COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Saturday, July 13, 2013

Headline on the Atlantic Blog on Hungry Americans: Does she look hungry to you?


69 comments:

  1. Maybe she just got "laid off." Or, maybe she just eats too much inexpensive starches. Maybe, a lot of things; but,

    What about those little kids?

    Should they go hungry just because she's fat?

    ReplyDelete
  2. But she could hardly be described as a “Hungry American.”

    I am all for DNA testing be done on the stud(s) that sired the kids and see what could be done to encourage him to feed his own.

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  3. I support raising minimum wages for workers significantly above poverty and welfare levels. That would be the best welfare program. A good start would be to forget the amnesty program for immigrants and give an industrial strength shellacking to the employers that are hiring them. That would go a long way to strengthen wages.

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  4. But, what about the children of the parents that are "laid off?"

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That is what unemployment compensation should be doing. It should be half paid for by the employer and should have a short fully paid duration and a downward weekly adjustment after that.

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    2. Many Americans that are laid off face that bleak choice because so many entry level jobs are filled with illegal immigrants that work for and get to keep a lower gross pay.

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    3. Or, as you stated yesterday, they are being replaced by even cheaper machines.

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    4. Assume that a single employee costs $50,000 per year.

      Eliminate the employee and replace with a robot.

      Interest on capital is 3% P.A. over seven years.

      The employer, minus the employee has $350,000 to purchase the machine, including carrying costs and amortization. He has the additional benefits of depreciation and other tax credits.

      With an employee, the manufacturer gets 2000 hours of service per year. With the robot, the employer gets 9000 hours.

      Assume the robot on an hourly basis is 5x more productive than the employee.

      The $25 an hour employee is replaced with a robot that on an hourly unit production basis costs the manufacturer under $2.

      My argument is that employer should pay the employee running the machine $50 hour. It is a win- win .

      Delete
    5. What industry is doing, is far different. They pay the remaining operator $12 hr.

      Delete
  5. Why should someone want to work for $9 per hour when they can get $12 on assistance?

    Why pay for your own kid’s lunches when freebies are available?

    Rent?
    Healthcare?
    Medicine?

    Why would Deuce not prefer to have Uncle Rufie pick up the tab and comp me for life?

    ReplyDelete
  6. A lot of states (all?) already do DNA testing.

    The House Republicans significantly increased the subsidies to farmers while referring to the food stamp program (which costs 0.005 of National GDP) as "extraneous."

    Approx. half of food stamp recipients are children.

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  7. Here is how the Australians do it:

    National minimum wage for adults

    Currently the full-time minimum wage is $16.37 per hour or $622.20 per week. This means that most employees in the national system shouldn't get less than this.

    Casuals covered by the national minimum wage get an extra 24% ($20.30 per hour).

    National minimum wages for apprentices, juniors & trainees

    There are special national minimum wages for trainees, apprentices and juniors who don’t have an award or agreement. From 1 July 2013 these are:

    Juniors:

    Age % of national minimum wage Minimum hourly rate
    Under 16------ 36.8% -- ---- - $6.03
    16------ --- 47.3% -- ---- - $7.74
    17------ --- 57.8% -- ---- - $9.46
    18------ --- 68.3% -- ---- - $11.18
    19------ --- 82.5% -- ---- - $13.51
    20------ --- 97.7% -- ---- - $16.00

    ReplyDelete
  8. The Senate immigration bill would fund, basically, a border patrol agent every 500 yards. The House is just sitting on it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We no more need an immigration bill than you have to pay for and set up tables for the uninvited guests at your daughter’s wedding.

      They figured out how to get in. Let them figure out how to leave.

      Delete
    2. If employers paid a decent wage and the government quit incentivizing unemployment, employers would get all the US labor they could handle.

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    3. The mostly unremarked upon fact is, that is basically what is happening, now. Net migration between the U.S. and Mexico is, presently, pretty much Zero.

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  9. It is sensible and fair. The executives and owners may have to trim their own compensation package and the government should radically decrease the burdens put on hiring labor.

    Fuck the lawyers and initiate a “loser pays” legal system, eliminate class actions suits and let the lawyers find a real job.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I expect the Dems to start a major "push" for an increase in the minimum wage sometime early next year.

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    2. Of course, as you pointed out, an increase in the minimum wage will lead to even faster increases in automation. (cain't anything ever be easy?) :)

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    3. Look, here's something that I think was overlooked. That fighter jet-sized drone that landed on the G.H.W. Bush was landed entirely by its Computer Program. There wasn't a "pilot" sitting in a trailer, somewhere, working a joy stick.

      While four living, breathing "pilots/officers" were bolloxing up the landing of a passenger jet in San Francisco, a Computer was landing a full-sized plane On a Carrier.

      Think about it.

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    4. 10 years from now, if you see a farmer sitting on a tractor it will just be because the guy wanted to "get out of the house" for awhile.

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    5. The "Factory of the Future?"

      A couple of people doing maintenance on the machinery.

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  10. Believe it or not, Mexico has replaced the United States as the country with the fattest people on earth.

    This is a national disgrace.

    We must, and can, do better.

    Personally, I blame Michelle Obama what with all those fruit salad school lunches.

    If we'd go back to chili and hot dogs and cokes and cookies for our kids' lunches we might get somewhere.

    bob

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  11. The point is basic. People are going to live. They need money. There are three ways to get it:

    Work for it

    Have it given to you

    Take it from someone else

    Obviously , the first is preferable. How do you accomplish that? One possibility is a corporate tax structure based on a point system on employees, benefits and wages. The object is to have corporations that minimize the benefits burden shift to government pay the least amount of corporate taxes. Companies that operate with few employees or are the most parsimonious with employees, compensation and benefits pay the highest rates. The assumption being that the parsimonious pricks are passing on the social costs to government.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A great example is Walmart. A Walmart store costs the Government close to a Million Dollars in "Safety Net" expenses (food stamps, Medicaid, etc.)

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  12. Well, there's a horizon, beyond which, you just can't see - too many unknowable, unknowns.

    As Bill Gates said, you'll overestimate the changes that will take place in the next Two years, and you will underestimate the changes that will take place in the next "Ten."

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  13. By the way, all the Republicans were saying with that vote was we want to separate the farm part from the feed part, get the Ag Dept back to being an agriculture department. Then deal with the food assistance issues in a separate bill. They were not saying 'let the people starve'.

    bob

    ReplyDelete
  14. July 13, 2013
    Audio recording shows DoJ's gross interference in Zimmerman case
    Rick Moran


    On Thursday, Judicial Watch released documents showing that a little known office with the DoJ was sent to Samford, FL to gin up outrage against George Zimmerman and pressure local authorities to put him on trial.

    Yesterday, JW released an audio recording of a community meeting where a representative of the federal Department of Justice - a supposed neutral observer who is charged with seeking conflict resolution - advocated for action against "the various structures and the various systems that allow something like this to happen."

    Washington Times:
    The legal watchdog Judicial Watch released an audio recording Thursday of a Department of Justice staffer urging Sanford, Fla., city officials and the minority advocacy group Dream Defenders to seek justice for Trayvon Martin, because "if a community perceives that there's something wrong in the black community, there's something wrong."

    "CRS is an arm of the department that we call the Peacemakers," Thomas Battles, regional director of the DOJ's Community Relations Service, said at a meeting at the Shiloh Church on April 19, 2012. "We work with communities where there is real or perceived racial tensions."

    Mr. Battles then introduced a member of the Dream Defenders.

    "When Trayvon happened, for many of us, it was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back," the man said. "We had grown up in a state and environment where race is a way of life ... We're not from Sanford, but what Sanford represented to us was the very real problems going around this state and this country. We wanted to figure out how could we stand in solidarity, and how could we make this about not just justice for Trayvon, but using this moment and using the opportunity to honor his memory, to honor his spirit by working to bring down the various structures and the various systems that allow something like this to happen."

    Standing in "solidarity" with the African American community is more imporant than justice? Why not just change the name of DoJ to the "Department of Railroading"?

    The findings, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said, "detail the extraordinary intervention by the Justice Department in the pressure campaign leading to the prosecution of George Zimmerman. My guess is that most Americans would rightly object to taxpayers paying government employees to help organize racially-charged demonstrations."

    The media still hasn't jumped on this information. As I explained on Thursday, they won't. Documents, audio recordings - JW could get a sworn statement from Eric Holder admitting that the feds interferred in the investigation and prosecution of Zimmerman and they still wouldn't report it.

    The media has been completely and thoroughly cowed by the racialists.

    bob


    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. .

      "When Trayvon happened, for many of us, it was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back," the man said. "We had grown up in a state and environment where race is a way of life ... We're not from Sanford, but what Sanford represented to us was the very real problems going around this state and this country. We wanted to figure out how could we stand in solidarity, and how could we make this about not just justice for Trayvon, but using this moment and using the opportunity to honor his memory, to honor his spirit by working to bring down the various structures and the various systems that allow something like this to happen."


      "You never let a serious crisis go to waste."

      .

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    2. Let us honor Trayvon's 'spirit'. Expelled from school twice, loving fighting, kicked out his mother's house, kicked out of his father's house, living with his aunt and uncle, until he would have been kicked out from there, user of drugs, unteachable.....yes, let us honor Traynov's spirit.


      bob

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    3. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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    4. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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    5. .

      My post above in which I offered up Rahm Emmanual's likely response to Mr. Battle's views on TM was meant to be ironic.

      Your last two posts clearly illustrate what I have said here before, that you are 'THE complete asshole'.

      In the past, I have tried to defend you against Rufus' comments that you were racist based on the assumption that you were just stupid. Now, the following makes me question my having given you the benefit of the doubt.

      He DESERVED to die. He was a hoodied black ass punk!

      .

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    6. Well Fuk Yew Quirk!

      bob

      Delete
    7. The above wasn't me.

      It's my friendly imitator again.



      This was me -->>Let us honor Trayvon's 'spirit'. Expelled from school twice, loving fighting, kicked out his mother's house, kicked out of his father's house, living with his aunt and uncle, until he would have been kicked out from there, user of drugs, unteachable.....yes, let us honor Traynov's spirit.


      bob<<

      The rest wasn't.

      bob

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    8. .

      If that is true, you should have Deuce check on were the post came from.

      Wouldn't surprise me to see is came from Atlanta or PA.

      .

      Delete
    9. it looks to be from Singapore.

      Delete
  15. Oh, man, this is precious:

    The problem was that the names — "Sum Ting Wong," "Wi Tu Lo," "Ho Lee Fuk" and "Bang Ding Ow" — were obviously fake. The news anchor read the names off the teleprompter and didn't bat an eye, adding that the information had been confirmed by the National Transportation Safety Board.

    U. B. Pawnd

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  16. Let me introduce myself - Fuk Yew

    bob

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  17. .

    Deuce, with his suggestion of an increased minimum wage, offers an interesting alternative to solving the problems of hunger and food stamps in America, one that will never happen given the political structure in the US and the need to appease the real 'players' here, the Walmarts, the farmers, and the like.

    It's easy to frame our current problems along political lines but the fact is that middle class wages have barely increased beyond the official rate of inflation (which we know doesn't include certain key items)for the last 30-40 years under administrations of both parties, this despite major increases in productivity over that time.

    However, during the current downturn even that fact has been overshadowed by a more pressing concern, jobs.

    It is easy to blame Bush for the great recession and the lack of jobs, Obama (and others) have been doing it for five years now. And Bush does deserve a lot of the blame. The down turn was so steep and shook the confidence of so many that employers ignored past practice when it came to employment.

    Instead of hiring back high seniority workers they hired back younger workers at lower wages. With the number of unemployed, they were able to hire at a much lower wage rate. That's if they hired at all rather than getting the same amount of total work using far fewer people b using productivity improvements, overtime, or just demanding that those who still had a job do more. They also moved more to contract and part time workers so as to reduce risk and lower benefit costs. It became a sweet deal for business and profits soared.

    But Bush just provided the precipitating event. (Note: when I say Bush or Obama, I obviously include their administrations, and other players like the FED, Congress, and the other munchkins in OZ.)

    Obama has had 5 years to address the problem and has done nothing. His solutions have been an ineffective stimulus program and government programs to address the symptoms (food stamps for example) not the causes of our problems.

    He offers us pablum such as "We have seen continuous progress" when in fact that is a lie. The employment figures touted by the government are at best misleading.

    What has actually happened with jobs is best described in the following article,

    http://www.redstate.com/andypuzder/2013/07/12/the-real-scandal-no-jobs/

    and it paints a very different picture of employment in America that that offered by today's pundits.

    The problems we are faced with are manifest and huge. The actions of the dicks in OZ are geared to the advantage of their main constituency, the 1%, the Banks, Wall Street, the Military, Big Ag, etc. but not to the 99%, the rest of us. Demographics are also a negative factor. Previously cyclical changes in employment have now become structural because of productivity, automation, and more and more, the profit motive. Globalization waxes and wanes but income inequality continues to grow at an expanding pace.

    Food stamps? Necessary perhaps, when you are unwilling or unable to address the real problems. However, they just amount to a modern 'bread and circuses' designed to keep the hoi polloi from getting rowdy over the shit that is dumped on them daily. It does nothing to solve the problems.

    .

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  18. And your solution is exactly what?

    Raise the minimum wage?

    That's it?

    Prices will go up accordingly.

    What is your solution?

    >>But Bush just provided the precipitating event.<<

    What exactly was this 'event'?

    bob

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. No, raising the minimum wage will not necessarily raise prices. It will raise wages and result in an aggregate increase in demand. The increase in demand will increase consumption volume and create additional profits for the efficient producers. An example would be if a worker could afford to buy a new car as opposed to a used car. Selling a used item has very little economic impact as it produces nothing new.

      Tax revenues would increase based on a higher volume of taxes instead of higher rates. Demand for social services would decrease.

      The Wall Street and doctrinaire Republicans always say that multimillion salaries are necessary to entice the right talent. The same logic, if you believe it, would work for an $18 per hour job over a $12 per hour job.

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    2. The government has a perverse habit of tying social welfare transfer payments to the minimum wage. We would all be better off if, the transfer payments were frozen or allowed to rise significantly less than wages reducing the incentive not to work.

      Delete
  19. If you are young, and undereducated, and unemployed, with a young child to feed Hunger is the Problem.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Ah, the article from Steyn that I knew was coming -


    >>>How difficult can that be in a country in which a Hispanic Obama voter can be instantly transformed into the poster boy for white racism? Who ya gonna believe – Al Sharpton or your lying eyes? As closing arguments began on Thursday, the prosecutors asked the judge to drop the aggravated assault charge and instruct the jury on felony murder committed in the course of child abuse. Felony murder is a murder that occurs during a felony, and, according to the prosecution's theory du jour, the felony George Zimmerman was engaged in that night was "child abuse," on the grounds that Trayvon Martin, when he began beating up Zimmerman, was 17-years-old. This will come as news to most casual observers of the case, who've only seen young Trayvon in that beatific photo of him as a 12-year-old.

    In that one pitiful closing moment, the case achieved its sublime reductio ad absurdum: After a year's labors, after spending a million bucks, after calling a legion of risible witnesses, even after the lead prosecutor dragged in a department store mannequin and personally straddled it on the floor of the court, the state is back to where it all began – the ancient snapshot of a smiling middle-schooler that so beguiled American news editors, Trayvon Martin apparently being the only teenager in America to have gone entirely unphotographed in the second decade of the 21st century. And, if Trayvon is a child, his malefactor is by logical extension a child abuser.....

    .....We have been warned that in the event of an acquittal there could be riots. My own feeling is that the Allegedly Reverend Al Sharpton, now somewhat emaciated and underbouffed from his Tawana Brawley heyday, is not the Tahrir Square-scale race-baiting huckster he once was.
    But if Floridians are of a mind to let off a little steam, they might usefully burn down the Sanford courthouse and salt the earth. The justice system revealed by this squalid trial is worth rioting over.<<<

    Mark Steyn: Zimmerman case's legal absurdities astound

    http://www.ocregister.com/articles/case-516709-zimmerman-child.html


    bob

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  21. AnonymousSat Jul 13, 12:48:00 PM EDT

    He DESERVED to die. He was a hoodied black ass punk!

    We all should patrol like Zimmerman.

    bob


    The mask falls again.

    The true face of Bob, and the "New" Fox News-watching Republican Party.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Except it wasn't me Rufus, it is my imitator again.

      See my post above.

      DEUCE CAN YOU PLEASE BLOCK THIS PERSON AND TAKE HIS/HER POSTS DOWN SOMEHOW?

      Thank you


      bob

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    2. .

      Or, as I suggested above, at least show where it came from. There are a lot of anonymous a-holes out there but we know where many of them come from.

      .

      Delete
    3. .

      Alternatively, if you would get a real Google handle, you wouldn't have the problem.

      .

      Delete
    4. Bob, identify for me the times on the comments that are not yours and listen to Q.

      Delete
    5. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
  22. .

    And your solution is exactly what?

    Obviously, a simplistic question. You ask for a magic wand that can be waved and solve the 30-40 year trends and factors that have brought us to the sorry state we are in right now. Ridiculous.

    Above, I was merely pointing out the real problems. I have no solutions or, at least, the ones I do have like Deuce's on the minimum wage, would have a snowball's chance in hell of being implemented by the current munchkins in OZ.


    Raise the minimum wage?

    That's it?

    Prices will go up accordingly.


    Again, an example of your simplistic thinking. You look only at the negative side of policies without ever looking at the positive (unless it fits with your GOP, Kool-Aid drinking, spoon-fed, talking points faux philosophy.)

    As for the precipitating event, years in the making, it was the recession that started in late 2007 and culminated in the financial crisis in 2008.

    .

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    Replies
    1. I am relieved to see you don't believe in the magic wand.

      " I have no solutions"

      Just as I thought.

      "As for the precipitating event, years in the making"

      Oh yes, Bush alone had been working for years on the precipitating event, coming to fruition just before the elections.

      And you call me simple.....


      bwahahahahha


      bob

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    2. .

      You nitwit. Once again, I have to call into question your reading comprehension skills. Good god, you purport to be an English major.

      Go back and read my entire post.

      If you still don't get it, I'll see if we can set you up in some remedial reading class over the summer.

      Man, you are dumb as a rock.

      (And if you are using speed reading, stop! It's not working.)

      .

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    3. .

      s/b '...my original post...'

      .

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    4. Bush had an opportunity to reduce the size of government as the economy expanded and didn’t, he expanded it. The man was a disaster as president.

      Delete
  23. Then he refers to his old "abort the black babies" position:

    AnonymousSat Jul 13, 01:09:00 PM EDT

    If only Trayvon had, as I've said before, been dealt with before birth, none of this would have happened and America would be a better place!

    bob


    I'm ashamed to share the same cyberspace with you Bob. You're a pathetic old racist.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It wasn't me Rufus, I am asking Deuce to take it down. It is my imitator again.


      DEUCE PLEASE DELETE AND SOMEHOW BLOCK MY IMITATOR.

      bob

      Delete
    2. Done, and to the scum bag that does it, I will try and find out who you are and will post it.

      Delete
  24. I am going to quit for the day.


    Anything else posted under my name is not me.


    bob

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I will have my daughter fix me up with a google account again and a picture before I return. This may be some days.

      Anything further by 'bob' is not me.

      bob

      Delete
  25. If I did not know better, based upon reading his racist tripe for years, I'd be shocked he'd even write such a thing.

    Race and wardrobe, all it takes for boobie to abrogate any human being's "Right" to life.

    As for boobie now exemplifying the "Republican" Party of the Murdock News Network, Wall Street Journal and FOX News, the throw in a little Steve Forbes and the picture is perfected.

    He fits the FOX News viewership profile, senior citizen welfare recipients looking to get a "Life Estate" on their family home, from bankers that are insured by the Federals so that the bankers do not lose.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. .

      Bullshit.

      Whoever is signing in under Bob's name is like any other pervert, on the same level as a peeping Tom, moving around in the dark, a deviant trying to ruin someone's name, a low-life without the balls to do it with an identifiable tag, scum, a spot of night soil.

      .

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