In the SST forum, users are free to discuss philosophy, music, art, religion, sock colour, whatever. It's a haven from the madness of Bulldrek; alternately intellectual and mundane, this is where the controversy takes place.
MooCow wrote:I also think that you should be required to serve X number of hours of community service for every Y dollars you spend to go to school.
I think you should be required to serve X number of hours of community service for every Y hours you live in the country.
So you are in support of a draft?
Not necessarily. I'm actually quite against the idea unless our country is being invaded right fragging now.
What I do believe is that everyone can spare a few hours a week to help with garbage detail, park maintenance, etc.. A system that turns everyone around you into competition isn't exactly my ideal society. People need to slow down and look at their country as a whole, not whether or not they'll save twenty bucks in taxes this year.
I don't understand why the government doesn't have more subsidized work programs. It seems like citizens should be involved in their communities and their governments as much as possible, and that it's in everyone's best interests to let citizens work for and in the government. Why not utilize more community service opportunities, in exchange for money, or as a credit against taxes, and so on?
3278 wrote:I don't understand why the government doesn't have more subsidized work programs. It seems like citizens should be involved in their communities and their governments as much as possible, and that it's in everyone's best interests to let citizens work for and in the government. Why not utilize more community service opportunities, in exchange for money, or as a credit against taxes, and so on?
What the fuck do people have against communists anyways?
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So what kind of community service did you have in mind?
Well, my idea of community service always comes back to doing cheap labor in your field of expertise for the government. In my case I'd work for the Army Corps of Engineers for some period of time at substantially less then what I could make as a private citizen. If I were an artist, maybe I'd work at painting murals around the city. As a teacher, I'd work with disadvantaged children as a tutor.
OK, well then I have already done mine.
3278 wrote:I don't understand why the government doesn't have more subsidized work programs. It seems like citizens should be involved in their communities and their governments as much as possible, and that it's in everyone's best interests to let citizens work for and in the government. Why not utilize more community service opportunities, in exchange for money, or as a credit against taxes, and so on?
There is always going to be people that doesn't like that. Plus they will start with that whole a government subsidized job takes away a "real" job. Over there (on your side of the pond) it probably sounds a bit to much like socialism to and that might scare people off (really? nah that probably ain't true).
ak404 wrote:What the fuck do people have against communists anyways?
They're stupid?
Edit: To be less glib, communists can be as smart as anyone. It's the clinging to a, whilst theoretically perfect, flawed system of governance that doesn't work in real life that gives the implication of foolishness. Witness every country that ever tried to implement it.
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75. Beer makes you mellow, champagne makes you silly, wine makes you dramatic, tequila makes you felonious.
They're still under-industrialised and were way too dependent on the Soviet Union's subsidised sugar buying. Their medical system and research industry are very respectable though. Of all the communist countries, I'd say they've made the best job of it- I don't recognise China as a communist country any more.
The 86 Rules of Boozing
75. Beer makes you mellow, champagne makes you silly, wine makes you dramatic, tequila makes you felonious.
I think Veed's point is that it hasn't actually been tried. Communism in the Marxist sense exists in the absense of centralised government. Building up a massive centralised government, as the USSR did, is just about as un-Communist as you can get. As such, it doesn't count as an attempt at Communism any more than the French Revolution counts as an attempt at absolute monarchy.
Eh, every time someone notices that the minimum wage has gotten pitifully low the evil small businesses (those small businesses that are evil, not all small businesses) start weeping about how they will all be driven out of business and how all the minimum wage jobs will move over the border. Then when it passes (a couple years ago here in washington we raised the minimum wage and put in automatic inflation adjustments with a ballot initiative that won with around 70% of the vote) nothing bad happens. Most of the minimum wage and near minimum wage jobs can't move, they are low end service jobs. Mcdonalds cannot move all its resteraunts to india, or even more than a few blocks in most cases. People cannot send their kids to pakistan for daycare.
I beleive it is also true that while not many people are actually paid minimum wage (except tip jobs like waiters) that many more people have thier income affected by the minimum wage. So when washingtons minimum went from $5, to $7.16 over the course of a few years even some people who were being paid $8 when the minimum was $5 saw thier hourly rate go up to stay above the minimum wage by some amount.
Anyhow I think its a great idea to increase the pathetic federal minimum wage, even though I can't imagine it ever exceeding the washington state one.
I had a couple near minimum wage jobs in college working with people who were at them year round (pickle factory, food service for the army). Those people worked really hard and the country would be a better place if they were paid more for thier labor despite thier lack of marketable skills.
The problem in this country isn't that the working poor are making too much money.
Has the bush campaign responded to this in any way?
