Yeah, that seems like a bit too much "sociel engineering."
Agreed, although I think that of the many people who believe taxes are too high in this country, a lot of them object based on a desire to end up with more money in their own pockets rather than what I take to be your more principled view -- witness how popular, e.g., the tea party folks have become now that money is tight and many governments are choosing to raises taxes rather than cutting services vs. not-that-many years ago when there was so much more money to go around.
Yes, the US is not a low tax country, and less so pretty soon. Many foreigners compare only the income tax with theirs but often fail to realize that most states levy an additional income tax and that property taxes in the US are generally very high (about 10x versus what we paid in Germany for a similar house).
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Regards, Joerg
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"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.
I'm confident that many of the folks on welfare today wouldn't be there if they had been raised by a good, loving family. While some people do have enough self-control and just plain luck to overcome a really crappy childhood, I don't think it's really any surprise that crappy family lives (single parents, impoverished parents, abusive/drunk/druggie parents, etc.) has a very, very strong correlation with being impoverished, incarcerated, etc. as an adult.
Have you seen the movie "Trading Places" (Eddie Murphy, 1983)?
Yeah, but if you work'em too hard they really won't have any energy left to go looking for jobs. :-)
Indeed, but once you're born it's not like it's legal for your parents to kill you because they realize it's making their lives so much harder now that you're around. :-) Nearly 1 in 5 children in the U.S. today live in poverty, after all.
Given that it's partially supported with tax dollars, I'm surprised it has your support. :-)
I have no objection to their message of "self-respect and lay off the sex and booze." I've read that abstinance programs are seldom particularly effective (i.e., those Promise Keepers kids end up doing the wild thing at almost the exact same rate as their non-Promise Keeper peers), but if you're going to make any comment on sex at all, certainly you'd want to go for discouraging it a bit rather than promoting hedonism. :-)
Keith! You're now Keith and not just KRW! Welcome back! :-)
Agreed, crappy upbringing is not an excuse for bad behavior. However, to my mind it means that it's well worth having entitlement programs specifically targeted towards the poor, so that their children hopefully don't repeat the pattern.
Nope, but I do think Hollywood movies can really get you thinking.
Seems to me that it's splitting hairs to suggest that government doesn't work when your selected partially-government-funded charity does...
Did you want to contract out the military to private firms too? There's already far more private military contractors providing "security" in Iraq and Afghanistan than in any prior war, and the cost to the taxpayers is many times more (per soldier) than the regular enlisted.
OK... Personally I couldn't in good conscious tell a child of mine that "it's best" to wait for marriage before you have sex when myself and many of my peers didn't get married until our mid-'30s, but I'm sure we'd agree that there are too many people having sex too early -- and having sex without appropriate protection for both the potential physiological and psychological consequences of doing so. Happily, the average age of the first sexual encounter has been slowly ticking upward for several decades now.
And the kids don't "text" anymore, they "sext", nudy videos via their cell phones :-) ...Jim Thompson
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| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
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The only thing bipartisan in this country is hypocrisy
"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...
Nah, 17 is more like it:
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They'd have been doing that 50 years ago if the technology had existed. Didn't you have skinny-dipping parties as a teen or college-aged kid? :-) ...it's just that there wasn't the techonology to infinitely replicate the images screen by the ogling teens to a worldwide audience in under a minute...
Meaningless, that's _average_... average of real people and nerdy engineers ;-)
Actually 17 was probably the age of my first "endeavor" ;-)
...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
The only thing bipartisan in this country is hypocrisy
Just a change in the way I set up Agent this time. I had to reinstall everything. I've been putting it off for far too long, so bought another disk over the weekend, and... It'll be weeks before I have everything working again. :-(
It's been proven to do exactly the opposite.
That's part of your problem.
Government isn't any part of Best Friends. It *is* a charity.
The military does what it does very poorly too. It's *very* expensive for what it does, just like everything that is the government. There is little choice, though, so it's built into the Constitution.
Does everything in your life lack any contrast?
Your peers didn't graduate high school until they were in their mid-30s? Well, I could have expected...
They purpotedly received funding from the Bush administration for their pro-abstinance programs -- and not without some controversy:
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Bill Bennett's gambling habits don't exactly speak much to "self-control" either -- even if he is able to afford the millions of dollars he's lost: If he were only making, say, $50k a year, would he really have stopped gambling before it became a real problem? I'm guessing no...
Cute, but no... from
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: "The programs of the Best Friends Foundation teach that the best decision is to wait until marriage to have sex."
This all being said, Bennett does deserve credit for making an active effort to improve the lives of the disadvantaged; even people who don't agree with the means would have to respect what he's trying to accomplish.
A little more efficiency in the military could pay for an awful lot of entitlement programs...
I don't have one handy, but I'm sure you'll find one on BF's site.
There is a big difference between government and receiving *some* funding from government.
What does gambling have to do with "self control"? Gambling is not illegal. It's not even a "sin". That whole brouhaha was a load of crap. BTW, he didn't lose "millions". Do you always get your "facts" from leftist loons?
The best decision isn't the only viable decision. The point being that if you
1) graduate high school. 2) get a job. 3) Have kids, in that order, the chances of you being poor are minimal. Waiting for sex until marriage is a goal of BF, but it certainly is not the only one or even the most important one.
A little more efficiency and you could cut taxes so the economy would be allowed to recover.
Hmm, well, I'll take a look, but hopefully you'd agree that your proposition -- entitlement programs specifically targeted towards the poor somehow makes them more likely to repeat a pattern of bad behavior than not having such programs -- is rather a lot to swallow.
I originally stated that they were partially-funded by the government...
Many people have a problem with not gambling more than they can afford, and not being able to stop is certainly a "self-control" issue. Since Bill Bennett is promoting self-control, even though he may not personally have a problem in the area, it's better if he avoids gambling so as to serve as a better example.
Yes.
The Washington Post says it was $8M:
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(look at the reference).
I largely agree with that. As I say, it looks like a pretty good organization overall that's worthy of support.
You tend to get what you reward. Reward sloth and you'll get more sloth. It's really plain to see for anyone with eyes. Entitlements reward sloth. BF is
*not* an entitlement.
You also equated them (as you're want to do with your silly moral relativism) with government. They are *not*.
He did not gamble more than he could afford to lose and stopped. Where is the lack of control?
^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ I rest my case. Lie
It's the only good idea. Without a vibrant economy there will be no money for any other pet projects.
There's some truth to this, but it seems like you're thinking of people like robots: What motivations people is a lot more than just, "if I do X, it seems like I can get Y, that I want" -- many people won't even try to do X because they've been told all their lives they can't to it or aren't even aware it's possible. Then need a little hand-holding to get things started, and overall everyone comes out ahead.
That wasn't my intent; sorry if it came out that way.
I'd almost suggest that losing $8M in Las Vegas is self-evidence of a lack of self control, but I realize that's subjective and that as someone having a net worth that's not even 1/10th that much, I probably can't relate. However, the issue isn't how much self-control he may or may not have, but whether it's appropriate for someone in his position to be engaging in activities where self-control often is a real problem -- it just looks bad.
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