Politics

[Altitude sickness]

It’s been an open secret, but apparently they finally admitted it.

IDF, Shin Bet acknowledge for first time special mission to hunt down and kill all Oct. 7 terrorists

Officers in 'Nili' unit confirm facial recognition, artificial intelligence, detainee interrogations, humint being used in operation to track down every participant in Hamas-led October 7, 2023, invasion, massacre, abductions

www.timesofisrael.com

 

[skydiver386]

Not intending to intrude but I like your idea. Originally you had to be a land owner to vote in America. Ive read they viewed land owners from a position of stability and responsibility and that made them the perfect guardians of the future of the colony.
I’m not advocating going back to that but I do agree that having some skin in the game would probably be better for the nation.

Bullseye.

People that are enamored with socialism are usually the laziest and the type to demand something for nothing.

For proof, I give you exhibit A, Karl Marx.

A totally worthless human being that never had a real job his entire life! Read Das Capital carefully, and it becomes obvious that he is not only advocating for an overthrow of the old system, he was to be put in charge of the new system. No skin in the game, but thinks he should be in charge of the entire world around him.

Exhibit B, Bernie Sanders.

Another worthless human being that has never had a real job his entire life, therefore no skin in the game. Work to a Socialist is what Kryptonite is to Superman, yet they think they should run the World and remake it in their image.

Socialists always demand other people's labor and money, because they produce nothing themselves.

Churchill had it right when he described Socialists as lazy, envious, and greedy for other people's money in order to make their Vampire system work.

Also, don't be fooled when these types use the word Democracy. If you read Marx carefully, he wanted one vote ONE TIME. Then when they are in power all the voting stops, and anyone that helped them obtain power but speaks out against this new tyranny are the first useful idiots to be thrown in the gulag.

I believe that anyone advocating or voting for socialism is either an idiot or a fraud.

 

[375 Ruger Fan]

If I’m not mistaken, wasn’t land ownership a requirement to vote in most States in the US when it was founded?

Land ownership and the vote was a big deal in South Africa during the time of Cecil Rhodes. It has always been painted as anti-black, but another view is that it wanted the voters to be educated and have some skin in the game.

As Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, Cecil Rhodes drove the passage of the Franchise and Ballot Act of 1892. This law raised property and wage qualifications and added a literacy test. The explicit goal was to restrict the vote for Black and Coloured Africans, laying early legal groundwork for segregation and later apartheid. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

The 1892 Franchise and Ballot Act

• • Higher property limits: Raised the required property ownership value from a low £25 to a much higher £75.
  • New education rules: Added a strict basic literacy test to register as a voter.
  • Targeted impact: Systematically cut thousands of Black and Coloured citizens from voting rolls because low wages made it hard for them to meet the new financial rules. [1, 2, 3]

 

[mdwest]

It’s been an open secret, but apparently they finally admitted it.

IDF, Shin Bet acknowledge for first time special mission to hunt down and kill all Oct. 7 terrorists

Officers in 'Nili' unit confirm facial recognition, artificial intelligence, detainee interrogations, humint being used in operation to track down every participant in Hamas-led October 7, 2023, invasion, massacre, abductions

www.timesofisrael.com

I have zero problem with this. Rape grandmothers and kill infants and murder college kids dancing at a love festival just because they are there .. you should be hunted down like the rabid dog you are and exterminated…

 

[Altitude sickness]

Mdwest, Wouldn’t it be nice if we just had a little bit of that back bone and tenacity?

We would send our own people to prison for doing that

 

[KJE81]

Isnt it in Starship Troopers that service (in the military) equals citizenship? I guess that would not work for any western democracy (since most of its inhabitants probably allready are citizens), but adjusting it so you have to pay taxes in order to vote should not be so problematic.

But I would assume making it so you could get more votes for paying more taxes would be a hard sell, since that would mean that you could basically buy votes while also violating the idea of One man, one vote. Perhaps one vote for each citizen that is paying taxes in combination with the citizen in question being over a certain age (for example 30 since it would seem to be when the brain is fully developed according to research) might be the way forward.

Wasnt it Churchill who said something like: ”If you are not a liberal at 20, you have no heart. If you are not a conservative at 40, you have no brain”. In Sweden the liberal party is part of the right so here its more like "If you are not left at 20, you have no heart". Left being the social democrats, the left and the greens here.

 

[375 Ruger Fan]

The fallacy in your argument is that it is not a 1:1 increase in labor costs to overall goods and services costs. I've already debunked this in an earlier post about corporate labor costs using McDonalds as an example. If a corporate owned store has labor costs of 23%, then if you double the wages and benefits of every employee there, the total expenses don't double for the company, they go up 23%. The most your happy meal should increase is 23%. So a 100% increase in their wages = a 23% increase in the end products price to the consumer. Or a 0.23:1 ratio. And that's assuming the Golden Arches doesn't absorb any of that increased cost by reducing their profit margins. Which they might.

The cost of a BigMac in Denmark is cheaper than the USA, but the starting wage for a burger flipper in Denmark is $21/hour, versus $13/hour in the United States. A danish burger flipper gets 50% more rate, but the product costs less. By your logic the cost of a BigMac in Denmark should cost almost $12, but it doesn't.

Edit:
And then you have to realize that for workers making less than $15/hour, that's only 13% of the workers, and for workers making under $17/hour, that's 23% of workers. So lets say we double labor costs for the bottom 13% of workers (we wouldn't) but assume worst case scenario for the oligarchs here. 23% labor costs x 13% workers is 3% country-wide. A one time 3% national increase in the total labor costs for goods and services produced by all of these workers, spread out over the total economy, assuming no company absorbs the increase from their profits. And yet their wages and benefits have doubled, so they have more spending money, and the gov finally gets to take a share.

@Big Easy, since you have such a command of all the figures and facts, how much does the Danish McDonalds pay in property tax? I don't have a clue, but I do know what a McDonalds in my home town in Louisiana pays. It's over a $100k per year. Gotta sell a lot of Big Macs, just to cover the property tax.

 

[LivingTheDream]

On a different note, was reading that last week Ukraine took back over 75sq KM of territory back.

Has Putin miscalculated the war of attrition, where Ukraine now has its own war machine manufacturing enough munitions to keep them in the fight.