Lampala

You make some good points, Chicah, and I agree. However, I think you are just articulating what everyone believes. I, too, think that people should have control over their lives, not money. We just disagree on how to make that happen. I think that lower taxes and less regulation (when unnecessary, like many of the regulations that destroyed our auto industry) are the answer to the creation of jobs and the long-term stability and adaptability of our economy. Someone does not have to "worry about getting injured" if the government has gone out of the way to let prices drop naturally, and not drive them up by getting unnecessarily involved. Plus, even though socialism may deliver more equality or better government services for a short while, it's unsustainable and will create long term problems. I don't think it would ever even work in the short term, in a country like the US with the biggest and most diverse economy in the world. Also, corporate greed and carelessness is too often cited as a fallback of capitalism. Sure, it may blow up a street in Louisville now and then, but look at the large scale effects. Look at a company like Wal Mart, and how many people it employs. These people have been guarded from poverty by a corporation's willingness to pay them for labor. The small, isolated negative effects of capitalism can be investigated, but should not be fixed by huge government rules, made from miles away, or large beaurocracies. This inevitably leads to more corruption and less freedom. That brings up something else. Socialists (and progressive liberals) bring up that socialism was not tried perfectly by the soviets or other socialist countries in the past. They try not to let Marx take credit for past failures. But I think that Marxism and excess government control is what leads to inefficient governments and greed in politics. If we give the government less control there will be less motive for such things. One thing we can all work together for is a truly accountable, transparent democracy, but I believe that to have this we must first have one that does not own half of our incomes or excessively control our businesses. The socialist utopia is wishful thinking and cannot be somehow separate from human immorality and hunger for power. Personal freedom can be realized the other way much easier.

I think that tax cuts are underestimated. Maybe cutting taxes in itself won't solve all of our economic problems, but raising them will do and has done terrible things. There's always the issue of corporations' potential to have excess, unaccountable power, but that can be solved through some restrictions (definitely not higher taxes) and, if it comes down to it, boycotts. The government should not be the one to get inside corporations and punish them for doing something wrong. It should be up to the people running it to decide the line between greed and financial success/safety, or cruelty and sacrifices. Usually corporations' evil is over blown anyway. It's not true that the rich always "rule" the economy and have ultimate say in the government as a result of capitalism. Sure, they can lobby, but they have no real power over the government. I would rather them not, in the case of a capitalism-encouraging sort of government. But my point was that lower taxes provides the opportunity for entrepreneurship and smaller businesses to form and grow. Some may be very successful, but they can't all grow into the greedy-wolf-filled, highly influential corporations that you mentioned. Actually, higher taxes make it so the biggest companies are the only ones that can survive, if they have the biggest profits. And it gives big companies the motive to influence the government in the first place. Why would they want to do so if the government is harmless to them anyway? As more socialist measures are being pushed forward, more corporations are lobbying so that the legislation doesn't kill them and all they've worked for. It's mere survival in this case.

To get down to the issue, I am very against socialism. It is always unsustainable in the common form that is practiced everywhere these days. Think about it. You cannot give everyone an adequate standard of living if you aim to exploit the means of creating wealth. By taxing business, businesses will need to have higher prices, employ less workers, cut services, etc. and eventually more failures will occur due to something that the private sector could not help. The money that was taken from these potentially successful, employing, well-paying business then goes to the government to expand its services. And you'd think we would get great education, less poverty, and more equality out of this process, right? No. The private sector decreases its productivity dramatically in these circumstances and pays less taxes, resulting in less government tax revenues (due to an increase in taxes... whoa!). Companies are forced sometimes to outsource the jobs or just lay off workers, and are increasingly outcompeted by the government. The government workforce, however, expands. So how does the government pay for its new workers and their services if businesses have so much less tax money to give it? They don't, and that's where you get situations that so many countries are in right now: huge, unsolvable deficits. Right now, the state of Illinois is trying to figure out how to solve their budget problems with taxes. You don't! You get rid of the primary cause of the deficits: the taxes. Or at least you lower them. If America embraces this rebellion against common sense, it will be the end of our prosperity and quality of life. We should just go the simple, obvious route: let businesses do their thing (with minor government services and regulations, etc., but minimal). If we don't do so, our economy will be controlled by one big corporation-like organization which cannot be boycotted, can only be held accountable once every two or four years, can impose universal requirements on anything in our lives, and whose power is unlimited... except by a constitution (which is in the US under attack... big surprise, huh?). So that's my opinion on socialism. And I sort of agree with the mentioned bumper sticker. Communists, socialists, and liberals have only one difference: how far they take the same agenda of government ownership of the economy. Their social agendas may differ, but that's not what we're discussing here. If liberals were going a different economic direction than socialists, they would not be trying to raise taxes, spend our way out of economic downturn, or establish government health care.

I think this is a better article for this discussion: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1230635/Scientist-climate-change-cover-storm-told-quit.html It has more information on the actual emails than the hacker. Everyone acts so concerned about the hacker that the actual information is being covered up. What this boils down to is scientists not being scientists but political activists. Global Warming is a THOERY and the scientific solution to figuring it out would be to welcome questions and skepticism, and covering up anything that opposes their viewpoint is obvious bias. Biased science is just political activism. Plus, the scientific population has a lot to gain from there being a general consensus of climate change. This increases their political power greatly, and a climatically-stable future they promote must be obtained through scientific research too, hugely increasing the need for scientists. I don't think this makes them all power-hungry corrupted liars, but it's something to consider. My opinion is that climate change can't be justified as good science. This incident of apparently obvious altering of data to get a point across goes to support that.

"I saw a thing on CNN yesterday where Ron Reagan was being interviewed about the disruptions at healthcare meetings. He claimed that at one one such meeting in Arizona, a gun fell out of the pocket of a man who was standing up, yelling against the new healthcare plan. Another incident occured when an elderly man told one of the protesters to calm down, and the protester yelled in the man's face. If you call that "passionately voicing the opposition", then you're horribly mistaken." Well there's nothing wrong with yelling, it's freedom of speech. Just because they're republicans doesn't mean they can't yell. When a bunch of people show up at Bush rallies yelling and screaming with inappropriate shirts on, it doesn't even make the news. Everyone has moments when they get really angry, and anyway, isn't more government accountability something we all want? And as for the gun, well, maybe he had a conceal and carry license, and maybe he was scared because he heard of people getting beat up at these meetings. I don't know. But if he was actually planning on shooting people for their political views, then he was crazy and I want nothing to to do with him. (plus, some activist guy I'd never heard of only "claimed" it.) "Mabye that's because they are being disruptive by yelling out the question, which is completely unnessescary." I've seen clips of legitimate questions being asked in an accusing tone, and there's nothing disruptive about that if they've been given the opportunity to ask. It's completely unnecessary to keep avoiding questions, and it should scare you that the bill's supporters can't answer them. "Many rich people are CEOs who got us into this recession in the first place; I think they can survive a minor tax hike. And you don't have to switch to the public plan; that has already been decided." Well, if it's a minor tax hike... we all know a minor tax hike on a tiny portion of the country won't pay for anything this big, even if they're rich. And anyway my opinion is that unnecessary regulation on banks was the main cause of the recession, so it's not fact that the rich need to be "disciplined" for ruining the economy. And anyway, they're the ones hiring people and in ways creating most private sector jobs, so taking their resources isn't going to get us anywhere good. As for switching to the public plan... yeah, Obama says you won't have to. The truth is, you'll be able to keep it until there's the slightest change in it, or of course the insurance companies all go out of business when they're losing customers to the public plan. As I said before, many democrats want a public -only plan as soon as they can get it, and so far they're fooling a lot of people.

The town hall meeting issue really is bothering me. The people being called un-american "mobs" and everything are simply voicing the opposition to the bill passionately. Because it's crazy that the government should spend billions on a bill when the deficit is already terrible and huge, threatening the future of our dollar and us, and most americans do not support the bill. When anyone tries to ask a question that challenges the bill, they will either get answered with "stop being disruptive" or "the bill will get everyone insured, only the evil rich people will be taxed, and you don't have to switch to the public plan." That's not true. It won't get everyone insured as I've heard, even the rich can't balance the deficit in taxes unless maybe you steal all of their money, and at some point you will have to switch to the public plan because private companies will collapse trying to compete with the government. Barrack Obama actually said early in his campaign that he would love to have a single-payer system, but first, "we have to take back the white house, we have to take back the senate, and we have to take back the house." Which they have done! We have a right to oppose this and calling passionate opposition to it "un-american" is pathetic. I'd say that if a bill is 1000+ pages, not even the president can answer good questions about it without being vague or getting mad at or scared of you, and it will cost huge mountains of money, don't support it.

There's obviously much more possible waste in the government because when the government wants to waste money on a bill they haven't even read, they can go ahead and do it because they're using people's tax money rather than their own valued money. And the people who have the power to take those officials out of office don't scrutinize them past their background, party, or sometimes even their race. I agree with you, Chris0101 that government should be held more accountable, but they're not, so why should we trust them with our precious health care system or anything else big? My point is, you apparently firmly advocate for the government and your reason included an "if". But what the "if" includes isn't there, so why do you firmly advocate for government in the first place? With our private health care system, people do pay a lot sometmes, but they at least get treated when they need it at the hospital they want by the doctor they want. And if you get terrible insurance or care, you can probably go to a different company. Under the Democrats' plan, people would pay for it in taxes (and there better be taxes if this gets passed... I don't want a bankrupt America) and the government would have the choice of whether to let you be treated. Plus you'd be confined to a certain hospital and doctor, without any choice of another plan than a most likely corrupt bureaucratic monopoly. The sickening expanding deficit will force the gov't to spend less , and if cutting off your healthcare becomes a way to save money, there's going to be a lot of unneeded illness and death, which will not have been there back in the days of the "health care crisis". And there'll be no going back. It really scares me that my healthcare could end up in the hands of this inexperienced, so far failing president and the drones who follow him, a man who openly admits he would not treat a dying person if they're too old, regardless if they want to live. Once our freedom of healthcare is taken away, we'll never be able to get it back and we'll never be able to say we have "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" again, just "a little liberty and hopeless pursuit of happiness".

Looking at the screenshots, it seems like there's no way to make an american-style city, and I haven't seen one shot of a suburb, and the suburbs are fun to make. No city builder yet has given much of an opportunity to create realistic suburbs (SC4 came close) and I thought this one would, but it looks like a purely european urban-only game, especially with the building styles. At least you can actually make european cities, unlike SC4! But I live in an american suburb so I just wish you could create that.

I don't think it will start really getting better in the US until Obama stops concentrating on propping up big failing businesses and starts trying to save small business and the middle class. The only way I can see that is by lowering their taxes and encouraging competition, but I don't see that coming anytime soon. The democrats (and liberal Republicans) have spent too much money to be able to concentrate on lower taxes. It's already evident that they're trying to find new ways to tax us, and I don't trust a president who's never been in charge of anything and won't even take credit for the debt he's caused. The blame Bush mindset has got to go if he wants to get serious about the economy. So basically, I think we're a little bit doomed right now.

Originally posted by: Duke87 Originally posted by: threeswept I do believe that there are those out there who do not want these people to have any rights. quote> We tend to want to think of evil people as soulless and inhuman, and thus not deserving of any rights. It's an emotional thing, since our hatred for them clouds our perception of them, and because if we thought of them as too human we'd feel bad about putting them through any discomfort at all. We don't want to feel sorry for criminals rotting in prison, so we mentally remove their humanity and think of them as savage beasts instead of people. And then any suggestion that they might be just as human as you or I becomes unwelcome. But that's all emotion, not reality. Some of these terrorists have wives and even children. And even if they don't, they probably have siblings and parents that they love. It's a misconception that people who do horrible evil things are incapable of such things. Especially considering that good and evil are relative. They think we're the bad guys, remember. quote> Oh, so I guess here in America, if someone is the bad guy to us, we can go kill them, and then everyone will think we're the bad guy and come punish us, but since we think they're the bad guys, they can't do that, and then since we didn't get the punishment we deserve, we're the bad guys again, so we get punished again, but then we can't, but then we can, but then... Come on! Maybe they have a family life, but why do they deserve that after making the choice to commit crimes bad enough o get them into Guantanamo? Under that mindset, a psycho-killer-torturer could get away with psycho-killing-torturing as long as he had loved or been loved at any time. Maybe he is capable of "such things", but if he can't control his desires to psycho-kill-torture, SOMETHING has to be done to stop him.

Well, we don't necessarily have to be lawyers or law students to understand that mac ports aren't perfect and we shouldn't sue them for this little thing that would have been basically impossible to fix (unless you can tell the future).

It'll only be useful if one day there's a massive overpopulation problem, I guess. It's still cool, though.