StrangeSox

QUOTE (greg775 @ Sep 21, 2011 -> 10:00 PM) Rios now has 12 homers which means he also has more than Dunn. Wow. When was Dunn's last home run of the 2011 season? June? I know he hit one in late July off of Verlander, it was the only game I went to this year.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Sep 21, 2011 -> 09:35 PM) that manages to top Moore's recent "most feared and hated man in the country" claim for oblivious egoism.

"established me as one of the nation’s great thinkers" lol

yes the joke was that driving is heavily subsidized.

The SCOTUS has granted a temporary stay to review a certiorari petition for Troy Davis.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Sep 21, 2011 -> 04:09 PM) Wasn't the tax your work and what you brought to the tribe? And wasn't the "rich" the tribal elders, who had more (food, clothing, women, etc) than others? Replace taxes/money with physical ability/work and it's the same idea. Not really, not if its organized along a "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" line. It also doesn't require a pre-existing aristocracy to tax to fund a government. If wealth and income distributions are flat, that means you tax everyone equally, not that you can't tax anyone at all.

Dealing with Ozzie guillen.

I'm pretty sure they just said its really subjective.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Sep 21, 2011 -> 03:56 PM) Well this quickly devolved into amazing silliness. Of course governments survive (modern ones) off taxes, and of course more of that money comes from the wealthy than not in this country. Of course a guy who builds a company from the ground up made themselves rich. And of course he can't do that without government help. As with any chicken and egg argument, there is no correct answer, as it has to work both ways. She made a poor choice of words. But her underlying point is spot-on. Agreed. I've just been reading/watching a lot lately both on Indian cultures and more recently the formation of money/debt, so the claim that government cannot exist without taxation and that taxation cannot exist without the wealthy really stood out to me.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 21, 2011 -> 03:51 PM) They still controlled the distribution of resources, which is the same thing. There was no tax and no rich. The existence of wealth stratification is not a necessary condition for the formation of government or for taxation.

Wealth accumulation and property rights don't exist without someone enforcing them, eg private goon squads or government.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 21, 2011 -> 03:46 PM) Governments don't exist without funding. That's all there is to it. Modern governments? Sure. All governments? Nope.

In fact you have plenty of communistic governments that existed sans taxes, like many (all?) of the NE American Indian tribes.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 21, 2011 -> 03:44 PM) And how did it exist? Because there were "rich" people to fund it. No, that's just not true.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 21, 2011 -> 03:43 PM) I think governments or some version thereof probably existed before currency and taxation, simply as a means of organizing security and armies. Would you disagree? Governments absolutely existed before currency and taxation. See my recent thread, "What is Debt?," which contains links to several articles and a book by an economic anthropologist who explores the origins of money.

I'm pretty sure that wealth stratification didn't exist until after governments were formed, though I could be wrong since I'm not an anthropologist.

We don't need government-subsidized alternative energy and transport. That's communism, we already have cars and roads and gasoline.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 21, 2011 -> 03:34 PM) I don't buy that. Too complex to frame an ad around, and if you try to bring that up to her in a debate, she does that. Eh it'll play easily into the conservative individualist, self-made man boot-straps rhetoric. "Warren doesn't believe the money you make is really yours, but the government's!"

she's going to get pummeled for that quote that "nobody got rich on their own"

Well that's true.

ozzie's mad because they didn't let nepotism force them into making a bad draft pick

QUOTE (CrimsonWeltall @ Sep 21, 2011 -> 12:43 PM) It's difficult to watch random episodes since a season is one story. Try season 1, 2, or 3. After that, they largely ran out of ideas and it became ridiculous. I think it was season 5 where my wife and I just never bothered putting the next DVD in because it just got too stupid. The first 3 or 4 were great, though.

I'd guess it's related to the #occupywallstreet protests going on this week. It's past 12PM ET so maybe this was a hoax or they called it off?

GOP leaders have sent a letter to Bernenke demanding that he ignore the fed's dual mandate and do nothing to help the stagnant economy.

democrat gerrymandering in Illinois was mentioned in the third post of this thread anyway.