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When people say babies have a "right to life" is the right to life a positive right or a negative right?
If it's a positive right, then I do not support the concept of a right to life.
If it's a negative right, then I support the concept of a right to life.
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@David
I thought COPPA just meant you can't collect data on children? How exactly is it illegal to have children use this site?
Also, aren't children going to just lie about their age and say their 13 to get on this site?
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@drafterman
Isn't the definition of incel to be angry and hateful towards women because you can't get a girl? How was this hateful? It was just criticism.
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@drafterman
But all Dr.Franklin was doing was criticizing our current society and how we seem to be too obsessed with sex, porn, and women. That's not being incel. That's being critical.
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I've got some solutions to poverty: Fix our broken education system so people can be smarter in life and thus more productive, let law-abiding adults have guns to protect themselves so their wealth doesn't get stolen so easily, get rid of the stupid laws designed to "fight climate change" that are costing people so much money, stop smoking and vaping, stop doing drugs, get rid of near-useless low-paying college majors like Lesbian Dance Theory, and stop going soft and easy on illegal aliens and criminals.
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But you can be tolerant of intolerant people.
If a person says they are intolerant of something, and you do not call for them to be censored or banned or whatever, and you allow them to talk about how intolerant they are without violating their First Amendment right, you are being tolerant.
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The argument is basically:
Hilter drank water.
Trump drinks water.
Therefore Trump is just like Hitler.
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@Varrack
Biometric gun safes are prone to all sorts of malfunctions, which you cannot afford to have in a life or death situation.
They're relatively new and have yet to be thoroughly tested.
Most small gun safes can be compromised by a variety of low-tech methods including paperclips, screwdrivers, or even just banging on them. Adding an economy biometric lock to a weak gun safe doesn’t make it any more secure. Many biometric gun safes also have flimsy key locks as “backups”. The key locks can often be opened with a standard screwdriver or strip of metal.
Also, biometric handgun safes are electronic and run on batteries (meaning if the battery dies you are locked out of the safe until you can replace or recharge the battery). In addition to the other reliability issues of biometric locks we’ll get into below, battery-powered devices are fundamentally less dependable than all-mechanical devices.
Biometrics in general are still evolving. Standards are still being developed. Performance testing and rating criteria like UL 768 don’t yet exist.
Fingerprint readers are fundamentally limited by the biology that they attempt to verify. Burns, cuts, and blisters to your fingers can change your fingerprint. Imagine fighting off an intruder to rush upstairs to get your weapon. But then you’re locked out of your biometric gun safe because your fingers are cut up. Or, being locked out because a potholder slipped yesterday taking something out of the oven.
Many people who work with their hands regularly have cuts or abrasion on their fingers that can cause their fingerprint to change. Workers and musicians also often have ridges, calluses, and parts of the fingerprints that are worn off. These can all cause issues with a biometric fingerprint scanner, especially a low quality one.
False negatives cause the lock not to open when an authorized person tries to use it.
In addition to cuts, burns, and abrasions, all sorts of things can obscure your fingerprint. Moisture, dirt, oils, blood, lotions, sunscreen, stains, ink, glues, and all kinds of other materials can cause problems.
If that’s not bad enough, biometric locks (especially cheap ones) can be susceptible to the angle of your fingerprint and which part of your finger you use. If your finger is at an angle or rolled slightly you may get locked out.
If the identification tolerance is too tight, it can lead to false negatives. In a false negative the correct person is locked out. This is a problem most people notice, so manufacturers try to avoid it. False negatives could be deadly in a self-defense situation.
To prevent customers from getting frustrated with being locked out of their new biometric gun safe and writing bad online reviews, manufacturers prefer to make the tolerances as loose as possible.
If the tolerance is too loose, false positives result, where prohibited people get access. This is very dangerous. But, the owner isn’t as likely to notice this as quickly as he or she is to notice getting locked out.
Looser tolerances also make “spoofing” or tricking all types of biometrics easier. For example, most facial recognition locks on computers and smartphones can be tricked with a photo of the person.
Source: http://archive.ph/EtUvW
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@Varrack
The problem with forcing people to store their guns away "safely" is that it makes it harder to access when they need it. If you're in your home with you gun and someone breaks in your home to hurt you you want to get your gun quickly you don't want to have to go to a safe and enter a combination just to unlock the safe and get the gun.
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@HistoryBuff
How do you ensure that no one has any assault weapons?
How do you magically stop the flow of guns that find their way into the hands of criminals?
Even then, it's really easy nowadays to build your own guns from spare parts.
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Instead of banning assault weapons why not just ban people from committing crimes with assault weapons?
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1. Fix our broken education system
2. Protect our second amendment from people like Bloomberg who want to impose stupid gun regulations
3. Do something about the illegal immigrants running wild in the country
4. Create more low-skilled entry level jobs
5. Do something about the homeless people pooping on the sidewalk and the gangs shooting each other up
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@zedvictor4
@Pinkfreud08
Zedvictor you're supposed to type in their name in the "Receivers" box, not type in @Pinkfreud08 https://i.imgur.com/u9dYnK9.png
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@RationalMadman
How much do you know about his past?
When you say "his past," how long ago are you talking about? 5 years ago? 10 years ago? Or are you referring to his entire life since when he was born, which in that case, I don't know all that much since I was born in 1999.
I remember first hearing about him in 2015 when he said he would run for president in 2016.
If, by "his past" you mean the time he got elected, all the way up to today, then I know that he has fulfilled his promises to make our borders more secure, bring back some jobs, attack the terrorist group ISIS, and cut down on illegal immigration. So he has a track record of getting those kinds of things done.
Do you know when some guys were beaten senseless with severe police brutality, even starving them within the jail until they admitted to comitting a gang rape that they never committed that Trump and with his friend being on the prosecution team
First of all, the article you linked said "It was 1989" meaning that this took place over 30 years ago (2020 - 1989 = 31).
Secondly, this sounds like a violation of the eighth amendment which prohibits "cruel and unusual punishment," so the police should have been punished for beating them senseless and starving them.
it's not even a question that he had motive, pushed for that to happen? That's one of many examples of this piece of filth and what he has done to people who either got in his way or merely were an easy target for a friend of Trump's to further their career and owe Trump for helping out.
This isn't really Trump's fault. The article said that there was not enough DNA evidence to prove that they were guilty of the rape, so if you want to blame anyone for this, blame the investigators for not gathering enough evidence, and the police for being brutal and inflicting their cruel and unusual punishment.
Then again, this was in the 1980s, probably back when DNA testing was very new at the time and was not as advanced as it is today, so it would have been easy to make mistakes in DNA testing back then. Hopefully we don't have this situation again where people are wrongly convicted, due to improved DNA testing.
barely a week after it all happened Trump is smiling on camera saying he's proud to build something on it that he'll be profiting from?
Proud to build what on what exactly?
To understand how deep Trump's corruption and immorality go will take you hours of research, days of 'resarching which research is reliable or not' and even more to uncover conspiracy theories and dirty mysteries behidn this man and where he got, and has used, his wealth.
At this point, it sounds like people are just mad that Trump won and Hillary lost so they're trying to go out of their way to dig up literally every single random thing that Trump did decades ago in order to spoil his reputation and keep him from getting re-elected.
Either way, it's important to remember that nobody is perfect. You will find bad things about ANY celebrity's distant past if you dig long and hard enough. Every successful person in life, whether they're a democrat or republican, has had struggles and hardships. Every successful person in life, whether they're liberal or conservative, has failed at some things and has made some poor decisions in their lives. Every past president has done and/or said something controversial that people didn't like. It's inevitable. Being a governor, mayor, or president is a stressful job. It's easy to make terrible mistakes when you have to deal with the constant pressure of thousands of people depending on you.
The question is whether to keep dwelling on the past or just move on already and focus on the things Trump has done as president, and whether or not he has followed up on his campaign promises. When we vote for our favorite candidate, we don't vote based on what they said or did decades ago. We vote based on what they have done, or will do, as president, and how it will affect our lives for years to come.
This article is saying I need to pay like a dollar or something just to view it. https://i.imgur.com/QxW9CNm.png
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@dustryder
The whistleblower identify is rather immaterial at this point.
The whistleblower should be identified so that he or she can be charged with defamation if what they say turns out to be incorrect.
Additional sources and evidences have come out since then that have fleshed out the incident.
In that case, your Wikipedia article should be updated to include this new information.
if an allotment has been made, the president does not have the ability to prevent this except in the circumstances where there are concerns of "a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights." and/or a “democratic system based on principles of the rule of law, individual freedoms, and representative government.” is taken into account and/or the conditions of the aid are not being met.
How could the president illegally prevent an allotment even though you just said he "does not have the ability to" do so?
if the freezing of aid was legal, if the motivation is corrupt then that law has been breached.
What does it mean for someone's motivation to be corrupt, and how can it be proven that Trump's motivation was a corrupt one?
How would a government find more information about a particular issue?
I suppose they would ask around and maybe also do some online research to see what others know? I'm not sure.
Investigating a situation with a person core to the situation is tantamount to investigating the person.
How does saying "if you could look into it" over the phone = soliciting interference with an election?
I can't say whether or not if it is as difficult as you say to prove "intent" or what the threshold for proof is,
If there is no objective threshold for what proof is that all sides can agree on, then I guess the courts and judges themselves would have to decide whether whatever evidence is presented against Trump is enough proof.
but there is certainly sufficient circumstantial evidence that should give anyone pause as to his motivations.
The people pushing for Trump's impeachment are fighting an uphill battle, since the burden of proof lies on them to prove that the whistleblower is a reliable source and not some random liar making things up, that Trump's motivation was corrupt, that he was specifically referring to Biden's son when he said if Ukraine could look into their situation, that he "contempted" the congress, and that his intent was corrupt.
In a court of law, it isn't enough for you to simply "give anyone pause" about something. You must actually prove that they are guilty. Until then, they are innocent.
They've already failed to prove that Trump colluded with Russia back in 2016. Now they're trying to prove he colluded with Ukraine, something that's probably going to be even more difficult to prove, since the transcript of the phone call does not show Trump directly asking for an investigation into Biden's son in exchange for foreign aid, and can easily be interpreted in different ways.
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@dustryder
So according to your Wikipedia article...
The impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump, the incumbent president of the United States, was initiated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on September 24, 2019,[1] after a whistleblower alleged that Donald Trump may have abused the power of the presidency
Well first of all, the whistleblower is not named, so this person could be literally anyone. It could be someone who is just going out of his or her way to spread lies about Trump to get him impeached. We don't know who this person is or what their political affiliation is so we have no way of knowing if they're even a reliable source. Secondly it says that he or she alleged that Donald Trump may have abused his power. It does not guarantee that he abused his power, so that means Trump can be found innocent, since all suspects of any crime are innocent until proven guilty.
by withholding military aid as a means of pressuring newly elected president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky to perform two favors:
Is the president legally obligated to give any military aid to this country? If not, then it's not a crime or an impeachable offense to withhold aid to any other country for any reason.
to pursue investigations of Joe Biden and his son Hunter,[a] and to investigate a conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, was behind interference in the 2016 presidential election.[3] More than a week after Trump had put a hold on the previously approved military aid,[4][b] he made the aforementioned requests in a July 25 phone call with the Ukrainian president,[6]
Here is what Donald Trump said, copied and pasted from the [6] document:
There's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it ... It sounds horrible to me.
Here's the thing: All Donald Trump was saying was that there were some people that wanted to know more about the situation regarding Biden's son, and that it would be great for them if they got more information about the issue. This can easily be misinterpret as Donald Trump asking the Ukrainian dude to pursue investigations into Biden, which I think a lot of people have done.
He was not asking for an investigation into Biden. If anything he was asking for an investigation into a situation that may have involved Biden. Investigating a person is different from investigating a situation. That Wikipedia article is being somewhat dishonest when it says that Trump was asking to pursue investigations into Biden.
In fact, the transcript shows that Trump simply said, "if you can look into it" and "it" could be anything, but "it" is being interpreted as Joe Biden's son.
which the whistleblower alleged was intended to help Trump's reelection bid.[3]
It's very difficult if not impossible to prove "intent" in a court of law. This could have been intended for that sure, but it could have also just as easily been intended for something else.
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@RationalMadman
@dustryder
People have begun trying to impeach President Trump since January 21 2017, literally 1 day after he was put into office. http://archive.ph/m7PRp
I really want to know why that is, and what exactly Trump did that day that he should be impeached for and warrants impeachment.
He is a piece of trash who doesn't belong in the white house, in fact he belongs in prison.
What makes him a piece of trash? What makes him not belong in the white house? What makes him belong in prison?
To my understanding, the specific crimes that he is accused of committing in the articles of impeachment are1) Soliciting foreign interference into US elections
What foreign interference did he solicit, and which US election specifically did he solicit it into?
2) Contempt of congress
How did he contempt our congress?
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@dustryder
Hey, merry christmas. Sorry, I was going to respond to you much sooner, but I've been having a whole bunch of.... technical difficulties. They have now been resolved.
A living wage is a minimum amount of income needed to provide a worker with basic necessities, such that they can live a basic life without government subsidies. It does not literally mean "I need x income or I cannot survive" which would be a subsistence wage. The idea is to lift people out of the feedback loop of poverty.
We've been increasing the minimum wage for decades, and millions of Americans are still living in poverty. We've got to find out what people are doing with all that extra money they get, and why.
Apart from this, there have you considered that a living wage is typically calculated based upon a 40? hour work week. However it is likely that a person who is earning a poverty wage must work more than that (which of course negatively impacts their life and is a part of the feedback loop).
Wasn't aware of that.
I think people need to take a look at the kind of work they're doing. If you're working 40 hours a week behind a cash register, you can't expect to make that much money to begin with, but if you're working 40 hours a week as a doctor, nurse, electrician, plumber, scientist, police, janitor, military, or whatever, you can easily get out of poverty and move up the corporate ladder. Right now, I'm trying to get into a job working for a bank, office, tech company, news company, or an insurance company, all of which pay far more than the minimum wage.
It's getting ridiculous that people are wanting more and more money doing their cheap cash register jobs, and not looking for ways to get into jobs that already pay better.
Raising the minimum wage just means more and more businesses are going to be finding ways to get around it, such as looking for more immigrants to hire under the table or whatever, thus negatively impacting even more lives, and contributing even more to that feedback loop you talked out.
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@bmdrocks21
But the job goes to the lowest bidder, and they overall are willing to accept less. Billionaires can afford to keep wages low by importing low-skill workers who don't care if they are underpaid since it is better than their home country.
I often hear people like Bernie Sanders complain about how the federal minimum wage needs to be raised to 15 dollars an hour due to it not being a livable wage, but if immigrants are able to come here (legally or illegally) and accept jobs that pay far lower than 15 dollars an hour, then wouldn't that mean that the minimum wage that is lower than 15 dollars an hour is already livable? Or is it somehow only livable for immigrants and not for American citizens?
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@DynamicSquid
What do you think about the Universal Basic Income of 1000 dollars a month that Andrew Yang loves to talk about? Do you think it's what we need or will it encourage people to be lazy?
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@zedvictor4
Having separate bathrooms helps prevent situations like these where people go in the opposite bathroom and cause problems.
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If it's true that we're "low information voters" then why not convince Trump supporters to support someone else instead, like Bernie Sanders? After all, we don't know any better and we need someone smarter than us mindless sheep to guide us in the right direction, right?
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I like Prager University. They make a lot of great videos. Sure, some of their videos can be silly or weird, but most of them are very informative.
Who cares if they're an actual University or not? Universities don't even have to be physical. They can exist online too.
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Wait, the @ notification name tag text is red for you but black for me
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@Greyparrot
Oh, I see they changed the @ notification name tag from blue to red...
But anyways, I don't want illegal aliens running wild in my country, do you?
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I love how people say they want open borders but don't want to open their own homes to illegals and unlock the doors and keep the gates and stuff open for them to come on in.
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Like I, and others have said, allowing boys and girls to use the same bathroom will lead to problems where perverts could go in and spy on or harass the opposite sex while they pee or poop, and since bathrooms usually can't have surveillance cameras, that means if someone sexually harassed you while you were using the bathroom, it would be hard if not impossible to prove anything so you would need maybe DNA evidence.
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Is there any specific problem you have with children signing up for the website?
Also, does that mean that person is going to get banned since they are too young to be on the site?
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@DebateArt.com
@Vader
@Ramshutu
@Speedrace
This person stated on their profile that the system wouldn't let them select their birthday. It could be a bug? Maybe someone could check it out? http://archive.ph/fxPYl
It wont let me select my actual birthday which is October 10th 2012 :(
Also, I think we should have an entire thread dedicated only to reporting on bugs so you don't have hundreds of different threads reporting on bugs, making the forums look messy.
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My problem with the bible is that it is riddled with contradictions that go against logic and deductive reasoning. Then, people try and defend/justify the various inconsistecies and contradictions with various excuses.
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What's the difference between historic standards and modern standards?
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Where does the burden of proof lie, here? Do believers have to prove that god does exist, or do non-believers have to prove that god does not exist?
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@DebateArt.com
@Zaradi
How? It was an interesting debate about the infamous Black Lives Matter group.
Also, DebateArt.Com person, I don't seem to be getting email notifications when my name is mentioned, sometimes.
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@ethang5
@Wylted
Aww my goodness. Why was this thread even created to begin with? If anyone has an issue with someone making personal attacks they should talk to a moderator about it privately.
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The alleged whistleblower is a dude named Eric Ciaramella
Don't know why he's being censored from places like Youtube and Facebook though.
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The best debate was probably this one https://www.debateart.com/debates/955/black-lives-matter-brainwashes-peoples-minds-to-make-them-hate-whites
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@Vader
He is also a Conservative too Mr. bench. Your original claim of only Conservatives votes taken down is false
Who's Mr Bench?
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@drafterman
1 & 2 is: the government.
What makes the government trustworthy for this complex task of coming up with a very good criteria for determining whether or not someone is getting duped when it comes to making their own autonomous decision to work for an employee at their own risk? What happens if the government comes up with a bad criteria for this that we are all forced to follow?
they collude with other businesses to force employees to offer shitty deals. This isn't speculation, this is reality. This is what happens, historically, without protections. Your hypothetical examples are overridden by reality.
If there are already laws in place to prevent such behavior, then we don't need any other extra arbitrary measures against what you call duping.
What is more likely to happen is that they see that this teenager is easily duped and offer them the same price or marginally better.
Again, that's competition, and there is nothing wrong with that. That's how businesses compete for employees, by offering something that they believe (or know) the employee will accept.
it's not telling the teenager they can't work that job. It's telling the employer they have to pay more for that job.
And if the employer is not able nor willing to pay more for that job then the teenager can't work that job, correct? So you are in fact telling the teenager they can't work that job if the employer is not able nor willing to pay more.
I didn't say anything about anyone's feelings.
When I asked: are you going to violate their freedom to make their own choices that affect themselves because you see them getting "duped" and you aren't feeling happy about that?
Your response was: Yes.
That means that we would have to take your feelings into account when making contracts between employers and employees, because if you aren't feeling happy about our contract because you feel someone is getting "duped" and that employers must be forced to either pay more or fire that employee.
Okay, so. I enter into a contract with a 5-year old where I give him a snickers bar and he pays me a penny on the first day 2 pennies on the next, then 4 pennies after that, each day doubling the amount of pennies for a year.To you this is a perfectly fine economic arrangement the government shouldn't be involved in except to enforce it if one party defaults?
When it comes to legally binding agreements, certain people are always considered to lack the legal ability (or "capacity") to contract. As a legal matter, basically they are presumed not to know what they're doing. These people--legal minors and the mentally ill, for example--are placed into a special category. If they enter into a contract, the agreement is considered "voidable" by them (as the person who lacked capacity to enter the agreement in the first place). Voidable means that the person who lacked capacity to enter the contact can either end the contract or permit it to go ahead as agreed on. This protects the party who lacks capacity from being forced to go through with a deal that takes advantage of his or her lack of savvy.
In other words, there are already measures in place to prevent these types of situations where your 5-year olds get forced into a slave contract with no way out. If for whatever reason the 5-year old is actually very intelligent and knew what they were doing, they could proceed with the contract if they wanted to, but they would still have the option to change their minds and opt-out of the contract to void it if they realized that it wasn't fair to keep losing pennies every day.
I don't see why we need any more arbitrary measures like minimum wage increases, on top of all that.
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@drafterman
People can be duped into "agreeing" to less than satisfactory arrangements. Happens all the time.If they were "less than satisfactory" then why'd they agree in the first place?Because they were duped.
Not only is an argument like this very difficult, if not impossible, to prove, but this so-called "problem" of people getting "duped" is also very difficult, if not impossible, to address.
In the free market, there will be cases where people making a certain wage get duped, there will be cases where people making a certain wage are not getting duped, and there will be cases where you can't always tell for sure whether or not someone is getting duped (it may look like they're getting duped but maybe they're not). That's a side effect of having a free market with limited government interference. It does not mean that free market capitalism is a bad thing in any way just because of this potential side effect.
In a lot of these cases, you aren't going to be able to easily tell if someone is getting duped or not. Even if you do determine and prove that someone is getting duped, you have to determine what the best solution is which is also difficult.
And before you can claim that people are getting duped, we should first establish 3 things:
1) who should best be in charge of deciding whether or not an employee or contractor is getting duped, and why are they best suited for the task of determining that?
2) what criteria should we use to determine if an employee or contractor is getting duped, and why should that criteria be used over something else?
3) what if the employee or contractor does not care if they're getting duped and wants you to stay out of their business and mind your own business? are you going to violate their freedom to make their own choices that affect themselves because you see them getting "duped" and you aren't feeling happy about that?
Let me explain why each of these 3 things are important.
We live in a world where people will get "duped" all the time in a variety of different situations. In a free market, this should be allowed, because business can be forced to compete for valuable employees by offering what they believe or know are the best deals to that employee.
For example, if businessA offers to pay you 20 dollars an hour while you work for them 3 hours a day on a certain task, and businessB offers to pay you 35 dollars an hour while you work for them 6 hours a day doing the same kind of work as businessA, you will have the freedom of choosing which business to work for.
Normally, it would make sense to choose to work for businessA since you would technically make more money in the long run, but the decision to work for businessA and not businessB should be the employee's, not someone else's. This is because there may also be reasons and factors as to why people would prefer to work for businessB even though businessA offers more money. Maybe the employee doesn't have the time to work for more than 3 hours a day and wants to do other things while still being able to work to earn a little money. Maybe businessB is physically closer to where the employee lives so the employee would have to spend less gas to drive to businessB. Maybe businessB offers other benefits to attract the employee, such as a free scholarship or something. Maybe businessB is just more friendlier than businessA. Maybe businessB is just more popular than businessA overall. There could be all kinds of different factors.
So if the employee chooses to work for businessB, will the person/people who decide that the employee is getting duped take all of these other external or hidden factors into account when making that decision, or will the person/people in charge of deciding if there is any duping going on take only money per hour into account, and nothing else that the business(es) offered to attract the employee?
If the employee chooses to work for businessB, and businessA still wants that employee, then businessA will have to compete for that employee by maybe offering an even higher wage or something, or maybe some better benefits, to attract the employee.
Then businessB will have to offer more to attract the employee, and businessA will have to offer more, and so on.
This is how competition works for businesses. Whoever can offer the most benefits, pay the highest wages, and/or attract the employee in the best way, wins that employee. In the case of the teenager who is satisfied working 6 dollars, the business that hired them probably had to compete with other businesses for that teenager, and the teenager ultimately chose to work for that business because they were most attracted to that business.
By trying to implement and enforce so-called anti-duping measures that are subjective and/or flawed, you hurt competition, which is what the economy needs.
In a free market, people should be allowed to make choices, even if it is, or at least seems like, the wrong choice, or if it seems like they're getting duped, when it comes to working for a certain wage. In a free market, people should be allowed to make mistakes and learn from the consequences of those mistakes in order to improve. people should be allowed to decide for themselves what is best for them. In a free market, people should be allowed to weight the upsides and downsides when choosing which business to work with, and how much they want to work for, with minimal government interference.
Because of this, it's going to be very hard, to come up with a good criteria to determine if someone is getting duped, and even harder to determine who should be in charge of deciding who is and who is not getting duped in such a complex competition of different business and employees, with all these different factors to consider. A lot of people, including myself, do not and will not trust the government to make the best decision on whether or not someone is getting duped, nor will they agree with the criteria that whoever is in charge establishes.
If you, as a business, believes, or knows, someone that is getting exploited or "duped" working for another business, you can always encourage them to leave that business and work for you instead, and offer more benefits or wages for that person, in order to attract them to your business. That is an example of competition, which leads to businesses improving to attract employees. It's better for businesses to compete for employees using what they offer to attract those employees, rather than an arbitrary minimum wage law that can hurt competition.
Like Athias said, "the only things that matter are the goals and interests of the parties involved. If the teenager is satisfied with accepting employment at $6 and the adults are satisfied with offering employment at $6, then there's no disadvantage or deception. If the teen doesn't agree, then the teen preferably would seek a better arrangement with another party."
Using this example, if the teenager and employee agree for 6 dollars, then there isn't any problem here. If things change in the future where the teenager might eventually need more money, that's a different story, but right now, the teenager has agreed to work for this amount of money. Any business that believes the teenager is getting duped can feel free to offer 'em a better paying job, or one with better benefits, and who knows? Maybe this teenager chose this specific 6-dollar job because they offered something like a scholarship, or because it's close to where they live, or because of some other external factor that made them decide that this was a good deal. There could be many reasons why this teenager chose this 6-dollar job. There could have been a business that offered more money, but this teenager did not look at only money. They looked at others things to consider, and so should you.
Wages and hours are not the only things people think about when looking for work. The economy is not that simple. Any business that can offer the best deal to an employee, and convince that employee that it's the best deal and not someone else, wins that employee. That's not duping. That's competition\.
If you step in and tell this teenager that they should not be working this job, you better either have proof, or have a business of your own that you can hire them for, that offers them a better deal. Otherwise, you leave them alone. Even if you're right about them being duped, they aren't going to quit their job and do nothing if you aren't participating in the competition with businesses for that teenager.
If the teenager is happy, and the employer is happy, but you're not happy because you feel they are getting duped, yet you have no business of your own to offer them, then why should they, or anyone for that matter, care that you aren't feeling happy? Why is it their problem whether or not their exchange of labor, money, benefits, and other valuables does not fit your subjective criteria?
The free market does not care about your feelings. The free market does not care if you feel that someone is getting duped in a certain situation and should not be. Employers and employees that agreed, and are satisfied, with the wages, hours, and other benefits that they freely agreed upon are not going to care about how you feel if you aren't offering the employee a better deal.
With arbitrary anti-duping measures that someone establishes, these employees and employers not only have to forge a contract that they can agree upon, but they must also forge one that you agree upon too, and one that agrees with your subjective standards. These subjective standards mean that employees and employers also have to take your feelings into account when forging a contract.
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@drafterman
People can be duped into "agreeing" to less than satisfactory arrangements. Happens all the time.If they were "less than satisfactory" then why'd they agree in the first place?Because they were duped.
Not only is an argument like this very difficult, if not impossible, to prove, but this so-called "problem" of people getting "duped" is also very difficult, if not impossible, to address.
In the free market, there will be cases where people making a certain wage get duped, there will be cases where people making a certain wage are not getting duped, and there will be cases where you can't always tell for sure whether or not someone is getting duped (it may look like they're getting duped but maybe they're not). That's a side effect of having a free market with limited government interference. It does not mean that free market capitalism is a bad thing in any way just because of this potential side effect.
In a lot of these cases, you aren't going to be able to easily tell if someone is getting duped or not. Even if you do determine and prove that someone is getting duped, you have to determine what the best solution is which is also difficult.
And before you can claim that people are getting duped, we should first establish 3 things:
1) who should best be in charge of deciding whether or not an employee or contractor is getting duped, and why are they best suited for the task of determining that?
2) what criteria should we use to determine if an employee or contractor is getting duped, and why should that criteria be used over something else?
3) what if the employee or contractor does not care if they're getting duped and wants you to stay out of their business and mind your own business? are you going to violate their freedom to make their own choices that affect themselves because you see them getting "duped" and you aren't feeling happy about that?
Let me explain why each of these 3 things are important.
We live in a world where people will get "duped" all the time in a variety of different situations. In a free market, this should be allowed, because business can be forced to compete for valuable employees by offering what they believe or know are the best deals to that employee.
For example, if businessA offers to pay you 20 dollars an hour while you work for them 3 hours a day on a certain task, and businessB offers to pay you 35 dollars an hour while you work for them 6 hours a day doing the same kind of work as businessA, you will have the freedom of choosing which business to work for.
Normally, it would make sense to choose to work for businessA since you would technically make more money in the long run, but the decision to work for businessA and not businessB should be the employee's, not someone else's. This is because there may also be reasons and factors as to why people would prefer to work for businessB even though businessA offers more money. Maybe the employee doesn't have the time to work for more than 3 hours a day and wants to do other things while still being able to work to earn a little money. Maybe businessB is physically closer to where the employee lives so the employee would have to spend less gas to drive to businessB. Maybe businessB offers other benefits to attract the employee, such as a free scholarship or something. Maybe businessB is just more friendlier than businessA. Maybe businessB is just more popular than businessA overall. There could be all kinds of different factors.
So if the employee chooses to work for businessB, will the person/people who decide that the employee is getting duped take all of these other external or hidden factors into account when making that decision, or will the person/people in charge of deciding if there is any duping going on take only money per hour into account, and nothing else that the business(es) offered to attract the employee?
If the employee chooses to work for businessB, and businessA still wants that employee, then businessA will have to compete for that employee by maybe offering an even higher wage or something, or maybe some better benefits, to attract the employee.
Then businessB will have to offer more to attract the employee, and businessA will have to offer more, and so on.
This is how competition works for businesses. Whoever can offer the most benefits, pay the highest wages, and/or attract the employee in the best way, wins that employee. In the case of the teenager who is satisfied working 6 dollars, the business that hired them probably had to compete with other businesses for that teenager, and the teenager ultimately chose to work for that business because they were most attracted to that business.
By trying to implement and enforce so-called anti-duping measures that are subjective and/or flawed, you hurt competition, which is what the economy needs.
In a free market, people should be allowed to make choices, even if it is, or at least seems like, the wrong choice, or if it seems like they're getting duped, when it comes to working for a certain wage. In a free market, people should be allowed to make mistakes and learn from the consequences of those mistakes in order to improve. people should be allowed to decide for themselves what is best for them. In a free market, people should be allowed to weight the upsides and downsides when choosing which business to work with, and how much they want to work for, with minimal government interference.
Because of this, it's going to be very hard, to come up with a good criteria to determine if someone is getting duped, and even harder to determine who should be in charge of deciding who is and who is not getting duped in such a complex competition of different business and employees, with all these different factors to consider. A lot of people, including myself, do not and will not trust the government to make the best decision on whether or not someone is getting duped, nor will they agree with the criteria that whoever is in charge establishes.
If you, as a business, believes, or knows, someone that is getting exploited or "duped" working for another business, you can always encourage them to leave that business and work for you instead, and offer more benefits or wages for that person, in order to attract them to your business. That is an example of competition, which leads to businesses improving to attract employees. It's better for businesses to compete for employees using what they offer to attract those employees, rather than an arbitrary minimum wage law that can hurt competition.
Like Athias said, "the only things that matter are the goals and interests of the parties involved. If the teenager is satisfied with accepting employment at $6 and the adults are satisfied with offering employment at $6, then there's no disadvantage or deception. If the teen doesn't agree, then the teen preferably would seek a better arrangement with another party."
Using this example, if the teenager and employee agree for 6 dollars, then there isn't any problem here. If things change in the future where the teenager might eventually need more money, that's a different story, but right now, the teenager has agreed to work for this amount of money. Any business that believes the teenager is getting duped can feel free to offer 'em a better paying job, or one with better benefits, and who knows? Maybe this teenager chose this specific 6-dollar job because they offered something like a scholarship, or because it's close to where they live, or because of some other external factor that made them decide that this was a good deal. There could be many reasons why this teenager chose this 6-dollar job. There could have been a business that offered more money, but this teenager did not look at only money. They looked at others things to consider, and so should you.
Wages and hours are not the only things people think about when looking for work. The economy is not that simple. Any business that can offer the best deal to an employee, and convince that employee that it's the best deal and not someone else, wins that employee. That's not duping. That's competition\.
If you step in and tell this teenager that they should not be working this job, you better either have proof, or have a business of your own that you can hire them for, that offers them a better deal. Otherwise, you leave them alone. Even if you're right about them being duped, they aren't going to quit their job and do nothing if you aren't participating in the competition with businesses for that teenager.
If the teenager is happy, and the employer is happy, but you're not happy because you feel they are getting duped, yet you have no business of your own to offer them, then why should they, or anyone for that matter, care that you aren't feeling happy? Why is it their problem whether or not their exchange of labor, money, benefits, and other valuables does not fit your subjective criteria?
The free market does not care about your feelings. The free market does not care if you feel that someone is getting duped in a certain situation and should not be. Employers and employees that agreed, and are satisfied, with the wages, hours, and other benefits that they freely agreed upon are not going to care about how you feel if you aren't offering the employee a better deal.
With arbitrary anti-duping measures that someone establishes, these employees and employers not only have to forge a contract that they can agree upon, but they must also forge one that you agree upon too, and one that agrees with your subjective standards. These subjective standards mean that employees and employers also have to take your feelings into account when forging a contract.
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@ResurgetExFavilla
@HistoryBuff
I think the wrong person got quoted.
Either way, I'm not saying that the poll is fake, flawed, or tainted. I'm saying that people should take these polls with a grain of salt and don't be afraid to question them if they're suspicious.
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Gallup found that 43% thought some form of socialism would be good for the country, putting socialism at a statistical tie with Trump
The problem with polls like these claiming that 43% of Americans or whatever favor socialism is that we don't know if the people who conduct these polls counted every single American of all ages, or if they cherry-picked a couple hundred/thousand Americans at random of specific age groups to see if they agreed with socialism.
This leads to people committing the Biased Sample Fallacy, where they interview 100, 1000, 10000, or 100000, Americans, and then claim "that 43% thought some form of socialism would be good for the country" simply because 43, 430, 4300, or 43000 Americans, respectively, agreed with it, without counting all of the other Americans to see if they would be okay with it.
It's like saying that 90% of the population agrees that rotten food is good for you, even though I only talked to 10 people, and 9 of them agreed, without checking with the rest of the millions of people to see if they agreed too.
"43%" does not necessarily mean 43% of the entire country's population. It could also just mean 43% of the people who participated in the poll/interview. I personally was never asked by this "Gallup" person if I would be okay with socialism. Were you?
A small, cherry-picked sample of people does not always represent an entire population.
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@HistoryBuff
The level of income inequality has reached ridiculous levels.
This is probably because too many people are spending years working at low-skilled jobs making minimum wage instead of developing a skill or trade that they can use to get into a better paying job. Because of this, income inequality will always exist, even under communism and socialism. Income inequality should not normally exist under communism or socialism, but, under communism, what happens is that people eventually get bored of everyone having the same stuff, and are eventually overcome by greed, which makes them want more than others, so they do things like steal and trade to acquire more, and, under socialism, it's easier for people to be lazy because the government takes care of them by taxing the wealthy and using it to pay for more benefits.
Do you really think that socialist policies like medicare for all would be super popular if the current economy was working well and everyone was succeeding?
There is no such thing as "everyone" succeeding. No economy has ever lead to that outcome. No economy will ever lead to that outcome. If there was such an economy that existed that would make everyone succeed, every country in the world would be adopting that perfect economy.
No, socialism is on the rise
What about all the people in places like Venezuela who are trying to get away from socialism and into capitalism? If socialism is supposed to be the best solution, why are they all trying to get as far away from it as they can? https://web.archive.org/web/20191109232439/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/20/world/americas/venezuela-refugees-colombia.html
because for a large percentage of the american people, the economy isn't working.
What do you mean by "isn't working"? Working, how?
If workers are well paid, then they have income they can use to buy things.
If a worker wants to be paid more money, they have to provide a good or service that people are both willing and able to pay more money for. You cannot expect someone working a low-skilled job behind a cash register 8 hours a day to be "well paid". The value of low-skilled labor is diminishing and/or being replaced by robots/automation. More and more people are looking for higher skilled labor.
They are advocating for them actually contributing to the society they are profiting off of
The rich are not "profiting off of" society. They profit off of the valuable goods/services/investments that they provide, which allows them to become wealthy in the first place. They are contributing to society by doing just that - investing in and providing valuable goods and services for many people. The creators of Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Instagram, Ebay, Youtube, and so many more valuable goods/services, are wealthy because they contributed to society by providing their highly valuable products and services. The amount of money that they make from that is the reward for their valuable product or service that they provided. Take away that reward (or reduce it by taxing them more) means that they are less likely to want to keep investing in and contributing to our country with their products/services, which is what Venezuela did.
Like Ethang5 said, "Tax the rich to feed the poor, till there are no rich no more."
People who advocate for removing regulations and corporate tax rates are advocating for corporations and the rich
It makes sense for the people who take big risks, the people who invest in a business, the people who invent something, the people who go that extra mile to get that extra knowledge needed to create that new product or service that helps so many people, the people who do more than just work a minimum wage job like the rest of the "workforce," like Mark Zuckerberg, to be rewarded with plenty of wealth. The wealth is the incentive. Take that incentive away (or even reduce it), and people won't take those big risks and invest in our country as much.
to have more rights than american citizens.
What extra "rights" are the wealthy getting, and aren't those wealthy people "american citizens" too? Are those extra rights like the right to be rewarded greatly for their valuable product or service that they provided for the country and/or the world, as well as the jobs they may also create? If so, why/how is that a bad thing?
It isn't right morally, but it is also terrible policy.
You're acting like the rich became rich by being selfish, and will continue to be selfish to increase their profits. This may be true for some rich people, but it doesn't apply to most of them. How is it not "right morally" that those who take those big risks, create those big businesses, make money work for them, develop a valuable marketable skill, and invent a product or service that benefits so many people, not be rewarded for their efforts?
It creates an environment where corporations will hurt anyone and everyone they want to in order to maximize their profits.
Except corporations do not profit off of hurting people. They profit off of, like I said, making investments, taking risks, providing a highly valuable product or service for others, and going that extra mile, doing far more than joining the thousands of low-skilled "workers" in the low-skilled "workforce" working a minimum wage job and expecting that alone to be enough to get by.
An example of a corporation profiting off of hurting people would be something like slavery, where they would kidnap people from their countries and bring them here to sell them, rape them, and/or make them work for little to no pay, against their will, while beating them publicly if they said or did anything they didn't like. Anyone that does profit off of something like this should be locked up.
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@Barney
There should also be the option to see how many characters you have left when typing posts, like in a debate.
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@Barney
Can you extend the character limit in the forums so I can add longer posts and not have to split a long post into 2 posts?
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@HistoryBuff
if camera's and motion sensors are enough to alert guards, then you don't need a fence that people can get over or through in a matter of minutes.
Having "a fence that people can get over or through in a matter of minutes" is better than no fence. It still helps, and if it keeps an illegal alien from coming here and raping/killing people, then you're saving lives without even knowing it.
The border is meant to be an extra layer of security; another obstacle that invaders have to overcome. It isn't meant to be the silver bullet solution to stopping invaders.
you just said that this gets him votes. Obviously that isn't from the illegal immigrants, since they can't vote.
They are starting to give certain voting rights to illegal aliens to allow them to vote in certain areas for certain things. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna893221
They're even putting illegal aliens in positions of power. http://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/amp/California-opens-state-boards-to-undocumented-14517946.php
Plus, those illegal aliens can come here and have anchor babies who will be able to grow up and vote in favor of the Democrats and their families.
We can easily help both. You don't need to attack immigrants to help veterans.
You're right. We can help them both, by having those immigrants come here legally instead of illegally, and also by helping the homeless people get into homes and get jobs.
Unfortunately the system is broken and republicans have no interest in fixing it. In fact they are actively working to make it harder to come in legally.
Just because it's hard to come here legally doesn't mean it's broken. The country is being flooded with more people than it can handle, which is why it is difficult and takes long to process asylum applications in the first place.
Instead of blaming our system for being "broken" blame the stupid countries that they come from with all the poverty, violence, and corruption that forces people to flee in the first place.
They could save millions if they moved to the suburbs.
I'm sure they don't want to go through the trouble of leaving their country and investing elsewhere, but people will do that if they have to, are able to, and feel that they have no other choice.
Alot of societies have faced economic ruin because they did exactly what you are suggesting. The end result is you destroy the middle class and create a system where there is only the rich and the poor.
A lot of societies like Venezuela have faced economic ruin because they did not do exactly what I am suggesting. The end result is you make the rich want to leave and go someplace else, and create a system where there is only the poor and the poorer. A society needs to have rich people to function, and there needs to be enough of them. The rich people are able to create businesses, services, products, and/or jobs, which helps the middle class and the poor. Without the rich, who will create plenty of jobs? Without the rich, who will take big risks and make big investments to uplift everyone?
Trickle Down Economics does not "destroy the middle class" like you say it does. Trickle Down Economics is meant to help rich, so they can, in turn, help the middle class, so they can, in turn, help the poor.
If it does destroy them, why hasn't it done so already?
Think about it this way: Say I'm rich, and you are middle class. With my wealth, I can increase your wage, hire more employees, and use my wealth to invest back into the business. With the extra money that you, and the other workers, have, you can pay additional taxes, help the government generate more tax revenue, which helps the government pay for SNAP and other benefits to help the poor.
However, if the government taxes me too much to the point where I am forced to move my wealth elsewhere, there won't be anyone to pay you more, hire more employees, pay them more, or create more wealth and expand. Then you won't have as much money to pay in taxes, and then the government won't have as much money to pay for services for the poor.
I don't know if that's exactly how it works, realistically, but that's the whole idea behind it.
And if the yacht was built in Italy and the hotel is in dubai, you have written off billions in tax revenue to hand that money off to a saudi prince who owns an expensive hotel.
That may be true, however, people from other countries can also do the same thing here, where they buy our goods/services and help us gain extra money. Different countries are helping each other this way. It's risky, i'll admit, but it can also work in our favor.
The much better plan is to raise revenue by taxing the people who can easily afford it so that you can work to protect the people who can't afford it.
What this whole issue boils down to is this: Both of our plans have flaws. Trickle down economics can help us as long as it leads to the rich, middle class, and poor all benefitting, but it can be risky since we could also lose wealth. Your plan to tax the wealthy can help us as long as the wealthy stick around and don't move elsewhere, but can be risky since taxing them too much will make them want to leave, ruining everything.
No plan is perfect, and you are right about the risks and potential downsides of Trickle Down Economics, but so far, it's working out just fine.
Both plans can help or hurt people, but it's matter of which plan would help more, which plan is riskier, and which plan has the biggest downside.
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@HistoryBuff
Dems offered him a deal that would have fully funded building the wall. He turned it down.
I'm not aware of such a deal taking place. Can you clarify when this happened, and what the deal was about, specifically?
You are talking about literally thousands of miles of border. There is not a guard within earshot of the vast majority of it.
You don't need to have guards at every section of the border. Cameras and motion sensors can help detect some of these people too. It's kind of like a car alarm. When you try to break in, it makes noise, drawing attention. At the border wall, you can use robots/machines with thermal cameras to detect people trying to cross, and then have armed border patrol agents investigate.
Another important thing to remember is that, even if you don't have guards at literally every part of the border, intruders who try to bypass the border wall aren't going to know which parts of the border wall are heavily monitored and which parts aren't.
This means that they would have to take a guess, pick a random part of the wall that they believe is safe, and hope that there's nobody there to shoot or apprehend them. They still run the risk of being caught. It isn't like these intruders have high-tech camera drones that they can use to scout out areas and see which places are heavily guarded and which places aren't.
Also, if the wall can be bypassed in a few minutes with basic tools, then why would it be worth spending billions on?
Because those without tools won't be able to get in. Not everyone has tools anyways. Many of these people, especially from the migrant caravans back in 2018, come empty handed anyways, with or without children. Having no border wall makes it even easier for them.
The majority of americans do not approve of the wall.
How do you know this? Was every single American asked by the government, going door to door, if they approved of it, or did the government just pick a couple thousand random people to see if they approved of it and assumed that the majority of Americans approved of it? Did American children, elderly, disabled, and prisoners also get a say in whether or not they approve of it?
A politician does something that his constituents want him to do that helps save lives
He is saving illegal lives at the cost of legal lives. He is prioritizing illegal aliens over the homeless American veterans who need a place to live. We should help ourselves before helping others. Those illegal aliens should be going through the legal asylum process.
they are handing money to the rich, and will then demand that the poor pay for it.
If you tax the wealthy too much, they will leave the country and invest elsewhere. This is what happened in Venezuela. They tried to help the poor by severely harming/taxing the rich, and the rich decided they weren't going to put up with it anymore and left.
It's better to tax the middle class than tax the poor or rich. The poor are too broke to afford to have to pay much taxes.
The rich will find loophopes to avoid paying much taxes or leave the country and take their wealth with them if they have to pay too much.
So the middle class pays the most taxes thanks to the rich having more money to pay them.
When the rich get "to buy an extra yacht, or stay in some obscenely expensive hotel in Dubai," that also helps the economy because the people who built that yacht make extra money, the people who operate that hotel and provide hotel service make extra money, and then they can spend or save that money, in order to help the economy.
The deficit does not occur mainly because of tax cuts. "The deficit occurs because the U.S. government spending of $4.75 trillion is higher than its revenue of $3.65 trillion." https://www.thebalance.com/current-u-s-federal-budget-deficit-3305783
The government is spending too much. It's spending more than it makes. That is what contributes to the deficit. Raising taxes on the wealthy won't magically fix that.
Tax cuts do result in the government making less money, but the government spends too much to begin with.
We're not demanding "that the poor pay for it." We're demanding that the government controls it's spending.
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