On the Nature of Things | Forum

noddy wrote:

Simple Minded wrote: sidenote: One of my cool friends in high school (late 1970's) drove a Ford Pinto.
On the trunk lid he stenciled "FLAMMABLE! STAY BACK 500 FEET!" in 4" high letters!

id love one of those.

manolo wrote:

Doc wrote: He is an extreme socialist and the socialist tide is definitely going out after 8 years of progressive(Socialist by another name) failure after failure.

Doc,

I respect your opinion but voting in the senate tells a different story.

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politi ... republican

Alex.

Doc wrote:Social Security will be bankrupt in a few years even without expanded benefits.

YMix wrote:

Doc wrote:Social Security will be bankrupt in a few years even without expanded benefits.

So expand the benefits. Or, better yet, have your companies pay decent wages.

Doc wrote:Ah an America hater.

YMix wrote:

Doc wrote:Ah an America hater.

Asking for decent wages is hatred?

Or, better yet, have your companies pay decent wages

Doc wrote:Answer No

My guess is that the companies here pay much better than they do in Romania.

So Ymix Why don't your companies pay decent wages? That is the real question.

YMix wrote:

Doc wrote:Answer No

Good.

My guess is that the companies here pay much better than they do in Romania.

Seriously? You're just going to compare US wages to Romanian salaries? The point is to have a decent salary in your country, not to be paid more that people from other countries. I'm pretty sure Romanians are royally paid by comparison with the average Zimbabwe resident, but that doesn't help us much.

I read in an article about the riots that many black families in Baltimore make around $20,000 per year (family of four) and are, therefore, below the poverty line. $20,000 per year is not bad for a family of four living in Bucharest, obviously the most expensive city in the country. It's not amazing, but definitely not poverty. The average national salary in Romania is RON 2,415, while $20,000 per year comes in around RON 6,600 per month.

So Ymix Why don't your companies pay decent wages? That is the real question.

Welcome to sort-of-free market sort-of-capitalism. The locals can't afford to pay decent salaries (or so they claim), while foreigners come here precisely because we're cheap labor.

Doc wrote:You still have not explained why Romania companies pay so much less than American companies. Just saying "they can't afford to " does not cut it.

Those Baltimore families live under progressive political leadership. That is the biggest factor in why they don't get paid more The Socialist/progressives have cased away all the money. My guess it is also why Romania workers don't get paid more.

YMix wrote:

Doc wrote:You still have not explained why Romania companies pay so much less than American companies. Just saying "they can't afford to " does not cut it.

That's what employers say. I think they're just greedy capitalist bastards. Maybe the government should do something about it.

Those Baltimore families live under progressive political leadership. That is the biggest factor in why they don't get paid more The Socialist/progressives have cased away all the money. My guess it is also why Romania workers don't get paid more.

Baltimore is a hostile business environment and high-tax city, with malice aforethought. “Officials raised property taxes 21 times between 1950 and 1985,” Steve Hanke and Stephen Walters of Johns Hopkins University write in The Wall Street Journal, “channeling the proceeds to favored voting blocs and causing many homeowners and entrepreneurs — disproportionately Republicans — to flee. It was brilliant politics, as Democrats now enjoy an eight-to-one voter registration advantage.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/ ... 17493.html

Ah, yes. It's always the fault of leftists and governments.

Doc wrote:Perhaps government has already done too much.

Baltimore is a hostile business environment and high-tax city, with malice aforethought. “Officials raised property taxes 21 times between 1950 and 1985,” Steve Hanke and Stephen Walters of Johns Hopkins University write in The Wall Street Journal, “channeling the proceeds to favored voting blocs and causing many homeowners and entrepreneurs — disproportionately Republicans — to flee. It was brilliant politics, as Democrats now enjoy an eight-to-one voter registration advantage.”

Indeed They are Guilty as charged.

YMix wrote:

Doc wrote:Perhaps government has already done too much.

Or too little.

Baltimore is a hostile business environment and high-tax city, with malice aforethought. “Officials raised property taxes 21 times between 1950 and 1985,” Steve Hanke and Stephen Walters of Johns Hopkins University write in The Wall Street Journal, “channeling the proceeds to favored voting blocs and causing many homeowners and entrepreneurs — disproportionately Republicans — to flee. It was brilliant politics, as Democrats now enjoy an eight-to-one voter registration advantage.”

You mean disproportionately white.

Also, that's not necessarily leftism, just plain old corruption. Been around for a long time.

Indeed They are Guilty as charged.

Life is so simple for some people.

Eugenics and American social history, 1880-1950.

Allen GE1.



Author information



Abstract

Eugenics, the attempt to improve the human species socially through better breeding was a widespread and popular movement in the United States and Europe between 1910 and 1940. Eugenics was an attempt to use science (the newly discovered Mendelian laws of heredity) to solve social problems (crime, alcoholism, prostitution, rebelliousness), using trained experts. Eugenics gained much support from progressive reform thinkers, who sought to plan social development using expert knowledge in both the social and natural sciences. In eugenics, progressive reformers saw the opportunity to attack social problems efficiently by treating the cause (bad heredity) rather than the effect. Much of the impetus for social and economic reform came from class conflict in the period 1880-1930, resulting from industrialization, unemployment, working conditions, periodic depressions, and unionization. In response, the industrialist class adopted firmer measures of economic control (abandonment of laissez-faire principles), the principles of government regulation (interstate commerce, labor), and the cult of industrial efficiency. Eugenics was only one aspect of progressive reform, but as a scientific claim to explain the cause of social problems, it was a particularly powerful weapon in the arsenal of class conflict at the time.

Doc wrote:Eugenics and American social history, 1880-1950.

The very year that Judge Curwen was commenting upon New England's nouveaux riches George Cabot traveled to Concord to argue against the proposal of the Boston merchants to fix prices in order to thwart the depreciation of currency. Thereafter he was to be more and more involved in Massachusetts and federal politics.

Among men of his class and standing one question was foremost at this time: the framing of a constitution for the Commonwealth. The document which was finally adopted was mainly the work of John Adams, that irascible little man who believed in a government of laws and not of men and who secretly longed for the establishment of an American monarchy. While it met with the approval of the North Shore merchants, who had formed a political group which became known as the Essex Junto, there were others who were afraid of it. The Baptists despised it because it set up Congregationalism as a state religion; the farmers were sure it gave the "marchantile towns" over-representation; the inland centers saw themselves doomed by the power given the seaports. Property qualifications for voters were doubled over the old Charter, a gratuitous insult, so many said, to the unpropertied. Well, these matters could be thrashed out at meeting, where each town had the right to accept or reject each clause before sending its final ballots to be counted.

And so they were thrashed out and the people thought they would get the kind of constitution they desired. But they failed to reckon with the Convention, of which George Cabot was a prominent member. He was one of the group entrusted with the counting of the ballots. The associates met behind locked doors. At the town meetings the people had understood that a two-thirds vote was required for the passage of each clause. Cabot and his colleagues decided otherwise: the vote should be applied to the paper as a whole. At least two of the articles, and perhaps more, failed to receive approval of the voters, yet the committee deliberately juggled the returns to make it appear that they had. And so the Convention ruled that the people had accepted as a whole a constitution they wanted only in part. George Cabot returned to his Beverly mansion convinced that he had done a good day's work.

YMix wrote:

Doc wrote:Eugenics and American social history, 1880-1950.

1880?

The very year that Judge Curwen was commenting upon New England's nouveaux riches George Cabot traveled to Concord to argue against the proposal of the Boston merchants to fix prices in order to thwart the depreciation of currency. Thereafter he was to be more and more involved in Massachusetts and federal politics.

Among men of his class and standing one question was foremost at this time: the framing of a constitution for the Commonwealth. The document which was finally adopted was mainly the work of John Adams, that irascible little man who believed in a government of laws and not of men and who secretly longed for the establishment of an American monarchy. While it met with the approval of the North Shore merchants, who had formed a political group which became known as the Essex Junto, there were others who were afraid of it. The Baptists despised it because it set up Congregationalism as a state religion; the farmers were sure it gave the "marchantile towns" over-representation; the inland centers saw themselves doomed by the power given the seaports. Property qualifications for voters were doubled over the old Charter, a gratuitous insult, so many said, to the unpropertied. Well, these matters could be thrashed out at meeting, where each town had the right to accept or reject each clause before sending its final ballots to be counted.

And so they were thrashed out and the people thought they would get the kind of constitution they desired. But they failed to reckon with the Convention, of which George Cabot was a prominent member. He was one of the group entrusted with the counting of the ballots. The associates met behind locked doors. At the town meetings the people had understood that a two-thirds vote was required for the passage of each clause. Cabot and his colleagues decided otherwise: the vote should be applied to the paper as a whole. At least two of the articles, and perhaps more, failed to receive approval of the voters, yet the committee deliberately juggled the returns to make it appear that they had. And so the Convention ruled that the people had accepted as a whole a constitution they wanted only in part. George Cabot returned to his Beverly mansion convinced that he had done a good day's work.

Nonc Hilaire wrote:Sanders: "Too big to fail is too big to exist"

http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-d ... big-banks/

Parodite wrote:

Nonc Hilaire wrote:Sanders: "Too big to fail is too big to exist"

http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-d ... big-banks/

Right on the mark.

What does this flood of imports of things we once made here mean for a city like, say, Baltimore? Writes columnist Allan Brownfeld:

“Baltimore was once a city where tens of thousands of blue collar employees earned a good living in industries building cars, airplanes and making steel. … In 1970, about a third of the labor force in Baltimore was employed in manufacturing. By 2000, only 7 percent of city residents had manufacturing jobs.”

Put down blue-collar Baltimore alongside Motor City, Detroit, as another fatality of free-trade fanaticism.

For as imports substitute for U.S. production and kill U.S. jobs, trade deficits reduce a nation’s GDP. And since Bill Clinton took office, the U.S. trade deficits have totaled $11.2 trillion.

An astronomical figure.

It translates not only into millions of manufacturing jobs lost and tens of thousands of factories closed, but also millions of manufacturing jobs that were never created, and tens of thousands of factories that did not open here, but did open in Mexico, China and other Asian countries.

In importing all those trillions in foreign-made goods, we exported the future of America’s young. Our political and corporate elites sold out working- and middle-class America — to enrich the monied class.

And they sure succeeded.

YMix wrote:

What does this flood of imports of things we once made here mean for a city like, say, Baltimore? Writes columnist Allan Brownfeld:

“Baltimore was once a city where tens of thousands of blue collar employees earned a good living in industries building cars, airplanes and making steel. … In 1970, about a third of the labor force in Baltimore was employed in manufacturing. By 2000, only 7 percent of city residents had manufacturing jobs.”

Put down blue-collar Baltimore alongside Motor City, Detroit, as another fatality of free-trade fanaticism.

For as imports substitute for U.S. production and kill U.S. jobs, trade deficits reduce a nation’s GDP. And since Bill Clinton took office, the U.S. trade deficits have totaled $11.2 trillion.

An astronomical figure.

It translates not only into millions of manufacturing jobs lost and tens of thousands of factories closed, but also millions of manufacturing jobs that were never created, and tens of thousands of factories that did not open here, but did open in Mexico, China and other Asian countries.

In importing all those trillions in foreign-made goods, we exported the future of America’s young. Our political and corporate elites sold out working- and middle-class America — to enrich the monied class.

And they sure succeeded.

Pat Buchanan is a socialist.

Doc wrote:So was Hitler and Joe Stalin

YMix wrote:

Doc wrote:So was Hitler and Joe Stalin

There's so many of them, you simply can't beat them. How about you join them.

YMix wrote:More like the Russians took a break and now are back. Also, more and more socialists appear every day. It never ends.