Global Democratic Revolution

[Stone]

Also, I've been thinking about some of these quality of life comparisons between the US and countries like Norway or Belgium. Do you guys ever think about where the US economy would be if we weren't paying most of the world's defense bill? If we were in the position of a country like Norway or Belgium, which doesn't have to worry about defending itself?

If we could save, maybe, 16% of our GDP, and return it to citizens in the form of tax cuts, or, hell, public works projects? Think about it.

Oh and stone, youre a retard.
Public service jobs are designed to help everyone, a railsystem is something that the US NEEDS, the US economy still for a large part relies on the rail system, its been dilapitading tough and once it becomes beyond repair the effects will be felt troughout the US.
Taxes and public works should benefit the masses, what you are LOVING benefits the priviliged.

Compare this to the post preceding it. The little story is my understanding of taxes, the above paragraph is Almaci's understanding of taxes. Pacrappa and you deserve each other.

[Matt]

Alright, this sort of stuff doesn't work. Saying it did, though, why go through the time and expense of creating a project, like a rail system, if we're simply looking to funnel tax dollars to people without jobs? That rail system requires paying architects, government planners, officials, the cost of developing a plan, the time - lots of additional expenses. We spend $35 billion dollars, and create 1 million $30k a year jobs.

Because you get nice shiny trains out of the deal. Having a rail system on par with Europe or Japan would make life so much easier we'd be wondering why it took so long to build them in the first place.

Cutting taxes may (or may not - you can argue both sides I'm sure) accomlpish the same thing jobwise, but there's still no social progress.

[Stone]

Ah, but wait. Remember how everyone is getting more money (because of the lower taxes and increased jobs), and spending that money on new things, increasing demand?

What if something they demand are nice shiny trains? A company comes around, tries to make a buck, builds the trains, demand is fulfilled, even more jobs are created, and we're good, progress.

What if people don't want the trains enough to pay for it? We don't need them, no one builds them, we're done - we get our social progress spending our money on the things we actually want.

The free-market economy is an unstoppable ass kicking machine.

[Almaci]

Stone:Compare this to the post preceding it. The little story is my understanding of taxes, the above paragraph is Almaci's understanding of taxes. Pacrappa and you deserve each other.

Trying to confuse people into thinking youve said something smart again Stone?

Look ali said this and i said that so im mister smarty pants, no one knows what the fuck you mean and you hope from that confusion they will think you said something so good that they have trouble grasping it.

Silly boy.

Ah, but wait. Remember how everyone is getting more money (because of the lower taxes and increased jobs), and spending that money on new things, increasing demand?

What if something they demand are nice shiny trains? A company comes around, tries to make a buck, builds the trains, demand is fulfilled, even more jobs are created, and we're good, progress.

What if people don't want the trains enough to pay for it? We don't need them, no one builds them, we're done - we get our social progress spending our money on the things we actually want.

The free-market economy is an unstoppable ass kicking machine.

This one is so laughably simple to refute I shouldnt even take the trouble, but ill humour you nontheless.

Its for the same reason companies need to be regulised, for the same reason you dont put an oil company at the head of an enviromental protection agency or indeed a lumber company in charge of forest preservation.
Joe shmoo doesnt understand the finer details of logistics, expedition and public works yet he expects them to be there at a fair price.
Leave it in the hands of private companies who only do what they have been contracted to by individuals and comunities and the bill will be much higher.
for proof of this look at the pharmaceutical industry in the US, no regulations so you guys pay three times what canadians are charged by the damn same companies, companies wich still make a profit at the Canadian prices.

At points you will get situations where setting up a system will be too expensive and private sector cant carry it, nor can a government becouse hey they didnt have taxes for that sorta stuff and assumed private sector would take care of it.

We NEED roads, we NEED rail, we NEED a lot of services wich can only be economical if done on a national level by the government, individual cases where people only provide when THEY need it makes things too fragmentated and expensive and you will end up with a non standardised patchwork of systems that are largely incompatible with each other.

We have organisational and operational standards wordlwide for exactly those reasons, governments can provide those and agree upon those, if you leave it to companies you get dozens of competing formats wich makes things needlesly expensive and incompatible at end users expense.
be it railway systems, roads or indeed flash cards for digicams and PDA´s, if there are no standards imposed and no nationaly government provided infrastructure things will crumble.

anyays, im sure youre familiar with all this and only act like a little dipshit to rile some people up and score some points with the less inteligent right wing contingency here so thanks a lot for wasting my time you asshole.

[Tracer]

Diffusion: We have a weak as industiral rail line in america. It could use improvement and as to commuter trains - travelling from Houston to Dallas on business is awkward (and needs to be done all of the time). It's too far to drive, to short to make flying cost effective so a rail line between the two for passengers (one like Ali mentioned in Europe) would take a 5 1/2 hour drive and make it a 2 1/2 hours. Then there's San Antonio and Austin and (like Dallas) Ft. Worth. ALOT of business is conducted daily between these cities (I use these as example because I know them well) and the transit time is just too long. Connecting them by more than just freeways and fiber optics would seem logical to me. Maybe it's just like that in Texas (indeed lots of businesses here deal mostly only in Texas and give how far apart some cities are from each other it is trying).

Stone: I realise what you're saying and I'm not going to try and flesh out an idea of my own to see if it would work (because frankly, I think that even if it did work it would never happen). I just think that the amount we're spending in Iraq is fucking absurd and no matter what patroitic jingle you put on it it's still 87 fucking Billion dollars. You could BUY Poland with that kind of money. I think just a portion of that could be spent on Public Services and jobs to sustain them. Rail, in anycase, was just an example. There are others. Maybe it's all flawed and stupid but a tax break provides only a tax break, that would provide the same effects except we'd have a damned convienient rail system. The movement of money has gotten faster but the movement of people has not which can be a problem.

[Gohron]

Almaci, I don't have a link for the machines I mentioned earlier as it was a very long time ago (a few months before the war started when the US started running tight inspections) but the machines bought (or given) away were the ones used to dig the tunnel under the English channel. Don't quote me on that but even CNN showed that Iraq had been using military equipment provided by France during the war, so France was offering Iraq a little more support (and lets not forget who sold nuclear technology to Iran).

And as for the whole Bush/Gore thing, let's just bring up some of what Gore did. During his Vice Presidency he worked with Clinton on the release of some of our military secrets to China for PERSONAL gain. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad if China's military didn't go around killing innocent civilians in "the name of the state".

And finally, I think it was Gidbits (sorry if I got your name wrong) who brought up the training of Iraqi soldiers by the US. The misconception here is that we taught Bin Laden his trade, which is partially true but mostly not. During the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the CIA helped train Afghani rebels to fight the Soviets, not to set up plots to crash planes into buildings. Why is it that our support of the Afghani rebels is so looked down upon yet nobody every brings up the fact that Soviet advisors trained North Vietnamese regulars and provided them with the weapons they needed to massacre 3 million South Vietnamese civilians? I personally am supportive of our actions in Vietnam yet I completely disagree with how they were carried out. Was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan any different?

[Stone]

no one knows what the fuck you mean

I think most of the people here are capable of working their way through my posts, whether you can handle it or not. I don't need to write long posts to prove I'm more intelligent than you, christ. Good work on learning all of those languages, bravo.

Joe shmoo doesnt understand the finer details of logistics, expedition and public works yet he expects them to be there at a fair price.

Liberalism = authoritarianism. It all comes back down to the same thing, regular people don't know shit, so the free market doesn't work, which means we need the government to regulate things. Your piece-of-shit US counterparts wonder why Southerners won't vote for them?

for proof of this look at the pharmaceutical industry in the US, no regulations so you guys pay three times what canadians are charged by the damn same companies, companies wich still make a profit at the Canadian prices.

No, asshole, we're bearing the cost of pharmaceutical drug development because the companies can't sell the shit at fair prices in holes like Belgium.

At points you will get situations where setting up a system will be too expensive and private sector cant carry it, nor can a government becouse hey they didnt have taxes for that sorta stuff and assumed private sector would take care of it.

The rail system is not an example of this. We don't use a rail system because our cars work well enough. We do not need one, mainly because our country is too large to handle or use a European style rail system.

anyays, im sure youre familiar with all this and only act like a little dipshit to rile some people up and score some points with the less inteligent right wing contingency here so thanks a lot for wasting my time you asshole.

The only reason your country has a shot at comparing to ours, economically, is because we're bearing the cost of defending the world. Return 16% of the US GDP to the US, and our per capita salaries would be even higher than yours, or, hell, if we wanted to fuck our country over too, we could simply hand out the same benefits you get over there.

I hate to return to this - but if you can't understand reason, maybe you can understand results. You're on the losing side of history. Pick Europe, pick the Palestinians, pick the forests, pick condiments on your fucking freedom fries, pick any of the causes you support.

Right, wrong, smart, stupid - you've got less influence, less money, and fewer guns. You are fucked.

[Tracer]

They should use that in the next WWE sometime.

[Diff-chan]

Look at a place like Germany (I think, in any case I read about one European country not too long ago) where they know they have to put in reforms for retirement age because as the population gets older the government will not be able to pay the benefits and everybody knows this and the minute Shroeder says it has to be done the unions flex their muscles and that is the end of the debate.

And the idea of a super-dense nationwide rail system is absurd to me. We already have a wonderfully sound interstate highway system thanks to Eisenhower, no need to sink untold billions into a rail system to do the same damn thing. It's a solution looking for a problem. But then again Stone, you're talking to the guy who couldn't comprehend the distance between New York State (more specifically, Ithaca NY) and New York City. So Im really not surprised that he thinks what works in Belgium will automatically work here.

[Tracer]

...and it gets done? -_o