Questions you want answered (P&C Edition)

Only if the government spends more money than it gets in tax and so has to raise taxes. I don't have any problem with people paying cash for purchases. I wish more people did. I think it is somewhat wrong that Visa and Mastercard and whatever the common UK equivalent is skim around 3% off almost every non-cash purchase in the US.

Not anymore, really. First, retailer's fees for debit cards were 44 cents per transaction on average, or about $15 billion per year. Dodd-Frank in 2011 cut that to 12 cents max. So at least it's gone down by about 70% in the recent past.

However, the banks announced that they'd simply make the money up, and most of them ended free debit accounts and raised ATM fees, which is why you see 3% withdrawal fees now instead of 1% or 1.5% of a few years ago.

But in this case, regulation was actually passed, and it actually benefited small retailers over large ones (since the large ones could simply negotiate low fees.) Didn't help consumers overall, but that's because the banks were unwilling to give up the cash cow.

I am eternally grateful for credit unions.

How can ideas like this be taken seriously enough to put on the NYT Sunday Op Ed? I mean... sure, it's just an opinion piece, but... how can it not be laughed out of the building faster than somebody suggesting we should replace all nutrition labels with new ones showing all of the homeopathic quantities of things in food?

Is Algebra Necessary?

Robear wrote:
Only if the government spends more money than it gets in tax and so has to raise taxes. I don't have any problem with people paying cash for purchases. I wish more people did. I think it is somewhat wrong that Visa and Mastercard and whatever the common UK equivalent is skim around 3% off almost every non-cash purchase in the US.

Not anymore, really. First, retailer's fees for debit cards were 44 cents per transaction on average, or about $15 billion per year. Dodd-Frank in 2011 cut that to 12 cents max. So at least it's gone down by about 70% in the recent past.

However, the banks announced that they'd simply make the money up, and most of them ended free debit accounts and raised ATM fees, which is why you see 3% withdrawal fees now instead of 1% or 1.5% of a few years ago.

But in this case, regulation was actually passed, and it actually benefited small retailers over large ones (since the large ones could simply negotiate low fees.) Didn't help consumers overall, but that's because the banks were unwilling to give up the cash cow.

I am eternally grateful for credit unions.

There are other options besides credit card and cash. Almost all invoices over here, where we also have a great tax evasion tradition, are paid by bank transfer.

Belgium is on the same path as the UK, albeit framed in a bigger debate. The horeca business got a lower VAT rate, in return they had to cooperate in tightening anti-fraud measures like electronic cash registers. The Belgian government is now negotiating with the construction sector with a similar trade-off: lower taxes on wage in return for electronic registration of construction workers.

Hypatian wrote:

How can ideas like this be taken seriously enough to put on the NYT Sunday Op Ed? I mean... sure, it's just an opinion piece, but... how can it not be laughed out of the building faster than somebody suggesting we should replace all nutrition labels with new ones showing all of the homeopathic quantities of things in food?

Is Algebra Necessary?

Sure, because it's not like this country needs better science education! We're already at number one when it comes to... oh, wait. No we're not.

Idiot.

Rallick wrote:
Hypatian wrote:

How can ideas like this be taken seriously enough to put on the NYT Sunday Op Ed? I mean... sure, it's just an opinion piece, but... how can it not be laughed out of the building faster than somebody suggesting we should replace all nutrition labels with new ones showing all of the homeopathic quantities of things in food?

Is Algebra Necessary?

Sure, because it's not like this country needs better science education! We're already at number one when it comes to... oh, wait. No we're not.

Idiot.

Clearly this guy would benefit from learning algebra. If he did, he would have realized he typed about x-5 words (where x is the total number of words in the article) more than he needed.

So I will leave the rest of this for another time. My fiancee's father and stepmother are in town for a shock visit, they do this.

I am really hoping to work on breaking her of this habit. But she wants to show she is being the better person, being mature, oh and swallowing a bunch of negative crap by having them over for dinner.

They are down home, Fox News loving, bible thumping, flat land Republicans. I warned her this morning, I am getting topped off with wrong and I may politely interject and let them know they are misinformed on a few topics-The Affordable Care Act(they had no idea that is what Obamacare is actually called), the Bible (Oh I am especially full of piss and vinegar since watching 'Because the Bible Tells me So' a nifty documentary), minorities.

I am not prone to explosive outbursts, and I really do not have any buttons to push. But how do I bear the cascade of uninformed dribble about to be at my dinner table?

Hey, those sound like my parents!

I used to think that being the better person and being mature meant putting up with all the crap they saw fit to shovel in my general direction. Then I decided it was a vastly mistaken notion, and being an adult doesn't mean being a doormat. Thus I told them they were absolutely not ever allowed to surprise me with visits and that we would not ever discuss politics.

Well, they don't adhere to the second one very well at all. Nothing's perfect :/

Algebra proves the deficit is really the same as the private sector net savings.

With so many people deficient in algebra no wonder this fact doesn't get through. Instead we get politics.

KG - Smile and change the subject to the Olympics.

Robear wrote:

KG - Smile and change the subject to the Olympics.

State the rule up front: No politics and no religion at the dinner table. First offense: Warning, Second: Out of the House. They can yammer about it in their own echo chambers at home.

Related to the cash-in-hand thing. My wife and I recently got back from a vacation in Iceland (Yes, it was fscking amazing! Go see it in July or August if you can). While we were there we partied at a bar for hours and the waitress was super helpful and awesome to us. My wife asked a guy next to us about tipping. He had a businessman's sort of dress and bearing. He said to us that he didn't understand the American thing with tipping and that all that unreported income was "feeding the underground." Yes, he actually said tipping was "feeding the underground." It was kind of bizarre, but an interesting viewpoint.

A lot of foreigners don't get that wait staff are paid very low wages in expectation of tips. When you point that out, they usually ask what's appropriate.

Help me understand something: The other day I was driving past a federal government building and on the sidewalk out front someone had set up shop with a 4x8 foot banner that had large text saying IMPEACH OBAMA and a photo of his face with a hitler moustache photoshopped on it. I think he was collecting signatures or something. Or maybe just handing out hateful literature, I don't know.

I get that people aren't happy with the current president, but what's with the Hitler thing?

Bush I, Bush II, and Clinton all got Hitler comparisons that I can personally recall. I suspect that every President since the '40s has. It's basically just a way of demonizing your opponent.

fleabagmatt wrote:

Help me understand something: The other day I was driving past a federal government building and on the sidewalk out front someone had set up shop with a 4x8 foot banner that had large text saying IMPEACH OBAMA and a photo of his face with a hitler moustache photoshopped on it. I think he was collecting signatures or something. Or maybe just handing out hateful literature, I don't know.

I get that people aren't happy with the current president, but what's with the Hitler thing?

There used to be a guy in downtown Vancouver with a bunch of Hitler-Obama posters. He'd set up on a street corner and hand out pamphlets. I never figured out what he was actually trying to accomplish.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Bush I, Bush II, and Clinton all got Hitler comparisons that I can personally recall. I suspect that every President since the '40s has. It's basically just a way of demonizing your opponent.

Yeah, I recall the Bush II ones as well. I guess I just didn't get what they were trying to say with it. Just "Oooh, he's evil!" I suppose.

fleabagmatt wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

Bush I, Bush II, and Clinton all got Hitler comparisons that I can personally recall. I suspect that every President since the '40s has. It's basically just a way of demonizing your opponent.

Yeah, I recall the Bush II ones as well. I guess I just didn't get what they were trying to say with it. Just "Oooh, he's evil!" I suppose.

Also: "Oooh, I have no idea real understanding of history or the present."

Hitler is far and away the most reviled political figure (arguably the most reviled figure, period) in our national discourse. He's a very elementary shorthand for evil and so comparisons between him and Presidents and other national figures aren't really meant to have much more depth than that. With Clinton and Obama, the basis of the comparison is that they're trying to take away our freedoms in the same way that Hitler did; with Bush II, it was used to paint him as a warmonger. (Likewise, politicians compare foreign enemies to Hitler when drumming up sentiment against them. Saddam Hussein, Ahmadinejad, and Vladimir Putin have all gotten rhetorical Hitler mustaches in recent years.)

There's another element with the Obama-Hitler thing: it was playing into a 'fear' that he was going to use the Great Recession to seize power like Hitler used the Great Depression. Talk of him being a charismatic speaker, enjoying the support of the masses, etc. It went beyond "Oooh, he's evil!" or even "Oooh, he's oppressing us!" into "He's literally another Hitler--we're not just comparing him to Hitler, we're saying he's going to rise to power the same way Hitler did!" It also traded heavily on this idea that a 'Nazi' is a National Socialist, and Obama's a Socialist, so you know...that's gotta mean something important.

To be fair, a lot of the leftist talk about Bush being Hitler was also "he's literally another Hitler" with him using 9/11 to rise to power and seize military control and throw everyone into camps. It's all junk.

Yeah, I feel Hitler comparisons are too elementary, to the point of harmful willful ignorance. For comparing American Presidents it's ludicrous. No elected President in an American democracy will ever in a million hojillion years (or eight years at most, more accurately) act a fraction as atrocious as Hitler. As worse or maybe even more, that shallow comparison also makes a caricature of Hitler, which totally depreciates the scope of his evil—and makes the comparison plain insulting to the victims of Nazism. He's not a mythical figure, or from the depths of history like Genghis Khan. Hitler's legacy isn't that old and it's still being felt; for a world that's vowed to never forget, comparing George W. Bush or, good God, Barack Obama, to Adolf Hitler is completely misguided.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

To be fair, a lot of the leftist talk about Bush being Hitler was also "he's literally another Hitler" with him using 9/11 to rise to power and seize military control and throw everyone into camps. It's all junk.

Except no one every accused Bush of being a great speaker, that's for sure. This was more like the way you'd recognize the Anti-Christ by the signs in Book of Revelations. Which I don't think is a coincidence.

How on earth can I be 45 today?

I wonder how many threads I can mention my birthday...

groan wrote:

How on earth can I be 45 today?

I wonder how many threads I can mention my birthday...

Well.... the blue thingy spins around the yellow burny-thing......

Happy Birthday!

momgamer wrote:
groan wrote:

How on earth can I be 45 today?

I wonder how many threads I can mention my birthday...

Well.... the blue thingy spins around the yellow burny-thing......

Happy Birthday!

LOL Thanks!

Now I want to see one of those Downfall parodies where Hitler's pissed about people making stupid comparisons of politicians to him, because it's damaging his image to have such "amateurs" called his equal.

The Obama-Hitler posters are from Lyndon LaRouche's PAC. Cutting NASA's funding was the reason I was given at the post office.

Bonus_Eruptus wrote:

The Obama-Hitler posters are from Lyndon LaRouche's PAC. Cutting NASA's funding was the reason I was given at the post office.

Right, because Hitler was such a staunch opponent of the kind of rocketry advancements undertaken at NASA.

Before I forget: happy birthday, groan!

On to P&C business. I've seen a few friends on Facebook trying to frame their support for Chick-fil-a as being rooted in free speech and not an anti-marriage-equality thing. I'm fairly sure this is bullsh*t on their part to not piss off people they know (I bet they won't be turning up with sandwich boards indicating the basis of their participation). However, I do wonder how one can reason it out as a free speech issue. Nobody's freedom of speech has been trampled on and nobody's been censored or anything, it's just dude actually spoke his mind (rather freely and speechily), and there has been negative feedback in reaction. After all, the Bill of Rights doesn't prevent negative repercussions to what you say, it just assures your right to say it publicly.

Is there something I'm missing here, or is this just good ol' fashioned "people disagree with us, so we're going to say our rights are being infringed upon by the other side!" childishness? Note I'm not looking to be convinced, but rather get some insight into the reasoning (if any, 'cause I see none).

There is no free speech issue, excepting the mayors of Chicago and Boston (and I think I heard Philly today?) who made comments that they may try to either ban the restaurant or block new ones from opening because of it. This would obviously be a gross violation of free speech and would have horrible consequences (think trying to open a middle-eastern restaurant in Appalachia, for instance). But I think said mayors know that any such ban would be knocked down so fast in the courts it wouldn't even be funny, so it's really just political posturing on their part.

In other news, last week I ate at Chik-fil-a and shopped at Amazon in the same day. Shockingly, my head did not explode from the paradox.

Minarchist wrote:

There is no free speech issue, excepting the mayors of Chicago and Boston (and I think I heard Philly today?) who made comments that they may try to either ban the restaurant or block new ones from opening because of it. This would obviously be a gross violation of free speech and would have horrible consequences (think trying to open a middle-eastern restaurant in Appalachia, for instance). But I think said mayors know that any such ban would be knocked down so fast in the courts it wouldn't even be funny, so it's really just political posturing on their part.

In other news, last week I ate at Chik-fil-a and shopped at Amazon in the same day. Shockingly, my head did not explode from the paradox.

From what I've read, it sounded like the official reasoning behind at least one of the towns trying to block new restaurants is that Chick-fil-a hasn't (and apparently won't?) put their anti-discrimination policy in writing. If their policy allows for discrimination based on sexual orientation I imagine there would be better legal ground to block new ones if the states in question make orientation discrimination illegal.