StrangeSox

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Oct 18, 2013 -> 11:35 AM) Which is why there is never a good way to determine what a "fair" wage is. $30k for a single human you can live off of. But if that human then decides to have children (multiple) that $30,000 doesnt go as far. But is that the govts job to make laws for? Or is that the humans job to make responsible decisions? I get laws, I get protecting people. But at some point you have to hold people accountable for their own decisions. On the other hand, it's not like wage labor provided to capitalist firms as the only way to earn a living for an overwhelming majority of people is a historical norm.

QUOTE (Iwritecode @ Oct 18, 2013 -> 11:21 AM) But should we really be giving people $15+/hour for something that's typically done by HS kids with a couple of hours of training? FWIW the median age of a fast food worker these days is about 29 years old, and the median wage is less than $9/hr. These aren't HS jobs and haven't been since at least 2002, when the median age was 22 (IIRC).

More related to the OP: The Great American Menu, the signature foods of all 50 states. http://deadspin.com/the-great-american-men...d-an-1349137024 edit: Chicago Deep Dish clocks in at #1

QUOTE (TaylorStSox @ Oct 17, 2013 -> 05:35 PM) At some point, the 1% will either share or have it taken from them. This is a very important function of a social safety net that often goes overlooked.

Woooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You guys might like checking out Tyler Cowan's the average is over

Universal Basic Income for every citizen.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Oct 17, 2013 -> 12:14 PM) Hmmm. Tough call. You're right, though. I think we've discovered why you've struggled to get your first win.

Oh I was just throwing that data out there because I was curious myself and googled it.

Over 50% of their stores are in the US Page 17 of this report breaks down revenues by region, but the US is one region and all of Europe is another. http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/content/dam/...ort%20Final.pdf

I only caught the beginning of that story and meant to go back and listen to it, thanks for the reminder.

Charles C. Pierce: I HATE CENTRISM

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 17, 2013 -> 09:23 AM) I think the author of that post is crossing his or her numbers up. The $24 billion cost estimate is not the cost to the government, it's the cost to the entire economy of the shutdown according to an S&P estimate. The government definitely lost billions, maybe more than $10 billion (I haven't seen a reliable, complete accounting of that yet) but I know where the $24 billion # comes from. It says "estimated economic losses" right in the first sentence. It wasn't an argument about the direct cost to government, but to point out that we're going to hear a lot about how this crappy website cost hundreds of millions of dollars, but not so much about the tens or hundreds of billions of dollars that the sequester, shutdown and debt ceiling brinksmanship has cost our economy as a whole.

Farhad Manhoo also has a piece in the WSJ covering what went wrong with healthcare.gov and why this same sort of thing goes wrong in most large-scale public/government tech projects. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000...139461596987366

The shutdown could have bought healthcare.gov 40 times over'

This is what it's like to be in a Stop And Frisk http://gawker.com/this-is-what-its-like-to...dium=socialflow

Pto!

So when do federal workers go back to work? Tomorrow, if it's signed tonight?

~both sides~

It will actually decrease because government destroys jobs!

Felix Salmon on why we're already feeling the affects of the debt ceiling limit (on top of the sequester and the shutdown): http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013...-already-begun/ The vaseline, in other words, already has sand in it. The global faith in US institutions has already been undermined. The mechanism by which catastrophe would arise has already been set into motion. And as a result, economic growth in both the US and the rest of the world will be lower than it should be. Unemployment will be higher. Social unrest will be more destructive. These things aren’t as bad now as they would be if we actually got to a point of payment default. But even a payment default wouldn’t cause mass overnight failures: the catastrophe would be slower and nastier than that, less visible, less spectacular. We’re not talking the final scene of Fight Club, we’re talking more about another global credit crisis — where “credit” means “trust”, and “trust” means “trust in the US government as the one institution which cannot fail”.

Well, I think the original drafters were smart enough to understand that there would be debates over the language of a particular law or amendment (as they themselves had these arguments) and that they knew the language of the 14th amendment was broad and would likely be understood to protect different things in the future. But based on past statements, Scalia doesn't believe that. He believes that the 14th was specifically about the racial oppression faced by black people from white people. edit: I guess it's important to read that Scalia is saying "we," meaning the SC both past and present, have held that it says one thing, not that he necessarily agrees or accepts with all past decisions on the EPC.

There's a reason that the US is the notably rare exception to the typical outcome of presidential democracies. Majorities can't govern, accountability is lowered, and with our particular setup, there are a ton of veto points.

If we ever have a Reign of Terror, I hope the DC cocktail circuit is the first to be dragged in front of the Revolutionary Tribunal. Specifically Politico.

Seems like she was trying to make an originalist plea to Scalia?