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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
On March 10 2017 04:22 Ayaz2810 wrote:
How does Sean Spicer live with himself on a daily basis? How many times can he say "the people want this plan. We are giving power back to doctors and patients. This plan is the salvation we have been waiting for" with a straight face? Does he talk to no one but Trump and Ryan? A vast majority of the country (private citizens and business) seems to abhor the proposed changes, and a bunch of shit we are being told are precisely the things people have been ranting about at town halls. How does he (Sean) not realize that?
On a side note, there's something about his face I don't like. He just looks like an evil bastard. I thought that the moment I saw a pic of him. Anyone else?
Press Secretaries are paid to peddle the president's plans. I wouldn't have expected Gibbs to say the American people knew Obamacare regs would raise premiums, or you wouldn't actually be able to keep your plan if you liked it. He's a straight up mouthpiece: if Trump is advocating a terrible idea, the press sec's job is to tell everyone it's the best ever, and will make your wildest dreams come true.
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Glad to see Washington state is calling out the top secret plan of rewriting the law after it has been challenged and stayed by the court. It is pretty rude to change the rules after someone put all that time into making legal arguments against them.
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On March 10 2017 04:22 Ayaz2810 wrote:
How does Sean Spicer live with himself on a daily basis? How many times can he say "the people want this plan. We are giving power back to doctors and patients. This plan is the salvation we have been waiting for" with a straight face? Does he talk to no one but Trump and Ryan? A vast majority of the country (private citizens and business) seems to abhor the proposed changes, and a bunch of shit we are being told are precisely the things people have been ranting about at town halls. How does he (Sean) not realize that?
On a side note, there's something about his face I don't like. He just looks like an evil bastard. I thought that the moment I saw a pic of him. Anyone else?
He reminds me of Saddam Hussein's propaganda minister. You know, that guy that said "Good news everyone! The Americans five miles outside of Baghdad have decide to commit suicide en masse, we have won the war!"
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On March 10 2017 03:44 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2017 03:27 IgnE wrote:On March 10 2017 02:33 Gahlo wrote:On March 10 2017 02:30 Nebuchad wrote:On March 10 2017 02:19 Danglars wrote:
Sometimes, I think the new drug is outrage and you all are addicts. There's always so much projection when talking to far right people, it's kind of unbelievable... Love me some horseshoe theory. Just another example of it at work. ive got a theory for you: the horseshoe is a complete historical anomaly and its shape is an illusion. it's actually a straight line that runs from the political at one end to an apolitical fukuyamaist consumerism at the other end. the horseshoe bend is a mirage produced by an aesthetic identity apolitics that appears to have extension within a real political dimension (hence the 2d horseshoe) but actually does not. You changed the image a little but the underlying horseshoe logic still seems to apply. You're saying that both the left and the right are a return to the 'political' while the establishment/center/whatever manages in administrative fashion.
yeah i changed the image and its ideological consequences. we have flatlanders operating under the delusion they they are tetrahedrons
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On March 10 2017 04:22 Ayaz2810 wrote:
How does Sean Spicer live with himself on a daily basis? How many times can he say "the people want this plan. We are giving power back to doctors and patients. This plan is the salvation we have been waiting for" with a straight face? Does he talk to no one but Trump and Ryan? A vast majority of the country (private citizens and business) seems to abhor the proposed changes, and a bunch of shit we are being told are precisely the things people have been ranting about at town halls. How does he (Sean) not realize that?
On a side note, there's something about his face I don't like. He just looks like an evil bastard. I thought that the moment I saw a pic of him. Anyone else?
unknown, and hard to tell from here.
lots of people simply aren't that moral. and in certain jobs it's helpful to not be a moral person as it makes it easier to do what the job requires.
also, skilled actors (and conmen) can say an awful lot of stuff with a straight face, as i'ts their job, and if they coudln't they wouldn't be in that job.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
Wikileaks had a press conference this morning. Find a link to the video if you like.
One of the kind of interesting things from it was that Wikileaks is giving some affected parties early access to allow them to patch the leaks. I guess people here should be happy about that?
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Remember when the Clinton Foundation was going to put her in the pocket of Saudi Arabia and give them the ability to buy favors, maybe weapons deals that Obama had been blocking over rights concerns?
Those favors are happening anyway, I guess. Good work, Saudi Arabia!
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
The Sauds clearly have some good contingency plans.
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On March 09 2017 19:45 kwizach wrote:I found this to be a good article on Chaffetz' iPhone comments, and on the idea in general that if people are poor it's because they're not trying hard enough to lift themselves up/be responsible/make the right choices: Show nested quote +Laziness isn’t why people are poor. And iPhones aren’t why they lack health care.
In response to a question about his party’s plan to increase the cost of health insurance, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) suggested that people should “invest in their own health care” instead of “getting that new iPhone.” He doubled-down on the point in a later interview: “People need to make a conscious choice, and I believe in self-reliance.” Of course, Chaffetz is wrong. But he isn’t alone.
While he has been met with justifiable derision for the comparison (Christopher Ingraham walked through the math for us, pointing out that a year’s worth of health care would equal 23 iPhone 7 Pluses in price), the claim he is making is hardly new. Chaffetz was articulating a commonly held belief that poverty in the United States is, by and large, the result of laziness, immorality and irresponsibility. If only people made better choices — if they worked harder, stayed in school, got married, didn’t have children they couldn’t afford, spent what money they had more wisely and saved more — then they wouldn’t be poor, or so the reasoning goes.
This insistence that people would not be poor if only they would try harder defines the thinking behind the signature welfare restructuring law of the Clinton era, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. It’s the logic at the heart of efforts to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients, to drug-test people collecting unemployment insurance or to forbid food stamp recipients to buy steak and lobster.
Since the invention of the mythic welfare queen in the 1960s, this has been the story we most reliably tell about why people are poor. Never mind that research from across the social sciences shows us, over and again, that it’s a lie. Never mind low wages or lack of jobs, the poor quality of too many schools, the dearth of marriageable males in poor black communities (thanks to a racialized criminal justice system and ongoing discrimination in the labor market), or the high cost of birth control and day care. Never mind the fact that the largest group of poor people in the United States are children. Never mind the grim reality that most American adults who are poor are not poor from lack of effort but despite it.
This deep denial serves a few functions, however. [...] Source
while i mostly agree with this article i think the spectre that haunts all these discussions and that is unnamed by people on all sides of this issue is inequality in mental capacities (eg intelligence, drive, proclivities, addiction, trauma, etc). this is most apparent in kwark's brand of fiscal conservatism (let's ignore for a moment the contradictions inherent in the necessity of a surplus labor pool and the belief that literally everyone can pull themselves up into economic security through wise financial practices. kwark's argument ultimately fails because it is based on a fundamental exclusion of others that is a requirement for any particular individual's success.)
for kwark the argument always depends on an abstracted human wrested out of his/her being-in-the-world who operates autonomously and with full access to the kinds of mental machinery required to plan out non-contingent actions and then appropriately execute those actions. this is ridiculous on its face, but one reason that it can appear superficially persuasive is that it never names, and therefore ignores, the aforementioned inequalities in mental capacities. this is compounded by the fact that we all have a (right) belief in the formal equality of our fellow citizen-subjects which tends to subsume its unnamed shadow counterpart: the radical difference in subjective experience and ability.
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United States42784 Posts
I've consistently stated that there are structural problems and placing an emphasis on individuals to solve them is missing the point. I've also consistently stated that for most people it's not a case of "why don't you just choose to fix the problems?", even if the problems are fixable, because an active choice to not fix the problems isn't being made, it's more a case of passive inertia. The kind of person who actively sets goals and tackles their problems generally isn't the kind of person who is poor, in the west at least, or if they are it's not for very long. But that comes more down to education, role models growing up and life experiences.
I firmly believe that most people can do more to better their lives. And that even if they don't have the knowledge or the skills to better their life immediately they have enough to recognize what they don't know and have access to the information. Literacy and internet access have democratized knowledge. I also believe it's not a realistic expectation to simply do nothing to help people and expect them to erase years of learned helplessness. My views on hard work and self improvement are on a micro scale, not a macro scale. On a macro scale it comes down to role models, schools, communities etc.
If you ask me for a solution to poverty in the nation then I'll talk about wealth inequality, deficient public services, economic dislocation, the prison industrial complex etc etc. If you ask me for a solution to a poor individual then I'll talk about education, hard work and planning. I know you gave me shit for this before but you really can fund a retirement by donating plasma, and donating plasma alone. Should people have to donate plasma to retire? No. Should individuals who have no retirement savings and 3 hours a week they can spare donate plasma? Yes, absolutely. I'm not advocating it as a fix to structural problems but as an example of a way that an individual can identify and tackle a specific problem in their life.
You don't need to wait for society in general to solve the obesity epidemic before you start taking the stairs. This is the same. If the surgeon general's answer to the society-wide crisis was that people should take the stairs more then I'd think he was doing a shitty job. But if the surgeon general's fat friend asks him what he should do, taking the stairs more would certainly be good advice.
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On March 10 2017 06:58 KwarK wrote:
If you ask me for a solution to poverty in the nation then I'll talk about wealth inequality, deficient public services, economic dislocation, the prison industrial complex etc etc. If you ask me for a solution to a poor individual then I'll talk about education, hard work and planning. I know you gave me shit for this before but you really can fund a retirement by donating plasma, and donating plasma alone. Should people have to donate plasma to retire? No. Should individuals who have no retirement savings and 3 hours a week they can spare donate plasma? Yes, absolutely. I'm not advocating it as a fix to structural problems but as an example of a way that an individual can identify and tackle a specific problem in their life.
I'd say this paragraph is the crux of the issue that many people have with your economic views. It's good that you have the awareness that your solutions apply solely on a micro scale, but then you keep jumping back to apply it on a macro scale.
The blood donation thing is a perfect example, as the only reason you're getting good money from that is because no one else is doing it. It has all the bearing of the typical get rich biography that collapses on itself once it's been spread to the masses.
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It is good in theory, challenging to put into practice everywhere. There is a reason some places are economically depressed, because there isn’t a lot of money flowing around.
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yeah that's fine kwark. my point in raising this issue is that it seems to me that articles like the one kwizach linked sustain a myth that operates to neutralize alternative discourse by channeling all debate into this American version of the "equality of opportunities" track which obscures the fact that personal outcomes are often overdetermined by factors outside of their control and which are not reducible to "opportunity" in a liberal capitalist sense.
it seems like discussions of the type that kwizach linked perform the same abstracting of humanity performed by the conservative kwark* in my depiction above: ripping them from being-in-the-world, hosing them down, and then equipping them with the standard tools of liberal subjectivity before reinserting them into carefully circumscribed laboratory scenarios. then they say "see look we need to help make sure liberal subjects in this setting are given a leg up so that they can compete on an equal footing with everyone else." but we are already arguing within the coordinates favorable to kwarks* who can simply disagree and say "there are opportunities, its just people are lazy, whatever. they could/should be donating blood plasma." and we get nowhere while ignoring questions like "what is an economy for? and how is our economy actually working for real people embedded in a contingent world?"
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United States42784 Posts
On March 10 2017 07:33 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2017 06:58 KwarK wrote:
If you ask me for a solution to poverty in the nation then I'll talk about wealth inequality, deficient public services, economic dislocation, the prison industrial complex etc etc. If you ask me for a solution to a poor individual then I'll talk about education, hard work and planning. I know you gave me shit for this before but you really can fund a retirement by donating plasma, and donating plasma alone. Should people have to donate plasma to retire? No. Should individuals who have no retirement savings and 3 hours a week they can spare donate plasma? Yes, absolutely. I'm not advocating it as a fix to structural problems but as an example of a way that an individual can identify and tackle a specific problem in their life. I'd say this paragraph is the crux of the issue that many people have with your economic views. It's good that you have the awareness that your solutions apply solely on a micro scale, but then you keep jumping back to apply it on a macro scale. The blood donation thing is a perfect example, as the only reason you're getting good money from that is because no one else is doing it. It has all the bearing of the typical get rich biography that collapses on itself once it's been spread to the masses.
Do more things that create value than you are currently doing, including learning ways to increase the value of your labour, while simultaneously improving the allocation of your resources through budgeting and investing is not a get rich scheme that will collapse if more people become aware of it. It's the essence of human progress. It's how you get someone going "I wonder if having a horse pull this plough would increase the output of the field enough to offset the trouble involved in having a horse?".
There is this false dichotomy between the two truths which people seem to struggle with. We have liberals so desperate not to blame individuals for poverty that they find themselves arguing against the idea that if you're poor and not working as hard as you could be then working harder would help. Literally disagreeing with hard work. Or that if you're spending money on crap you don't need and don't have enough for the shit you do need then maybe that's a problem of resource allocation, rather than of resource shortages. Meanwhile we have conservatives insisting that what a kid growing up in an area with shitty schools and a single parent working two jobs really needs is cuts to public services because that way they'll obviously learn to be more self sufficient, once they're done learning to read that is.
It is true that there are structural problems in society. It is also true that individuals can improve their own outcomes. There is literally no conflict there but for some reason people seem to want to insist that it be an ideological warzone and because they are certain that their side is right they must pretend the other side is wrong. Sure, health insurance costs more than an iphone and saying "just don't buy a phone" is an oversimplification of the problem. I'm fine with that. But at the same time, if you have a perfectly good phone and know that you're too broke to pay for any health issues then don't fucking upgrade your phone.
It is legitimately a normal thing for working poor people with regular and predictable income streams to do shit like say they can't pay rent by the 3rd and will have to pay it on the 10th for an extra $200 in fees, month after month. When someone says there should be more affordable housing I'm behind that, but at the same time you can't pretend that the reason they can't afford rent is it's too expensive for all of these people. They can afford it, they can afford $200 more than it, and they can afford to overpay by $200 month after month. If you halved the rent you wouldn't change the problem which in many cases is just that people don't see the need to not spend their rent money before rent is due.
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On March 10 2017 07:48 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2017 07:33 WolfintheSheep wrote:On March 10 2017 06:58 KwarK wrote:
If you ask me for a solution to poverty in the nation then I'll talk about wealth inequality, deficient public services, economic dislocation, the prison industrial complex etc etc. If you ask me for a solution to a poor individual then I'll talk about education, hard work and planning. I know you gave me shit for this before but you really can fund a retirement by donating plasma, and donating plasma alone. Should people have to donate plasma to retire? No. Should individuals who have no retirement savings and 3 hours a week they can spare donate plasma? Yes, absolutely. I'm not advocating it as a fix to structural problems but as an example of a way that an individual can identify and tackle a specific problem in their life. I'd say this paragraph is the crux of the issue that many people have with your economic views. It's good that you have the awareness that your solutions apply solely on a micro scale, but then you keep jumping back to apply it on a macro scale. The blood donation thing is a perfect example, as the only reason you're getting good money from that is because no one else is doing it. It has all the bearing of the typical get rich biography that collapses on itself once it's been spread to the masses. Do more things that create value than you are currently doing, including learning ways to increase the value of your labour, while simultaneously improving the allocation of your resources through budgeting and investing is not a get rich scheme that will collapse if more people become aware of it. It's the essence of human progress. It's how you get someone going "I wonder if having a horse pull this plough would increase the output of the field enough to offset the trouble involved in having a horse?". There is this false dichotomy between the two truths which people seem to struggle with. We have liberals so desperate not to blame individuals for poverty that they find themselves arguing against the idea that if you're poor and not working as hard as you could be then working harder would help. Literally disagreeing with hard work. Or that if you're spending money on crap you don't need and don't have enough for the shit you do need then maybe that's a problem of resource allocation, rather than of resource shortages. Meanwhile we have conservatives insisting that what a kid growing up in an area with shitty schools and a single parent working two jobs really needs is cuts to public services because that way they'll obviously learn to be more self sufficient, once they're done learning to read that is. It is true that there are structural problems in society. It is also true that individuals can improve their own outcomes. There is literally no conflict there but for some reason people seem to want to insist that it be an ideological warzone and because they are certain that their side is right they must pretend the other side is wrong.
Again, it's good that you have the awareness of the micro and macro implications of your arguments, but you continue to jump between the two without regard to context of the discussion.
Most glaringly because I don't think anyone in this thread would argue that a poor person cannot break out of their situation through their own power, primarily because these kinds of discussions don't focus on individuals in the first place.
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On March 10 2017 07:33 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2017 06:58 KwarK wrote:
If you ask me for a solution to poverty in the nation then I'll talk about wealth inequality, deficient public services, economic dislocation, the prison industrial complex etc etc. If you ask me for a solution to a poor individual then I'll talk about education, hard work and planning. I know you gave me shit for this before but you really can fund a retirement by donating plasma, and donating plasma alone. Should people have to donate plasma to retire? No. Should individuals who have no retirement savings and 3 hours a week they can spare donate plasma? Yes, absolutely. I'm not advocating it as a fix to structural problems but as an example of a way that an individual can identify and tackle a specific problem in their life. I'd say this paragraph is the crux of the issue that many people have with your economic views. It's good that you have the awareness that your solutions apply solely on a micro scale, but then you keep jumping back to apply it on a macro scale. The blood donation thing is a perfect example, as the only reason you're getting good money from that is because no one else is doing it. It has all the bearing of the typical get rich biography that collapses on itself once it's been spread to the masses.
I think you're missing the point of most plasma donations. Most of these "donations" are going to research facilities for bio tech companies. Its a fair transaction and no different then say a facility that would pay you to ride a bike or exercise (which public health care could fund for a 2 birds one stone idea tbh).
A good micro awareness is good for someone to ask advice for your particular situation. Kwark isn't advocating for the system to be better hes advocating for you to use the system in your advantage.
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On March 10 2017 08:08 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2017 07:33 WolfintheSheep wrote:On March 10 2017 06:58 KwarK wrote:
If you ask me for a solution to poverty in the nation then I'll talk about wealth inequality, deficient public services, economic dislocation, the prison industrial complex etc etc. If you ask me for a solution to a poor individual then I'll talk about education, hard work and planning. I know you gave me shit for this before but you really can fund a retirement by donating plasma, and donating plasma alone. Should people have to donate plasma to retire? No. Should individuals who have no retirement savings and 3 hours a week they can spare donate plasma? Yes, absolutely. I'm not advocating it as a fix to structural problems but as an example of a way that an individual can identify and tackle a specific problem in their life. I'd say this paragraph is the crux of the issue that many people have with your economic views. It's good that you have the awareness that your solutions apply solely on a micro scale, but then you keep jumping back to apply it on a macro scale. The blood donation thing is a perfect example, as the only reason you're getting good money from that is because no one else is doing it. It has all the bearing of the typical get rich biography that collapses on itself once it's been spread to the masses. I think you're missing the point of most plasma donations. Most of these "donations" are going to research facilities for bio tech companies. Its a fair transaction and no different then say a facility that would pay you to ride a bike or exercise (which public health care could fund for a 2 birds one stone idea tbh). A good micro awareness is good for someone to ask advice for your particular situation. Kwark isn't advocating for the system to be better hes advocating for you to use the system in your advantage.
No, I got that point. My point is that the argument is not very relevant to anything. Sure, it would pay my retirement. It wouldn't fund the retirement for my entire community, or a nation.
And communities and nationwide poverty is what these discussions are (almost) always about.
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Decription of the Yemen raid by villagers : (from here) It's pretty brutal
On January 29, 5-year-old Sinan al Ameri was asleep with his mother, his aunt, and 12 other children in a one-room stone hut typical of poor rural villages in the highlands of Yemen. A little after 1 a.m., the women and children awoke to the sound of a gunfight erupting a few hundred feet away. Roughly 30 members of Navy SEAL Team 6 were storming the eastern hillside of the remote settlement.
According to residents of the village of al Ghayil, in Yemen’s al Bayda province, the first to die in the assault was 13-year-old Nasser al Dhahab. The house of his uncle, Sheikh Abdulraouf al Dhahab, and the building behind it, the home of 65-year-old Abdallah al Ameri and his son Mohammed al Ameri, 38, appeared to be the targets of the U.S. forces, who called in air support as they were pinned down in a nearly hourlong firefight.
With the SEALs taking heavy fire on the lower slopes, attack helicopters swept over the hillside hamlet above. In what seemed to be blind panic, the gunships bombarded the entire village, striking more than a dozen buildings, razing stone dwellings where families slept, and wiping out more than 120 goats, sheep, and donkeys.
Three projectiles tore through the straw and timber roof of the home where Sinan slept. Cowering in a corner, Sinan’s mother, 30-year-old Fatim Saleh Mohsen, decided to flee the bombardment. Grabbing her 18-month-old son and ushering her terrified children into the narrow outdoor passageway between the tightly packed dwellings, she headed into the open. Over a week later, Sinan’s aunt Nadr al Ameri wept as she stood in the same room and recalled watching her sister run out the door into the darkness.
Nesma al Ameri, an elderly village matriarch who lost four family members in the raid, described how the attack helicopters began firing down on anything that moved. As she recounted the horror of what happened, Sinan tapped her on the arm. “No, no. The bullets were coming from behind,” the 5-year-old insisted, interrupting to demonstrate how he was shot at and his mother gunned down as they ran for their lives. “From here to here,” Sinan said, putting two fingers to the back of his head and drawing an invisible line to illustrate the direction of the bullet exiting her forehead. His mother fell to the ground next to him, still clutching his baby brother in her arms. Sinan kept running.
His mother’s body was found in the early light of dawn, the front of her head split open. The baby was wounded but alive. Sinan’s mother was one of at least six women killed in the raid, the first counterterrorism operation of the Trump administration, which also left 10 children under the age of 13 dead. “She was hit by the plane. The American plane,” explained Sinan. “She’s in heaven now,” he added with a shy smile, seemingly unaware of the enormity of what he had witnessed or, as yet, the impact of his loss. “Dog Trump,” declared Nesma, turning to the other women in the room for agreement. “Yes, the dog Trump,” they agreed.
According to White House press secretary Sean Spicer, the al Ghayil raid “was a very, very well thought out and executed effort,” planning for which began under the Obama administration back in November 2016. Although Ned Price, former National Security Council spokesperson, and Colin Kahl, the national security adviser under Vice President Biden, challenged Spicer’s account, what is agreed upon is that Trump gave the final green light over dinner at the White House on January 25. According to two people with direct knowledge, the White House did not notify the U.S. ambassador to Yemen in advance of the operation.
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United States42784 Posts
On March 10 2017 08:18 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2017 08:08 Sermokala wrote:On March 10 2017 07:33 WolfintheSheep wrote:On March 10 2017 06:58 KwarK wrote:
If you ask me for a solution to poverty in the nation then I'll talk about wealth inequality, deficient public services, economic dislocation, the prison industrial complex etc etc. If you ask me for a solution to a poor individual then I'll talk about education, hard work and planning. I know you gave me shit for this before but you really can fund a retirement by donating plasma, and donating plasma alone. Should people have to donate plasma to retire? No. Should individuals who have no retirement savings and 3 hours a week they can spare donate plasma? Yes, absolutely. I'm not advocating it as a fix to structural problems but as an example of a way that an individual can identify and tackle a specific problem in their life. I'd say this paragraph is the crux of the issue that many people have with your economic views. It's good that you have the awareness that your solutions apply solely on a micro scale, but then you keep jumping back to apply it on a macro scale. The blood donation thing is a perfect example, as the only reason you're getting good money from that is because no one else is doing it. It has all the bearing of the typical get rich biography that collapses on itself once it's been spread to the masses. I think you're missing the point of most plasma donations. Most of these "donations" are going to research facilities for bio tech companies. Its a fair transaction and no different then say a facility that would pay you to ride a bike or exercise (which public health care could fund for a 2 birds one stone idea tbh). A good micro awareness is good for someone to ask advice for your particular situation. Kwark isn't advocating for the system to be better hes advocating for you to use the system in your advantage. No, I got that point. My point is that the argument is not very relevant to anything. Sure, it would pay my retirement. It wouldn't fund the retirement for my entire community, or a nation. And communities and nationwide poverty is what these discussions are (almost) always about.
Poor people who have extra time devoting that time to increasing their income, through additional work, self improvement, job hunting, increasing their skillset or whatever else would absolutely solve retirement problems. Obviously if every single person tried to do plasma that'd be too many people, but plasma is a placeholder here, it's not a statement of actual policy. If you're driving a piece of shit beater that you'll have to replace soon and you have no credit and no money for a new car then you're going to get fucked for several thousand dollars a year in avoidable interest purely because you're such a bad bet, and that's assuming you keep up with your payments. If you don't then you'll lose the car but be stuck with the debt and be ultrafucked. In the current year it's perfectly reasonable for an individual to learn how to do a lot of car repairs just off of youtube tutorials and the like. It doesn't have to be plasma, it could just be spending a month researching how to replace the parts in your car in the evenings, and then the next month it'll be something else. Just proactively creating surplus value in your down time in addition to what you would normally do.
This is exactly my point though. For some reason you're trying to argue that people creating additional value designated only for use in retirement wouldn't solve problems of funding retirement for the nation. That's absurd. It'd absolutely solve it, the problem is that we can't make people do it. It's the exact same as the Chaffetz problem. It's not that it wouldn't help if people prioritized healthcare and an emergency fund over non essentials, it's that it's not relevant because people don't do that, regardless of whether it would help.
Honestly sometimes I feel like if Trump were to say that black people are genetically predisposed to crime because 1+1=2 then a good half of the disagreement would come from people shouting that 1+1=3.
Incidentally I just calculated the value of a lifetime of plasma donations (18 years old to 66 years old) put into an IRA and invested in index funds. $2,516,321 at the time of retirement (in current value, real figure would be higher due to inflation). 3 hours a week. Not everyone can do plasma but they don't have to, they just need to find their 3 hours and find what works for them. Evening classes, learning a second language, making their lunches for the week on Sunday rather than eating out, whatever. We can't make people do it because they don't want to, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't work if they did it.
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On March 10 2017 08:36 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2017 08:18 WolfintheSheep wrote:On March 10 2017 08:08 Sermokala wrote:On March 10 2017 07:33 WolfintheSheep wrote:On March 10 2017 06:58 KwarK wrote:
If you ask me for a solution to poverty in the nation then I'll talk about wealth inequality, deficient public services, economic dislocation, the prison industrial complex etc etc. If you ask me for a solution to a poor individual then I'll talk about education, hard work and planning. I know you gave me shit for this before but you really can fund a retirement by donating plasma, and donating plasma alone. Should people have to donate plasma to retire? No. Should individuals who have no retirement savings and 3 hours a week they can spare donate plasma? Yes, absolutely. I'm not advocating it as a fix to structural problems but as an example of a way that an individual can identify and tackle a specific problem in their life. I'd say this paragraph is the crux of the issue that many people have with your economic views. It's good that you have the awareness that your solutions apply solely on a micro scale, but then you keep jumping back to apply it on a macro scale. The blood donation thing is a perfect example, as the only reason you're getting good money from that is because no one else is doing it. It has all the bearing of the typical get rich biography that collapses on itself once it's been spread to the masses. I think you're missing the point of most plasma donations. Most of these "donations" are going to research facilities for bio tech companies. Its a fair transaction and no different then say a facility that would pay you to ride a bike or exercise (which public health care could fund for a 2 birds one stone idea tbh). A good micro awareness is good for someone to ask advice for your particular situation. Kwark isn't advocating for the system to be better hes advocating for you to use the system in your advantage. No, I got that point. My point is that the argument is not very relevant to anything. Sure, it would pay my retirement. It wouldn't fund the retirement for my entire community, or a nation. And communities and nationwide poverty is what these discussions are (almost) always about. Poor people who have extra time devoting that time to increasing their income, through additional work, self improvement, job hunting, increasing their skillset or whatever else would absolutely solve retirement problems. Obviously if every single person tried to do plasma that'd be too many people, but plasma is a placeholder here, it's not a statement of actual policy. If you're driving a piece of shit beater that you'll have to replace soon and you have no credit and no money for a new car then you're going to get fucked for several thousand dollars a year in avoidable interest purely because you're such a bad bet, and that's assuming you keep up with your payments. If you don't then you'll lose the car but be stuck with the debt and be ultrafucked. In the current year it's perfectly reasonable for an individual to learn how to do a lot of car repairs just off of youtube tutorials and the like. It doesn't have to be plasma, it could just be spending a month researching how to replace the parts in your car in the evenings, and then the next month it'll be something else. Just proactively creating surplus value in your down time in addition to what you would normally do. This is exactly my point though. For some reason you're trying to argue that people creating additional value designated only for use in retirement wouldn't solve problems of funding retirement for the nation. That's absurd. It'd absolutely solve it, the problem is that we can't make people do it. It's the exact same as the Chaffetz problem. It's not that it wouldn't help if people prioritized healthcare and an emergency fund over non essentials, it's that it's not relevant because people don't do that, regardless of whether it would help. Honestly sometimes I feel like if Trump were to say that black people are genetically predisposed to crime because 1+1=2 then a good half of the disagreement would come from people shouting that 1+1=3. Incidentally I just calculated the value of a lifetime of plasma donations (18 years old to 66 years old) put into an IRA and invested in index funds. $2,516,321 at the time of retirement (in current value, real figure would be higher due to inflation). 3 hours a week. Not everyone can do plasma but they don't have to, they just need to find their 3 hours and find what works for them. Evening classes, learning a second language, making their lunches for the week on Sunday rather than eating out, whatever. We can't make people do it because they don't want to, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't work if they did it.
Well, okay then, guess you do think your life philosophy does apply on a macro scale.
Of course plasma donations are a placeholder, because the same counter-argument applies no matter what you use. You could save money by doing car repairs, cool. Too many people do that, no car sales and mechanics have net devaluation and you've pushed the economic burden elsewhere. Learn a second language? No value gained if your competition has those same qualifications.
I mean, you're basically arguing that everyone in the country can collectively increase the money in the country by a sizable amount without any economic effect.
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EPT
