StrangeSox

His parents were Black Panther activists. Apparently it's an ancient Egyptian word for Nubia.

yeah not sure what I was thinking with that phrasing!

Breitbart forced to settle for $100k over O'Keefe video They run a hell of an organization over there, and it's only gotten (substantially) dumber since Breitbart died.

We still have judges that say that s***: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012...apologized.html http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/09/0...ower-to-change/

Lost Decade(s)

OTOH we had an unexpectedly strong jobs report today. 236k new jobs in February, unemployment at 7.7%.

Another good article from Ta-Nehisi Coates, this time in the NYT. The Good, Racist People more here: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archiv...-people/273843/

Scariest Jobs Chart Ever Isn't Scary Enough

edit: Rand Paul is awful 99% of the time, but he had some other vote recently that I was in favor of

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Mar 6, 2013 -> 01:24 PM) Well the nice thing about that era is there wasn't much of a government to co-opt. You misunderstand. The smaller the government, the easier it is to co-opt and the less restrictions on their actions and exploitation in the first place. Corrupting and controlling the government was central to many of these companies' success, especially the railroads. Citation? There was an awful lot of labor unrest, poverty and exploitation. Either way, few other places in the world had started moving away from the horrible structures that defined the Gilded Age, so that's not really saying much. It's certainly not a moral argument for those structures.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Mar 6, 2013 -> 01:15 PM) By modern standards? Yea, of course it was s***ty for most people if you're comparing it to 2013 America. But if you compare the standard of living in the United States to its global peers at that time we were blowing them out of the water. There's a reason immigrants flowed into this country. No, compared to some of their peers at the time who made enormous amounts of money exploiting cheap labor working in horrible conditions and co-opting the government.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Mar 6, 2013 -> 01:09 PM) CUE THE WHITE GUILT LADIES AND GENTLEMEN Anyone advocating for a return to the Gilded Age and how awesome it was should feel guilty when they realize they forgot to consider reality for >50% of the population. I really think that the Gilded Age was an incredibly s***ty era for most people. We were talking about the hypothetical return to a minimalist government.

For most people? Yeah, it was. Especially anyone who wasn't a white male and was legally a second-class citizen. For a very few at the top? It was awesome. Steinbeck's quote about temporarily embarrassed millionaires comes to mind.

GM didn't get forced by the government to build the Volt. We can look to see what a minimalist government results in. Just go look at the Gilded Age. Power was enormously concentrated among a handful of firms if not outright monopolies in most industries.

Soviet Soldier Found 33 Years After Going Missing in Afghanistan Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/03/06/soviet.../#ixzz2Mmma8QYE

Dropping a couple quick thoughts because there's a lot in that post but I can't write hundreds of words right now 1) You could impose maximum wages/compensation, though that's off in lefty-land 2) I ultimately don't know that we can achieve this with the current system, that we can patch-up where capitalism fails enough. Taxation could go a long way theoretically, but capital is simply too mobile and wealth too easily sheltered these days. I dunno, strong social democracies work in some places, much stronger than what we have. 3) Capital is already highly mobile, but I'm genuinely shocked to see you rejecting the most prominent conservative economic policy, which is that we need to cut, cut, cut taxes to keep businesses here. Hell, we know it works, that's why companies extort huge tax breaks out of state and local governments all the time. 4) I don't know how well such a protectionist law that would bar capital flight from doing business in the US would work ultimately--seems enormously complex. Politically it's an impossibility, though. 5) But that's the end-result of capitalism--concentration of wealth and power (and this includes co-option of the government, historically and currently). There's also quite a bit in our modern world that can't be done by "local mom and pop shops"--you going to fly on the Jim & Bill 747 built in their backyard? Build a semiconductor lab in your basement? With a few phrasing tweaks, this could be something I'd expect to read from an avowed socialist.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 6, 2013 -> 11:03 AM) The bigger the business, the more employees, the bigger the impact on local and state economies. The more people have the opportunity to advance within the company and make more money and on and on. But all you're doing is making it a little easier for small- and medium-sized businesses to become big businesses. Where does the calculus ultimately change there? Why wouldn't these new-big-businesses also have CEO's making 380 times the average employee's salaries, why wouldn't a substantial portion of the wealth created still be siphoned off by the finance industry? We've seen the growth of gigantic, multi-national firms over the past several decades and we've seen real wages stagnate and opportunities disappear. Why should we expect drastically different results from these tax policy changes? One will take its capital and its jobs to another country. This is the real problem that the race-to-the-bottom, cut-taxes-and-regulations policy that gets euphamized as a "business-friendly environment" is addressing. But your stated goal is to help small- and mid-sized businesses become large businesses, who would then become subject to these taxes, right? I don't see how such a substantial tax reform is't broad, but really that's just semantics so w/e.

QUOTE (GoSox05 @ Mar 6, 2013 -> 10:30 AM) Why Ecuador loves Rafael Correa Awesome, thanks. edit: interesting paper in the comments http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications...dor-2012-05.pdf

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 6, 2013 -> 10:27 AM) I guess I don't disagree with the statement, but my response is so what? If the point is that employers should give more, we've established that small companies most likely can't because of other market forces. I was making a descriptive statement there. It was more about pointing out the fallacy of treating "market forces" as some sort of deity with its own will and unknowable intentions when it's really the culmination of peoples' collective actions and conscious choices. But how would helping small and medium businesses become big businesses help them? What do you do in the age of incredibly mobile capital to keep the big businesses, who still employ a majority of Americans (if we count "big" as >500 employees), around? You're just shifting some tax preferences around in the same structure. (how are these substantial tax reforms not "broad, mandatory measures"??)

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 6, 2013 -> 10:20 AM) I watched it and I agree it's a huge problem. What i'm saying is that 95% of business owners can't be expected to magically raise rates for all of their employees if they want to stay in business. 95% of businesses don't have CEO's and board members hoarding tons of cash while their employees scrape by. So? None of that challenges my statement that the people who comprise "The Market" that sets wage rates are always looking to minimize wage rates. For the barely-profitable small business, even more so. It's a capitalism problem, but I think you're generalizing and straw-man stuffing a bit when you keep saying what "liberals think." How do you expect to shift wage inequality through narrow, voluntary measures?

I'd say it's a bit of a stretch to compare Chavez to Mussolini. You pointed to Chile, where inequality is still high (higher Gini than Venezuela) and so is discontent with the government. That doesn't seem like a particularly strong example. What other countries have taken measures similar to Venezuela to use these resources to directly help the poor? I don't have much knowledge in this area, but I know I've seen Venezuela lauded for their efforts in this area and I've seen other countries that have fallen victim to the "Resource Curse"

QUOTE (bmags @ Mar 6, 2013 -> 09:44 AM) After Pinochet was removed, the former socialist party took over and have been a very good government. They have kept the best part of Friedman via Pinochet reforms, while creating a better floor for their population. They are a very-well run country with good government. But they still have pretty high inequality and there's widespread discontent with the government IIRC. And their privatized social security system has been a bit of a failure, too. What's wrong with saying Chavez was s***ty politically but that the way he used the oil wealth to help the poor was genuinely good when many other leaders have not? I'm not required to endorse everything he did or said in order to point out that he wasn't the universal evil he's typically portrayed as.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 6, 2013 -> 09:44 AM) Yes, in theory you lower costs, your revenues go up and your labor should get a share of that. But given the costs of doing business in this country, that's not some easy feat. Most companies don't charge exorbitant prices with tons of excess revenue. Their prices are set by the market - competition from other businesses and the price they can demand for their product/service. Labor's just another line item. The business will be more successful if you minimize labor costs as much as possible, regardless of business size. "As much as possible" is doing a lot of work for me there, but our economic system still incentivizes reducing your labor costs. Uh, yeah? No disagreement there. The lower and middle classes have been stagnant or losing ground for decades to an increasingly small percentage who hoards all the wealth. edit: did you see that video I posted earlier? go take a look, it shows how pretty much across the board, until you get to the very tail, the wealth distribution is far below what Americans think it is and think it should be.

US-backed puppet dictators tend to have far, far worse human rights records.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 6, 2013 -> 09:19 AM) And helped himself to two billion dollars. Chavez did a good thing by actually helping the poor of his country with the oil wealth. He also did plenty of s***ty things and I don't like seeing him idolized by some on the left.