A commentary on "We Don’t Need to Prove “Jackie’s” Story "
http://msmagazine.com/blog/2014/12/11/we-dont-need-to-prove-jackies-story/
” When I heard that Jackie’s story was being questioned, though, my reaction was slightly different from that of my peers: My first thought was, “So what?” ”
So they already attacked the reputation of an entire frat and by extension everyone in it. They already shut down fraternity activities on the basis of this report. So it’s kinda important if it might not be true.
” but a larger part of me knows that the real devil is the rape culture that pervades college campuses.”
Then you should be looking at whether there is any evidence of said “rape culture” instead of claiming it doesn’t matter if an accuser told the truth. When Jackie’s word was undoubted, it mattered, it was evidence of both horrendous evil and official negligence of that evil. Now that it seems like her story isn’t true it’s irrelevant. Well which is it? Either accusations her case matters or it doesn’t.
“it doesn’t matter if Jackie’s story is discrepant in some areas.”
Nor does it matter if those discrepancies prove it’s a load of codswallop. And that’s the point. You don’t care about the truth, so why should we listen to you?
“What matters is that I have lost count of the number of friends who have been assaulted in my three-and-a-half years on campus.”
Then why not write about their cases rather than one of the most inconsistent accounts of criminal activity I’ve heard since the Hilton Hotel bombing?
“nothing will change how her story rang true for too many college women. I know it rang true for me.”
Then it rang true despite obvious and serious contradictions. Which means we can’t take your word for it that any of the other cases that “ring true” for you are true.
“When I told this story to my friends recently, the men looked at me in disbelief. But the women nodded their heads in agreement, as every one of them had experienced something similar.”
Really? Every single women in your social group was sexually assaulted? Even assuming that we take feminist numbers seriously (and God knows that’s a stretch) how likely is it that everyone had that experience? Even if you told only 4 friends at 1 in 4 that’s a 1 in 64 chance that they were all assaulted. On the other hand how likely is it that they all heard stories like yours, maybe about a
“friend of a friend”? Quite likely.
“Look up the pages upon pages of similar stories that women shared ”
Well the first one is similar in that it’s completely non-credible. She says that she decided to pursue it through the university because of privacy concerns, but “The police discouraged me from pursuing it criminally, saying that I didn’t have enough evidence to win.”. So which is it? Did the police tell you you had no chance or were you worried about the privacy?
The woman continues: “(I didn’t want future employers to Google me and see that I brought forward rape charges), ”
Really? That’s what she didn’t want employers to know? Is there any evidence that employers discriminate on that basis? Or did she not want them to know that she had made FALSE allegations? She claims she has all this evidence, yet nobody seemed to agree. She also claims that “Nicole Eramo … later told me she didn’t believe the studies that showed rapists, in particular, were repeat offenders of this heinous crime. “. Is that likely? Is it likely that someone would dispute a well-known statistic that isn’t disputed by anyone I know of, even MRAs who dispute almost everything feminists say is true. Look kindly stop taking anonymous reports as gospel and we’ll all be better off.
“One questionable account does not change the fact that the problem with rape cases isn’t false reporting; it’s underreporting. ”
Right because there can only be one problem with rape cases. Tell that to Brian Banks you ludicrous “reporter”.
“This is what we should take from Jackie’s story, whether it’s fully accurate or not:”
Or indeed accurate at all or not.
“Being a woman on a college campus today means feeling, at times, threatened, abandoned and scared. ”
No that’s not what you can take from this story. What you can take from it is that women can get their accusations taken seriously despite massive holes in their story, and whole fraternities of men can get punished unjustly and people like you don’t even apologize.
If you want to take the another lesson from a story, find another story. Or make one up, AGAIN. And yes I’m implying that you made up the story of your sexual assault.
Monday, December 29, 2014
Saturday, December 06, 2014
The vacuity of "Biology Of Intelligent Design " by Edgar A. Postrado
I have viewed the free kindle portion
of the book mentioned in the title. It is shit beyond all
belief.
P1When Richard Dawkins and his colleagues had cut the neck of the dead giraffe to study its laryngeal nerve, Dawkins said, “No engineer would ever make a mistake like that”. (playing time, 0:41 ∼ 0:43)
P1When Richard Dawkins and his colleagues had cut the neck of the dead giraffe to study its laryngeal nerve, Dawkins said, “No engineer would ever make a mistake like that”. (playing time, 0:41 ∼ 0:43)
P2In addition, at the end of the
video [entitled “Richard Dawkins Explains The Imperfection of the
Giraffe”], Richard Dawkins said, “Remember that a
designer, an engineer can go back
to the drawing board, throw away the old design, start fresh that
looks more sensible. A designer has foresight, evolution
can’t go back to drawing board.
Evolution has no foresight.” (playing time, 3:50 ∼ 4:04) .
Engineer! Engineering in biology! Thus, a person who has an
engineering degree like me could
solve or scientifically explain “structural problems” in biology
since an engineer was quoted as a reasonable or reliable
person in the design of any
structures. Thank you, Richard Dawkins!"
Well no you've misunderstood the quote,
which isn't that hard to understand. What the engineer would have to
explain is why things like the giraffe's laryngeal nerve grow as they
do. Engineering doesn't help you there since anyone with any training
in engineering or the intelligence to figure things out for
themselves would realise that it's a bad design. What helps is
knowing about the theory of evolution and why it explains how a
structure could be preserved even if it isn't the structure an
engineer would pick for it's task. That you misunderstood something
so basic doesn't bode well.
“It is true that an engineer is
both a scientist and an engineer since an engineer uses science and
mathematics to construct, in my case, any structures for human’s
usage.”
Using science doesn't make you a
scientist. Using the scientific method to discover things does.
“thus, I think that I am the most
qualified person on earth in science so far to discuss biological
structures in biology.”
And yet you failed to understand the
significance of the giraffe's laryngeal nerve and what knowledge you
need to understand it's significance.
"P5In Chapter 1. Focusing
Science. “This chapter will show you how our real scientists
conduct science – real science. The same technique that I used in
dethroning the Theory of Evolution (ToE).
This chapter will tell you how
Intelligent Design could replace an erroneously reigning theory by
the discovery of the categorization process (or universal boundary
line, UBL) of all X in the entire natural realm.”
A categorisation process will have no
effect on the theory of evolution. It doesn't matter what categories
you put things into, they either have the qualities they have or they
don't. These qualities either conform to the ToE and no other or they
don't. You simply don't understand even the basics of how science is
done.
“The figure was posted in the
online discussion forum since many people believed that the Theory of
Evolution was poised to be replaced by religious leaders in the
opposing camps. That means, there are really a fierce debate between
the proponents of ToE and the other camps in biology.”
There is no such “fierce debate”.
There is believers in Darwinian Evolution and fringe nutters.
“For example, Einstein had
assumed that the speed of light was constant in the universe (in a
vacuum) and used this assumption to calculate his general relativity,
GR.”
No he showed that the physics only
works if the speed of light is constant. He did the absolute opposite
of assuming something.
“CHAPTER2.
FALSIFYING THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION
P1/P66 The Theory of Evolution
(ToE) was really very, very, very hard to be falsified. ToE was
grounded and was hidden in a camouflaged hiding place – 'insulated
place'. Our scientists had camouflaged ToE unknowingly for the span
of 160 years! “
No you lying piece of shit they have
not done anything of the kind. They've openly declared what ToE is
and what it means, and published the explanation in book after book.
“P2 Science has made a lot of many assumptions and initial conditions for any hypotheses or explanations.”
Such as what? What was assumed in the
formulation of the ToE?
“The first assumption was started
by Darwin and was replaced and upgraded by the new generation
scientists many times to conform to the “camouflaged” evidences.”
What assumption you lying shit?
“The original name for Darwin’s
theory was “Darwinian Evolution. The changes that they had made
were sometimes named as “Neutral Darwinism”, “Social
Darwinism”, “Universal Darwinism”, and “Neo-Darwinian
Evolution”. “
The fact that you have not idea what
“social Darwinism" is and therefore included it among names
for the ToE shows how ignorant you are. But none of these names were
used to disguise the ToE.
“P3 Nevertheless, I will show you
how the Intelligent Design had discovered that those assumptions of
ToE were partly, if not all, wrong (thus falsified) and must be
replaced with another, new scientific assumptions for our scientific
knowledge of the natural world. “
What assumptions you massive dickhead?
“P5 By scientific definition, as
being used by science and ToE’s scientists, “evolution” is
simply defined as “change over time”. That is how ToE’s
scientists define “evolution” in a simplest and easiest way. But
in biology, the word “evolution”, as one “word”, refers to
“biological evolution”. However, when scientists used that in
general topics in science, the meaning is always mostly the same –
biological evolution. “
Right so stop wasting our time and tell
us what the definition of “biological evolution is, since that's
what we're talking about.
"In the broadest sense,
evolution is merely change, and so is all-pervasive; galaxies,
languages, and political systems all evolve. Biological evolution ...
is change in the properties of populations of organisms that
transcend the lifetime of a single individual. The ontogeny of an
individual is not considered evolution; individual
organisms do not evolve. The changes in populations that are
considered evolutionary are those that are inheritable via the
genetic material from one generation to the next. Biological
evolution may be slight or substantial; it embraces everything from
slight changes in the proportion of different alleles within a
population (such as those determining blood types) to the successive
alterations that led from the earliest protoorganism to snails, bees,
giraffes, and dandelions." - Douglas J. Futuyma in Evolutionary
Biology, Sinauer Associates 1986 [06]
Great you could have just led off with
that.
“P7 Biologists in our current
naturalistic science”
Which is to say in our current science
because science by definition is naturalistic.
“P8 Scientists from ToE’s
camp normally use the term “evolution” with some combinations
like,
“micro-evolution” and
“macro-evolution”. “
Who “normally uses the term evolution
with combinations like “micro-evolution” and “macro-evolution”
besides creationist frauds?
“P10 Let me show you why ToE must
be replaced through series of falsifications.”
And if you can let me nominate you for
the Nobel Prize.
“Falsification and Collapse of
ToE 1:
ToE’s false assumption about
“intelligence” and its application.
P11These are the primary reasons
why the Theory of Evolution (ToE) is not scientifically correct and
must be replaced. To camouflage ToE unknowingly, the topic of
intelligence was deliberately neglected and separated in biological
sciences or related fields. ToE had “erroneously assumed” the
followings:
P121. “Intelligence” postdates
evolution –ToE scientists implied indirectly and assumed
scientifically that intelligence has nothing to do in biology.”
The ToE does not assume that
intelligence postdates evolution. They simply don't need intelligence
to explain evolution and see no evidence for it before life evolved
intelligent beings. That's not the same as assuming there was no
intelligence before life evolved it. If there was intelligence before
there was life that would not affect the evidence for evolution or
the validity of the theory.
Secondly you claim that it “falsely”
assumes that intelligence postdates evolution, but where is the
evidence of intelligence before evolution? There is none you lying
fraud.
“ToE assumed that before
intelligence or its principles were formed, or even before the living
organisms were formed on the face of the planet earth, intelligence -
as an idea, a principle, and a concept - did not exist.”
No it simply didn't find any evidence
that they did because there is none.
“ That is the reason why ToE
ignored “intelligence” in all of its explanation in biological
science. “
No they ignored it because it's not
necessary for the theory. If there was something in biological
science that required intelligence to
explain it you'd just mention that instead of this long smear of
bullshit about what the ToE assumes.
“In addition, the second reason
was the difficulties of knowing “intelligence”. Scientists who
endorse ToE deliberately ignored the topic of “intelligence” due
to ignorance of intelligence. “
No the ignored it because it was
irrelevant. There was no need to think about the presence of
intelligence before evolution of intelligent living beings because
there is no evidence of it.
“P13 However, when simple
scientific experiment of raw egg and tissue papers in Intelligent
Design was made (as shown in the book “The New Intelligent Design ,
Turning The Scientific World Upside Down”), this assumption of ToE
was found to be incorrect.”
Ok I'm calling bullshit on this claim,
because if someone had found evidence of intelligence existing before
life they'd again, get the Nobel prize. Again you're a lying piece of
shit.
“Before complete life forms existed, DNA and cell must exist first.”
Nope, there is no evidence that the
first life had either DNA or a cell, now fuck off until you've done
basic research.
“And they both follow this pattern X + X’, a pattern for any intelligently designed objects (intellen) of Intelligent Design . “
And a pattern which you haven't defined
in this book, conveniently leaving it in a book I can't read without
paying for it. Needless to say nothing about these supposed patterns
was subject to peer review or any other method of sorting out
bullshit from truth.
“P14 The correct scientific assumption and explanation is, "Intelligence predates evolution since Intelligent Design had detected that intelligence, as principle of creating universe and life, was used in the origin of both universe and life." “
You're stating the conclusion as an
argument you shitty, shitty person.
“P15 By how? Life has a defense mechanism, cell has a defense mechanism,”
So what? They evolved AFTER life
already existed.
“and the universe had the ratio of matter to anti-matter that both denote as the
product of asymmetrical phenomena
(X + X’),”
A term which you've made up which means
nothing. Yet again you're hoping people will buy your other shitty
book to learn what this actually means. Spoiler alert, it's still
bullshit.
“which falls into the category of
intelligence (intellen), and not purely natural process (PNP) or
naturen.”
HOW DO YOU KNOW? You seem to be saying
that when something has more of something than something else that
proves that there is intelligence. That's obvious bunkum and only a
really deluded creep like you would know that.
“Therefore, ToE is incorrect and is falsified.”
Non sequitor and a half.
“ToE assumed that intelligence did not exist or if it existed, could not be accounted for the appearance of new species i.e. speciation.”
Again it does not assume that. It
simply observes that it's completely unnecessary to explain the
observed phenomena.
“Since intelligence was very hard to be defined and the understanding of intelligence was still obscure, ToE’s scientists or scientists in the field of biology and its related fields, deliberately neglected “intelligence”, assuming that intelligence, as principle, had no role in speciation.”
You know retard if you would stop
repeating your moronic lies there would be room in this book for the
definitions of the shit you use to try to disprove evolution and I
wouldn't have to guess what you meant.
“ ToE’s scientists could not even differentiate “natural” to “supernatural” scientifically. “
By definition “supernatural” isn't
scientific you moron.
“P17The correct scientific assumption and explanation is: intelligence is not the product of evolution since before “life” could evolve and living organism could produce intelligence, the defense mechanism of DNA,”
What “defence mechanicism are you
talking about you fucking retard? Are you talking about some sort of
immune system? Or a DNA error-checking system? Because there's no
evidence of either existing before evolution worked to create them.
“cell,”
Again, you're assuming the first life
had cells for which you have no evidence.
“or life was already existing – a typical asymmetrical phenomenon (X + X’) that falls into
the category of intelligence.”
No it doesn't. You can't just say
“asymmetrical phenomenon” and then claim intelligence you
fucktard.
“In addition, defense mechanism too of all species is part of intelligence since it follows this pattern (X + X’).”
What defence mechanisms, you lying
little shit? And where is the evidence they did not evolve?
“Thus in speciation, intelligence is being used.”
No you lying little shit not “thus”
you haven't even talked about speciation.
“P183. Intelligence has no role in making X, for whatever X is subject for study in science. “
Again, not an assumption.
“Since our current science did not yet discover the real intelligence and its definition,”
What real intelligence? So far you
haven't shown any evidence of intelligence.
“then, categorizing or classifying an X event, phenomenon, or process was very difficult since there would be no basis for this classification.”
And there still isn't you lying little
toad.
“ Carl Linnaeus did not yet discover Eventonomy, or the real Intelligent Design, together with Taxonomy,”
And nobody else has either because it's
shit like everything else that you've bullshitted on about.
“thus, every time ToE’s
scientists explained a process or event, it would always have one
categorization, natural process or natural event - without
intelligence.”
And that always worked fine. If there
was any event or process that couldn't be explained without
intelligence you'd mention it, but you don't because you're LYING.
“Because of this dilemma, all X
events (or processes) were all non-intelligent events since there
were no criteria for intelligence.”
You don't need a criteria for
intelligence to distinguish events requiring it from events that
don't. It's quite clear that EbyNS isn't intelligent, if there was
anything that wasn't explained by it you haven't shown it.
“There were also no criteria to
differentiate non-intelligence from intelligence. “
Other than of course people who realise
you're talking shit and people who don't.
“P19That assumption (listed as
P18 No. 3) in naturalistic science is not correct since intelligence
had already been defined and detected by Intelligent Design .”
No it hasn't, you can't just claim
you've discovered something and expect us to believe it you useless
waste of shit.
“Intelligence too was detected
prior to the existence of all living organisms and prior to the
origin of universe since this pattern (X + X’) was detected.”
What fucking pattern you lying piece of
filth?
“P20 Thus, ToE had been falsified
and collapsed since ToE’s explanation in naturalistic science was
incorrect by using incorrect assumptions. “
Repeating this doesn't make it true.
“Falsification and Collapse of
ToE 2:
The false assumption of the
non-existence of Intelligent Agent (IA) or if Intelligent exist, IA
does not use intelligence’s principle.
P21Naturalistic science had not yet
“proven” or “shown” that “God or Intelligent Agent” exist
or not (by searching the entire universe).”
They don't need to. All they need to do
is show there is no evidence for it, and they have.
“Naturalistic science had no way
of testing the existence of those deities because no method of
categorizing of things (like using intelligence, as one method) had
been used.”
Well if there's no way of testing it
then it's unverifiable bullshit. So fuck off. But science can
categorise intelligence, and could detect it if there was any
evidence. The problem is you're insane and think that categories
prove things. They do not, they only DESCRIBE things already known or
suspected to exist.
“Therefore, the current science
has no power or no knowledge to either denounce or renounce those
God, deities, or the likes, as real or unreal.”
They can however point out that none of
the claims about God, deities etc. have any evidence for them, and
they have. Of course you don't care because you're a lying shit.
“In addition, naturalistic
science did not yet find, did not yet discover, or did not yet
disclose intelligence. Thus, it had no categorization method at all.”
Oh fuck off with your categories.
“P22 Intelligence was too elusive
and too hard for our science and scientists to know. Therefore, the
easiest way was to assume that intelligence and “God” or
“Intelligent Agent” did not exist based on ignorance.”
No it's not that the easiest thing was
to assume that, it's just that there is no evidence of it and those
claiming something exists have to provide evidence.
And that brings me to the end of the
free bullshit. God I hate this man and the asshole who made me
look him up.
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Objective morals and it's opposite, religion.
Bizarrely, many atheists are bothered by the idea of objective or absolute morality. They seem to feel that it means judgmental, intolerant, sexually repressive morality as represented by the Abrahamic religions. Similarly the representatives of said religions seem to believe that their dogmas are objective morality and indeed the only possible source of objective morality. This is the opposite of the truth, objective morality does not need to be based on, and indeed cannot be based on, the Abrahamic religions.
To see why let's define what me mean by "morality". Morality is the study of which choices _ought_ to be made, and which _ought_ not to be. Moral goodness/badness comes from making right/wrong decisions. Therefore morality must be individual because only individuals make choices. Where the statement is made that "the community/nation/government" made a decision we find that in fact individuals made decisions. Even in cases where the decision was made by voting individuals decided how to vote, and those who voted against a decision cannot be held responsible for it. Therefore the concept of "collective" guilt is a nonsense. The only guilt or virtue is individual. Yet the Abrahamic make guilt not only collective, but species wide. We are asked to believe that an "objective" moral standard holds us responsible for actions that took place before our birth. It would be like holding me responsible for the assassination of JFK, over 5 years before I was born. This is the doctrine of "original sin", that punishment is valid for acts which the person could neither cause nor prevent. In the words of Ayn Rand "They call [this] a morality of mercy and a doctrine of love for man.".
But to judge the Abrahamic religions only for how they think about sin is to miss half their depravity. How they think about forgiveness is, if anything worse. Having designated the mere fact of our existence as a crime worthy of eternal pain* they offer a way to be forgiven. Note that the possibility that one might be _worthy_ of forgiveness is denied us. Our moral status cannot be changed by our own acts, but only by the decision of God to forgive us. So not only is guilt the result of someone else's actions, so is forgiveness. A morality based on nothing you do is not objective, it's not morality and it's not worth considering.
So what we're advised to do is beg for a forgiveness that we don't deserve. Note what is being suggested, to try to gain something without deserving it. This is by definition not moral. The definition of something not deserved is something it is not moral to choose to gain, at least not until some action can be taken to deserve it. The method of gaining this undeserved thing is begging and obedience. Yet begging cannot change whether something is deserved. Begging is an attempt to convince someone of the rightness of an action, not through demonstrating it is right for them, or morally right, but beneficial for someone who deserve the benefit but is pitiable. The justification for us being forgiven is that someone else was punished for our sins. But since moral status is individual, the punishment must logically be individual as well. Since rightful punishment must, by definition a response to a particular moral status, punishing someone for someone else's crime is incoherent. The moral status of one cannot depend on the actions of another.
So if objective morality cannot come from the Abrahamic religions, can it exist at all? Well yes, and it's simply proved. Christopher Hitchens said: "I would submit that the doctrine of vicarious redemption by human sacrifice is utterly immoral. I might if I wished … say, “look, you’re in debt, I’ve just made a lot of money out of a God-bashing book, I’ll pay your debts for you” … I could say, if I really loved someone who’d been sentenced to prison, “if I could find a way of serving your sentence, I’d do it” … I could do what Sydney Carton does in A Tale of Two Cities … “I’ll take your place on the scaffold,” but I can’t take away your responsibilities, I can’t forgive what you did, I can’t say you didn’t do it, I can’t make you washed clean. The name for that in primitive Middle Eastern society was scapegoating. You pile the sins of the tribe on a goat and you drive that goat into the desert to die of thirst and hunger; and you think you’ve taken away the sins of the tribe: a positively immoral doctrine that abolishes the concept of personal responsibility upon which all ethics and all morality must depend.”. This is clearly an objective moral truth, which means that objective moral values are possible. They're just not possible with the false claims of the mainstream religions.
So is an objective morality compatible with a God? I can't see why not, if there is a non-contradictory definition of God. However it doesn't require it. By definition objective morality depends on the evidence available. If there absolute morality depended on a God, and God wasn't objectively proven, then it wouldn't be objective morality. It would merely be the morality that people who think God existed think is objectively true. But there is no reason to believe that an objective morality does depend on God.
* By some interpretations it's only eternal oblivion and denial of eternal life. Personally I think eternal life would be a curse but oh well...
Friday, May 02, 2014
Counterforce vs. Uber, let's call someone a sociopath because we don't like them.
These counterforce people are disgusting. It starts with an accusation that the Theta Xi fraternity is a" pool of misogynists, rapists, and business contacts,", as though those three were equivalent. Although I'm pretty sure I know which group they're really upset by. They don't link to any evidence of a Theta Xi member raping anyone, let alone that Theta Xi members are more likely to rape someone.
"His first venture was a knock-off Napster, designed to divert money from the music industry and into his own pockets."
Because the music industry is full of people who deserve the money they get.
"At an early age, Kalanick became convinced that competition was the only force that could motivate him to do anything, "
"But to this foolish young capitalist, his defeat was only fuel to his blossoming free-market ideology."
Yes he's so foolish not to have accepted defeat and given up on being an entrepreneur. It's not like he sold a company for 15 million dollars. Oh wait he did. But it's not like he started another company that's rapidly growing and profitable, oh wait, he did. Yeah they're right, that Kalanick guy is a moron.
"In his twisted imagination, he ascribed this success solely to himself and his ability to compete, ignoring the fact that he was harvesting the natural urge of people to share with each other and converting that human desire into revenue."
Did he say anything at all to even suggest that he believed this? Or is this just counterforce being arrogant twats who don't feel they have to do any research and can just ascribe opinions to people?
"For six years he extracted capital from all the people trusting enough to use his services."
So did any of those "trusting" people regret trusting him? Because if they didn't then why use the word "trusting"? Logically anyone who uses a service trusts the service provided to some extent. Counterforce doesn't feel the need to show that the trust was unearned or betrayed, because to them, merely making money is evil.
"He seems to believe that his inner capitalist strength is the prime generator of all his wealth, and in this regard he is no different than any of the other Uber Men of the tech world."
His "inner capitalist" is the prime generator of all his wealth. How did all that wealth get generated? By customers using the services that were available SOLELY because he made the decision to provide them. And that's why counterforce hates him, because they can't even begin to equal his achievement and they know it.
"This Uber Man trampled on gods, morals, everything that kept him from becoming what he was: a dancing star, born of chaos."
And that has what to do with Kalanick? What morals has he trampled on, let alone what gods?
"In the three short years since then, Uber has made significant headway towards creating more and more service jobs catering to the ruling classes. "
And that's bad, because it's far more important to not cater to the ruling classes than to create jobs so people can eat. Of course it's news to the average Uber user that they're part of the "ruling class", probably because counterforce made that bit up.
"Kalnick views the contractors who generate his sacred capital as expendable pawns. If a driver suddenly drops from a 4.8 driving score to a 4.7, they are terminated without any explanation. "
Actually I think a drop in a performance measurement is an explanation.
"In this competitive atmosphere, drivers are constantly fiddling with their smart phones and stressing about their next fare. During one such moment, a money-obsessed driver ploughed into a mother and her children on the streets of San Francisco. "
Actually there appears to be no evidence that he was checking his smartphone at the time, and if he was it's incredibly irresponsible since he was making a turn. Far from encouraging this behaviour Uber AUTOMATICALLY suspend people who are involved in a "serious police matter". So how is Kalanick responsible for someone else's negligence?
"Since then, Uber has assumed liability for its drivers at all times, but we want to assure Kalanick that the ghost of Sofia will never leave him. Kalanick doesn’t seem to notice her, however."
Well that's probably because there's no evidence it's his fault. If Uber drivers were shown to be more dangerous than regular drivers or taxi drivers he might have reason to feel guilty. But to blame him because one of the hundreds of drivers he employs had a fatal accident is absurd. By that standard every CEO of every large transport corporation, no matter how careful and conscious of safety, would eventually have to collapse in tears of guilt.
" Jen is the Seattle Community Manager for Uber and seems to be very dedicated to the CEO and the company."
Well yes, it would be strange if the PR manager didn't seem devoted.
"Over 36,000 people in Seattle signed their names on pieces of paper provided by Jen and her minions. 630,000 people live in the city, and only a minority of them use Uber. "
So they got 5.7% of the cities population to sign a petition. That suggests that either Seattle is a VERY drunk town or they didn't get them all in bars. In any case surely the fact that 5.7% of the population signed a petition says something about the popularity of Uber. Like maybe people think it's a bloody good idea?
"By marketing itself as way to get shitfaced drunk and then get home safely, Uber is hoping to clean the pockets of everyone who wants to feel free on a night like this one. "
Oh no, they're marketing themselves as a way to do something that they actually are a way to do. Horrors!
"On top of the forty dollars they might spend on booze and food, the average Saturday night drunk can now spend another thirty on an Uber cab."
Which is so much worse than spending the money for a regular cab that it takes an hour to find.
"Without the desire to escape produced by this sick capitalist society, Uber would be lacking in drunks to ferry home every night."
Ok, let's assume for a moment that the only, or even the main, reason someone would drink too much to safely drive is our sick capitalist society. Did he create said society? No. Would it still exist even if he didn't offer a convenient way to get home without driving drunk? Yes. So how is it his fault?
"But of course none of the success of Uber has anything to do with the passengers, or with their misery,"
I'm pretty sure Kalanick is aware that his success has to do with customers. People who launch more than one successful business venture tend to be aware of the importance of customers to their success.
"or with Jen’s fierce and terrifying identification with her CEO. "
Yes it's so terrifying that Jen says good things about the guy who pays her to say good things about his business. It's like she's a monster.
"Burgess, Bagshaw, and Rasmussen were the only council members to oppose the cap. Nevertheless, despite their allegiances and power plays, it was the capitalists that decided the matter for the City of Seattle, not the other way around."
Citation needed. The "City of Seattle" or rather 9 people who think they can use force in it's name, decided the issue. The fact that Counterforce doesn't distinguish between "the City of Seattle" and the government of Seattle is a hint that they're not anarchists. But let's examine the facts. Uber came with a petition with tens of thousands of signatures. Six out of 9 councilors decided to not limit their activity. How is that the capitalists deciding the matter? It's pretty much democracy in action. Of course Counterforce is so utterly ignorant or dishonest that they didn't mention the influence of the traditional cab companies, who I'm sure tried to get the cap passed. Of course these "anarchists" try to solve problems by using government force, so you can't expect consistency.
" Travis Kalanick wants to undermine every City Hall he encounters and render its laws meaningless. "
And that's bad how? Let's look at precisely what laws he wants to "undermine". They are laws specifically set up to privilege capital at the expense of labour. Now I think Marx is an idiot and his categories largely meaningless. Nevertheless in this we see a literal Marxist class struggle between the cab companies and those who wish to sell taxi-driving services. Between labour and capital. Capital wishes to restrict competition so that they can keep profits artificially high. Labour just wants to work for what their services are worth. Counterforce is on the side of capital. Worse they're on the side of capitalized State-provided privilege.
" But in the end, he wants the laws to favor him and him alone."
No, he actually wants the laws to be neutral towards him. He isn't demanding a restriction on competition, or hundreds of millions in government loans or guarantees, or that the city build him a stadium and rent it to him at below commercial rates. He's simply asking that he be allowed to sell something somebody wants.
" Like the besieged capitalists in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, people like Travis Kalanick will compete with everyone on their way to the top, "
Because competing with people is bad somehow.
"trampling on their workers"
How is he trampling on the workers? As I understand it the people who work for him are quite happy with the pay and conditions. Or do you mean the workers employed by his competitors? Are you saying that providing a better service at lower cost is "trampling" on those who provide a worse one at higher cost? That's insane. It's not his fault that the taxi companies can't provide what's wanted at a reasonable price. Nor is it his fault that the workers in those taxi companies don't get the money they deserve. Nothing stops those drivers from switching to working for Uber, and many are. But even if they couldn't, why does the travelling public owe them a living? Why do they get to say "I know you can get a ride better and quicker somewhere else, but you should pay me anyway, because I deserve it.". If counterforce is so concerned about the workers why have they NOT ONCE mentioned the $400K price of a taxi medallion? Scrapping the need for that would free up thousands of dollars a year in unneeded finance costs that could go to the drivers. Yet this is not mentioned.
"With the click of a button, Kalanick will completely destabilize and undermine African immigrant communities in Seattle. "
"Dozens of cab owners are currently threatened by the unrestrained expansion of Uber,"
I very much doubt African immigrants could afford the $400K medallion. If counterforce really cares about the poor immigrants they had DECADES to protest the unfair medallion system. They did not. Therefore they don't give a damn about the poor Africans.
" If you hate arbitrary authority, if you know how to share, and if you want the people around you to be safe, you’re probably an anarchist."
Says someone who a) lauded the attempt to impose arbitrary authority, b) is actively opposing a way to share, and c) has not even tried to find out what is safest.
Finally, on a personal note. You're scum. Seriously that you would use the death of an innocent to stop poor people getting jobs, with no evidence for your view of what caused her death, makes you the lowest of fascist sympathizers. And yes, I said fascist, for that is what you advanced in practice.
"His first venture was a knock-off Napster, designed to divert money from the music industry and into his own pockets."
Because the music industry is full of people who deserve the money they get.
"At an early age, Kalanick became convinced that competition was the only force that could motivate him to do anything, "
"But to this foolish young capitalist, his defeat was only fuel to his blossoming free-market ideology."
Yes he's so foolish not to have accepted defeat and given up on being an entrepreneur. It's not like he sold a company for 15 million dollars. Oh wait he did. But it's not like he started another company that's rapidly growing and profitable, oh wait, he did. Yeah they're right, that Kalanick guy is a moron.
"In his twisted imagination, he ascribed this success solely to himself and his ability to compete, ignoring the fact that he was harvesting the natural urge of people to share with each other and converting that human desire into revenue."
Did he say anything at all to even suggest that he believed this? Or is this just counterforce being arrogant twats who don't feel they have to do any research and can just ascribe opinions to people?
"For six years he extracted capital from all the people trusting enough to use his services."
So did any of those "trusting" people regret trusting him? Because if they didn't then why use the word "trusting"? Logically anyone who uses a service trusts the service provided to some extent. Counterforce doesn't feel the need to show that the trust was unearned or betrayed, because to them, merely making money is evil.
"He seems to believe that his inner capitalist strength is the prime generator of all his wealth, and in this regard he is no different than any of the other Uber Men of the tech world."
His "inner capitalist" is the prime generator of all his wealth. How did all that wealth get generated? By customers using the services that were available SOLELY because he made the decision to provide them. And that's why counterforce hates him, because they can't even begin to equal his achievement and they know it.
"This Uber Man trampled on gods, morals, everything that kept him from becoming what he was: a dancing star, born of chaos."
And that has what to do with Kalanick? What morals has he trampled on, let alone what gods?
"In the three short years since then, Uber has made significant headway towards creating more and more service jobs catering to the ruling classes. "
And that's bad, because it's far more important to not cater to the ruling classes than to create jobs so people can eat. Of course it's news to the average Uber user that they're part of the "ruling class", probably because counterforce made that bit up.
"Kalnick views the contractors who generate his sacred capital as expendable pawns. If a driver suddenly drops from a 4.8 driving score to a 4.7, they are terminated without any explanation. "
Actually I think a drop in a performance measurement is an explanation.
"In this competitive atmosphere, drivers are constantly fiddling with their smart phones and stressing about their next fare. During one such moment, a money-obsessed driver ploughed into a mother and her children on the streets of San Francisco. "
Actually there appears to be no evidence that he was checking his smartphone at the time, and if he was it's incredibly irresponsible since he was making a turn. Far from encouraging this behaviour Uber AUTOMATICALLY suspend people who are involved in a "serious police matter". So how is Kalanick responsible for someone else's negligence?
"Since then, Uber has assumed liability for its drivers at all times, but we want to assure Kalanick that the ghost of Sofia will never leave him. Kalanick doesn’t seem to notice her, however."
Well that's probably because there's no evidence it's his fault. If Uber drivers were shown to be more dangerous than regular drivers or taxi drivers he might have reason to feel guilty. But to blame him because one of the hundreds of drivers he employs had a fatal accident is absurd. By that standard every CEO of every large transport corporation, no matter how careful and conscious of safety, would eventually have to collapse in tears of guilt.
" Jen is the Seattle Community Manager for Uber and seems to be very dedicated to the CEO and the company."
Well yes, it would be strange if the PR manager didn't seem devoted.
"Over 36,000 people in Seattle signed their names on pieces of paper provided by Jen and her minions. 630,000 people live in the city, and only a minority of them use Uber. "
So they got 5.7% of the cities population to sign a petition. That suggests that either Seattle is a VERY drunk town or they didn't get them all in bars. In any case surely the fact that 5.7% of the population signed a petition says something about the popularity of Uber. Like maybe people think it's a bloody good idea?
"By marketing itself as way to get shitfaced drunk and then get home safely, Uber is hoping to clean the pockets of everyone who wants to feel free on a night like this one. "
Oh no, they're marketing themselves as a way to do something that they actually are a way to do. Horrors!
"On top of the forty dollars they might spend on booze and food, the average Saturday night drunk can now spend another thirty on an Uber cab."
Which is so much worse than spending the money for a regular cab that it takes an hour to find.
"Without the desire to escape produced by this sick capitalist society, Uber would be lacking in drunks to ferry home every night."
Ok, let's assume for a moment that the only, or even the main, reason someone would drink too much to safely drive is our sick capitalist society. Did he create said society? No. Would it still exist even if he didn't offer a convenient way to get home without driving drunk? Yes. So how is it his fault?
"But of course none of the success of Uber has anything to do with the passengers, or with their misery,"
I'm pretty sure Kalanick is aware that his success has to do with customers. People who launch more than one successful business venture tend to be aware of the importance of customers to their success.
"or with Jen’s fierce and terrifying identification with her CEO. "
Yes it's so terrifying that Jen says good things about the guy who pays her to say good things about his business. It's like she's a monster.
"Burgess, Bagshaw, and Rasmussen were the only council members to oppose the cap. Nevertheless, despite their allegiances and power plays, it was the capitalists that decided the matter for the City of Seattle, not the other way around."
Citation needed. The "City of Seattle" or rather 9 people who think they can use force in it's name, decided the issue. The fact that Counterforce doesn't distinguish between "the City of Seattle" and the government of Seattle is a hint that they're not anarchists. But let's examine the facts. Uber came with a petition with tens of thousands of signatures. Six out of 9 councilors decided to not limit their activity. How is that the capitalists deciding the matter? It's pretty much democracy in action. Of course Counterforce is so utterly ignorant or dishonest that they didn't mention the influence of the traditional cab companies, who I'm sure tried to get the cap passed. Of course these "anarchists" try to solve problems by using government force, so you can't expect consistency.
" Travis Kalanick wants to undermine every City Hall he encounters and render its laws meaningless. "
And that's bad how? Let's look at precisely what laws he wants to "undermine". They are laws specifically set up to privilege capital at the expense of labour. Now I think Marx is an idiot and his categories largely meaningless. Nevertheless in this we see a literal Marxist class struggle between the cab companies and those who wish to sell taxi-driving services. Between labour and capital. Capital wishes to restrict competition so that they can keep profits artificially high. Labour just wants to work for what their services are worth. Counterforce is on the side of capital. Worse they're on the side of capitalized State-provided privilege.
" But in the end, he wants the laws to favor him and him alone."
No, he actually wants the laws to be neutral towards him. He isn't demanding a restriction on competition, or hundreds of millions in government loans or guarantees, or that the city build him a stadium and rent it to him at below commercial rates. He's simply asking that he be allowed to sell something somebody wants.
" Like the besieged capitalists in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, people like Travis Kalanick will compete with everyone on their way to the top, "
Because competing with people is bad somehow.
"trampling on their workers"
How is he trampling on the workers? As I understand it the people who work for him are quite happy with the pay and conditions. Or do you mean the workers employed by his competitors? Are you saying that providing a better service at lower cost is "trampling" on those who provide a worse one at higher cost? That's insane. It's not his fault that the taxi companies can't provide what's wanted at a reasonable price. Nor is it his fault that the workers in those taxi companies don't get the money they deserve. Nothing stops those drivers from switching to working for Uber, and many are. But even if they couldn't, why does the travelling public owe them a living? Why do they get to say "I know you can get a ride better and quicker somewhere else, but you should pay me anyway, because I deserve it.". If counterforce is so concerned about the workers why have they NOT ONCE mentioned the $400K price of a taxi medallion? Scrapping the need for that would free up thousands of dollars a year in unneeded finance costs that could go to the drivers. Yet this is not mentioned.
"With the click of a button, Kalanick will completely destabilize and undermine African immigrant communities in Seattle. "
"Dozens of cab owners are currently threatened by the unrestrained expansion of Uber,"
I very much doubt African immigrants could afford the $400K medallion. If counterforce really cares about the poor immigrants they had DECADES to protest the unfair medallion system. They did not. Therefore they don't give a damn about the poor Africans.
" If you hate arbitrary authority, if you know how to share, and if you want the people around you to be safe, you’re probably an anarchist."
Says someone who a) lauded the attempt to impose arbitrary authority, b) is actively opposing a way to share, and c) has not even tried to find out what is safest.
Finally, on a personal note. You're scum. Seriously that you would use the death of an innocent to stop poor people getting jobs, with no evidence for your view of what caused her death, makes you the lowest of fascist sympathizers. And yes, I said fascist, for that is what you advanced in practice.
Thursday, April 24, 2014
Reich gets it wrong again.
Reich gets it wrong again.
This is a commentary on "Raising Taxes on Corporations that Pay Their CEOs Royally and Treat Their Workers Like Serfs". Firstly it should be obvious that even the title is absurd. There are no corporations that force workers to pay them before they can quit their jobs or do any of the things that serfs were actually forced to do, like fight wars. But I expected no better from a man fundamentally ignorant of every subject I've ever heard him talk about.
"This growing divergence between CEO pay and that of the typical American worker isn’t just wildly unfair. "
Of course he doesn't actually support that claim. What would a "fair" ratio of CEO pay to worker pay consist of? I don't know. He hasn't defined what he means by "fair" in this (or any other) context. Nor has he included any information about the productivity or effort of either group or if and how these have changed. Certainly there's no information about how and why the efforts of either group might have changed in relative value. So in short this claim is pulled out of his fundament.
" It’s also bad for the economy. It means most workers these days lack the purchasing power to buy what the economy is capable of producing — contributing to the slowest recovery on record. "
There's no reason to believe that CEOs are less likely to spend and invest, thus creating demand, than other people. Transferring money doesn't make it better for the economy.
"Meanwhile, CEOs and other top executives use their fortunes to fuel speculative booms followed by busts."
Oh god does this idiot actually think that executive salaries, rather than government money creation, are the main source of speculative funds? Or that other people DON'T fuel the speculative booms? Do you think CEOs bought all those homes? Serious Reich you are pig-ignorant.
"Anyone who believes CEOs deserve this astronomical pay hasn’t been paying attention. The entire stock market has risen to record highs. Most CEOs have done little more than ride the wave."
Most is not all. Even assuming many or even almost all CEOs don't deserve their salary, what does this have to do with workers pay? It is shareholders, not workers who are worse off when CEOs are overpaid.
" but this week I’ll be testifying in favor of a bill introduce d in the California legislature that ... sets corporate taxes according to the ratio of CEO pay to the pay of the company’s typical worker. Corporations with low pay ratios get a tax break.Those with high ratios get a tax increase."*
So then workers in corporations with highly paid CEOs get a pay rise, while workers whose CEOs are less well paid will not. So workers have and incentive to work for high-CEO-pay firms, regardless of whether they create more value in those firms. On the other hand firms with highly paid CEOs have an incentive to fire their low-skilled workers and hire ones more skilled workers who demand higher pay. Bear in mind this is from a bill that he claims "at least creates the right incentives.". Yet even the most basic economic analysis shows the exact opposite. While the free market encourages entrepreneurs to find the resources least useful to others and use those, this does the exact opposite. Those whose labor is highly sought after find that it's even more so, those who labor is not will find it even less so. The incentive is to ignore the most efficient way to produce something and find the way that justifies the lower tax rate. This is about as far from "getting the incentives right" as it is possible to get.
For example take an extreme case. Suppose there was a CEO whose brother was mildly intellectually handicapped. As a result he has an interest in getting mildly intellectually handicapped people into the workforce and over the years became skilled at using their labor in place of non-handicapped people. Their labor is still not as useful as a "normal" persons, being worth only, say $8 an hour, compared to say, $12 an hour for others in the same job. This CEO would suffer a serious pay cut because he did this under the proposed legislation. While of course he might choose to pay the intellectually disabled the same rate as normal people ($12) but how can this be justified to the shareholders, whose money it is? How is it their responsibility as shareholders to provide extra money to the disabled? While it could be argued that taxpayers, citizens or even "the rich" should provide help there is no reason why owning particular shares makes you responsible.
But let's look at it from the other angle. This encourages shareholders to pay their CEO or highest paid employee less. Is this a good thing? Not necessarily, even if the effect was uniform across all firms, which it wouldn't be. By encouraging firms to pay people less than they would in a free market they encourage those people to quit and form their own companies, becoming self-employed and thus not subject to any limit on compensation. While there is nothing wrong with people doing this if it's justified by consumer demand, this isn't the case here. These executives would be starting a new firm not because they believe their actions would be most productive that way, but because they believe that they would be least taxed that way. Again, this is the exact opposite of "creates the right incentives.".
But there's more. Suppose that a CEO or other highest earner learns that the shareholders through the Board of Directors, will cut their pay from say, $5M to $1.25M because the medium wage of his workers is $5oK. He asks the Board members individually or in groups, if they really think he's not worth $5M. They all say "No we believe that you're worth the money, but the extra taxes we'd have to pay are a lot more than the extra value you give us, so we're going to cut your pay regardless.". The logical response to this is to say "Fine, but I'm going to steal the difference from the company and if you try to find out how I'm stealing it, I'll quit.". Notice the incentives here. The board know that the CEO is worth $5M, but that they can't pay him that. The CEO knows that he can't openly and legally get the money he's worth. They both know that if he takes the money covertly and illegally it's in neither of their interests to stop him. Of course the benefits need not be in direct theft. The age-old tradition of nepotism could get a real revival as a result of this. Why begrudge a man worth $3M more than paying him a few jobs for his nephews. Of course since the nephews aren't being employed for actual productivity they won't be put in the roles where they would create most value in the economy. Or even any value in the economy. So their potential labor value is wasted too. Of course he could employ female "friends" instead. It's just a bad incentive extravaganza here.
But let me get back to something I mentioned before, " even if the effect was uniform across all firms, which it wouldn't be. ". Firms differ in the average pay of their employees. This is not because some firms are run by generous, openhearted George Bailey types and some by Ebenezer Scrouge types. It's because some require lots of highly skilled labor and some require a lot of low-skilled labor. Because the labor of a worker with low skills can be substituted for by many other worker's labors their pay is low. Because the labor of a worker with high skills cannot be substituted for by many other worker's labor their pay is high.
Under this legislation CEOs and others who might become the most highly paid workers of a firm have an incentive to work for firms that mostly use high-value labor. This is not a good thing. There is nothing inherently better about the best management managing small numbers of high-paid workers as opposed to large number of low-paid workers. Walmart and McDonalds both need good managers just as much as Apple or Google. This legislation will result in those who management skills would be most useful to low-skill companies going to work for high-skill companies instead. As a result bad decisions will be made at the low-skill companies, resulted in wasted resources, less production, production less suited to what consumers actually want and even possibly the bankruptcy of the company or it's exit from the jurisdiction where this law applies.
"What about CEO’s gaming the system? Can’t they simply eliminate low-paying jobs by subcontracting them to another company – thereby avoiding large pay disparities while keeping their own compensation in the stratosphere?
No. The proposed law controls for that. Corporations that begin subcontracting more of their low-paying jobs will have to pay a higher tax. "
Note that the law only increases the taxes for decreases of 10% or more of full-time equivalent workers. This really shows how little thought went into this bill. I mean really who can't figure out that this will mean 9.8%-9.9% cuts in full-time equivalent year on year is an idiot. Which doesn't mean I'm surprised Robert Reich didn't figure it out. Note of course that the increase for firms that do decrease their direct employees by 10% is 50% of the previous tax rate. Note that this is regardless of whether firing these people pushes average pay of direct employees up, down, or nowhere. So far from being designed to plug a potential loophole in the legislation this clause is merely creates a tax on outsourcing. Of course even in this it's flawed. It's supposed to discourage substituting outsourced labor for direct employees. But what it actually does is discourage hiring indirect employees at the same time as firing a certain amount of direct employees. So if a company subcontracts for some people in industry A at the same time as shutting down an unprofitable plant in industry B they can get hit with the tax increase, even though the indirect employees are not substitutes for the direct employees, and may not even be paid less than them. The sheer lack of thought in this bill is astounding.
"For the last thirty years, almost all the incentives operating on companies have been to lower the pay of their workers while increasing the pay of their CEOs and other top executives."
Which incentives are these and incentives for who? As usual Reich states the simplest possible position and doesn't justify it. That's because his job is to have certain attitudes, not to actually deduce or explain facts or theories.
However some things have occurred that indirect do create and incentive for increasing CEO pay. The value of the CEO to the company can be expressed as a simple equation:
CEO value of company = (Capital of company * ( percentage return(CEO) - percentage return( best alternative CEO)) + cost of employing best alternate CEO
Best in this context means the alternative CEO with the highest value to the company.
So the larger the company the more worthwhile it is to pay for a better CEO. This is pretty obvious when you think about it, no matter how good a manager someone is it's not worth paying them $10M to manager a $20M business. So what has led to big companies? In a word government. Regulation is less costly to comply with per dollar of revenue for big companies, and regulatory rules have multiplied for decades. There are of course direct encouragements of scale like "Too Big To Fail" which is still worth about $83 Billion dollars** or about 3% of the US Federal tax take for 2013. Think about that. For ONE INDUSTRY the subsidy for being big equals 3% of what you pay to the government. And that's from ONE market distortion "Too Big To Fail". That Reich doesn't mention this means that he either doesn't want to, or can't, explain these distortions.
But there is something more than ignorance in the support of this bill by Reich and others. There is sheer evil. That seems like a strong term, so it's probably best to define it. I define evil as the willingness to inflict suffering on others for the sole reason of being allowed to do things that would not be justified if that suffering and the goals that suffering served were taken into account. So what suffering am I talking about, why wouldn't it be justified and what goals are being served? Well I hope I've explained the suffering.
So what is the goal of the legislation? We can dismiss the idea that it's goals are what it stated since it doesn't efficiently achieve those goals. So either the legislation has other goals that are concealed or the writers of the bill do not wish to examine how their bill would work. If the latter then the true goal of the legislation is to allow the writers of this bill and their supporters to pretend they are solving the problem rather than actually solve it. So the actual goal is to avoid the effort of thought an actual solution would require. There are a number of possible concealed goals and I think each requires it's own paragraph.
Firstly this bill would make it harder for big business compared to small and medium sized business. It's much less of a burden to pay your employees 1/25 of the bosses pay when the boss only manages 100 people compared to if he manages 10,000. So the bill can be thought of as essentially a subsidy for smaller businesses. But that doesn't explain why they sought this means to get an advantage. Why not simply target the many and various ways that large scale is advantaged? Because these various government programs have been promoted with various false justifications for years, and it's hard to attack the entrenched propaganda. Additionally the justification that the bill raises workers wages is more acceptable than that it raises the profits of a type of entrepreneurs. The bill also seeks to claim that the costs will be on CEOs who are unpopular, rather than shareholders in big business, who are not so unpopular (and include the pension funds of many voters).
Secondly this bill would benefit high skilled workers over low-skilled ones. Employing low-skilled workers would impose additional tax costs under this bill for many (although not all) firms. That means that some firms will be willing to pay more for high-skilled workers to substitute for larger numbers of low-skilled workers.
Thirdly and most importantly this bill diverts attention from the failure of regulators and other government employees to prevent the problems afflicting American workers. By focusing attention on the actions and incomes of employees the authors of this bill implicitly excuse anyone else of being the main cause of the workers distress. This is important as regulation has been increasing substantially for as long as anyone can remember. There will of course be many people who claim that regulation has reduced in the past decades. To them I ask by what measure? What measure of regulation actually decreased in the last, say 30 years? Pages of regulations? Estimated cost of regulations? Cost to start a new business? What? I've asked this several times of various people who claim the economy was deregulated and have never got an answer.
But even without being evil this bill would be grossly unfair. Consider the effect on the wages of two workers, identical in all ways except that one works at a big firm with a highly paid CEO and another works at a small firm with a lower paid CEO. Why does the former deserve a raise and the latter not? I've already mentioned the CEO who employs intellectually disabled people at lower rates of pay, how does he deserve a pay cut for employing the previously unemployable? And it's not just intellectually disabled, but physically disabled, recent immigrants whose language skills aren't great, the long-term unemployed, former convicts and many others are less productive than other potential employees. Hiring them at the wages their productivity justifies can serve both the shareholders and them, but it costs the CEO, how is that fair?
Of course the response might be "These people aren't at fault for their lower productivity***, why should they deserve less money that more productive people.". But business isn't about who deserves things but who can produce net value. Suppose that Klaus wanted to be a pilot, saved his money for courses and studied hard. The night before his final qualification exam he comes across some skinheads beating a Jewish girl, he intervenes and saves her, but gets "curb party" which loses him his right eye. With one eye nobody wants to hire him as a pilot and he has to take lower paid work. So does he deserve less money? Of course not. But his potential employers don't deserve to be the ones to pay the difference between what deserves and what his labor is worth. While there might be a case for government taxing people to reimburse Klaus for the difference, it's certainly not justifiable to slap it all on the firms that do employ him. So the argument that these people (might) deserve more is not a valid argument for making their employers pay them more. It's an argument for them being the subject of some sort of charity, or if necessary, government aid****.
Even more unjust than the differential effects on pay is the differential effect on employment. Low-skilled workers will lose jobs under this legislation, even though they are ostensibly one of those supposed to benefit. Why should they lose a job just so someone with more skills, who could have gotten another job anyway, can do their work? This is the biggest hypocrisy to me, the brutal abandonment of the very disadvantaged for the better paid workers. This is true sociopathy and it disgusts me.
* Full quote of two paragraphs so I won't be accused of taking it out of context.
"There’s no easy answer for reversing this trend, but this week I’ll be testifying in favor of a bill introduced in the California legislature that at least creates the right incentives. Other states would do well to take a close look.
The proposed legislation, SB 1372, sets corporate taxes according to the ratio of CEO pay to the pay of the company’s typical worker. Corporations with low pay ratios get a tax break. Those with high ratios get a tax increase."
** Source http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2012/wp12128.pdf via http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-02-20/why-should-taxpayers-give-big-banks-83-billion-a-year-
*** This is not true all the time but it's true some of the time.
**** I do not in fact favor government aid, but at least it would be better than sticking the costs on random employers.
This is a commentary on "Raising Taxes on Corporations that Pay Their CEOs Royally and Treat Their Workers Like Serfs". Firstly it should be obvious that even the title is absurd. There are no corporations that force workers to pay them before they can quit their jobs or do any of the things that serfs were actually forced to do, like fight wars. But I expected no better from a man fundamentally ignorant of every subject I've ever heard him talk about.
"This growing divergence between CEO pay and that of the typical American worker isn’t just wildly unfair. "
Of course he doesn't actually support that claim. What would a "fair" ratio of CEO pay to worker pay consist of? I don't know. He hasn't defined what he means by "fair" in this (or any other) context. Nor has he included any information about the productivity or effort of either group or if and how these have changed. Certainly there's no information about how and why the efforts of either group might have changed in relative value. So in short this claim is pulled out of his fundament.
" It’s also bad for the economy. It means most workers these days lack the purchasing power to buy what the economy is capable of producing — contributing to the slowest recovery on record. "
There's no reason to believe that CEOs are less likely to spend and invest, thus creating demand, than other people. Transferring money doesn't make it better for the economy.
"Meanwhile, CEOs and other top executives use their fortunes to fuel speculative booms followed by busts."
Oh god does this idiot actually think that executive salaries, rather than government money creation, are the main source of speculative funds? Or that other people DON'T fuel the speculative booms? Do you think CEOs bought all those homes? Serious Reich you are pig-ignorant.
"Anyone who believes CEOs deserve this astronomical pay hasn’t been paying attention. The entire stock market has risen to record highs. Most CEOs have done little more than ride the wave."
Most is not all. Even assuming many or even almost all CEOs don't deserve their salary, what does this have to do with workers pay? It is shareholders, not workers who are worse off when CEOs are overpaid.
" but this week I’ll be testifying in favor of a bill introduce d in the California legislature that ... sets corporate taxes according to the ratio of CEO pay to the pay of the company’s typical worker. Corporations with low pay ratios get a tax break.Those with high ratios get a tax increase."*
So then workers in corporations with highly paid CEOs get a pay rise, while workers whose CEOs are less well paid will not. So workers have and incentive to work for high-CEO-pay firms, regardless of whether they create more value in those firms. On the other hand firms with highly paid CEOs have an incentive to fire their low-skilled workers and hire ones more skilled workers who demand higher pay. Bear in mind this is from a bill that he claims "at least creates the right incentives.". Yet even the most basic economic analysis shows the exact opposite. While the free market encourages entrepreneurs to find the resources least useful to others and use those, this does the exact opposite. Those whose labor is highly sought after find that it's even more so, those who labor is not will find it even less so. The incentive is to ignore the most efficient way to produce something and find the way that justifies the lower tax rate. This is about as far from "getting the incentives right" as it is possible to get.
For example take an extreme case. Suppose there was a CEO whose brother was mildly intellectually handicapped. As a result he has an interest in getting mildly intellectually handicapped people into the workforce and over the years became skilled at using their labor in place of non-handicapped people. Their labor is still not as useful as a "normal" persons, being worth only, say $8 an hour, compared to say, $12 an hour for others in the same job. This CEO would suffer a serious pay cut because he did this under the proposed legislation. While of course he might choose to pay the intellectually disabled the same rate as normal people ($12) but how can this be justified to the shareholders, whose money it is? How is it their responsibility as shareholders to provide extra money to the disabled? While it could be argued that taxpayers, citizens or even "the rich" should provide help there is no reason why owning particular shares makes you responsible.
But let's look at it from the other angle. This encourages shareholders to pay their CEO or highest paid employee less. Is this a good thing? Not necessarily, even if the effect was uniform across all firms, which it wouldn't be. By encouraging firms to pay people less than they would in a free market they encourage those people to quit and form their own companies, becoming self-employed and thus not subject to any limit on compensation. While there is nothing wrong with people doing this if it's justified by consumer demand, this isn't the case here. These executives would be starting a new firm not because they believe their actions would be most productive that way, but because they believe that they would be least taxed that way. Again, this is the exact opposite of "creates the right incentives.".
But there's more. Suppose that a CEO or other highest earner learns that the shareholders through the Board of Directors, will cut their pay from say, $5M to $1.25M because the medium wage of his workers is $5oK. He asks the Board members individually or in groups, if they really think he's not worth $5M. They all say "No we believe that you're worth the money, but the extra taxes we'd have to pay are a lot more than the extra value you give us, so we're going to cut your pay regardless.". The logical response to this is to say "Fine, but I'm going to steal the difference from the company and if you try to find out how I'm stealing it, I'll quit.". Notice the incentives here. The board know that the CEO is worth $5M, but that they can't pay him that. The CEO knows that he can't openly and legally get the money he's worth. They both know that if he takes the money covertly and illegally it's in neither of their interests to stop him. Of course the benefits need not be in direct theft. The age-old tradition of nepotism could get a real revival as a result of this. Why begrudge a man worth $3M more than paying him a few jobs for his nephews. Of course since the nephews aren't being employed for actual productivity they won't be put in the roles where they would create most value in the economy. Or even any value in the economy. So their potential labor value is wasted too. Of course he could employ female "friends" instead. It's just a bad incentive extravaganza here.
But let me get back to something I mentioned before, " even if the effect was uniform across all firms, which it wouldn't be. ". Firms differ in the average pay of their employees. This is not because some firms are run by generous, openhearted George Bailey types and some by Ebenezer Scrouge types. It's because some require lots of highly skilled labor and some require a lot of low-skilled labor. Because the labor of a worker with low skills can be substituted for by many other worker's labors their pay is low. Because the labor of a worker with high skills cannot be substituted for by many other worker's labor their pay is high.
Under this legislation CEOs and others who might become the most highly paid workers of a firm have an incentive to work for firms that mostly use high-value labor. This is not a good thing. There is nothing inherently better about the best management managing small numbers of high-paid workers as opposed to large number of low-paid workers. Walmart and McDonalds both need good managers just as much as Apple or Google. This legislation will result in those who management skills would be most useful to low-skill companies going to work for high-skill companies instead. As a result bad decisions will be made at the low-skill companies, resulted in wasted resources, less production, production less suited to what consumers actually want and even possibly the bankruptcy of the company or it's exit from the jurisdiction where this law applies.
"What about CEO’s gaming the system? Can’t they simply eliminate low-paying jobs by subcontracting them to another company – thereby avoiding large pay disparities while keeping their own compensation in the stratosphere?
No. The proposed law controls for that. Corporations that begin subcontracting more of their low-paying jobs will have to pay a higher tax. "
Note that the law only increases the taxes for decreases of 10% or more of full-time equivalent workers. This really shows how little thought went into this bill. I mean really who can't figure out that this will mean 9.8%-9.9% cuts in full-time equivalent year on year is an idiot. Which doesn't mean I'm surprised Robert Reich didn't figure it out. Note of course that the increase for firms that do decrease their direct employees by 10% is 50% of the previous tax rate. Note that this is regardless of whether firing these people pushes average pay of direct employees up, down, or nowhere. So far from being designed to plug a potential loophole in the legislation this clause is merely creates a tax on outsourcing. Of course even in this it's flawed. It's supposed to discourage substituting outsourced labor for direct employees. But what it actually does is discourage hiring indirect employees at the same time as firing a certain amount of direct employees. So if a company subcontracts for some people in industry A at the same time as shutting down an unprofitable plant in industry B they can get hit with the tax increase, even though the indirect employees are not substitutes for the direct employees, and may not even be paid less than them. The sheer lack of thought in this bill is astounding.
"For the last thirty years, almost all the incentives operating on companies have been to lower the pay of their workers while increasing the pay of their CEOs and other top executives."
Which incentives are these and incentives for who? As usual Reich states the simplest possible position and doesn't justify it. That's because his job is to have certain attitudes, not to actually deduce or explain facts or theories.
However some things have occurred that indirect do create and incentive for increasing CEO pay. The value of the CEO to the company can be expressed as a simple equation:
CEO value of company = (Capital of company * ( percentage return(CEO) - percentage return( best alternative CEO)) + cost of employing best alternate CEO
Best in this context means the alternative CEO with the highest value to the company.
So the larger the company the more worthwhile it is to pay for a better CEO. This is pretty obvious when you think about it, no matter how good a manager someone is it's not worth paying them $10M to manager a $20M business. So what has led to big companies? In a word government. Regulation is less costly to comply with per dollar of revenue for big companies, and regulatory rules have multiplied for decades. There are of course direct encouragements of scale like "Too Big To Fail" which is still worth about $83 Billion dollars** or about 3% of the US Federal tax take for 2013. Think about that. For ONE INDUSTRY the subsidy for being big equals 3% of what you pay to the government. And that's from ONE market distortion "Too Big To Fail". That Reich doesn't mention this means that he either doesn't want to, or can't, explain these distortions.
But there is something more than ignorance in the support of this bill by Reich and others. There is sheer evil. That seems like a strong term, so it's probably best to define it. I define evil as the willingness to inflict suffering on others for the sole reason of being allowed to do things that would not be justified if that suffering and the goals that suffering served were taken into account. So what suffering am I talking about, why wouldn't it be justified and what goals are being served? Well I hope I've explained the suffering.
So what is the goal of the legislation? We can dismiss the idea that it's goals are what it stated since it doesn't efficiently achieve those goals. So either the legislation has other goals that are concealed or the writers of the bill do not wish to examine how their bill would work. If the latter then the true goal of the legislation is to allow the writers of this bill and their supporters to pretend they are solving the problem rather than actually solve it. So the actual goal is to avoid the effort of thought an actual solution would require. There are a number of possible concealed goals and I think each requires it's own paragraph.
Firstly this bill would make it harder for big business compared to small and medium sized business. It's much less of a burden to pay your employees 1/25 of the bosses pay when the boss only manages 100 people compared to if he manages 10,000. So the bill can be thought of as essentially a subsidy for smaller businesses. But that doesn't explain why they sought this means to get an advantage. Why not simply target the many and various ways that large scale is advantaged? Because these various government programs have been promoted with various false justifications for years, and it's hard to attack the entrenched propaganda. Additionally the justification that the bill raises workers wages is more acceptable than that it raises the profits of a type of entrepreneurs. The bill also seeks to claim that the costs will be on CEOs who are unpopular, rather than shareholders in big business, who are not so unpopular (and include the pension funds of many voters).
Secondly this bill would benefit high skilled workers over low-skilled ones. Employing low-skilled workers would impose additional tax costs under this bill for many (although not all) firms. That means that some firms will be willing to pay more for high-skilled workers to substitute for larger numbers of low-skilled workers.
Thirdly and most importantly this bill diverts attention from the failure of regulators and other government employees to prevent the problems afflicting American workers. By focusing attention on the actions and incomes of employees the authors of this bill implicitly excuse anyone else of being the main cause of the workers distress. This is important as regulation has been increasing substantially for as long as anyone can remember. There will of course be many people who claim that regulation has reduced in the past decades. To them I ask by what measure? What measure of regulation actually decreased in the last, say 30 years? Pages of regulations? Estimated cost of regulations? Cost to start a new business? What? I've asked this several times of various people who claim the economy was deregulated and have never got an answer.
But even without being evil this bill would be grossly unfair. Consider the effect on the wages of two workers, identical in all ways except that one works at a big firm with a highly paid CEO and another works at a small firm with a lower paid CEO. Why does the former deserve a raise and the latter not? I've already mentioned the CEO who employs intellectually disabled people at lower rates of pay, how does he deserve a pay cut for employing the previously unemployable? And it's not just intellectually disabled, but physically disabled, recent immigrants whose language skills aren't great, the long-term unemployed, former convicts and many others are less productive than other potential employees. Hiring them at the wages their productivity justifies can serve both the shareholders and them, but it costs the CEO, how is that fair?
Of course the response might be "These people aren't at fault for their lower productivity***, why should they deserve less money that more productive people.". But business isn't about who deserves things but who can produce net value. Suppose that Klaus wanted to be a pilot, saved his money for courses and studied hard. The night before his final qualification exam he comes across some skinheads beating a Jewish girl, he intervenes and saves her, but gets "curb party" which loses him his right eye. With one eye nobody wants to hire him as a pilot and he has to take lower paid work. So does he deserve less money? Of course not. But his potential employers don't deserve to be the ones to pay the difference between what deserves and what his labor is worth. While there might be a case for government taxing people to reimburse Klaus for the difference, it's certainly not justifiable to slap it all on the firms that do employ him. So the argument that these people (might) deserve more is not a valid argument for making their employers pay them more. It's an argument for them being the subject of some sort of charity, or if necessary, government aid****.
Even more unjust than the differential effects on pay is the differential effect on employment. Low-skilled workers will lose jobs under this legislation, even though they are ostensibly one of those supposed to benefit. Why should they lose a job just so someone with more skills, who could have gotten another job anyway, can do their work? This is the biggest hypocrisy to me, the brutal abandonment of the very disadvantaged for the better paid workers. This is true sociopathy and it disgusts me.
* Full quote of two paragraphs so I won't be accused of taking it out of context.
"There’s no easy answer for reversing this trend, but this week I’ll be testifying in favor of a bill introduced in the California legislature that at least creates the right incentives. Other states would do well to take a close look.
The proposed legislation, SB 1372, sets corporate taxes according to the ratio of CEO pay to the pay of the company’s typical worker. Corporations with low pay ratios get a tax break. Those with high ratios get a tax increase."
** Source http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2012/wp12128.pdf via http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-02-20/why-should-taxpayers-give-big-banks-83-billion-a-year-
*** This is not true all the time but it's true some of the time.
**** I do not in fact favor government aid, but at least it would be better than sticking the costs on random employers.
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
A refutation of "Exploiting a Tragedy, or Le Rouge en Noir" by Daniel Singer
" My objection to the corpsecounting historians is not that they tell a horrible story. It is that they are reducing a major tragedy--revolution in a backward country failing to spread and the terrible result then presented to the
world as a model--to a grand guignol. And these historians are not doing it to prevent the repetition of horrors
in future transformations. They are doing it to destroy the very idea of radical change. They are painting the East in black to whitewash the West."
First of all how do you know their intentions? For a start many of those who support this work have also attacked totalitarianism of the "right". But even assuming they're " not doing it to prevent the repetition of horrors in future transformations" but to "destroy the very idea of radical change." why shouldn't that idea be destroyed? After all it's piled up 100 million corpses. One way "to prevent the repetition of horrors in future transformations" is to prevent future transformations. Now sure people like you, who denied the existence of such horrors for DECADES might say "There's a better way to prevent the horrors.". But given the 100 million corpses, it's reasonable to tell you to prove your case. Even if they are trying to "destroy the very idea of radical change" it's up to you to prove and your ilk to prove that idea is worth saving.
world as a model--to a grand guignol. And these historians are not doing it to prevent the repetition of horrors
in future transformations. They are doing it to destroy the very idea of radical change. They are painting the East in black to whitewash the West."
First of all how do you know their intentions? For a start many of those who support this work have also attacked totalitarianism of the "right". But even assuming they're " not doing it to prevent the repetition of horrors in future transformations" but to "destroy the very idea of radical change." why shouldn't that idea be destroyed? After all it's piled up 100 million corpses. One way "to prevent the repetition of horrors in future transformations" is to prevent future transformations. Now sure people like you, who denied the existence of such horrors for DECADES might say "There's a better way to prevent the horrors.". But given the 100 million corpses, it's reasonable to tell you to prove your case. Even if they are trying to "destroy the very idea of radical change" it's up to you to prove and your ilk to prove that idea is worth saving.
As it happens I am in favor of radical change, just not the kind your kind likes. I became aware of the "corpse-counting historians " solely through the writings of those who favor radical change. So it seems strange that those trying to destroy the very idea get some much free, positive publicity from those who espouse it.
"The basic weakness of both The Black Book of Communism and The Passing of an Illusion is their incapacity to explain anything. If you look at Communism as merely the story of crimes, terror and repression, to borrow the subtitle of the Black Book, you are missing the point. The Soviet Union did not rest on the gulag alone. There was also enthusiasm, construction, the spread of education and social advancement for millions; when this momentum was lost in the Brezhnev years the system was close to the end of its tether. Similarly, it is impossible to grasp the fascination of outsiders for the Soviet myth and their reluctance to see the reality if you don't view them in their own environment. If you ignore the Great Depression, the strikes and other struggles against exploitation, thecolonial oppression and deadly poverty, the wars in Algeria or Indochina-in short, if, like these authors, you
idealize the Western world--you cannot comprehend why millions of the best and brightest rallied behind the
red flag or why a good section of the Western left turned a blind eye to the crimes committed in its name. Historyis understanding, not just propaganda."
Why is it a "basic weakness" of a history book to not explain why people supported something? I don't need to explain why people supported slavery to make a book on the inhumanity of the slave trade worthwhile. It is no more a "basic weakness" of The Black Book of Communism that it doesn't deal with why communism has
supporters than it is a basic weakness of Darwin's Descent of Man that it doesn't deal with the evolution of the
Kangaroo. A book was needed that explained, clarified and listed the crimes of communism. This book did that. Where is the "weakness"?
"The Soviet Union did not rest on the gulag alone."
But it did rest on the gulag right? Because if the Gulag wasn't needed to keep the USSR afloat then it was an
even worse crime.
even worse crime.
"Similarly, it is impossible to grasp the fascination of outsiders for the Soviet myth and their reluctance to see the reality if you don't view them in their own environment. "
But surely the first step is to show that such reluctance to see reality was present? Surely the first step to examining the pretense that millions were not being murdered is to acknowledge and prove that they were murdered. An examination of why people ignored evidence of Soviet and other communist atrocities would be valuable, but you don't provide it any more than they did."
To claim that "the Great Depression, the strikes and other struggles
against exploitation, the colonial oppression and deadly poverty, the wars in Algeria or Indochina" caused people to ignore these crimes makes no sense. The primary concealers of communist reality (the intellectuals) never
starved, were never exploited, never went on strike, and didn't live in Algeria or Indochina. Even if they did
there's no reason why these things would cause someone to ignore communist crimes. Yes if you view the world as a fight between communism as practiced by brutal dictators and capitalism then you must ignore the crimes of the former to continue that fight. But if you genuinely believe that communism or other radical change is
possible without massive killing then you need to know why the killings happened. Simply ignoring them means thee same "mistakes" are repeated. But more than that, using the Great Depression as an excuse to ignore the
gulags is like using Jim Crow as an excuse to ignore the Holocaust. One is far worse than the other, and to
gloss over the one in your preferred system because of the far smaller crime in the other is morally bankrupt.
To claim that "the Great Depression, the strikes and other struggles
against exploitation, the colonial oppression and deadly poverty, the wars in Algeria or Indochina" caused people to ignore these crimes makes no sense. The primary concealers of communist reality (the intellectuals) never
starved, were never exploited, never went on strike, and didn't live in Algeria or Indochina. Even if they did
there's no reason why these things would cause someone to ignore communist crimes. Yes if you view the world as a fight between communism as practiced by brutal dictators and capitalism then you must ignore the crimes of the former to continue that fight. But if you genuinely believe that communism or other radical change is
possible without massive killing then you need to know why the killings happened. Simply ignoring them means thee same "mistakes" are repeated. But more than that, using the Great Depression as an excuse to ignore the
gulags is like using Jim Crow as an excuse to ignore the Holocaust. One is far worse than the other, and to
gloss over the one in your preferred system because of the far smaller crime in the other is morally bankrupt.
Monday, March 10, 2014
None of the arguments against raising the minimum wage have fallen apart.
This is a critique of the Joshua Holland article in "Nation of Change" entitled "All of the arguments against raising the minimum wage have fallen apart.".
The first argument that allegedly "collapsed" was that a higher minimum would cost jobs. "We also have real-world experience with higher minimums.". We do, but they reference only one, the Washington State experience. They don't analyze what might account for Washington State's better employment growth other than higher minimum wages. With at least thousands of major factors, making a claim of causation from ONE factor from ONE location is absurd. If that's the best he's got, then either he does not understand science at all, or he's being deliberately dishonest.
It gets worse though. His refutation of the argument “It will hurt mom-and-pop businesses” is that small business owners favor it. So what? Since when do small business owners know microeconomics? Argumentum ad populem is a classic logical fallacy. This man is a idiot, or thinks we are.
But even assuming they knew enough economics to make the judgment only and that judgment determined their opinion only 57% to 43% favored it. What if the ones the 43% that believed they would be harmed by it would be harmed by it much more than the 57% who favored it? Note that 82% of them "say they already pay their employees more than the minimum". So at least 25% of the small business owners wouldn't have to pay their own employees any more, but still didn't support the raise. Note that at least some are COMPETING against people who employ people at minimum wage. So in other words among people who definitely don't pay extra direct costs and possibly have their competitors pay higher costs, at most 69.5% * support it. This is weak sauce indeed, even for argumentum ad populem. Additionally at least 5% of those who said that "“people will have a higher percentage of their income to spend on goods and services” and small businesses “will be able to grow and hire new workers.”" didn't support it. Pathetic.
So how about the argument that “Major costs will be passed along to consumers”, fallen apart? Not exactly. The argument here is based on the effects of increasing wages at _2 companies_. That's not even 0.0001% of the companies out there. To pretend that everyone buys everything from Walmart and McDonald's is an insult to his reader's intelligence.
But that's his job. To insult his readers intelligence by telling them exaggerations and lies, and obvious one at that. You see when an intelligent argument can be made for a leftist cause, you don't need the average Nation of Change writer. Their job is to take up the baton when no rational argument can be made.
25% of the total don't support it and pay more than the minimum. Divide that by the 82% of the total pay more than the mimimum and you get 30.48% of those who pay more don't support it. Which means that at most 69.51% of those who pay more than minimum support it.
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
"Woman is the nigger of the world."
This quote was originally by Yoko Ono, and was made more popular by a song by John Lenon her husband. Mr. Lennon justified his and his wife's use of the term "nigger" by reference the following to John Dellums quote:
"If you define "niggers" as someone whose lifestyle is defined by others, whose opportunities are defined by others, whose role in society are defined by others, then Good News! You don't have to be black to be a "nigger" in this society. Most of the people in America are "niggers"."
Yoko Ono's quote was in 1969, John Lennon's justification was made in 1972. Both were made in America. Quick question; Who in American between 1969 and 1972 had their lifestyle most "defined by others"? I'll give you it a hint, it wasn't women. If you want another hint they wore a lot of green, learned to duck fast and got called murderers by Mr. Lennon's friends (arguably correctly).
Women are the whingers of the world more like.
"If you define "niggers" as someone whose lifestyle is defined by others, whose opportunities are defined by others, whose role in society are defined by others, then Good News! You don't have to be black to be a "nigger" in this society. Most of the people in America are "niggers"."
Yoko Ono's quote was in 1969, John Lennon's justification was made in 1972. Both were made in America. Quick question; Who in American between 1969 and 1972 had their lifestyle most "defined by others"? I'll give you it a hint, it wasn't women. If you want another hint they wore a lot of green, learned to duck fast and got called murderers by Mr. Lennon's friends (arguably correctly).
Women are the whingers of the world more like.
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