Pretty much on the arms deal. Dems and Reps have been trading our dignity for the Saudis oil for a long time.

Id imagine some of the operations in Syria where planed during the Obama administration too but trump is letting the military have free reign so who knows which bombing he would of approved of.


Much more knowledgeable people then me would know more and people are saying i lie a lot so...

10-13K seems most common, although I've seen higher as well. And yes, it's generally supposed to be universal. This is important as one of the benefits of UBI is that it doesn't have any work disincentive - you don't lose any benefits if you work. I'd imagine you would want to be able to convert it to a tax credit if you paid over 10k in taxes, but that shouldn't matter much.

A UBI would solve the "motivated seller" for unskilled labor problem TiltedDonkey identified as the main reason for a minimum wage. Getting rid of the minimum wage would alleviate some of the loss of unskilled labor supply that would probably follow from a UBI. Total demand for labor probably goes up as you can now legally hire people for jobs with lower margins. I would also expect that more wage differentiation at the bottom of the wage scale would improve the quality of those jobs as well - allowing them to have higher relative status if nothing else, but probably also increasing productivity because of a less distorted wage scale. Higher taxes to pay for UBI would be a drag on the economy, but that cost would be nationalized. Companies that employ people at the bottom of the wage scale would be more profitable, probably leading to more jobs and hence higher wages.

On the other hand, wages are sticky, so I'm not sure you really pull something like this off in a country as large as the US.

I take it that the main issue wil was talking about wasn't the hypothetical no-minimum-wage world, but rather the effects of efforts to increase the minimum wage from its current amount. For example, Ed Rensi, former CEO of McDonald's USA, wrote an article last November claiming that McDonald's investment in these self-service kiosks was at least partially in response to the Fight for $15 movement. I don't know if that is actually accurate, but it is plausible enough.

Ahaha yeah just looking at the timestamp that was past the point of no return.

My post should probably go in the moderation thread, but this quote is a perfect example of a particular moderation conundrum.

See, what wil describes didn't actually happen and anybody with moderate reading comprehension ability realizes this, but there was just enough ambiguity that wil could get confused. So the question is whether he's actually trolling and ****posting, actively, or he's just too dumb to know any better.

trumps pretty mysterious mat. I know a lot of smart people. I knew people who worked in the bush administration. I mean obviously on one level trump is full of **** but what is trump actually doing? I have no idea. like literally i just don't know. I would guess based on nothing he is following a neo-con playbook presented to him. but he might be a genital mutiltor.

And my post above doesn't touch on the other bit of ridiculousness.

On the surface I like the idea, especially so because it seems it would take away the "butthurt factor", which is what I think hurts the incentive for universal healthcare in the United States. People simply do not like it when they feel other people are getting a free ride, whether it's true or not. People view healthcare as a direct wealth transfer between groups, and I can understand why. It seems UBI, on the surface, would be great because the wealthier people get their 10k too.

I googled around a bit to see what holes people poke into the idea and it seems a bit troubling.

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/a...ome-good-idea/

From the point of view of economists, a UBI is not feasible. “Thoughtful liberals and conservatives trained in economics are almost universally against the idea,” Smetters says. Former Clinton official and economist Laura Tyson writes that “a UBI for the United States is as fanciful as President Donald Trump’s border wall: It would be prohibitively expensive; and it would not solve the problems that it is meant to address.” UBI would benefit higher-income workers and distracts from immediate problems such as stagnant wages and persistent poverty. Instead, the U.S. should expand benefits for existing programs such as Medicaid, critics argue.

Meanwhile, conservative economist Martin Feldstein opines that a universal income would be “impossibly expensive.” The former Reagan official says paying for the program without raising the deficit would require “doubling the personal income tax.” A UBI that pays every American $10,000 a year would cost about $3 trillion, Smetters says. Conservative economists do not like it because it would harm economic growth, he adds.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/...-a7505561.html

Basic income is the latest bad political idea that refuses to die

I find the entire idea intriguing but due to the extremely large nature of this and the inherent distrust of large scale programs, I would bet that we never see something like this in our lifetimes. I have a deep concern about the path forward for many groups of people. Unskilled labor, felons, and even worthless degrees attained in college are a harder obstacle to overcome. Forget the ability to buy a house and invest, these people have a hard time just trying to survive. I couldn't imagine what I'd be doing if I had a sociology degree, much less have ever spent a few years in prison.

The current situation in the United States is pretty grim. To have a "successful" life you need to almost thread the needle perfectly (at least, in my specific area). A means to acquire a good skillset, a decent to high-paying job with a transferable skillset to ensure survival, and a vehicle for financial growth. The poor lack all of these, and that's extremely troubling.

I agree that I'd be suspicious of that being the reason why McDonald's truly went ahead with the self-ordering kiosks. While suspicious, I can easily see how that have been a determining factor in green-lighting that step.

Anecdotally in my area we have stores called "WaWa". They are great, and they have terminals where you can punch in your order for prepared foods, like a sandwich or a salad. I think they are pretty good, but I personally prefer talking to a cashier. Obviously it is highly subjective.

To be fair i kind of took the first shot. He fine i dont care if he goes there.

wil I spent a lot of time loitering wawas near restaurants when i was 12-13. me and my friends would like play pokemon blue/red do some skateboarding and shop a bit at wawa. i think i still have some funny pics of wawa on my phone. I try to tell people outside the midwest that QT is almost as good as wawa but no one curr.

I don't think anyone truly knows who isn't in his inner circle. The issue we have at this point is we have no idea what is true or not true when it comes to what is written about him. No matter what you think of him, I don't see how any rational person can not acknowledge Trump is painted in a very confusing light in terms of media coverage.

Some people truly believe he's an idiotic psycho who is fumbling around in the dark. While I can completely understand why people would believe that due to the articles written about him, his background does not support that view.

I'm interested in how I will feel years after his presidency. I felt nothing but joy and happiness before and during Obama's presidency until his last year in office. I now feel nothing but disappointment and bitterness towards his presidency. Nothing I hoped would happen happened. I did make a lot of money, though.

I'd be willing to take the reverse with Trump.

LOL. 5ive keeps having a pseudo-important irrelevant discussion with himself that no-one gives a **** about and he thinks we're mad.

I would assume you are talking about "QuickTrip"? I've never been in one, I had to Google it to figure out what you were talking about.

I will say that WaWa's have a strange effect on me, unlike other convenience stores. When I see one they actually make me happy and I immediately ask myself "do I need anything from WaWa?". I've never had that feeling about a store before and I can't figure out how they managed to accomplish that. The no-fee ATMs was a masterful idea, and I suspect a part of that.

There are many people who fit into a general category in this forum. People like aofrantic, victor, jalfrezi and Kerowo all fit into a general category. 5ive, however, is in a category of his own. I've never seen anyone act the way he does online. I literally have him on ignore to reduce spam and he still manages to spam me by posting 10 posts in a row.

He's "special", and not in a good way.

Trump's trolling of the media is genius level imo. Everyone thinks he's this big dummy but in actual fact he's playing them for all they're worth and it's driving them crazy.

"Folks just don't like black people and it's a gosh darn shame," says local racist.

Wil there is something great about wawas that I can't pin point. Like first off wawa isnt THAT great, right? like if you go into a wawa expecting total greatness you're going to be disappointed.


BUT as a younger person there really WAS something great and intangible about wawa. It's... a really good gas station. Like i was saying, me and my 12-13 year old friends would **** around and annoy people im sure at our local wawa because it had a certain appeal. my first kiss was loitering a wawa.

I agree with this but I admit many people do not. There are many people who are distraught about what they are reading because they truly believe it. I dismiss many things I read because I simply do not trust the media and I look things up myself, formulating my own opinion.

I do worry that I may be proven completely wrong. I was completely and totally wrong about Obama. I fully admit I was wrong and am embarrassed about it now. Knowing that, I must admit there's a possibility I could be wrong about Trump, due to my experience with Obama. That troubles me.

But for now, I'm 100% behind him.

good post. I agree he seems more closed off like Obama as oppossed to clinton/bush. I also hope his presidency ends well. As for how you will feel later i have no idea in this case just like you and a lot of people I do not know what to expect from this administration or the future.

Maybe I shouldn't have been The Boy Who Cried Gibberish because this right here below is pure unadulterated gibberish.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold.

Is this like that thing when playing peekaboo with a very young child, and sometimes the child thinks you can't see them because they can't see you?

Yeah, that road from Vegas to LA has been more than a short trip for more than one traveller. That's for sure.

Very nearly came to grief on that hiway, many years ago.

Yeah, it could be my imagination that there are multiple threads with 100s of posts ITF about how to optimally mod said F, and me making a post about how to approach a common piece of moderation, that was actually defending wil in a roundabout way, was relevant.

The whole thing is probably just bats though.

also wil, i forgot to answer your question. Yes, I am talking about quicktrip. and no it's not quite as good as wawa. Wil in case you are confused by all of the trolling you have pretty strong independent thinking skills which is hard for a lot of people. That is a valuable asset in and of itself because it's hard to go against the flow. I do everyday. because of that there's a whole bunch of people who have think im a weak person but if put in my shoes would get crushed on day 1. And it doesnt bother me that people think that way either. really.

No I KNOW he has me on ignore, which is a whole separate bizarre topic for the particular structure of this particular forum, but I mainly meant he's lying about why he has me on ignore and how bizarre that lie is considering it's all written down and saved.