U.S Presidential Election | PUNT ROAD END | Richmond Tigers Forum
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U.S Presidential Election

AngryAnt

Tiger Legend
Nov 25, 2004
27,017
14,792
yeah dude I hear your arguments and i understand them, I disagree with some of them, but I don't have time for this now.
 

KnightersRevenge

Baby Knighters is 7!! WTF??
Aug 21, 2007
6,782
1,222
Ireland
There’s a bit to unpick there:
- whether the 1% controls 44% or 90% doesn’t tell you whether this is good or bad. The 1% also is not a static group of people, it involves much churn
- yes the politically influential use the government’s power to bestow advantages upon themselves. So isn’t the answer to remove the government’s power?
- growth can only be achieved by making labour more productive, something that should always be strived for. What we have now is growth fuelled by inflation which is not growth at all but fools many people for a long time.
- externalities, I assume you mean things like environmental damage. The best way to have that priced in correctly is to do away with public property and have properly understood and respected property rights. Only then can long term capital value incentives (such as a healthy environment) be considered in economic calculus.

- whether the 1% controls 44% or 90% doesn’t tell you whether this is good or bad. The 1% also is not a static group of people, it involves much churn
The churn doesn't seem to be a factor in any of this. At what granular level the control resides may not be informative either.
-Yes the politically influential use the government’s power to bestow advantages upon themselves. So isn’t the answer to remove the government’s power?
That seems an odd place to slice this particular pie. There are many benefits to having centralised governing structures. Making them as accountable as possible seems a better answer to me. Creating a power vacuum with no oversight just hands the power to anyone with the might to take it. Not a great solution so far as I can see. Sure some ideal level playing field where everyone has an equal opportunity and ability to exert control would be lovely but it is naive and anti-historical to think that is possible in human society.
- growth can only be achieved by making labour more productive, something that should always be strived for. What we have now is growth fuelled by inflation which is not growth at all but fools many people for a long time.
Why should growth be the standard? Why shouldn't sustainability or general happiness be the metric of choice? I often rail against it because it is camouflaged in reporting often in the phrase "profit growth". Profit is growth, so this is growth ON growth and that is unsustainable, hence why I think this a poor metric or goal.
- externalities, I assume you mean things like environmental damage. The best way to have that priced in correctly is to do away with public property and have properly understood and respected property rights. Only then can long term capital value incentives (such as a healthy environment) be considered in economic calculus.
Only if you think capital value is a good metric. See above.
 

Giardiasis

Tiger Legend
Apr 20, 2009
6,906
1,314
Brisbane
The churn doesn't seem to be a factor in any of this. At what granular level the control resides may not be informative either.


That seems an odd place to slice this particular pie. There are many benefits to having centralised governing structures. Making them as accountable as possible seems a better answer to me. Creating a power vacuum with no oversight just hands the power to anyone with the might to take it. Not a great solution so far as I can see. Sure some ideal level playing field where everyone has an equal opportunity and ability to exert control would be lovely but it is naive and anti-historical to think that is possible in human society.

You can’t make them accountable in the long term when they only need to worry about the next election cycle. Political lobbyists will find a way to use the government’s power to bestow privileges for themselves at other’s expense. People’s individual votes become meaningless. Let people govern their own affairs to the extent that they deem appropriate and not allow others to trample their property rights. You don’t just go from A to B, it would involve a long drawn out process which begins by decentralising sovereign governments first and working our way downwards. An impossible task perhaps given people’s propensity to want to control the actions of others, which they believe central government will provide them.

Why should growth be the standard? Why shouldn't sustainability or general happiness be the metric of choice? I often rail against it because it is camouflaged in reporting often in the phrase "profit growth". Profit is growth, so this is growth ON growth and that is unsustainable, hence why I think this a poor metric or goal.

Growth means we produce things cheaper. This shouldn’t be controversial that is the goal to strive for if you seek to improve material well-being. However it is not the ultimate goal, people have their own list of goals they want to achieve. I for one donate to charity for other goals I have in mind. A lot of people give up their time and money to help others, their family and friends. However if our capital stock is not growing, it means that our material well-being is either stagnant or in regression. People can’t invest everything they have they must consume to live, however to maintain prosperity they must not live outside their means, i.e. they must not consume their capital stock, only a part of the income it generates, if they seek to avoid impoverishment. It is not sustainable to consume your capital stock. Prices allow us to perform the calculation here to determine how we are going. There is no such objective standard to measure happiness.

On a side note, what we are witnessing in the west today (for the past several decades in fact) is the consumption of domestic capital stock. Credit expansion through both the actions of central bank’s loose monetary policies and fractional reserve banking practices of commercial banks has led to massive distortions in market prices and led to wide scale malinvestment. In addition to this, government’s have been increasingly intervening into the market process through large scale redistribution programs, onerous regulatory burdens and wasteful spending programs. The solution to this problem has been to provide higher doses of the poison. Our outlook for increasing material well-being looks grim, I don’t believe today’s children or even their children will enjoy the level of well-being experienced by their parents and grandparents. The major reason why these problems were allowed to be given the light of day is because of the power of centralised governments with no incentives to preserve long term capital value.

Only if you think capital value is a good metric. See above.

It is the only method that allows for rational economic decision making. Everything else is reaching in the dark, blindfolded.
 
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Brodders17

Tiger Legend
Mar 21, 2008
17,663
11,701
I wonder how many Americans would still have voted for Trump if they knew he would be responsible for a fair percentage of deaths of a quarter of a million of them.
judging by their obsession with guns probably as many, or more, than who actually did.
 

TrialByVideo

HailBGale!
Mar 1, 2015
4,422
8,532
Great to hear Donald Trump say he's got a friend who said to him "he didn’t know there were 184 countries in the world"...... hangs with some seriously intelligent dudes.

(Yes, I know there are more countries than that..... 184 is currently the number reporting covid 19)
 
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Djevv

Tiger Champion
Feb 11, 2005
3,091
252
NT
www.youtube.com
I respect your experience, but it's not everyone's experience.

Why male teachers are disappearing from Australian schools

I think everyone in the profession wants more male teachers. Most especially female teachers. The proportion is about 2:1 in secondary and 7:1 in primary which was the focus of the article. Personally I think if affirmative action is good enough for professions which are male dominated, why not those that are the other way around? Children really need good male role models.

In saying that it’s a very tough job, mentally. Stress is the main reason people leave. You can’t just legislate people into it, they have got to really, really want to do it.
 
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Djevv

Tiger Champion
Feb 11, 2005
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252
NT
www.youtube.com
I just thought I might add some more thoughts on the education debate even though it doesn’t seem like the right thread. I’ve been a teacher for over 20 years teaching Maths & Science but these days mainly Maths.

Anyway the reason girls do way better than boys in HS is not really to do with feminism IMO. It’s mainly that by age 13 girls are 2 years older in terms of maturity than boys of the same age. So they work and study in a completely different and more adult way.

On top of this a girls will not suffer any social penalty from their peers if they do well at school. This is not the case for boys.

The real problem with Australian Schools is classroom behaviour. That’s what burns teachers out and why most men won’t consider education as a career. There is absolutely no support in your average school for the classroom practitioner. If you can handle it, great, otherwise move on to another career thank you. In lots of schools little is taught, it’s really just crowd control.

On top of all this is the demand to teach to all levels, learning styles and make adjustments for various syndromes and conditions a student might have. Am I making this sound easy?

Another pressure teachers have these days is to get good results in standardised testing. In some schools if you don’t get the results you are off to the principal’s office for a little pep talk!
 
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TrialByVideo

HailBGale!
Mar 1, 2015
4,422
8,532
Good to see the Trumpsters keeping themselves safe with the PPE

Social distancing needs a bit of work.

(I see your AK47 and raise you with my Uzi :rolleyes:)

Studio_20200418_072927.jpg
 

jb03

Tiger Legend
Jan 28, 2004
33,856
12,108
Melbourne
Geez. Perhaps history will one day dictate this as the commencement of the decline of America as a superpower.
 
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tigerman

It's Tiger Time
Mar 17, 2003
24,150
19,619
The right to be a redneck is the 28th and little known amendment to the US constitution.
 
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artball

labels are for canned food
Jul 30, 2013
6,890
6,302
I have a few friends in the USA. Besides the city dwellers there are 2 others - one in New Mexico and another in Virginia and it is these 2 that are seriously concerned right now. Not from Covid19 but the lunatics who are spouting very heavy civil unrest. “It’s real”, one of them said, “the streets are bubbling”.
 
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Ian4

BIN MAN!
May 6, 2004
22,180
4,679
Melbourne
I was over recently for the first time in the Trump era.

The biggest difference I noticed was the number of people walking around with guns on their hips, something I had never seen previously.

well i hope you don't have plans to visit any time soon as you won't get in. their borders will be closed for years if this keeps up. Perhaps longer if Trump gets another 4 years
 

AngryAnt

Tiger Legend
Nov 25, 2004
27,017
14,792
4c2
 
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