Wisconsin in the news

[_Eric]

I think what we need to do is seriously evaluate how private land uses align with the public interest. Take Oregon, for example, which passed legislation a long time ago preventing beaches from being blocked off to public access. Jefferson proposed giving 50 acres to every white man that didn't already own 50 acres because he saw the dangers of the few owning the majority of the land in the South. The acquisition of enormous landholdings by conglomerates, to then be merchandised and sold back to the people for a profit, is what I am talking about. Not your personal rights to your property.

[_bcspace]

Republicans finally got a spine and nuked it. The Democrats would have been derelict in their duty even if they had been there. Any takers on whether or not the Democrats can get through this without violence, mob coercion, or vote tampering?

[_asbestosman]

Why should the bank own your home? Who has a right to the land?

In my opinion, the government does indeed have the ultimate right to the land. That is why they can charge me property taxes or even force me to move if they want to build a road. Why should anyone else be able to buy and sell property? Because private ownership helps overcome the problem of the commons. Nobody is motivated to maintain property that may be taken from him at any moment. Buying and selling property also helps in free markets to mediate who will get the most desired properties in the suburbs and who gets the noisy spots by the train tracks next to the marshes with mosquitoes.

How can you say that people who get paid minimum wage, only enough to stay alive and keep working, aren't being exploited by shareholders making 200 times that much to do absolutely nothing?

Shareholders and landlords do provide services. They help provide information in the market by buying and selling things they research and find to be of most value. Supply and demand tend to make things more fair. It's not perfect, of course, but big bucks will attract a bigger supply of shareholders and landlords. With a larger supply, will come lower profits for those landlords and shareholders. That's the free market for you. But it suffers from some barriers to entry and hiccups. It is for that reason that I do not support unguided free markets, but I do support the existence of big economic rewards for some people.

Uh... No one said anything about the rich paying for all our wants and making us rich. That is a straw man.

I didn't say anything about making us rich. I was talking about forcing the rich to foot the bill of the goals we have to help society. It's not a straw man. You are precisely saying that we should tax the rich and use that to help alleviate suffering. The only difference is that you do not see the money as rightfully belonging to the rich in the first place. Since this last point is contended, I don't see how it's a strawman. I was writing about what you propose from my point of view, not misconstruing your views.

Good for you. So because you have more than enough for yourself, all is well in the world? I'm sure if we took the time to find out, we would learn that a lot of what you enjoy in life today is the result of privilege and opportunities not afforded to other, less fortunate people.

You are correct about me having opportunities not afforded to others. This is one reason I support public education and various welfare programs. It helps level the playing field somewhat (at least so they can reach my level) even though it is not perfect. But no, I do not claim that all is well in the world. What I do claim is that I find comparing my wealth to the wealth of the rich is irrelevant. You were the one who brought up Angelo Mozilo or Paris Hilton after saying that life may well be good for us. If you only meant to bring them up to compare with the suffering of others, then perhaps you could have phrased your question differently.

It's not about having "more money," it's about exploitation and disparity.

The disparity between the ultra-rich and me does not bother me. The suffering of the poor does.

Low wages absolutely does equal exploitation. And worse. People can't live off low wages. They are often forced to work more than one job, just so they can make enough money to survive in poverty. When it happens unnecessarily, that is slavery. That is exploitation.

No, there's more to it than that. Free markets pay not for who works the hardest, but for who does the most valuable work. Other than some hiccups, that's how it is and I think that's fair enough. Sure, it's not completely fair. Some have more advantageous backgrounds and have more opportunities to get into better schools and with better crowds. We can address some of those things with welfare programs and educational programs. Other things like smarts, creativity, and raw talent can't be addressed with money. These things will always let one person do the work which is more valued than others even if others work harder. It's about working smarter, not harder. However, we do need to give people ample opportunity to grow their talents and earn better livings. That means some social programs.

What do you see as the difference? I see Communism as an extension of Socialism.

More private ownership and the continued existence of classes and the wealthy. However, I may need to study this more.

Even so, we cannot address all medical needs. We have made medical advances that weren't possible a few years ago. Unfortunately, many of these are very expensive such as cancer treatments.

It's expensive because we merchandise it.

We merchandise it to incentivise difficult research so that we continue to develop more cures. We merchandise it because it encourages more of a supply of people willing to offer treatment. Obviously this also has some drawbacks. I think that we should probably look into some changes with patent law. Even so, I do believe in encouraging this labor-intensive research because of the valuable results.

So what is it you propose? Allowing the so-called "Free Market" decide who gets treatment and who doesn't?

Not quite. I think we should provide some core healthcare to everyone. However, we don't have infinite resources, so ultimately we do have to decide what healthcare will be provided for everyone and what will not. Yet I still like there to be research in other cures. The only workable way I know of to let this happen, is to allow some free market forces in. Greed is a great motivator for research and labor which ultimately can provide us many benefits.

What if colonizing space helps prevent the extinction of our species?

Are you serious?

Sort of. I'm not personally worried about extinction anytime soon, but we do know that our sun will eventually expand and boil our oceans (sooner if global warming is true). There's also a good chance of a big meteor hitting us every 300,000 years. Sure, that's a long time, but I think it's worth thinking about. Then again, I guess I can just rely on God to save us. I'm not so sure what you think about that though.

Another important point of consideration regarding limited resources is that we already consume more than is sustainable, and it is only growing. The good life costs more than money. If we want all of humanity to enjoy the good life, we'll need to find more resources than are available on Earth alone. Either that or we could try learning to get along with less including less medicine, but that would also lead to suffering.

[_EAllusion]

It wasn't a matter of "getting spine" BCSpace. The stripping of collective bargaining rights was proposed as a necessary step to balancing the small short term budget deficit at the end of the biennium. By passing it in a non-fiscal bill, they had to implicitly admit that was a lie. I guess they "got spine" in the sense that they did that (who was being fooled anyway?), but that's why it didn't happen until now.

[_Brackite]

Wisconsin judge halts state budget law curbing unions' power:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/03/18/wiscon ... ?hpt=Sbin#

[_Brackite]

Here is a Link to the latest News out of Wisconsin about this:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/ ... D020110324

[_EAllusion]

I'm baffled why they are fighting this. Not even the local media seems to know. They can easily just pass the law again following proper legislative channels. I don't see how they could possibly be worried about losing face on that. They've already lost a ton of face as it is. Van Hollen's argument against judicial review is pretty wild. This was a law, not a technicality in self-determined procedural rules. A few of the conservative judges on our Supreme court are really just partisan Republicans, but one wonders if even they are going to be sympathetic to an argument against their authority to review to a particular set of laws.

The fiscal item issue is more serious, but that also could be fixed by rewriting the law.

[_EAllusion]

Liberal sources I'm familiar with speculate that the Republican strategy is to let the court overturn the bill for, you know, violating the law simply so they can play the "judicial activism!" card for rhetorical purposes. Then they'll just pass the law again. I guess that's possible, but I'm sticking to my befuddlement for the moment.

[_MCB]

The fiscal item issue is more serious, but that also could be fixed by rewriting the law.

They need to rework and pass it by bits and pieces.

Their bypassing the complications brought about by the Democrats going AWOL was downright underhanded and dishonest.

[_Brackite]

Wisconsin union law upheld:
http://forums.hannity.com/showthread.php?t=2271741