United States of Entropy

[nbcrusader]

Originally Posted by anitram

Pardon me, but wasn't the platform of the Republicans running in the 2010 elections JOBS JOBS JOBS?

So it's very convenient now to state that the Tea Party is irate at the President because there are no jobs. Why aren't they asking John Boehner where the jobs are? That was their party's PLATFORM, after all.

You’ve repeated this a couple of times. There would be some merit to this conclusion if you’d done a survey of all bills and proposals made by the GOP and discovered that none dealt with job creation. Do you have any facts do back-up these statements?

[anitram]

Here are a few tidbits about the useless do-nothing Congress, and please don't simply assume that I think the GOP in Congress is useless. There are plenty of Democrats who amount to little more than seat filling. It's just that Nancy Pelosi has better control over them than Boehner does over his caucus.







Direct impact on jobs:

The macroeconomic analysis, "The Cost of Crisis-Driven Fiscal Policy," quantifies the negative economic impact of governing by crisis, and examines the effects of Washington’s actions — and inactions — including events such as sequestration, the government shutdown, and brinksmanship over the debt ceiling.

The report concludes that crisis-driven government and the resulting fiscal policy uncertainty has directly harmed the American economy by increasing the unemployment rate by 0.6%, or the equivalent of 900,000 jobs. "The Cost of Crisis-Driven Fiscal Policy" was prepared by Joel Prakken of Macroeconomic Advisers, LLC, a leading independent research firm, for the Peter G. Peterson Foundation.

Worth nothing this is from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation (!!), lest we be accused that Soros is doing the analysis.

[nathan1977]

From those statistics, the government shutdown of 17% of its workforce single-handedly affected the unemployment rate in this country by 0.6 percent. That's kind of staggering.

The unemployment rate is already not great. The shutdown sure didn't help, putting 800,000 workers temporarily on unemployment, but at least those employees in the nation's biggest employer were able to go back to work.

The same, tragically, can't be said for the rest of the nation's unemployed.

U.S. Unemployment Rate Down
Sept. 6, 2013

The U.S. unemployment rate ticked lower to 7.3 percent in August, the lowest figure in nearly five years, the Department of Labor said Friday.

The economy added 169,000 jobs, the department's Bureau of Labor Statistics said. That is close to the average for the year, but short of the 180,000 jobs economists expected.

The last time the unemployment rate was at 7.3 percent was in December 2008.

Analysts say it takes monthly job growth of close to 300,000 jobs to lower the unemployment rate. The drop from 7.4 percent in July is due in part to a smaller labor force, as many people have given up looking for work, which takes them out of the statistical pool used to calculate the unemployment rate.

The department also lowered its estimate of jobs gained in June and July.

For June, the department said, 172,000 jobs were added to the economy, rather than the previous estimate of 188,000. For July, the 162,000 jobs created in the month was revised sharply lower to 104,000.

The unemployment rate has dropped from 8.1 percent in August 2012, although economists point out that much of the decline represents the failure to find work.

The department said in August there were 4.3 million persons unemployed for 27 months or more, which amounted to 37.9 percent of the 11.3 million persons counted as unemployed.

An additional 7.9 million are counted as working part time for economic reasons, which means working part time although they would prefer a full time job.

Another 2.3 million are counted as marginally attached to the workforce. This group, consisting of people who had looked for work in the past year, but not in the past month, is not counted as part of the workforce, although they would push the number of unemployed from 11.3 million to 13.6 million.

http://www.hispanicbusiness.com/2013..._rate_down.htm

The employment scenario is worse than it looks, and no one's doing anything about it. While the costs of healthcare, and the costs of buying into healthcare insurance, increase dramatically.

This is not progress.

[PhilsFan]

Originally Posted by INDY500

AFL-CIO Labor Group Warns Democrats About Proposed Medicare Cuts: 'Don't Try It... We Will Never Forget'

Just doesn't fit the narrative of "all the crazy" being on the Right does it?

Saying that atheists replace God in their lives with the federal government sure does.

[deep]

The first Americans put grandma out in the middle of the wilderness to die

what's unAmerican about that


(in the wilderness God decides who lives and dies, not tax payers)

[Irvine511]

Originally Posted by PhilsFan

This is the stupidest thing I have ever read.

Originally Posted by anitram

you don't know how Washington works.

Originally Posted by LJT

It's odd to see a country polarised between the centre-right and the far right.

i'm taking a breather. but these points all bear repeating.

[anitram]

Really clear, eye-opening video:

9 Out Of 10 Americans Are Completely Wrong About This Mind-Blowing Fact

[INDY500]

Originally Posted by LJT

This is incredibly moronic. Rights existed long before God came on the scene in varying forms, and will continue to exist long after God is forgotten, precisely because they are man made, something we collectively decided were 'good' things. So yeah I reject that those unalienable rights come from God. I place my faith in the power of people to do good for themselves and oh so importantly for each other, that is what the state is.

Well if you lived in the American colonies of the 1770s your rights originated from the benevolence of King George III. Maybe that fits your fancy but fortunately a few malcontents thought different. They understood the true nature of man, understood that tyranny, not liberty, is the default state of man. And devised a government accordingly.

Although you aren't an American thank you illustrating a point of this thread.
Only societal entropy describes the evolution of a self-evident truth into "incredibly moronic."

[PhilsFan]

Originally Posted by INDY500

Well if you lived in the American colonies of the 1770s your rights originated from the benevolence of King George III. Maybe that fits your fancy but fortunately a few malcontents thought different. They understood the true nature of man, understood that tyranny, not liberty, is the default state of man. And devised a government accordingly.

Although you aren't an American thank you illustrating a point of this thread.
Only societal entropy describes the evolution of a self-evident truth into "incredibly moronic."

It's not an either-or scenario, dude. It's not government or God. It's not freedom or tyranny. Get that through your head or this conversation is utterly pointless.

[LJT]

'God' may be where you think those rights are derived from, but he isn't around to implement them. We only have man made institutions which can do that, which are those voted for by the people, and we are deciding all the time which rights to give people or to take away. It is not self evident we are all born equal, that has always been the furthest from the truth, from the slave 2 centuries ago to a gay man living in Texas. But of course God has been used as an excuse to deny many rights, whether that is rightfully or wrongfully I will leave that up to Christians to have an internal debate on the matter, but it's an awfully slippery yardstick to judge any unalienable rights on.

I don't think anyone can ascribe what the true nature of man is, it's in flux all the time from one century to the next. Anyway you have an awfully pessimistic view on humanity, you should go out and meet a few people, we aren't a bad lot, even us commies.

And yeah I would just love to be ruled by an absolute monarch, it's right up my direct democracy alley.

[Jive Turkey]

Originally Posted by anitram

Here are a few tidbits about the useless do-nothing Congress, and please don't simply assume that I think the GOP in Congress is useless. There are plenty of Democrats who amount to little more than seat filling. It's just that Nancy Pelosi has better control over them than Boehner does over his caucus.

Maybe a little off topic and maybe I'm missing the point, but why would you want more laws to be passed?

[Jive Turkey]

Originally Posted by INDY500

Everyone has a religion.

Who's the one projecting again?

[Jive Turkey]

Originally Posted by INDY500

I believe our unalienable rights can only come from God

Can you list some of these rights mentioned in the bible?

[corianderstem]

Guns!

[AEON]

Originally Posted by Jive Turkey

Can you list some of these rights mentioned in the bible?

I think to an atheist or deist, the term "self evident" can probably be substituted here.

The general idea is that there are certain "rights" that can't be granted or taken away by any other person.

[LJT]

The point is that the rights aren't self evident, we agree we should have certain rights, but that has been a process of centuries/millennia of philosophical thought on the matter, but even now we can't agree on what some of those rights should be. They are most certainly granted and frequently taken away. I know it is a fairly obvious point to make.

Rights are something society has to have a serious discussion on. The Human rights charter lays out a long, long list of rights that we pay a lot of lip service to.

[Jive Turkey]

Originally Posted by AEON

I think to an atheist or deist, the term "self evident" can probably be substituted here.

The general idea is that there are certain "rights" that can't be granted or taken away by any other person.

This is a more reasonable stance. LJT makes a good clarification.

But lets not forget we're addressing someone claiming your country is based on 'judeo-christian' values anointed by god

[nathan1977]

Originally Posted by Jive Turkey

lets not forget we're addressing someone claiming your country is based on 'judeo-christian' values anointed by god

The opening of the Declaration of Independence reads, "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights."

That was the language of the Founding Fathers, not INDY's.

[Jive Turkey]

It says judeo christian where? Because if we're just talking about rights from each persons individual creator, which religion shall we choose? Certainly there's no consensus

[nathan1977]

Originally Posted by Jive Turkey

if we're just talking about rights from each persons individual creator, which religion shall we choose? Certainly there's no consensus

The appeal to inalienable rights based not on a king's will but on divine purpose is the point.