TheEncogitationer

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Robert,

At least those things help to equalize wealth imbalances. The government acts like a heat-sink absorbing each knee-jerk crisis as investors panic.

So you think government bailing out AIG and American auto manufacturers and Raytheon help the poor? Please tell that to the old Occupy crowd before they cannabalize you.

Why do you even automatically assume that inequality of wealth is a bad thing, or that equality of outcome is even possible? As long a there is equal freedom to move upward and as long as wealth depends on providing a better product or service inequality of outcome is not a problem.

Do explain why so-called “conservatives” on average, manage to increase the deficit more than us “socialists”? Maybe because they always reduce taxes for the wealthy? Maybe because “cost-cutting” root problem solutions ends up costing more because of the horrible after-effects?

Annual deficits and overall National Debt are both the result of government spending more than it takes in, something both “conservatives” and “progressives” have done for decades.

Proactive thoughts like that are beyond libertarian ideology, I know. They think we are not a society. Just independent individuals who can perform brain surgery on themselves.

Keep that assembly line of Strawmen coming!

Bezos doesn’t care if his thousands of trucks run over potholes. They clog our inadequate road systems with trucks full of Chinese made MAGA hats. Imagine if Biden accepted a gifted airplane from Hamas supporting Arabs?

And on whose watch did those roads deteriorate? And whose energy policies crippling U.S. production of fossil fuels enabled Qatar to have the wealth to bankroll Islamic terrorism and propaganda from Al-Jazeera?

This country is dumber than a box of hammers.

A box of hammers can at least be used to build something. All governments do is take and restrain building wealth.

• This reply was modified 6 days, 20 hours ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Spelling. Something I do without a government bailout

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Unseen,

And yet, in a democracy what the people want the people should get. Otherwise the demos (people) goes away leaving just the kratos (rule).

What if the People wanted to punish Atheism with death?
Or, more to the point, what if the People demanded that no one earn more wealth than anyone else?

Again, why the United States is not a Democracy but a Constitutional Republic.

Most of that is just more special treatment lopsidedly benefitting the rich because the system is set up to do that. And it’s set up that way because those at the bottom have little wealth or power.

Well, it is government spending that creates the National Debt, not people wanting to keep their own paychecks.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Unseen,

I’m well aware of all of the arguments about disincentives and creating dependencies when it comes to taxation. I haven’t been living under a rock. I’m also aware of the “rising tide floats all boats” which can also be used in favor of taxing the rich, who would benefit from a society made more stable by reducing poverty with all of the attendant problems.

Decades of pampering the rich with what amounts to an embarrassment of loopholes, cutouts, incentives, etc., has resulted in putting the burden more and more on those who can least afford it.

Somehow, this never includes stopping bail-outs to Detroit, Investment Banking Firms, Saving & Loans, Big-Ag, no-bid Defense Contractors, NGOs, and other multi-billion Dollar benefactors of government spending. Why doesn’t so-called “Most Important Economist in the World” Jeffrey Sacks consider that as a part of the National Debt?

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Unseen,

We embed this fallacy in our national, state, and local government’s various constitutions. I have taught logic. Verbal fallacies, unlike formal fallacies, do not imply false conclusions with necessity. They are inconclusive.

The very definition of any Fallacy, verbal or formal, is that the conclusion does not necessarily follow from the premises. And wanting does not mean good (or getting, as Mick observed) no matter how many people want. Start again.

So, you’re saying one can’t argue that the will of the people means anything? Maybe Trump is right about elections. We don’t need them, we need a potentate at the top to run the show to the benefit of all.

I never made an Argument From Authority, so you just piled a Strawman Non Sequiteur onto the Argument From Popularity. Again, start again

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Reg,

That was one of my first thoughts today when I heard the rambling speech he made. I also thought about what the family of the WaPo journalist Jamal Khashoggi must be thinking. Of course Trump would not mention that. He does not care about what happened him. Or maybe he really does like MBS too much to mention it.

The Saudis are brutal suppressors of dissent and Trump is deranged for thinking they are allies, but Jamal Khashoggi was no Salman Rushdie or Ibn Warraq. Not merely was Jamal Khashoggi a supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, the fathers of Wahabism and Salafism, but he actually shed tears over the death of Bin Laden. His story was one with no heroes.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Unseen,

But I don’t think the people want the government to spend less, since that would likely mean abandoning or severly adulterating some very popular programs which benefit not only individuals but society at large.

Argument From Popularity Fallacy. The fact that people might want government largess doesn’t make it good them or for an economy.

Now what would be unfair about a wealthy or fabulously wealthy individual paying at least as much as a middle class person in the 22% category, since their wealth is largely in a discretionary area whereas for people in the middle class, paying taxes comes out of income that could be applied to food, shelter, healthcare, and actual human necessities?

I just said lower taxes for everyone regardless of income.

Ask your AI about the moral hazards and economic effects of taxation and government subsidies and about whether a rising tide floats all boats.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Robert,

Someone older than the young’uns obviously taught them well or they are still in the blank slate phase.

That picture would make the young Woke Ivy Leaguers and their Professors go MAGA, as would Trump’s cozying up to the Saudis. I wonder what survivors of 9/11 have to say about all this?

• This reply was modified 1 week, 1 day ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Spelling. Autospell is too blank-slated

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Unseen,

If government spent less and every Citizen, regardless of income, were taxed less, Citizens would have more money to both spend on foreign goods or to invest in domestic companies producing goods and services. And Citizens would gain either way.

Again, not Trickle-Down, not Trickle-Up, but Big Splash.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Robert,

I do have hope that when slimy gen z and boomers die off, they will take most of the racism and religious- inspired hatred with them.

That’s just a step away from Antifa wanting to accelerate the process. I believe you once said you were 45, clearly within the Gen-X timeline.

Are you sure you want to add intergenerational conflict to every other sissy slap-fight plaguing the nation and world?

By the way, these generational labels came from William Strauss’s and Neil Howe’s Generation Theory, a theory many have rightly criticized as unsupported by evidence, deterministic, and unfalsifiable pseudohistory and pseudoscience.

A simpler Occam’s Razor is people throughout time can fall on any side or even change sides.

• This reply was modified 1 week, 1 day ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Spelling and punctuation , both changed as another Generation was born somewhere

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Jake,

If you looking for an Antisemitic Lefty to cite in defending your thesis, you could cite none better than Karl Marx.

Marx didn’t simply denounce the religion aspect of Jewishness (his Father was baptized Lutheran,) but Marx espoused Antisemitic tropes and denounced his own ethnicity in his essay “On the Jewish Question” where he said that the hucksterism and greed he attributed to Jews would be impossible to exist in his ideal classless society.

Marx also in correspondence expressed hatred for fellow socialists who were Jewish. In particular Marx called fellow Socialist Ferdinand LaSalle a “Jewish Blazing Saddles Sheriff” i.e. a “Jewish Ni-BONG!”

Thomas Sowell’s Marxism: Philosophy and Economics and this essay below make for interesting reading. Note also in the essay how Marxists hatewashed Marx, claiming he was ‘being witty and ironic’ and ‘starting a converstion.’ :

Karl Marx’s Radical Antisemitism

Karl Marx’s Radical Antisemitism

The name of the American pro-Nazi group you alluded to was The Silver Shirts. I didn’t know their popularity extended to California, but the were founded by William Dudley Pelley in Ashville, North Carolina, much to my shame as a Tarheel State resident. No surprise about Asheville, though. Asheville and Black Mountain are heavy on all kinds of craziness.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Reg,

Now granted, other streaming services have movies about Lizards and Extraterrestrials and even conspiracies involving both, but none that I’ve seen have them as documentaries or hint that they may be true.

There are some Pseudoarcheology videos, but I’m not sure what they are classified as elsewhere.

That story of The Three Fates of Woo was truly depressing. Despite this, it is a good thing that there’s a free media to expose all this to the light of day.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Robert,

France has done a good job with their small nuke plants plus solar/wind/hydro. They only use fossil fuel for 6% of their electricity and are net exporters. They have to do tons of repairs and maintenance of their reactors. Stress fractures of the cooling systems are always happening.

I swear I don’t trust Americans with dangerous tech anymore. Can’t keep air traffic control systems running. Can’t even get through a week without a school shooting.

All energy sources have dangers and nuclear energy has the least and more managable of all of them. The one and only nuclear power accident in the United States, Three Mile Island, had no loss of life or even injuries. Chernobyl didn’t have the shielding of power plants in the U.S. and with the reactor in Fukashima, the culprit was an earthquake, with only one death from radition and 24 non-fatal injuries.

To get a full idea of risks, we need to apply The Precautionary Principle to what we don’t do as well as what we do. The risks of not using nuclear energy or natural gas is shortage of power for everything in our civilization.

(Note on the 2021 blackout in Texas: The failure to winterize equipment to deliver natural gas and the power it generates was the cause. Fortunately, everything needed to winterize e.g. fuel treatment, lubrication, antifreeze, insulation, derives from and is produced by petrochemicals. So, the lesson here is to winterize and keep drilling and fracking to do so.)

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Reg,

Are MAGA and the Lizard People all one and the same?

This story certainly explains a lot that’s going on today. A whole lot of people, MAGA and otherwise, are only using the portion of their brains which we share with the lizards.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Jake,

Wrong thread, but the right answer.

Identitarianism we see on the Right was dying until the Left started propagating it’s own version of Identitarianism, which is what “Wokeism” is. They both share Antisemitism as a common denominator.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Robert,

Actually, no, I still don’t think white guys really know what it like to be a black guy with all the racism around. That was the idea of being ‘woke’. To have empathy at least. Guess what? It worked. Gen Z and later IS woke. When my racists-as-fuck boomers and gen x cohorts are all dead; it is gonna be very different.

And so now boomers are erasing history from the teaching agendas and emptying libraries. Fucking pieces of shit.

Here’s where you’re showing a lack of history. Boomers and The Greatest Generation were the ones who brought us the Civil Rights Movement. Gen-X added LGBT Rights into the mix.

The younger generations who don’t even have an agreed-on name have segregated clubs, dorms, and graduations on campuses, as well as the present Antisemitic pogroms in the Ivy Leagues. That is what “Woke” hath wrought.

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