Nice to see mankind survived global warming, and even achieved talking heads in a jar (definite knock-off of Futurama, except the guy sitting down, who’s a knock-off of George Jetson).
If he were, he wouldn’t be a socialist. You won’t find many socialist among engineers, scientists, or other math-intensive fields. The futility of socialism is mathematically obvious – it’s a non-starter.
Hey, vanpelt when you’re surrounded by trees do you see the forest?
ynnek58, by what authority do you make that statement? What scientific poll are you referring to? Your opinions are not facts. I studied physics, and by no stretch of logic is “The futility of socialism … mathematically obvious.” If anything, it is human nature, primarily laziness and greed, that makes socialism futile.
I read a similar ridiculous comment on some forum (it may have been this one) implying that left wingers are primarily Democrats and are too dumb to study hard sciences. Pew Research recently released results of a poll in which 6% of scientists stated that they are Republican. Facts make more convincing arguments.
I think Mark Twain said it best…(in this case, in re socialism) “If 50,000,000 Frenchmen believe a stupid thing, it’s STILL a stupid thing!” Solialism is the epitome of wishful thinking. If you don’t have a reward for doing something better, or working harder…or smarter…what’s the use of doing it?
ynnek, that was just a silly statement. I’m a social scientist and I don’t even know how you could make such an assertion based on research. (And for the record, engineers and scientists are often disproportionately poor at people-intensive skills, which is why so few become managers and leaders on the large scale. Math isn’t enough to be successful in many parts of the real world.) Arguably any “ism” is too extreme to be implemented as described – certainly there has never been a Communist state that remotely resembled anything Marx wrote about, nor has there even been a pure democracy.
Coming back to the cartoon - yeah, Ted! I’m SO sick of the boomers, who used to mistrust anyone older, and now mistrust anyone younger – their real motto is “nobody but us matters.”
I work in an engineering office. The only socialist are secretaries – not sure who paid for the survey. Maybe they are including social ‘sciences’?
Many of my coworkers are actually more of a libertarian bent, wanting neither interference in there personal lives, nor interference in their fiscal lives. I myself am not a Republican nor a Democrat; IMO they’re all drunk with power, corrupt, and they all just want my money. The level of money-driven influence in Washington is staggering, and that goes for both parties. It’s really pathetic.
Still, if you can’t tell me what’s mathematically wrong with the SS system, for instance, then you truly do not understand the fundamentals of mathematics, and by fundamentals I mean 4th grade math. I double-dog dare you to start a similar system and lay odds within a few years you’d be in jail.
I you don;t like Socialism, you better not drive, call the police, or have a house fire, ‘cause the roads, the police and the firefighting is nearly ALL Socialized.
Also, don’t use any water from a fawcett.
Oh, and looking at this, it doesn’t look like we did survive Global Warming.
fennec, agreed. And ynnek, if you think you’re being funny with your link between “socialist” and social science, you’re not. If you meant by your earlier post that the economics of socialism don’t hold up in a mathematical sense (referring, for example, to Margaret Thatcher’s famous statement that you run out of other people’s money), I would accept that as a reasonable hypothesis, but the way you stated it implied that there was a simple mathematical proof, which ain’t so.
Especially since the definition of “socialism” seems to be awfully vague ‘round here. Obama’s healthcare proposals are not socialism by any reasonable definition, for example. But the most vehement “anti-socialists” don’t seem to object to a “socialist” military. And why don’t we criticize the loggers, miners, and oil companies who take government money or use property at ludicrously low rates?
And just for the record, social science is a science like any other. I use plenty of mathematics, thanks; my dissertation required any number of regression analyses and factor analyses – which were developed by and for social scientists, by the way.
OK, I was, but still, no one has addressed, how the SS program is mathematically sustainable (or medicaid,medicare, or any other of the ‘big’ programs that are mathematically heading for trouble – this before we even START to talk about the new healthcare spending), at least nowhere near the present levels. The age will continue to creep up, it’s likely they will raise taxes, the benefits will go down and they will institute means testing within my lifetime.
Also, Sowell’s point about SS system being racist, since the life expectancy of blacks is less than whites is also true, as it is also with men, who die younger than women.
I’ve already addressed why the ‘socialism’ of police and fire etc. fall under the constitutionally directed mandate of government, so I’ll not address it further, that argument doesn’t hold water. However, estimates of the total healthcare portion of the economy pie put it to be around 1/6 of the economy. If you were to put that in the hands of the government it would represent a significant amount of control over the economy - sorry if some of us are a little leery about this as the State has done such a ‘great’ job on everything else they’ve messed with. I’m sure it will be different THIS time… right.
I’m not saying that it wouldn’t be nice to see everybody get everything they need and most of what they want, but please, how that is going to be paid for is a huge question. Everybody keeps yammering about how cheap it’s going to be, but frankly I haven’t seen any cost savings, just the addition of 47 E6 people to the system. The marginal saving due to better up-front care are estimated even by the GAO to be marginal – so where is the savings? This is the simple math that I’m talking about – no calculus required.
Maybe in absolute terms you could get it cheaper with a single source pay system of very basic care (with presumably lower quality), but that’s not even the plan on the table, is it?
So, I absolutely maintain that the math to support this ‘new’ approach to covering everybody in the country is not there and in fact cannot exist. Now we won’t know exactly, because the plan and rumors of the plan are changing daily [or so it seems]. I’ve said that I could probably live with a single payer system as long as it is very basic etc. but in the present climate, that isn’t what you are going to get.
Sadly, the real root cause of the cost of healthcare in the country is the lazy lardasses that we’ve collectively become. I posted a link on another thread about this which shows the over-weight distribution state by state. It’s alarming. The reality is about 90% of what ails us is preventable – why aren’t we addressing that? I’ll tell you – people don’t want to here it, and they don’t want to take any responsibility with regard to their personal health. They can’t handle the truth. You want cheaper healthcare – get America off the couch and behaving a little less like animals. As long as cigarettes, drugs, booze, unprotected and underage sex, and Mac Donald’s are allowed under the government plan, then the cost will be overwhelming.
Could you possibly get any more holier than thou? Your ridiculous comment about someone who studied physics and the higher math required to understand it being unable to master basic arithmetic shows how credible you are.
Doesn’t Sowell’s (a right wing sound bite spewer) comment about SS being racist imply that there is still a great deal of systemic racism in this country? It does to anyone capable of simple logic. Blacks die younger because of the inherent bias in this country.
Your anecdotal comments about your workplace are worthless in a logical discussion. You are not the universal man.
47E6 is shorthand for 4.7 x 10 to the 6th power which equals 47 million. I disagree that we are less free now. In the ’60s, dissenters were routinely killed by the police. Now, it has improved to where the police only routinely brutalize dissenters.
mattro53
NO need to get you undies in a wad. Sowell, is just observing the facts, there are a lot of reasons why the life expectancy of blacks could be lower. Only the anointed would assume that because the outcome is different it must be due to institutional racism (don’t use a test of any kind, even if it only has job related information on it – it will surely be racist by definition). There are in fact, many factors, including cultural differences, diet, lifestyle choices (exercise, incidence of smoking), higher drug usage, gang banging etc. I’m not saying racism doesn’t exist in the USA, it certainly does, but to say that institutional racism is the reason why blacks don’t live longer, is not just not possible to say, it is even less possible to prove. We could certainly say it’s certainly not the sole reason. Obesity, for instance is higher among blacks (and Native Americans) – the government isn’t out the forcing people to eat more than they should or father children out of wedlock. Last time I checked only Jesse Helms was [ironically] the only congressman known to have sired a child with a black woman out of wedlock, other than that, this is a condition that is self inflicted within the community as are the others mentioned.
The fact is that blacks put into the system just like the whites, but collect less – white women collecting the most and for the longest time (my mom is 85 and still collecting (she, like most others of her generation have collected way more than they put in)).
And the math behind the SS system still sucks and no one has, nor will refute that. When it started there were 15 workers for every retiree. Had they forced people to save for their retirement, it would have still been wrong on moral grounds, but at least they would have been saving their own money (incidentally for a LONG they didn’t even pay any interest on that money either). (BTW, what did people do for hundreds of years before this? It was family looking after family and extended family, and neighbor looking after neighbor, as it should be.) However what the boneheads in charge at the time did was turn around and immediately dole out that money to those that were already retired (just like a Madoff [Ponzi] scheme)…oops! Soon we will have just 3 people working for every retiree and guess what? Something has got to give. You’ll see decreased benefits, the raising of the retirement age AGAIN (what was it 62 to begin with and now we’re at 70? – you ain’t seen the last of that either). I think we aren’t too far from means testing (which means it will not be a supplemental income anymore, but just another poor tax). That last one will be a last resort, but you will probably see a combination of those. The taxes on the working will also need to be raised further, and well as the taxes on employers [which is regressive]. They will likely also remove the SS cap, which means some people will put in WAY more than others for the same benefit (fair? Hardly!). So, when I, a bit mockingly (sorry about that), suggest that there are some socialists that are having problems with basic math, I frankly don’t think that this is either arrogant, or very far off the mark. Sorry if you feel offended.
BTW, 47E6 means 47 with 6 zeros behind it (shorthand). NO one really knows the exact number, but it’s a round number (a very large round number) which will have a rather round price tag to go with it.
What the heckle does socialism have to do with Woodstock?
All I can say about Woodstock, the “Woodstock Nation,” and all of the crap that was so popular in those days is: it was phony then, and it’s phony now.
ynnek58 almost 15 years ago
Nice to see mankind survived global warming, and even achieved talking heads in a jar (definite knock-off of Futurama, except the guy sitting down, who’s a knock-off of George Jetson).
ynnek58 almost 15 years ago
vanpelt
If he were, he wouldn’t be a socialist. You won’t find many socialist among engineers, scientists, or other math-intensive fields. The futility of socialism is mathematically obvious – it’s a non-starter.
mattro65 almost 15 years ago
Hey, vanpelt when you’re surrounded by trees do you see the forest? ynnek58, by what authority do you make that statement? What scientific poll are you referring to? Your opinions are not facts. I studied physics, and by no stretch of logic is “The futility of socialism … mathematically obvious.” If anything, it is human nature, primarily laziness and greed, that makes socialism futile. I read a similar ridiculous comment on some forum (it may have been this one) implying that left wingers are primarily Democrats and are too dumb to study hard sciences. Pew Research recently released results of a poll in which 6% of scientists stated that they are Republican. Facts make more convincing arguments.
wxman927 almost 15 years ago
I think Mark Twain said it best…(in this case, in re socialism) “If 50,000,000 Frenchmen believe a stupid thing, it’s STILL a stupid thing!” Solialism is the epitome of wishful thinking. If you don’t have a reward for doing something better, or working harder…or smarter…what’s the use of doing it?
Motivemagus almost 15 years ago
ynnek, that was just a silly statement. I’m a social scientist and I don’t even know how you could make such an assertion based on research. (And for the record, engineers and scientists are often disproportionately poor at people-intensive skills, which is why so few become managers and leaders on the large scale. Math isn’t enough to be successful in many parts of the real world.) Arguably any “ism” is too extreme to be implemented as described – certainly there has never been a Communist state that remotely resembled anything Marx wrote about, nor has there even been a pure democracy. Coming back to the cartoon - yeah, Ted! I’m SO sick of the boomers, who used to mistrust anyone older, and now mistrust anyone younger – their real motto is “nobody but us matters.”
ynnek58 almost 15 years ago
mattro53
I work in an engineering office. The only socialist are secretaries – not sure who paid for the survey. Maybe they are including social ‘sciences’?
Many of my coworkers are actually more of a libertarian bent, wanting neither interference in there personal lives, nor interference in their fiscal lives. I myself am not a Republican nor a Democrat; IMO they’re all drunk with power, corrupt, and they all just want my money. The level of money-driven influence in Washington is staggering, and that goes for both parties. It’s really pathetic.
Still, if you can’t tell me what’s mathematically wrong with the SS system, for instance, then you truly do not understand the fundamentals of mathematics, and by fundamentals I mean 4th grade math. I double-dog dare you to start a similar system and lay odds within a few years you’d be in jail.
AdmNaismith almost 15 years ago
I you don;t like Socialism, you better not drive, call the police, or have a house fire, ‘cause the roads, the police and the firefighting is nearly ALL Socialized. Also, don’t use any water from a fawcett.
Oh, and looking at this, it doesn’t look like we did survive Global Warming.
Motivemagus almost 15 years ago
fennec, agreed. And ynnek, if you think you’re being funny with your link between “socialist” and social science, you’re not. If you meant by your earlier post that the economics of socialism don’t hold up in a mathematical sense (referring, for example, to Margaret Thatcher’s famous statement that you run out of other people’s money), I would accept that as a reasonable hypothesis, but the way you stated it implied that there was a simple mathematical proof, which ain’t so. Especially since the definition of “socialism” seems to be awfully vague ‘round here. Obama’s healthcare proposals are not socialism by any reasonable definition, for example. But the most vehement “anti-socialists” don’t seem to object to a “socialist” military. And why don’t we criticize the loggers, miners, and oil companies who take government money or use property at ludicrously low rates? And just for the record, social science is a science like any other. I use plenty of mathematics, thanks; my dissertation required any number of regression analyses and factor analyses – which were developed by and for social scientists, by the way.
Ripit over 14 years ago
Easy target. Where’s the rage, Ted?
ynnek58 over 14 years ago
OK, I was, but still, no one has addressed, how the SS program is mathematically sustainable (or medicaid,medicare, or any other of the ‘big’ programs that are mathematically heading for trouble – this before we even START to talk about the new healthcare spending), at least nowhere near the present levels. The age will continue to creep up, it’s likely they will raise taxes, the benefits will go down and they will institute means testing within my lifetime.
Also, Sowell’s point about SS system being racist, since the life expectancy of blacks is less than whites is also true, as it is also with men, who die younger than women.
I’ve already addressed why the ‘socialism’ of police and fire etc. fall under the constitutionally directed mandate of government, so I’ll not address it further, that argument doesn’t hold water. However, estimates of the total healthcare portion of the economy pie put it to be around 1/6 of the economy. If you were to put that in the hands of the government it would represent a significant amount of control over the economy - sorry if some of us are a little leery about this as the State has done such a ‘great’ job on everything else they’ve messed with. I’m sure it will be different THIS time… right.
I’m not saying that it wouldn’t be nice to see everybody get everything they need and most of what they want, but please, how that is going to be paid for is a huge question. Everybody keeps yammering about how cheap it’s going to be, but frankly I haven’t seen any cost savings, just the addition of 47 E6 people to the system. The marginal saving due to better up-front care are estimated even by the GAO to be marginal – so where is the savings? This is the simple math that I’m talking about – no calculus required.
Maybe in absolute terms you could get it cheaper with a single source pay system of very basic care (with presumably lower quality), but that’s not even the plan on the table, is it?
So, I absolutely maintain that the math to support this ‘new’ approach to covering everybody in the country is not there and in fact cannot exist. Now we won’t know exactly, because the plan and rumors of the plan are changing daily [or so it seems]. I’ve said that I could probably live with a single payer system as long as it is very basic etc. but in the present climate, that isn’t what you are going to get.
Sadly, the real root cause of the cost of healthcare in the country is the lazy lardasses that we’ve collectively become. I posted a link on another thread about this which shows the over-weight distribution state by state. It’s alarming. The reality is about 90% of what ails us is preventable – why aren’t we addressing that? I’ll tell you – people don’t want to here it, and they don’t want to take any responsibility with regard to their personal health. They can’t handle the truth. You want cheaper healthcare – get America off the couch and behaving a little less like animals. As long as cigarettes, drugs, booze, unprotected and underage sex, and Mac Donald’s are allowed under the government plan, then the cost will be overwhelming.
mattro65 over 14 years ago
Could you possibly get any more holier than thou? Your ridiculous comment about someone who studied physics and the higher math required to understand it being unable to master basic arithmetic shows how credible you are.
Doesn’t Sowell’s (a right wing sound bite spewer) comment about SS being racist imply that there is still a great deal of systemic racism in this country? It does to anyone capable of simple logic. Blacks die younger because of the inherent bias in this country.
Your anecdotal comments about your workplace are worthless in a logical discussion. You are not the universal man.
mattro65 over 14 years ago
47E6 is shorthand for 4.7 x 10 to the 6th power which equals 47 million. I disagree that we are less free now. In the ’60s, dissenters were routinely killed by the police. Now, it has improved to where the police only routinely brutalize dissenters.
ynnek58 over 14 years ago
mattro53 NO need to get you undies in a wad. Sowell, is just observing the facts, there are a lot of reasons why the life expectancy of blacks could be lower. Only the anointed would assume that because the outcome is different it must be due to institutional racism (don’t use a test of any kind, even if it only has job related information on it – it will surely be racist by definition). There are in fact, many factors, including cultural differences, diet, lifestyle choices (exercise, incidence of smoking), higher drug usage, gang banging etc. I’m not saying racism doesn’t exist in the USA, it certainly does, but to say that institutional racism is the reason why blacks don’t live longer, is not just not possible to say, it is even less possible to prove. We could certainly say it’s certainly not the sole reason. Obesity, for instance is higher among blacks (and Native Americans) – the government isn’t out the forcing people to eat more than they should or father children out of wedlock. Last time I checked only Jesse Helms was [ironically] the only congressman known to have sired a child with a black woman out of wedlock, other than that, this is a condition that is self inflicted within the community as are the others mentioned.
The fact is that blacks put into the system just like the whites, but collect less – white women collecting the most and for the longest time (my mom is 85 and still collecting (she, like most others of her generation have collected way more than they put in)).
And the math behind the SS system still sucks and no one has, nor will refute that. When it started there were 15 workers for every retiree. Had they forced people to save for their retirement, it would have still been wrong on moral grounds, but at least they would have been saving their own money (incidentally for a LONG they didn’t even pay any interest on that money either). (BTW, what did people do for hundreds of years before this? It was family looking after family and extended family, and neighbor looking after neighbor, as it should be.) However what the boneheads in charge at the time did was turn around and immediately dole out that money to those that were already retired (just like a Madoff [Ponzi] scheme)…oops! Soon we will have just 3 people working for every retiree and guess what? Something has got to give. You’ll see decreased benefits, the raising of the retirement age AGAIN (what was it 62 to begin with and now we’re at 70? – you ain’t seen the last of that either). I think we aren’t too far from means testing (which means it will not be a supplemental income anymore, but just another poor tax). That last one will be a last resort, but you will probably see a combination of those. The taxes on the working will also need to be raised further, and well as the taxes on employers [which is regressive]. They will likely also remove the SS cap, which means some people will put in WAY more than others for the same benefit (fair? Hardly!). So, when I, a bit mockingly (sorry about that), suggest that there are some socialists that are having problems with basic math, I frankly don’t think that this is either arrogant, or very far off the mark. Sorry if you feel offended.
BTW, 47E6 means 47 with 6 zeros behind it (shorthand). NO one really knows the exact number, but it’s a round number (a very large round number) which will have a rather round price tag to go with it.
sjsczurek over 5 years ago
What the heckle does socialism have to do with Woodstock?
All I can say about Woodstock, the “Woodstock Nation,” and all of the crap that was so popular in those days is: it was phony then, and it’s phony now.
(And I am of that generation, too.)
Bernidbigdog over 5 years ago
In the year 2525, if man is still aliveIf woman can survive, they may find
Mr. Blawt over 5 years ago
If only the boomers could live for ever and control everything for always