Negatory

I’ll put $10 down on RIFs in the next 2 years.

Can’t say I expected it to happen, but the R party has really imploded these last 2 months. Many of you expected Trump to throw a wrench in traditional politics and he did - he fractured voting confidence and the base for Rs as he tried to burn down the establishment. At the same time, he’s galvanized some more fringe voters to vote dem. It’s funny, because in Nov it was relatively understood that Rs were going to be able to keep the senate if they could just hold themselves together. You can’t argue that you didn’t get what you voted for. Incoming: senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. The mayor’s lost control.

It's a pretty nuanced point. It was never dangerous for Typhoid Mary to make food for herself. But it was dangerous for her to go out and make food for the 53 people she infected.

You're in the wrong thread, but fine. Advocating for a revision of tax structures that have been bad for a majority of Americans, as evidenced by multiple sources that I cited, is not communism. In fact, it was addressed in the framework of capitalist America, and even had precedence in American policy, again, as referenced by my sources. Calling everything you disagree with communism isn't productive for intellectual discourse, but it sure makes you feel morally superior. This is what people look like when they call everything that they don't agree with "communism," even when the policies literally have nothing aligned with that form of government: Also, this isn't relevant to this thread or conversation, so I will not address this again here.

Do you have anything of actual value to add to the conversation? Or do you always just resort to baseless name-calling whenever you can't make a valid rebuttal?

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/15/most-brits-just-wont-wear-face-masks-heres-why.html Mask mandates don't work, I agree with that. Because a large portion of people don't follow them anymore. That's why the whole US is going up in flames while we "lockdown." But that doesn't mean masks and lockdowns don't work, whatsoever. Realistically, if you want a good look at what happens when people wear masks and social distance, look at a time when people actually had high compliance: March-May. You'll note that, almost everywhere in the world, cases decreased significantly - that's what happens. Am I saying that is tenable? No. We can't lock down and literally not interact with each other indefinitely. But your guys' arguments and correlation graphs that aren't related are bogus and unscientific.

But not in this thread. No thank you.

Clearly you don’t know how to read posts.

Your graphs fails to address your actual point: what would those curves have looked like if the people who did use masks didn’t? What if literally no one had done anything, would it have been worse?

Actually there’s tons. Because you specified practical evidence ONLY, here’s but one example: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.livescience.com/amp/hair-stylists-infected-covid19-face-masks.html If you would like me to get you the scientific evidence, I can do that as well.

A lot of pseudo science in here. @pawnman is right, and it's not apples and oranges. Masks do work, because the virus hasn't been demonstrated to be an aerosol that has to be filtered out at the nm level. They primarily work by blocking large droplets by sick people wearing them and, therefore, not emitting large droplets. Large droplets aren't just emitted from yelling. They're emitted from breathing. They're emitted from talking. They're emitted from existing. You ever gone outside in the cold and "seen your breath?" Those are large droplets. They are emitted ALL THE TIME. Let's establish some facts as of our current understanding: 1) "no study has demonstrated actual clinical evidence of the airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2" 2) "the overwhelming majority of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is via large respiratory droplets as conclusively demonstrated by contact tracing studies, cluster investigations, the lack of infection spread in hospital settings with universal masking protocols and the low estimated R" Source: https://www.pennmedicine.org/updates/blogs/penn-physician-blog/2020/august/airborne-droplet-debate-article 3) Masks that are not N95s very effectively block the vast majority of large droplets. This study that came out shows that simple surgical masks or even single-layer cotton masks are extremely effective at stopping large droplets. Source: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.201663

Your point doesn’t make sense. Almost all organizations are already like that. They aren’t single paid single run organizations. The point was the slippery slope fallacy.

You can have organizations that pay more equitably that aren’t run by single persons. This is not black or white.

Yeah, but a pilot in a cyber role probably won’t have the tactical understanding to be truly excellent when compared to someone that was actually trained properly. In fact, I could see that as part of why we aren’t as good in some aspects. I’m wondering how many homegrown cyber folks end up in leadership.

I didn’t say anything like that and you know it.

Counterpoint: The money they make is entirely from the labor of the people they employ and the machines they run.

I am not disagreeing with many of your points. And I, along with many of you, are plenty well off. I get that. No shit we all have Roth IRAs and TSP and retirement and stable socialized jobs that allow us, very fortuitously, to be some of the lucky people in society. But most people can't, and that's the problem. To just say there is no limit to wealth in society and entirely detach from reality by saying that how much the top 1% makes isn't connected to how much the working class makes is asinine. Because if they had incentives to give that money to workers as opposed to stock buybacks or letting it sit in stock options, maybe society would be better? Also, it's not like the system we have today has been around for very long, yet you guys talk like it's holy and could never be altered. Since 1913 to now, the top end capital gains tax has ranged from 13%-77%. The personal income tax for the highest bracket has ranged from less than 10% to greater than 90%. My argument is that Reaganomics and the policies that were implemented in the last 40 years have disproportionately helped the rich while making it harder to live and generate wealth for the vast majority of future and younger generations. That is the argument I want you to address. For example, Millenials only hold 3% of total US wealth, whereas baby boomers held 21% if you go back in time to when they were the same age. https://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-less-wealth-net-worth-compared-to-boomers-2019-12 Purchasing power hasn't change at all in decades. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/ Inflation adjusted home costs have risen nearly 40% in the last few decades. https://dqydj.com/historical-home-prices/ Education costs have tripled since 1980, after adjusting for inflation. https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college These all began their upward trajectory after we decided that horse and sparrow (which literally comes from the sparrow getting to eat out of the horse's shit) economics (reaganomics) were what we were going to do as a nation. My argument is that these are real, society defining, problematic issues that we need to address. We can fix some of these problems with the right market and governmental incentives/tax structure. Or you guys can keep hanging on to republican/neo-liberal fiscal conservatism which just saw over 20% of all circulating US dollars created just this year along with $4T in debt and the Fed swelling to over $7T. This is a crisis that you guys aren't addressing because your TSP appeared to go up in value, and I want to know why or when you think the current system will improve. Finally, here's an additional hypothetical to one of your points: Why not just give the trillions directly to billionaires and the top 0.1% only because they're the "job creators" (actually pretty close to what already happens with large company bailouts of people like Boeing that just did stock buybacks over the last 10 years; socialize losses, privatize gains, right)? Don't give literally anyone else money, especially working class. Those billionaires, by the logic in this thread, will create all the jobs and totally donate to charity and fix the roads and trickle all over society if they just have a little more money.

Naw man, let’s have an intellectual debate if you’re capable.

Here’s a hypothetical, what if the top 1% made it quadrillions of dollars a year? Would that be too much? Quintillions? There’s no limit, right? Everything is ethical, Ayn Rand, right? Because folks on the right like to argue that going from $10-15 an hour for low wage earners would be untenable for the economy but that giving 3 individuals a quarter of a trillion is okay.

I do know the difference. Increase personal capital gains taxes, it isn’t that hard. Or do something more imaginative, I don’t think people care. Whether you like it or not, disparity or perceived disparity has gotten so bad that the majority of one political party candidates proposed a wealth tax and weren’t laughed out of their races. Welcome to America where CEOS compensation has increased 1000% since 1975 while working class compensation has increased closer to 15-20%. The best part is the working class folks (that’s you guys), such as those in the military making 100-200k, will continue to perpetuate this trend. https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-2018/

How about the money that’s pumped into the fed disproportionately going to a small swath of society? That’s moral, right? And of course we all made money on the stock market. But you’re blinded to it’s bigger long term disparity effects because you “got yours.”

Eh, the blunt truth is that wealth or debt transfer aren’t as much of big boogeyman words for a huge amount of people anymore after the stock market literally entirely detached from reality this year. Tens of millions are suffering and the top 1% or .1% were disproportionately (and ironically) the group the poor people’s wealth was “transferred to.” Just Bezos, Musk, and Zuckerberg made ~$250B this year while the majority of the world was suffering. I’m not saying they shouldn’t make money - they should as they provide services that are in demand - but this is plainly immoral. I get that most people can’t fathom what making over 200,000 times what the average, well off, family makes. But what if the system only had them make... $25B? What if it was only $25M?!? Oh they couldn’t live comfortably anymore probably. And socialism amirite? Philosophically, many will scream foul. “They earned it!” But that requires the current iteration of the capitalist system and tax structure we have set up now to, at a baseline, already be “moral” or “fair” in the eyes of society, and that’s just an opinion. An opinion you’re gonna have a harder time defending if things continue. Why is 2020’s system morally superior to say the 1960s when top tax brackets would be taxed at 90%? Back when people could graduate college debt free working part time and then immediately buy a house with their union job. More and more, working class people are starting to wonder if, just maybe, the current iteration of the system doesnt work for the average American. IMO, reagonomics did what it was supposed to do; it defeated the USSR. 30 additional years was a tragedy, and it needs an immediate revision.

How many flag officer 17Ds are there?

Hasn’t it always been known that there need to be 2 doses for that vaccine? Another example of the media making a misleading story.

Yeah. When BLM was focused on police brutality it was a much more tolerable movement. And no one’s a racist for thinking that.