They've gone down for many people. Hunger in America was nonexistent under Carter, and we didn't have this obesity epidemic either. All presidents since Carter sold out American health for capitalist interests.



Medicare will be replaced with a better system that distributes health care in a more effective way.

SS is completely solvent with a 1% increase across the board, 1/2% for the worker, 1/2% for the employer. As of now it isn't really in much trouble, that is the boogey man talk.

We are nothing like those countries you mentioned, only a moron would think the Democrats were like the communist in Venezuela or Bolivia.

Every time the Dems do something good with welfare the GOP always comes in and fucks it up. Regardless the average time a family spends on welfare has been two years, and this has been since the 1970's. You act like the black welfare queen was ever more than a myth to get reactionary white voters with a god complex emotional "we pay for all the blacks with our tax dollars" bah. Affirmative Action has been a great program to help black culture, and the reasons it was implemented are still around. If you don't like it, try to be above the lowest 20% and it won't apply to you. The idea that qualified white people are losing jobs to people because they're black is complete drivel, because of those qualified white people weren't on the lowest rung of ability they wouldn't be affected by it.

Again, attacking the public sector isn't going to help very real cultural problems Americans have with attitudes towards education. Our method of delivery works just fine with many people, the people who it don't work for are overwhelmingly poor and disenfranchised in every other possible way besides education as well.

And I'm pretty sure the Democratic party as a whole has many more advanced degree holders than the GOP, and they don't rely on fantastic thinking to explain how things work nearly as much. "If the government taxes less, it will have more revenue". GTFO

This post was edited by Skinned on Apr 9 2014 02:48pm

that's like calling Hinduists anti-linguistics because some more extreme Hinduists reject the thought that Sanskrit might be a regular language.


apart from my other points, there's the historical point that it's just damn absurd to blame one Persian fellow for the Islamic decline in a time in which books were copied hand by hand - in coincidentally the same time that the reconquista, the crusades and the Mongol invasions happened. it's even funnier to think that all of Middle East and Northern Africa would be a singular place under the catch name of "Islam"... when considering that the Middle Eastern(?) world didn't enter a proper decline in power for many hundred years after, and that it's even more foolish to blame Al-Ghazi and his school of thought for a slow down and a decline that actually happened several hundred years after his works had been published

the Safavid/Ottoman/Mughal empires really did deserve their titles as Empires!

This post was edited by Gastly on Apr 9 2014 03:57pm

Correlation not causation.

I'd attribute this to technology. Government policy (both left and right) has a minimal contribution to our well-being compared to technology.



SS is very much in trouble. The disability fund is in great peril (hospital fund is already insolvent...they'll have to take money from other parts of the SS fund). But go ahead and pussyfoot around the issue so that you can keep getting votes. It seems to be working quite well for your party.

i don't understand why you brought up hinduists when i said muslims aren't anti-science. Biological evolution is probably the only scientific theory that can spring controversy.

saying i made the persian scholar responsible for the decline of muslim empires is a strawman. I only stated his contribution to the development of an atmosphere that doesn't really encourage scientific inquiry for its own sake. His general influence on religion is visible to this day.

This post was edited by Neptunus on Apr 9 2014 05:43pm

Corporatism =/= capitalism.

it was brought up as an example of another theory that can bring up controversy, and it was especially brought up as an example of a theory that can spring controversy apart from the theory of evolution

... except that one of the more influential founders of this view of Islamic theology explicitly stated that thinking independently is one of the pillars of faith.
if he was responsible for this type of a current, then - in many Islamic views - his views upon the scientific "farq" were to be esteemed as well while expanding upon them - or they could be not, in which case one of his "pillars of faith" would have to be disacknowledged

the Salafists weren't influential until recently - and even then there's a plenty of other schools to subscribe into. which ones of the Islamic schools of thought are you thinking of?
didn't the Ottomans revolutionise warfare among others some 200 years after Al-Ghazi?

how about each and every other historical event that happened in the "Islamic world" around those times though?

This post was edited by Gastly on Apr 9 2014 05:58pm

Thinness was a product of want, obesity came with plentiful cheap food, and now healthy living is slowly replacing obesity as a product of luxury and social advancement.

The solution was never to embrace Carter's dream of want and Soviet styled sacrifice, instead we've pushed the bounds of societal accomplishment.

Medicare is insolvent and yet the left only proposes to add spending on top, meaningful change isn't discussed. Ryan is being attacked for suggesting we have a problem.

Social Security isn't solvent because the trust fund doesn't exist. It is debt owed by the government, and the funds to pay for obligations will have to come from the budget to make up for it. This represents a double burden on the current and future generations.

We need to forgive these obligations, accept that they're gone, and work to raise the retirement age and reduce benefits to make up for it. Otherwise they will just represent a real and growing burden on budgets going forward masked by the fact that the fund itself is technically solvent.

Demonizing the wealthy and deciding that the minimum wage "just doesn't feel right" is exactly the same leftist populism that those countries embrace.

This bleeds into the anti-intellectualism of the Democratic Paety. Most economists are to the right, most professionals are to the right. The left is composed of the uninformed poor and the liberal arts and social science academics (economics excluded). I don't see why those academics would be seen as particularly informed on how economies should be structured. If I want an opinion on Anglo-Saxon culture in the mid-9th century I'll duly turn to them for help, just as I'm sure you'll embrace the economic wisdom of those who have made their life a study of it.

it certainly is
for the republican party
and you need to shift to attempt to shift the goal post as defence?

guess it will not be too long before he will introduce a law to make it compulsory to teach in public schools
that santa claus, the easter bunny and the stork are real

because of my point below

apart from the field of linguistics, as opposed by extremist hinduists and more fanatical "tamilists"


that's a nice view.
except that it disaknowledges all of the factors, the influences, the agencies etc. of the people by themselves in the many Islamic states, and presumes that they'd suddenly just "stopped advancing" because of Al-Ghazali and the Ashari (Asharim?)



Okay. how? Which schools of thought follow the Ashari school in general - and was the Salafist school an influential force at all before more recent times?
And even now - how influential are the Safavids at all? There's a plenty of Islamic scholars!

This post was edited by Gastly on Apr 9 2014 07:29pm