’t stop where we decide it should, and neither does evolution.

Dan8267 says

why should you even care if your genes survive? They aren't you.

ME, ME, ME. I guess that's the point: having kids is not about YOU.

We need that law, folks! One child policy. Particular heroes - Nobel Prize winners, Medal of Honor Winners, National Science Academy Members, can have a second child without the $100,000 bond.

Dan8267 says

2. It does not matter how much land there is. Demand will grow without bounds if land hording is profitable.

There is no land hording. It's a simple supply/demand. Something liberals clearly don't understand very well, when (demand > supply = prices go up). It's free to live on all that empty land between LA and SF, but no one wants to live there. Yet everyone crowds into a tiny square space in SF or LA downtown for good paying jobs and screams it's unaffordable. Well, duh!

Dan you liberals really don't do well with economics, it's not your thing. All you know is equality and hand outs, and that's the base you reason from, hence you will never be right.

Heraclitusstudent says

A specious argument considering even 1 gene can make a huge difference and evolution works at the margin.

This hardly advocates self reproduction since that 1 gene is just as likely to be in your sexual competitor as it is to be in you. Tell me, does anyone willingly forgo reproduction and a desirable mate because one's competitor may be genetically better?

In any case, even very important genes tend to get clobbered in modern populations because they cannot compete with all the competitions. For example, there are two common types of cholesterol, low density (LDL) and high density (HDL), with LDL being bad and HDL being good. However, there is a gene in people in an isolated community in Italy that produces a third kind of high density cholesterol that is super good and caused the people there to live very long and healthy lives. This gene was brought in by an individual that migrated to the isolated community. Had he not, the gene would have never had the opportunity to flourish.

The moral of the story is that if you were actually concerned about advancing human evolution more quickly, you'd isolated all of humanity into many small pockets and rarely interbred them.

Heraclitusstudent says

Designer babies may or may not happen.

History has shown that if there is a demand for something and it's not forbidden by the laws of nature, eventually technology will make it happen.

Heraclitusstudent says

Civilization may collapse before they do,

In which case, there would be far greater problems to worry about than your genetic code. In any case, if civilization is to collapse, it most likely would happen due to something caused, at least largely, by overpopulation.

Heraclitusstudent says

ME, ME, ME. I guess that's the point: having kids is not about YOU.

Projecting much?

My philosophy has always been "the messenger is irrelevant".

Why are you so ego-eccentric?

TwoScoopsMcGee says

We need that law, folks! One child policy. Particular heroes - Nobel Prize winners, Medal of Honor Winners, National Science Academy Members, can have a second child without the $100,000 bond.

I would simply make parenting something that requires a license that includes a financial responsibility test such as $100k in savings per child. For great scientists, give them $100k or more so they automatically qualify.

FortWayne says

There is no land hording.

It's amazing how divorce your mind is from reality. Obviously you know nothing about New York City where landlords have horded land for generations. Or about foreigners buying up real estate in Florida.

FortWayne says

Something liberals clearly don't understand very well, when (demand > supply = prices go up).

I fully understand that. What you clearly do not understand is that land hording both increases demand and decreases supply, which means prices go up. Why do I have to explain such obvious things to you?

FortWayne says

Dan you liberals really don't do well with economics, it's not your thing.

Oh honey, I've given numerous real world examples of why the conservative right sucks at economics, business, and running an economy. That greatly outweighs your baseless assertion.

Dan8267 says

Heraclitusstudent says

ME, ME, ME. I guess that's the point: having kids is not about YOU.

Projecting much?

My philosophy has always been "the messenger is irrelevant".

Why are you so ego-eccentric?

Dan, that's because ppl (like Hera'), believe that children are some extension of their soul's incarnation's function on this earth. I believe it's a mix of ego-centrism and spiritual mumbo jumbo, whether it's Judaeo-Christian or some New Age claptrap.

In the end, those ppl can't stand the thought of dying alone and thus, require an entourage of weeping descendants at their wake, to give themselves some validation.

My prayer is that Hera' does in fact, die alone and thus, is forced to address this psychological issue, even if it's on his deathbed.

Dan8267 says

Heraclitusstudent says

Designer babies may or may not happen.

History has shown that if there is a demand for something and it's not forbidden by the laws of nature, eventually technology will make it happen.

Designer babies are almost guaranteed to happen, given the pace of change in bioinformatics and genomic therapies.

Rin says

Designer babies are almost guaranteed to happen, given the pace of change in bioinformatics and genomic therapies.

The 21st century will be dominated by sex bots and designer babies and A.I. assistants.

Dan8267 says

The 21st century will be dominated by sex bots and designer babies and A.I. assistants

For me, I only care about the sex bots. I've got a lot to do, w/o needing to worry about my next boink!

Dan8267 says

I would simply make parenting

Good thing you can't really make anything. Except walls of text on patnet that is.

Rin says

Dan8267 says

The 21st century will be dominated by sex bots and designer babies and A.I. assistants

For me, I only care about the sex bots. I've got a lot to do, w/o needing to worry about my next boink!

Rin is clearly making up for the rest of the society.

Dan8267 says

FortWayne says

There is no land hording.

It's amazing how divorce your mind is from reality. Obviously you know nothing about New York City where landlords have horded land for generations. Or about foreigners buying up real estate in Florida.

That's called investing, not hoarding.

Dan8267 says

FortWayne says

Something liberals clearly don't understand very well, when (demand > supply = prices go up).

I fully understand that. What you clearly do not understand is that land hording both increases demand and decreases supply, which means prices go up. Why do I have to explain such obvious things to you?

he he he. Dan, you really are very funny. Stop getting your education from the internet, and attend a real class.

Straw Man says

Good thing you can't really make anything. Except walls of text on patnet that is.

I could say the same about you.

At least I can justify the policies I propose. All you can do is verbally masturbate.

Strategist says

That's called investing, not hoarding.

90% of investing is hoarding.

These assholes didn't create the land, did they?

Strategist says

he he he. Dan, you really are very funny. Stop getting your education from the internet, and attend a real class.

Feel free to explain how hoarding land doesn't increase demand while decreasing supply. Go on, genius.

Rin says

Dan, that's because ppl (like Hera'), believe that children are some extension of their soul's incarnation's function on this earth. I believe it's a mix of ego-centrism and spiritual mumbo jumbo, whether it's Judaeo-Christian or some New Age claptrap.

In the end, those ppl can't stand the thought of dying alone and thus, require an entourage of weeping descendants at their wake, to give themselves some validation.

My prayer is that Hera' does in fact, die alone and thus, is forced to address this psychological issue, even if it's on his deathbed.

It's a natural, evolutionary instinct to want your cute little baby. Remember, every single ancestor of yours going back to the apes and well beyond had babies. If even one of them did not want a baby, you would never have been born. The best part of life is raising those little brats.

Strategist says

It's a natural, evolutionary instinct to want your cute little baby.

Just because something is an instinct, doesn't mean you should follow it.

Do you really want welfare queens crapping out a dozen babies?

Dan8267 says

Strategist says

That's called investing, not hoarding.

90% of investing is hoarding.

These assholes didn't create the land, did they?

So what if the "assholes" didn't create the land. Why do you call hoarding? I own vacant residential lots that I accumulated over the years. I plan on selling 4 or 5 of them in a few years when i think the real estate market has plateaued. That's investing, not hoarding.

Dan8267 says

Strategist says

he he he. Dan, you really are very funny. Stop getting your education from the internet, and attend a real class.

Feel free to explain how hoarding land doesn't increase demand while decreasing supply. Go on, genius.

Please why you feel this way.

Dan8267 says

Strategist says

It's a natural, evolutionary instinct to want your cute little baby.

Just because something is an instinct, doesn't mean you should follow it.

Instinct to want babies is that invisible force that turns into a desire to want babies. You don't have to follow it, but not wanting babies is just not natural.

Dan8267 says

Do you really want welfare queens crapping out a dozen babies?

Hell no. I would hate supporting babies that are not mine.

Strategist says

Please why you feel this way.

1. I think, not feel, that. I don't base my beliefs on artsy fartsy feelings. I base them on facts.
2. You are dodging the question.

Dan8267 says

90% of investing is hoarding.

These assholes didn't create the land, did they?

They didn't create companies or stocks or people who work for those companies, yet they still buy it. You simply don't understand investing.

Again your socialist backed reasoning is always going to be flawed as long as you begin with your SJW mentality of equal outcomes.

Dan8267 says

Strategist says

Please why you feel this way.

1. I think, not feel, that. I don't base my beliefs on artsy fartsy feelings. I base them on facts.

2. You are dodging the question.

You cannot hoard land because there is so much of it with millions of owners. Hoarding commodities does occur like it did during WW2 where a group would buy up a certain commodity in short supply, wait for the price to jump, and then sell it. It's also very common in Africa where food shortages are common.
But it does not happen in land in the USA. Land is a long term investment. The does not entail hoarding.

Strategist says

You cannot hoard land because there is so much of it with millions of owners

It's just a problem of scale. As anyone knows, such problems can be overcome with organization. Enter the Real estate investment trust, where investors combine cash into hundreds of billions available to buy up property in prime locations and rent it back to consumers. Such a scheme is well able to hoard property, and is currently doing so.

FortWayne says

Dan8267 says

90% of investing is hoarding.

These assholes didn't create the land, did they?

They didn't create companies or stocks or people who work for those companies, yet they still buy it. You simply don't understand investing.

Honey buns, we're not even talking about stocks and companies. We're talking about land and why housing is expensive. Stick to the topic and stop flinging red herrings to cover your incompetence.

Strategist says

You cannot hoard land because there is so much of it with millions of owners.

Once again, you demonstrate your complete inability to grasp reality. We're not talking about land in North Dakota. Housing there is damn cheap.

We're talking land in NYC, Florida, Silicon Valley, and other places were housing is expensive. The fact is, it's damn cheap to build a house. What's not cheap is buying an existing house to tear down so that you can build the new house.

Land in an economically developed location is a scarce commodity. And you claim to know more about economics than I do. What a joke. My statements are obviously true.