where are tom and cross? they both should have interesting things to add. typically they both have fresh perspectives and outside their industry they're fairly polarizing...

$7 is offensive. Exhorbinant for health care is the 1200/mo that my company wanted me to pay for BC/BS.

I did get acclimated to taking pills to ensure I didn't GET malaria while deployed, fwiw

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It did not.

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Proud LGBTQQ Individual

Actually, we've been deregulating and cutting taxes for decades, and there are less jobs. But SOMEHOW the consensus among the GOP is that we need to KEEP doing what we've BENN doing, i.e. cut taxes and regulation. It's not fucking working, it's concentrating all wealth in the hands of the rich.

Agree Pat. 1980, 10$/hr plus benefits is NOT an exorbitant salary. Try supporting a family on it. And I don't care if someone dropped out of school and is a cashier at Walmart, they still should be able to support themselves and pay their medical bills if they go to their job every day.

If people think that jobs at McDonald's, Walmart, or wherever deserve to be poverty-level wages, then those people have no right to shop at Walmart or eat fast food IMO. They're saying that those services aren't important. If you eat at McDonald's or shop at Walmart, then that indicates to me that you think those services are important. Yet we treat the people who provide them like shit while they work their asses off in order to often end up on government programs like food stamps or medicaid because they don't get paid enough to support themselves. Walmart rakes in profits and corporate subsidies while more of their employees receive public aid than employees of any other company. Fuck that noise.

I never said $10/hr plus benefits was exorbitant. It's enough to live on though, depending on what type of health care someone can afford. Maybe not enough to live on solo, but that's why people shack up or get a roommate. As far as a family goes, people have to decide how many kids they can afford. That often doesn't happen, or perhaps many people feel they don't have to or shouldn't have limit the number of children they have. That just leads to a cycle of poverty that can't be blamed on anyone else.

i havnt seen tom on here in a while.

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you CAN'T live on $10 bucks an hour. there is no insurance that you'd be able to pay for while getting hygienic items, rent, food, and other living expenses. i don't think anyone that has a career-type job (whether it's plumber, line worker, press operator, lawyer, doctor, wall st executive...etc) should have to live with a roommate if they have any reasonable debt. like a cell phone (land lines are out, man, and you gotta contact people) and maybe a reasonable car payment. those are things people with careers should be able to afford on their salaries.

but i agree with you on one point...it pisses me the hell off when people who don't make much money have 2, 3, 4, or more kids. yes, you're free to have kids, but it's not fair that i should have my taxes go towards your stupidity. i'd be less upset if my taxes paid for vasectomies.

People have lived with others to make ends meet for decades (centuries?) though. Whether that's by staying in a home with both nuclear and extended family, or a border house, or multiple co-workers, etc. I don't think we've ever had a time in the US when everyone expected to be able to live in their own residence by themselves and live off only their own wage. I've never had that type of perfect vision of a America in my head. Has anyone?

Not that perfect vision, but definitely one where each nuclear family has their own place that they can afford, whether that be as owners or renters. Even with two incomes that dream just keeps getting harder and harder instead of easier, which again I would associate with a common dream vision of America.

They also worked on farms or communes and had a communal lifestyle.

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My 21 year old son and his girlfriend had to move in with us a couple of weeks ago and I can tell you, my wife and I are having that vision on a regular basis.

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th' only knower of th' cosmic mysteries alive at this time

Laura Ingalls Wilder has....

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CUPERTINO, Calif. – Steve Jobs warned President Barack Obama last year that he risked losing re-election over his policies toward business, according to the official biography of Apple's late co-founder.

"You're headed for a one-term presidency," Jobs told Obama when the two met in the fall of 2010, according to The Huffington Post, which obtained a copy of the book.
Jobs told Obama he had to adopt more business-friendly policies, saying companies were more likely to build factories in China because of "regulations and unnecessary costs" in the United States.

From the mouth of the former cultist tech leader.

So you think one quote from a BUSINESSMAN who obviously might have an interest in pro-business policies is all the backing you need? Try looking up tax rates from times when the economy was said to be doing much better, say the 50's or 60's, and compare them to today. What you'll find is taxes have been slashed, yet the average worker is in no better a situation economically, and often makes less adjusting for inflation. You can keep believing in failed policies against the facts, but your argument is nothing but catch-phrases, and you'll never convince me with that. I really don't understand how you convince yourself with it.

So raising taxes to the levels in the 50's or 60's will improve the economic situation of workers and fix the economy?

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Hold my beer and watch this...

Of course not in itself. It's more the point I keep trying to hammer on that the deregulation argument flies in the face of facts. Trickle down economics is better described as syphon up economics. It's just plain delusional to think that more of the same will yield a different result. Some call that the definition of insanity.

OK then...Conservatives have the Lower taxes, remove restrictive regulation drum to beat, what the liberal mantra?
Still stuck on Keynesian economics?
TARP and the bailouts weren't big enough?

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Hold my beer and watch this...