World Politics

[Waylander]

5 hours ago, Beelzebub said:

Yes, mostly rural folks though there is a whole local unsanctioned gun industry that makes cheap weapons out of ex nihilo. Google Peshawar gun making. 

I actually checked, according to this survey we have the highest gun ownership in all of Asia apart from militia infested places like Yemen Lebanon wtf

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country

If i remember correctly Pakistani military has sometimes gone into tribal areas yet is careful in case they start a civil war. If I am correct they do not interfere with the region that makes these weapons. 

[OrangeKhrush]

 

[Azeem]

Pakistani military top brass and American establishment have always been in bed. Any occasional snide remarks/accusations by American officials during WoT were just for public consumption, like business partners they may fell out at times but no big deal in the end.

[Dr. Gonzo]

11 hours ago, OrangeKhrush said:

 

9 seconds into the video "Guess what else was founded in 1913... tax department."

So I googled "When was the US IRS founded?"

1862 

[OrangeKhrush]

8 hours ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

9 seconds into the video "Guess what else was founded in 1913... tax department."

So I googled "When was the US IRS founded?"

1862 

https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/how-we-wound-up-with-a-national-income-tax

income tax act passed in 1913.  so yes they are right, just like all the more pressing issues.

[Dr. Gonzo]

1 hour ago, OrangeKhrush said:

https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/how-we-wound-up-with-a-national-income-tax

income tax act passed in 1913.  so yes they are right, just like all the more pressing issues.

Yeah but that’s not when the first tax collector was established… which is what the guy said. And it’s not like there wasn’t federal taxation before 1913 and before it was called “federal income tax” there was still a federal tax. It even says that in that link.

It’s literally just fear mongering over governments needing more money because the population swelled and then creating conspiracy theories over financial policies changing to reflect that.

[OrangeKhrush]

54 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

Yeah but that’s not when the first tax collector was established… which is what the guy said. And it’s not like there wasn’t federal taxation before 1913 and before it was called “federal income tax” there was still a federal tax. It even says that in that link.

It’s literally just fear mongering over governments needing more money because the population swelled and then creating conspiracy theories over financial policies changing to reflect that.

The premise still works globally,  as unemployment rises due to loss of work,  the burden is then shifted to a smaller tax pool which is unsustainable. 

. 

[Spike]

IF unemployment is rising is because capitalism is a short term ideology that would rather not hire someone than pay them at a rate that can sustain a livelihood or match goods inflation. Despite the fact that in the long term a higher base pay means higher rates of consumption, massive employers only see the numbers for a single financial year because they need to return value to their investors.

[Waylander]

I read some time ago that globalisation was a race to the bottom and then watched as jobs were exported to Asia and then Europeans come over and undercut staff in restaurants so locally had Poles bizarrely in Italian and Spanish cafes. 

I remember speaking to a Polish chap in a cafe near Kings Cross and asked him if he liked the UK, and said it was ok but he wanted to go home though had trouble saving. 

[OrangeKhrush]

On 18/11/2022 at 16:26, Spike said:

IF unemployment is rising is because capitalism is a short term ideology that would rather not hire someone than pay them at a rate that can sustain a livelihood or match goods inflation. Despite the fact that in the long term a higher base pay means higher rates of consumption, massive employers only see the numbers for a single financial year because they need to return value to their investors.

If an employer cannot afford employees you get retrenchments.  Massive corporates have their hands in the pockets of politicians so they are not the ones facing the real crisis,  it is small and medium businesses that are being murdered by exorbitant taxes.

The cost of living rises are not because of employers and rate of pay,  it is due to lack of production of things that are needed,  the culprit for that is the lack of people working in primary and secondary markets ie: farming and industry,  they are seen as unappealing for the modern generation.   While automation has both caused and alleviated this,  the cost of materials has gone up substantially because all the resources are being pooled up by China and Russia.    

[Spike]

15 minutes ago, OrangeKhrush said:

If an employer cannot afford employees you get retrenchments.  Massive corporates have their hands in the pockets of politicians so they are not the ones facing the real crisis,  it is small and medium businesses that are being murdered by exorbitant taxes.

The cost of living rises are not because of employers and rate of pay,  it is due to lack of production of things that are needed,  the culprit for that is the lack of people working in primary and secondary markets ie: farming and industry,  they are seen as unappealing for the modern generation.   While automation has both caused and alleviated this,  the cost of materials has gone up substantially because all the resources are being pooled up by China and Russia.    

They are unappealing because they pay fucking slave wages. Go pick some fruit for $5 an hour

[Dr. Gonzo]

On 17/11/2022 at 22:44, OrangeKhrush said:

The premise still works globally,  as unemployment rises due to loss of work,  the burden is then shifted to a smaller tax pool which is unsustainable. 

. 

I'm sure an unsustainably small tax pool would have nothing to do with big business has successfully lobbied to keep their taxes disproportionately low in the western world, compared to what tax rates were in the west's "golden age" on massive corporations and the ultra-wealthy.

It's a self-inflicted problem that governments around the world could rectify pretty easily, if not for it pissing off the megarich who pay for legislation. That's a corruption problem, not a worker problem.

50 minutes ago, Spike said:

They are unappealing because they pay fucking slave wages. Go pick some fruit for $5 an hour

This. Especially with the so-called "megafarms" that have taken over the US agriculture industry and have expanded pretty rapidly into the UK as well. Look how much more profitable farming was 20 years ago in just the UK alone: https://www.statista.com/statistics/313932/agricultural-farming-income-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/ .... oh wait... the industry has more than doubled its profitability in 20 years. I can't find statistics on what agricultural workers wages have been like over 20 years... but given how in the UK census the mean wages of 2021 were lower than they were in 2008, despite wages being up since 2019... I think it's fair to say these workers haven't seen their wages triple.

Why do back breaking work, or in megafarm case - back breaking work that can be emotionally exhausting, for the same rate you could sell your time for a much less labour and emotionally intensive job? These jobs are important and necessary - the pay should reflect it. Especially in a cost of living crisis.

[Spike]

Anyone that blames the worker for the situation of the economy is either; wealthy, or a poor person that votes against their wellbeing because they are a temporarily embarrassed millionaire. 

[OrangeKhrush]

13 hours ago, Spike said:

They are unappealing because they pay fucking slave wages. Go pick some fruit for $5 an hour

what one can do in life is a product of their output.   A flunky that barely got out of high school with 15% in mathematics is not going to be a quantum physicist, chartered accounted, medical practitioner, pilot etc.   

it is then how to realistically change your life as not everyone will get high paid qualifications.  that picking fruit can be turned into learning how to farm which is a invaluable asset.   that person going to a steel mill can learn how to turn raw metals into useful materials worth more and with more skills comes more pay particularly where the workers output is reciprocated in productivity.

having been a specialist in labour law for 15 years, south African labour law is pretty advanced compared to the United States, it is also very employee friendly and unionised yet so many people continue to get dismissed despite minimum wage constantly going up.   the issue isn't pay, it is socialist doctrine which is infecting western society.  The business owner is just the punch caddy between politicians realpolitiking what people want to hear, and the people expecting that unrealistic promise.

things are going to get worse very soon and you would think people will take it out on the politicians they voted for, they are the ones making cost of living intolerable not businesses.

 

 

[Spike]

3 hours ago, OrangeKhrush said:

what one can do in life is a product of their output.   A flunky that barely got out of high school with 15% in mathematics is not going to be a quantum physicist, chartered accounted, medical practitioner, pilot etc.   

 

That is simply not true and some bullshit libertarian mindset of ‘pulling up by the bootstraps’, ‘They must be poor because they are stupid’. The cycle of poverty isn’t broken by the exceptional individual it is broken by a society that helps the people falling behind.

No one can be a doctor is they can’t break the wealth barrier to become one. A person born with a towering intellect can do nothing with it if they never went to school. And someone with a 15% in mathematics can go to Harvard if their parents did, shake a few hands and leave with a degree in whatever they please. What world do you live in?

No fruit picker is learning how to farm, what insanity is that? What are they gonna save up $5 an hour and buy a plot of land and tools to farm it?

[OrangeKhrush]

2 hours ago, Spike said:

That is simply not true and some bullshit libertarian mindset of ‘pulling up by the bootstraps’, ‘They must be poor because they are stupid’. The cycle of poverty isn’t broken by the exceptional individual it is broken by a society that helps the people falling behind.

No one can be a doctor is they can’t break the wealth barrier to become one. A person born with a towering intellect can do nothing with it if they never went to school. And someone with a 15% in mathematics can go to Harvard if their parents did, shake a few hands and leave with a degree in whatever they please. What world do you live in?

No fruit picker is learning how to farm, what insanity is that? What are they gonna save up $5 an hour and buy a plot of land and tools to farm it?

That is incorrect as Universities don't accept for BSc, LLB, BCom, BAcc unless you meet the minimum criteria to get admitted,  I did a LLB and needed a minimum of 60% average to attain the points needed to study,  my Brother studied electrical engineering and to do that you need a minimum of a first in mathematics and science.    We are not from a rich family but his studies got paid on a bursary which he is working back now,  to keep that bursary he needed to obtain a minimum of 75% overall,  he graduated top 5 in the country and his first job he is earning 40K a month.    He did it by dedicating to learning and while others were out having fun he was at home studying all day because to get anywhere you need to do it yourself.

The reason why a 15% can't do anything in Science, Technology, Medicine, Accounting (chartered or actuarial), Piloting etc is because with 15% you will never be able to do it.    In short not everyone is equal in ability and no amount of social uplifting will change it.   I know of a person, who at 40 years old decided to rewrite their matric mathematics,  took extra lessons which are not that expensive to do,  learnt hard and got the points needed to go do a BAcc and qualified with honours,  went from working as an administrator to being a Auditor for a big Auditing house. 

In order to secure a land loan for farming you need to prove understanding in farming practices.   It is far from uncommon for the registrar of the land bank to not grant small land leases to individual to start of smaller farming practices.    The point I was making is that "social uplifting" is a pipe dream,  It comes down to what the individual wants to achieve. 

[Spike]

Legacy students are six times more likely to be admitted at a prestigious university.  People literally buy into places like Harvard and Yale. 

[Spike]

John wants to be an astronaut, he lives in Chicago.
The school he attends due to his geographic location is one of the worst in the country.
His school is underfunded, understaffed.
His parents are poor, and so is his family so any sort of private education is out of the question.
He does well in school, despite it being a terrible location of learning.
He can’t afford most universities due to the wealth barrier and due to how low his school is rated, making admission more difficult. 
He definitely hands the raw talent but his lot in life doesn’t afford upwards mobility.
Scholarships are difficult to win as they are so few for so many.
His ethnic group has low admissions rates and he isn’t a legacy student.

What are John’s odds at breaking the cycle of poverty? Pretty low and this is the reality most people face in life. The idea that ‘work hard and you can be rich’ is a complete cope and straight faced lie from people that don’t realise what priveledge they’ve been afforded in life. If you honestly believe in that, you are completely naive to the reality people meet in which systems do nothing but maintain a status quo of poor, uneducated, exploited consumer masses.

 

[Spike]

You know what if you change the story earlier from John to Jake and Chicago to the Outback, it’s the same story. Except the ethnicity part. So I know the feeling of having cards stacked against the player. I could barely find a place to live when I studied, at a university more interested in extracting wealth from international students that teaching a generation of Australians. The only reason I survived as long as I did was due to a paltry stipend from the government, and if that didn’t exist I wouldn’t have survived a week. 

I barely got accepted, they looked at my high school and knocked my score down three places, they lowered my score and didn’t do a thing to help me bridge the gap they said existed between my education and the standard. How is it fair that I could only score on a scale of 1-25, with one being the highest; a nine because of what subjects were offered to me in school, and then they knocked it down to a twelve because my school was insufficient anyway, I tried to beats the odds but I was chewed up and spit out within a year and a half.

 

[Spike]

At one point in my life, I had to RENT a fridge because I couldn't afford to buy one and I had no car to go get a cheap fridge people were selling. I didn’t have a clothes washer and there were no near laundromats so I had to wash my clothes in a bathtub. Of course then I can’t buy a fridge or a car because I am putting my money into renting a fucking fridge just so I can eat. My diet was a chicken carcass that I would spread over into a week’s worth of food at a time, of course though I could have fixed my situation by worker harder and doing a cheap mathematics course that I would get to with my imaginary red car fuelled by hard work and dedication.

[nudge]

13 minutes ago, Spike said:

At one point in my life, I had to RENT a fridge because I couldn't afford to buy one and I had no car to go get a cheap fridge people were selling. I didn’t have a clothes washer and there were no near laundromats so I had to wash my clothes in a bathtub. Of course then I can’t buy a fridge or a car because I am putting my money into renting a fucking fridge just so I can eat. My diet was a chicken carcass that I would spread over into a week’s worth of food at a time, of course though I could have fixed my situation by worker harder and doing a cheap mathematics course that I would get to with my imaginary red car fuelled by hard work and dedication.

I mean, you could have gotten a job at a car repair shop and learned how to build a car from scratch by yourself before volunteering at an oil refinery in order to learn how to make gasoline out of crude oil, doh. 

[Spike]

17 minutes ago, nudge said:

I mean, you could have gotten a job at a car repair shop and learned how to build a car from scratch by yourself before volunteering at an oil refinery in order to learn how to make gasoline out of crude oil, doh. 

I should have just worked at the golf club and learned how to be a millionaire

[Rucksackfranzose]

On 01/12/2022 at 11:07, OrangeKhrush said:

what one can do in life is a product of their output.   A flunky that barely got out of high school with 15% in mathematics is not going to be a quantum physicist, chartered accounted, medical practitioner, pilot etc.   

it is then how to realistically change your life as not everyone will get high paid qualifications.  that picking fruit can be turned into learning how to farm which is a invaluable asset.   that person going to a steel mill can learn how to turn raw metals into useful materials worth more and with more skills comes more pay particularly where the workers output is reciprocated in productivity.

having been a specialist in labour law for 15 years, south African labour law is pretty advanced compared to the United States, it is also very employee friendly and unionised yet so many people continue to get dismissed despite minimum wage constantly going up.   the issue isn't pay, it is socialist doctrine which is infecting western society.  The business owner is just the punch caddy between politicians realpolitiking what people want to hear, and the people expecting that unrealistic promise.

things are going to get worse very soon and you would think people will take it out on the politicians they voted for, they are the ones making cost of living intolerable not businesses.

 

 

You mean like the introduction of higher income tax and wealth tax respectively, nationalization of key industries and forming of worker's, farmer's and soldier's soviets that take place all over the 20 bigest economies? ...Oh wait

[Waylander]

A big thing is going to university, I didn't parental pressure from my Dad.

Certainly has made it difficult to get into certain job sectors.

I do support Uni graduates getting a loan and also support them not paying anything below a certain salary level. 

I think because of high asset inflation and low interest rates since the late 90s unless you were lucky enough to get on the property ladder then almost impossible without parental support or buying with friends you trust.

Property companies dislike building small houses due to lack of return. 

I also think a big thing is letting people on a lot of medication needing outside support to stay at home as it restricts housing supply.

No easy answers and it is why there are always people to buy lottery tickets.

[Stan]