Dating seemed so quaint in the past didn't it?
The young man drives over to your parents house in his first car. He's dressed nice. He has flowers. He knocks politely.
Meanwhile, you've been getting ready for hours! Putting on your best dress, your finest makeup, hair done just so. You bask in your mothers concern, and hope you survive your fathers stern gaze.
You answer the door! Your young man introduces himself to your father and they shake hands. Stern words are politely conveyed about curfew.
The date proceeds with the usual of the day. Dinner and polite small talk. A movie! And what's not to like about being in the dark with a date?!!?!
At best you hold hands, or maybe kiss if this is past the first date or two.
Ah! Blissful innocence.....
......................................................................................................
Keep in mind that nearly every stage of the above is in actuality servile, juvenile, mean, and designed to reinforce gender roles......roles that no longer really exist. Roles that treated men like department managers, and women as property. It's rather insulting if you think about it.
A man in the past *couldn't* gain access to a female without working hard to prove himself financially. Think it was weird a century ago when it was normal for men to out-age their wives by a decade or more? It was REQUIRED. A man had to establish himself to be "worthy", as well as capable. Women working was, up until recently a HUGE taboo. In the past, women were escorted by men...not because men were nice...but because only maids, the poor, and prostitutes walked alone. You were escorted to broadcast that...well at least you're not a hooker....
Women *had* to put on their best face and be as pretty as possible. Wait too long to get married and you were an old maid.....in your EARLY 20's!!!!!!! Meanwhile noone really gave too much of a shit if your husband was old, so long as he had cash.
Men and women today, especially in my generation, are playing by these old rules still, and it's utterly fucking stupid.
I recall my Great Aunt Marylee's idyllic life. She married a mechanical engineering professor, and boy did he do well!! He got a WHOLE FRIGGIN MOUNTAIN as his wedding dowry, because his inlaws were wealthy in the textile business! He retired young, and he and she lived out their days doing equestrian training and selling land and timber off of their little mountain, while they lived in a tiny stone cottage near the top.
She was also 13 years old. She was tutored to read and write, and how to be a housewife. She did not attend school. She had her eighth child before she was 22. Her husband was 18 years older than her.
Was her life idyllic? Or was it an intervention from child protective services waiting to happen??
DO WE REALLY WANT TO KEEP THINKING THIS SHIT WORKS?
A lifestyle not too far removed from today, was considered perfectly normal...and today it is considered a horrible crime. And yet many of the rules remain, to the detriment of us all.
I've tried really hard to wrap my mind around how nostalgia and social customs seem to distort things. Is it any wonder that men and women have so many failed relationships today? And especially if they look back fondly on the past? That past was actually a nightmare!!
I approach dating in a rather passive way, but I'm a passive (if outspoken) person by nature. I try to make it abundantly clear when I like someone, but I don't push boundaries and I require permission to pursue things like intimacy. Not because I'm shy (I am anything but shy), but rather because I hope to find an adult on the other end of this interest that really understands what the pivotal (though not only reason) to want a relationship actually is.
Relationships are an attempt to find someone to reliably have sex with. Someone to bone! Bump uglies with. Do the horizontal mambo with. FUCK.
Period! :P
That doesn't mean that common interests, common worldview, friendship, or shared values are not also vital....because they most definitely are. But those things are generally requirements in ALL of our friendships and relationships with others on some level. None of those people, however, are ever going to fuck you, nor should they most likely.
I'm a heterosexual, though I think this line of thinking applies regardless of which gonads your fond of.
I actually think non heteronormative relationships seem to have figured this shit out better than many of us "normal" people (I use that term sarcastically). Gay people have at least embraced wholeheartedly and unashamedly that their need for sexual expression is pivotal and vital to their happiness. DUH!
I also think the young in this generation do this better than us more "mature" individuals (hint: maturity is a bullshit story we tell ourselves). Not because they make better choices, per-se. Rather, it's because they have the frivolity of youth to realize that LIVING is kind of a cool thing to do. Risk is a natural part of life, and it's the mature that have that joy beat out of them.
Women? Are you tired of "Netflix and chill"? THEN DONT PUT UP WITH IT. Just don't consider it strange that a guy who likes you wants to sleep with you (hint: that is part of liking you). And don't make the poor guy perform like a circus act with a built in ATM, just to be granted access to your vagina. It's insulting, and your vagina isn't that special. Half the population of the earth has one. He'll move on.
Men? Are you tired of being treated like a portable bank account, wrestling with overly and deliberately vague deflections of your advances that make you feel like you're being strung along by a girls dubious uncertainty? THEN DONT PUT UP WITH IT. Just don't consider any woman owes you anything. Vagina's may be aplenty, but they are NOT YOURS. They belong to someone you actually might like, so try some human decency, respect, and permission. Retain your self worth and pride. And stop with the dick pics already. She knows you have one. :P They are no rarer than the vajayjay! :P
Just have the courage to face who is in front of you. Take chances. Have fun. Live your life! And have as much sex as you want to have. Toss in contraception (American's are REALLY FUCKING STUPID ABOUT THIS...it makes sex as dangerous as inflating a tire), and just enjoy yourself.
You won't find Mr./Mrs. Right in your first relationship. Maybe not your 20th. You have to be willing to ride that rollercoaster as much and as long as you can till you find what you really want and deserve. Romance novels, old TV shows, sitcoms, romcoms.....these are works of fiction. They use storytelling devices. They are not life guides or textbooks.
Go get laid for cryin out loud. It feels nice! :)
Sunday, May 1, 2016
Tuesday, March 22, 2016
Income Inequality
A lot of people genuinely fail to grasp precisely what income inequality entails. And many make the terrible mistake of merely or only looking at median income levels, when in actuality there are many many more dynamics at play.
There was an article in the Wall St. Journal recently delineating the struggles of families with incomes in the $250,000 range. To many WSJ readers the article resonated. But to many on the left it was met with outrage, given the disconnect obvious in the article from where most real families incomes fall.
I think the outrage was uncalled for. Furthermore I think it typifies a fundamental mistake made in the calculus between both of our political parties, and whom they decide to champion. And lastly it fails to acknowledge the real underlying issue of what income inequality actually is, and why we are in this untenable place.
I am a capitalist. I work in the corporate world, unashamedly and unapologetically. As far as I am concerned capitalism is, at its most functional, the greatest single (and obvious) force for peace that exists. And I believe this because it dovetails, again at its most functional, with the most basic of our human instincts, that of cooperation. Human beings are fundamentally tribal in their behaviors, and it is our collective strength as groups of people working together that gave rise to our species dominance on this planet. It is therefore very little of a stretch to realize a simple truth. If you have something I want, and I can get it from you without a risk of violence (which ends badly for the both of us), I have a basis to cooperate with you. It doesn't mean I have to like you. But it does open up an avenue of understanding, and that is how coalitions form and how people LEARN the value of cooperation in scenario's they would not otherwise wish to cooperate. This reality breaks down barriers of geography, race, gender, and culture better than any.
But, I also realize that much of the discussion about markets and how they should be "free" is a whole lot of nonsense. There is no such thing as a free market when you move beyond tribal village sized economies, and we haven't had those for many millenia.
Governments chief role, throughout human history, has been to set the rules of commerce. Rules allow a market to flourish (or to falter if the rules are bad), and rules have to change with the tide of human change. And economic systems are so inordinately complex in the modern world, that they have to be measured and analyzed almost constantly, so that desired outcomes are met.
It is along this line of thinking that we SHOULD be examining issues like income inequality, because the real issue at stake comes down to what sort of society you want to live in. At its most fundamental, the issue is really what sort of world you want.
The struggles of a professional family earning $250,000 a year are real for them, though I completely acknowledge that they are different than the struggles of a family earning $50,000. That doesn't make one less important than the other. And this is key to my discussion here, because it points out a glaring problem in how I view the current political take on this.
The American Dream. That's what this is about. And George Carlin said it best when he said "It's called a dream because you'd have to be asleep to believe it." But that's not the entire story.
A professionally educated couple making that sort of income and raising a family represents a group of people who still believe in the American Dream, primarily because they are the ones who actually have a shot at living it. And why shouldn't they? In many areas of this country that sort of income is required to even hope to live the life typified in the concept of the American Dream. Costs for housing, education, and health care have skyrocketed way beyond mere market inflation in most places in this country, and in a few skyrocket doesn't even begin to describe it.
The rest of us who make far less (my combined household income is less than a quarter of that) could easily become incensed, and deride the "hardships" of those people. But that is shortsighted nonsense.
An easy example for me to cherry-pick in my current experience would be my pharmacy staff. Both of my staff pharmacists make three times what I do, and yet on many matters I get to tell them what to do. I have expertise in operations, procedures, and managerial policy with my company that they lack, and I have the authority to enforce those things. So I have important skills, but my skills are not as specialized nor as market valuable as theirs. I'm a college dropout, and neither one of them are. They *should* make more than me, because their expertise (and how the market values that expertise) determines this.
Both of my pharmacists live objectively better lives than I do, merely from the amount of income they generate. But you have to be honest and realize "better" is also a very subjective term. I have plenty of employees who make much less than I do, so those employees could equally make the same value judgement mistake about me.
Judging ourselves against one another and using incomes as a metric to determine worth as human beings is colossally stupid. More importantly it makes it all too easy to DIVIDE US, and allow us to lose focus on what the real issue should be.
The real issue is figuring out what sort of world we want to live in. What sort of nation we wish to be proud of. What sort of society will we raise our children within.
There will always be a need for people who bake a tasty delicious pizza for you. There will always be a need for a cute and charming waitress to service your table. Do they deserve your scorn and derision because they haven't achieved what you have? Do they deserve to live in poverty despite working hard?
I'm a pretty smart guy, but I'm not Stephen Hawking smart. And I made choices in my youth that I cannot undo without the assistance of a time machine. My income potential still has growth opportunity even at my age, but I cannot kid myself into thinking I'll ever get to the level of making what my staff pharmacists do. Possible, but not likely. Nonetheless I do have skills more valuable to a company and a market than a pizza chef or a waitress, and I feel no guilt in realizing that my compensation is naturally going to be higher than theirs.
But I also acknowledge that I think it is important to live in a world where work is valued. And believe me I have worked in the service industry my whole life, and take offense when someone derides a pizza chefs job or a waitresses job as "easy". On the contrary those are HARD JOBS, and anyone telling you different is not only a fool, but telling you how terribly they view their fellow man.
If the genetic, social, and cultural crapshoot that is being alive had graced me with a substandard intelligence or some other setback, would I deserve poverty? Just remind yourself of the sobering fact that 60 years ago you could feed a family digging holes for a living. Sure, if that's all you could do well, you weren't going to do as well as an investment banker. But you could still take care of yourself.
Today that is impossible. Is that the kind of world you want to live in? Surrounded by people who could keep their dignity if it were only 1953?
Too much of the political and social commentary on this issue has had the WRONG PEOPLE angry at the WRONG PEOPLE. And I'll quote George Carlin again, because it is precisely the reason why we get this whole situation ass backwards.
"The rich pay almost none of the taxes, make almost all of the money. The middle class pays most of the taxes, makes almost none of the money. The poor? Exist to scare the shit out of the middle class, keep em' showin up at those jobs!"
Those on the left, and indeed way more so on the right, are angry at the wrong people. And this is precisely because so few people grasp what the word rich even means. To a single mother with two kids living in government housing, that $250,000 a year making family is rich....but only to her. $250,000 is not rich, not anymore.
People don't really understand the math of this. And it is precisely because the abbreviations we use to get rid of zero's when we speak about big numbers obscure our ability to innately grasp them. Billions and Trillions are very simple words to say, but they represent almost unfathomable amounts of money to the average person. They simply cannot figure out how to wrap their mind around those numbers when they are expressed in real terms.
Here is an improbable for instance. Bill Gates, who at the moment is worth $79 Billion dollars. Let's assume for the sake of argument he could instantly liquidate that worth into cash. Imagine him just deciding for shits and giggles that he was going to give away a million dollars a day every day for as long as it took for him to go broke.
He would have to live another 216 years before that happened.
And his wealth is in total only about 6% of what we spent as a nation on a plane that can't fly (The F35). The richest man in the world isn't even a dent in the decisions governments make all the time.
Our economy is staggeringly large, so large that few people who even graduated high school can easily grasp the sheer mathematics of it, despite the math itself being very simple.
A small handful of individuals in this country, Bill Gates among them, own more than 270 million Americans do. A group so elite and tiny that they represent less people than I have in my store on a slow Tuesday.
The accumulation of weath isn't necessarily a bad thing. You want more than you have, and so do I. But there comes a point when wealth becomes meaningless as an individual. For you and I it would probably not come anywhere close to Bill Gates's net worth.
At what point do we say that we'd rather live in a society where people can still be rich, but the least among us can feed themselves?
I think it is clear that we have reached the point to where we MUST be asking this question. And we must realize that it is a conversation vital to saving the world we want to live in.
There was an article in the Wall St. Journal recently delineating the struggles of families with incomes in the $250,000 range. To many WSJ readers the article resonated. But to many on the left it was met with outrage, given the disconnect obvious in the article from where most real families incomes fall.
I think the outrage was uncalled for. Furthermore I think it typifies a fundamental mistake made in the calculus between both of our political parties, and whom they decide to champion. And lastly it fails to acknowledge the real underlying issue of what income inequality actually is, and why we are in this untenable place.
I am a capitalist. I work in the corporate world, unashamedly and unapologetically. As far as I am concerned capitalism is, at its most functional, the greatest single (and obvious) force for peace that exists. And I believe this because it dovetails, again at its most functional, with the most basic of our human instincts, that of cooperation. Human beings are fundamentally tribal in their behaviors, and it is our collective strength as groups of people working together that gave rise to our species dominance on this planet. It is therefore very little of a stretch to realize a simple truth. If you have something I want, and I can get it from you without a risk of violence (which ends badly for the both of us), I have a basis to cooperate with you. It doesn't mean I have to like you. But it does open up an avenue of understanding, and that is how coalitions form and how people LEARN the value of cooperation in scenario's they would not otherwise wish to cooperate. This reality breaks down barriers of geography, race, gender, and culture better than any.
But, I also realize that much of the discussion about markets and how they should be "free" is a whole lot of nonsense. There is no such thing as a free market when you move beyond tribal village sized economies, and we haven't had those for many millenia.
Governments chief role, throughout human history, has been to set the rules of commerce. Rules allow a market to flourish (or to falter if the rules are bad), and rules have to change with the tide of human change. And economic systems are so inordinately complex in the modern world, that they have to be measured and analyzed almost constantly, so that desired outcomes are met.
It is along this line of thinking that we SHOULD be examining issues like income inequality, because the real issue at stake comes down to what sort of society you want to live in. At its most fundamental, the issue is really what sort of world you want.
The struggles of a professional family earning $250,000 a year are real for them, though I completely acknowledge that they are different than the struggles of a family earning $50,000. That doesn't make one less important than the other. And this is key to my discussion here, because it points out a glaring problem in how I view the current political take on this.
The American Dream. That's what this is about. And George Carlin said it best when he said "It's called a dream because you'd have to be asleep to believe it." But that's not the entire story.
A professionally educated couple making that sort of income and raising a family represents a group of people who still believe in the American Dream, primarily because they are the ones who actually have a shot at living it. And why shouldn't they? In many areas of this country that sort of income is required to even hope to live the life typified in the concept of the American Dream. Costs for housing, education, and health care have skyrocketed way beyond mere market inflation in most places in this country, and in a few skyrocket doesn't even begin to describe it.
The rest of us who make far less (my combined household income is less than a quarter of that) could easily become incensed, and deride the "hardships" of those people. But that is shortsighted nonsense.
An easy example for me to cherry-pick in my current experience would be my pharmacy staff. Both of my staff pharmacists make three times what I do, and yet on many matters I get to tell them what to do. I have expertise in operations, procedures, and managerial policy with my company that they lack, and I have the authority to enforce those things. So I have important skills, but my skills are not as specialized nor as market valuable as theirs. I'm a college dropout, and neither one of them are. They *should* make more than me, because their expertise (and how the market values that expertise) determines this.
Both of my pharmacists live objectively better lives than I do, merely from the amount of income they generate. But you have to be honest and realize "better" is also a very subjective term. I have plenty of employees who make much less than I do, so those employees could equally make the same value judgement mistake about me.
Judging ourselves against one another and using incomes as a metric to determine worth as human beings is colossally stupid. More importantly it makes it all too easy to DIVIDE US, and allow us to lose focus on what the real issue should be.
The real issue is figuring out what sort of world we want to live in. What sort of nation we wish to be proud of. What sort of society will we raise our children within.
There will always be a need for people who bake a tasty delicious pizza for you. There will always be a need for a cute and charming waitress to service your table. Do they deserve your scorn and derision because they haven't achieved what you have? Do they deserve to live in poverty despite working hard?
I'm a pretty smart guy, but I'm not Stephen Hawking smart. And I made choices in my youth that I cannot undo without the assistance of a time machine. My income potential still has growth opportunity even at my age, but I cannot kid myself into thinking I'll ever get to the level of making what my staff pharmacists do. Possible, but not likely. Nonetheless I do have skills more valuable to a company and a market than a pizza chef or a waitress, and I feel no guilt in realizing that my compensation is naturally going to be higher than theirs.
But I also acknowledge that I think it is important to live in a world where work is valued. And believe me I have worked in the service industry my whole life, and take offense when someone derides a pizza chefs job or a waitresses job as "easy". On the contrary those are HARD JOBS, and anyone telling you different is not only a fool, but telling you how terribly they view their fellow man.
If the genetic, social, and cultural crapshoot that is being alive had graced me with a substandard intelligence or some other setback, would I deserve poverty? Just remind yourself of the sobering fact that 60 years ago you could feed a family digging holes for a living. Sure, if that's all you could do well, you weren't going to do as well as an investment banker. But you could still take care of yourself.
Today that is impossible. Is that the kind of world you want to live in? Surrounded by people who could keep their dignity if it were only 1953?
Too much of the political and social commentary on this issue has had the WRONG PEOPLE angry at the WRONG PEOPLE. And I'll quote George Carlin again, because it is precisely the reason why we get this whole situation ass backwards.
"The rich pay almost none of the taxes, make almost all of the money. The middle class pays most of the taxes, makes almost none of the money. The poor? Exist to scare the shit out of the middle class, keep em' showin up at those jobs!"
Those on the left, and indeed way more so on the right, are angry at the wrong people. And this is precisely because so few people grasp what the word rich even means. To a single mother with two kids living in government housing, that $250,000 a year making family is rich....but only to her. $250,000 is not rich, not anymore.
People don't really understand the math of this. And it is precisely because the abbreviations we use to get rid of zero's when we speak about big numbers obscure our ability to innately grasp them. Billions and Trillions are very simple words to say, but they represent almost unfathomable amounts of money to the average person. They simply cannot figure out how to wrap their mind around those numbers when they are expressed in real terms.
Here is an improbable for instance. Bill Gates, who at the moment is worth $79 Billion dollars. Let's assume for the sake of argument he could instantly liquidate that worth into cash. Imagine him just deciding for shits and giggles that he was going to give away a million dollars a day every day for as long as it took for him to go broke.
He would have to live another 216 years before that happened.
And his wealth is in total only about 6% of what we spent as a nation on a plane that can't fly (The F35). The richest man in the world isn't even a dent in the decisions governments make all the time.
Our economy is staggeringly large, so large that few people who even graduated high school can easily grasp the sheer mathematics of it, despite the math itself being very simple.
A small handful of individuals in this country, Bill Gates among them, own more than 270 million Americans do. A group so elite and tiny that they represent less people than I have in my store on a slow Tuesday.
The accumulation of weath isn't necessarily a bad thing. You want more than you have, and so do I. But there comes a point when wealth becomes meaningless as an individual. For you and I it would probably not come anywhere close to Bill Gates's net worth.
At what point do we say that we'd rather live in a society where people can still be rich, but the least among us can feed themselves?
I think it is clear that we have reached the point to where we MUST be asking this question. And we must realize that it is a conversation vital to saving the world we want to live in.
Sunday, March 20, 2016
What You Don't Know About Immigration
Trumplicans (I think I just coined a new phrase!!) are being convinced that the number one threat to our economy and future are immigrants.
And I won't lie. Our immigration policies are terrible. But not terrible in the way you think, or for the reasons you believe. I suppose this is why we can get so easily distracted by the utterly harmless Syrian refugees (people react to what happens in the moment) and not see the larger picture.
Most Americans (and indeed some of my friends) don't dig deep enough, or think hard enough. It's time for another soapbox session! Listen up!!
Immigration (the legal kind) is a perfect storm of two terrible ideologies that agree with one another for entirely different reasons.
Democrats in Congress want more immigrants, because they typically vote Democrat. And most legal immigrants put less of a burden on our social welfare systems than natural born citizens do. That's just a fact. It is still a burden because of the growth, but not per-capita. The #1 drain on social programs is white americans in the south. Yup! (remember minorites...are minorites...because their are less of them....math people! :P)
Republicans in Congress want more immigrants (though they claim not to) because the H1B Visa program allows us to import skilled engineers, doctors, scientists.....that, because they come from countries that typically have wide income inequality, can be paid less....because they are not accustomed to things American's used to take for granted. Like pensions, extended benefits, etc...
On the liberal side it's a mix of bleeding hearts and hunger for votes. On the conservative side it's more cynical. It gets business highly skilled cheaper labor...and gives their conservative base something easy to get angry about (that their Republican politicians helped create), thereby stupidly giving them carte-blanc to continue dismantling what little labor protections we have left (it's the gubmints fault...so less gubmit.....this equals less rights for you and me too...duh)
Democrats and Republicans have flip flopped their roles in this a bit the last 40 years, I won't deny that. But right now it's conservative Republicans driving the legislative bus, and they're all over this like a hobo on a ham sandwich...regardless of what they say in speeches.
Politically it thus becomes a scramble between who's strategy works best from a purely political standpoint. It's all about votes, election cycles, lobbying, and that cushy job after congress.
Why? Because our political process is bought and sold by the wealthy. If you haven't realized this by now..........well....
George Carlin said it best. "The Rich make all the money, pay almost none of the taxes. The middle class make almost none of the money, pay all the taxes.....The poor? Exist to scare the shit out of the middle class. Keep em showin up at those jobs!"
Immigration isn't the actual problem. The numbers are a problem (the projected numbers going forward are clearly unsustainable), but a deliberately created one....
The actual problem with immigrants is twofold.
1). Why are H1B Visa programs bringing in skilled workers? Because even if we did invest in trade & technical education (something we desperately need), American's would demand fair compensation. Foreigners will settle for less....because it's freakin America!!! Who wouldn't want to come to the land of the free, when yesterday you lived in a warzone? And no...not every H1B Visa holder came from a war zone. Only some did. But most come from far less progressive countries. You don't see mass immigration from Sweden! :P
But did you know that foreign looking doctor at Doctors Care, with the imprecise English (apart from having as credible a medical education....and apart from likely being Hindi or Muslim ..yeah about 10% of all doctors in the U.S. currently are Muslim) makes little more than what I do running a grocery store? I sell potatoes....They manage your health....I dropped out of college...They have doctorate degrees. Wrap your mind around that! Hospitals LOVE THEM. They're cheaper than some nurses!!
2). Illegal immigrants come here because there are jobs for them. And it's not "jobs that Americans's wont do". That's a stupid argument. The more correct argument is that it's "jobs employers would get in a lot of trouble over if their employees weren't illegal". Citizens have rights. Illegals have almost none. So they are EXPLOITABLE. Most illegal immigrants pay taxes, because it's easy to avoid E-Verify (Dept Of Homeland Security citizenship or legal status checks) if you're a small time contractor with under 50 employees (you're not legally required to)....but good luck dodging the IRS. So illegals (who cannot claim welfare benefits though their natural born chidren can) get to pay taxes into a society and reap almost none of the benefits. You think mexicans are born carpenters??!??!?!? No....but most construction of that type is small, under 50 employee operations....ON PURPOSE.
Immigrants aren't the problem. Two faced politics (mostly by Republicans, but Democrats share blame) designed to keep businesses happy, and keep citizens focused on something to be angry about, while your labor rights (rights your parents and grandparents built their lives on) get whittled away...are the problem.
And it goes deeper.
It's a good strategy if you want to EXTRACT wealth from an economy, and protect that same economy from inflation...thereby allowing you to KEEP DOING IT for far longer.
That's what 35 years worth of Reaganomics have done. Less people than shop in my store on a slow Tuesday (400) now own the combined wealth equivalent to the bottom half of the American population. Immigrants (and terrible trade policy that encourages moving jobs overseas) allow all this money to silently move to the top tenth of a percent of Americans, because it helps keep things CHEAP, so we can avoid the inflation that ....every other country in the world has had to cope with.
Without the immigrant "solution" we'd have seen pitchforks by now.
.....................
This reality is why I support Bernie Sanders.
Hillary Clinton (and her husband) have earned many millions from large financial institutions in public speaking fees, not to mention the shedloads of money poured into her campaign. Do you really want someone like that, who makes a living speaking to the very institutions that tanked our economy and led to the loss of trillions in actual wealth?
Trump? He survives on favorable tax incentives and favorable bankruptcy protection, and foreign investors. He's not beholden to the Republican party, but he is beholden to the underlying system that kept him rich...and got us here. He's a master manipulator, not a business expert.
The rest? Well Cruz is actually a bit more frightening than Trump, but in general all the rest are bankrolled by Wall Street and the system that got us here. Trust them at your peril, unless you like how things are.
Bernie isn't a Presidential candidate, at least not in the way we typically think of one. He's a movement. Even if you do not agree with all of his politics...hell even if you barely agree with any of it, he is beholden to NONE of the system that got us to this point.
He is forcing a change in the way we view this entire conversation, and it is both good and long overdue.
Back to the main point here.....even if I think this segue was necessary.
We should openly accept Syrian refugees...any refugees....they are REFUGEES. To not accept them is morally reprehensible. That is a SEPERATE ARGUMENT from the problems with immigration. :)
/soapbox mode off
And I won't lie. Our immigration policies are terrible. But not terrible in the way you think, or for the reasons you believe. I suppose this is why we can get so easily distracted by the utterly harmless Syrian refugees (people react to what happens in the moment) and not see the larger picture.
Most Americans (and indeed some of my friends) don't dig deep enough, or think hard enough. It's time for another soapbox session! Listen up!!
Immigration (the legal kind) is a perfect storm of two terrible ideologies that agree with one another for entirely different reasons.
Democrats in Congress want more immigrants, because they typically vote Democrat. And most legal immigrants put less of a burden on our social welfare systems than natural born citizens do. That's just a fact. It is still a burden because of the growth, but not per-capita. The #1 drain on social programs is white americans in the south. Yup! (remember minorites...are minorites...because their are less of them....math people! :P)
Republicans in Congress want more immigrants (though they claim not to) because the H1B Visa program allows us to import skilled engineers, doctors, scientists.....that, because they come from countries that typically have wide income inequality, can be paid less....because they are not accustomed to things American's used to take for granted. Like pensions, extended benefits, etc...
On the liberal side it's a mix of bleeding hearts and hunger for votes. On the conservative side it's more cynical. It gets business highly skilled cheaper labor...and gives their conservative base something easy to get angry about (that their Republican politicians helped create), thereby stupidly giving them carte-blanc to continue dismantling what little labor protections we have left (it's the gubmints fault...so less gubmit.....this equals less rights for you and me too...duh)
Democrats and Republicans have flip flopped their roles in this a bit the last 40 years, I won't deny that. But right now it's conservative Republicans driving the legislative bus, and they're all over this like a hobo on a ham sandwich...regardless of what they say in speeches.
Politically it thus becomes a scramble between who's strategy works best from a purely political standpoint. It's all about votes, election cycles, lobbying, and that cushy job after congress.
Why? Because our political process is bought and sold by the wealthy. If you haven't realized this by now..........well....
George Carlin said it best. "The Rich make all the money, pay almost none of the taxes. The middle class make almost none of the money, pay all the taxes.....The poor? Exist to scare the shit out of the middle class. Keep em showin up at those jobs!"
Immigration isn't the actual problem. The numbers are a problem (the projected numbers going forward are clearly unsustainable), but a deliberately created one....
The actual problem with immigrants is twofold.
1). Why are H1B Visa programs bringing in skilled workers? Because even if we did invest in trade & technical education (something we desperately need), American's would demand fair compensation. Foreigners will settle for less....because it's freakin America!!! Who wouldn't want to come to the land of the free, when yesterday you lived in a warzone? And no...not every H1B Visa holder came from a war zone. Only some did. But most come from far less progressive countries. You don't see mass immigration from Sweden! :P
But did you know that foreign looking doctor at Doctors Care, with the imprecise English (apart from having as credible a medical education....and apart from likely being Hindi or Muslim ..yeah about 10% of all doctors in the U.S. currently are Muslim) makes little more than what I do running a grocery store? I sell potatoes....They manage your health....I dropped out of college...They have doctorate degrees. Wrap your mind around that! Hospitals LOVE THEM. They're cheaper than some nurses!!
2). Illegal immigrants come here because there are jobs for them. And it's not "jobs that Americans's wont do". That's a stupid argument. The more correct argument is that it's "jobs employers would get in a lot of trouble over if their employees weren't illegal". Citizens have rights. Illegals have almost none. So they are EXPLOITABLE. Most illegal immigrants pay taxes, because it's easy to avoid E-Verify (Dept Of Homeland Security citizenship or legal status checks) if you're a small time contractor with under 50 employees (you're not legally required to)....but good luck dodging the IRS. So illegals (who cannot claim welfare benefits though their natural born chidren can) get to pay taxes into a society and reap almost none of the benefits. You think mexicans are born carpenters??!??!?!? No....but most construction of that type is small, under 50 employee operations....ON PURPOSE.
Immigrants aren't the problem. Two faced politics (mostly by Republicans, but Democrats share blame) designed to keep businesses happy, and keep citizens focused on something to be angry about, while your labor rights (rights your parents and grandparents built their lives on) get whittled away...are the problem.
And it goes deeper.
It's a good strategy if you want to EXTRACT wealth from an economy, and protect that same economy from inflation...thereby allowing you to KEEP DOING IT for far longer.
That's what 35 years worth of Reaganomics have done. Less people than shop in my store on a slow Tuesday (400) now own the combined wealth equivalent to the bottom half of the American population. Immigrants (and terrible trade policy that encourages moving jobs overseas) allow all this money to silently move to the top tenth of a percent of Americans, because it helps keep things CHEAP, so we can avoid the inflation that ....every other country in the world has had to cope with.
Without the immigrant "solution" we'd have seen pitchforks by now.
.....................
This reality is why I support Bernie Sanders.
Hillary Clinton (and her husband) have earned many millions from large financial institutions in public speaking fees, not to mention the shedloads of money poured into her campaign. Do you really want someone like that, who makes a living speaking to the very institutions that tanked our economy and led to the loss of trillions in actual wealth?
Trump? He survives on favorable tax incentives and favorable bankruptcy protection, and foreign investors. He's not beholden to the Republican party, but he is beholden to the underlying system that kept him rich...and got us here. He's a master manipulator, not a business expert.
The rest? Well Cruz is actually a bit more frightening than Trump, but in general all the rest are bankrolled by Wall Street and the system that got us here. Trust them at your peril, unless you like how things are.
Bernie isn't a Presidential candidate, at least not in the way we typically think of one. He's a movement. Even if you do not agree with all of his politics...hell even if you barely agree with any of it, he is beholden to NONE of the system that got us to this point.
He is forcing a change in the way we view this entire conversation, and it is both good and long overdue.
Back to the main point here.....even if I think this segue was necessary.
We should openly accept Syrian refugees...any refugees....they are REFUGEES. To not accept them is morally reprehensible. That is a SEPERATE ARGUMENT from the problems with immigration. :)
/soapbox mode off
Sunday, February 28, 2016
Dating isn't what you think it is
I'm going to make some of you uncomfortable. And some of you will completely discount me for doing this.
That's ok...
If there is anything I have found to be true, it is this. The value in finding exactly what you want is usually less than the value gained by being open to discovering things you never even considered. If you're single, and don't want to be, you have hopes and desires on the table. Hopes to find connection on many levels... physically, emotionally, intellectually.
But....are you letting past experiences guide you? Or are you letting them narrow your focus so much that nothing becomes possible?
I've asked myself that time and again over the last 14 post-seperation/divorce years. Here's what I've discovered after a lot of work and a mountain of mistakes.
Romance? It's the kids who have it right, not most of us. The young recognize what it is to make a friend. This "friends first" nonsense? It isn't even necessary for them. Making friends is a function of being alive. A dog knows how to do this! We forget this, and hide behind such euphemisms as "friends first" or "I'm only here for friends" and even that whole nonsense of "friends with benefits".
The truth of the matter is all THREE of those ideas are about as unfriendly as you can get, because they are steeped in cynicism. And although some of that cynicism is directed towards others, most of it is about ourselves. We are all damaged goods in some way, but you do not have to succumb to damaged thinking.
What the young lack is NOT experience. A child knows how to love. Hell a cat knows how to love! And it takes almost no time at all to develop friendships and even love....if your heart is open and you let it.
Is it? Can you?
What do the young lack that we posess then? All they lack is the stability of adulthood, which is way more about investments in time and learning how to live, than it ever is that overly used nonsense we call "maturity". Maturity is just the bulls*** story we tell ourselves.
Romance is not for the timid. Caution is a waste of time. Common sense, and heeding lessons learned however is not. They are distinctly different things.
Every man is not a crazy creepy violent stalker. Every woman is not the embodiment of my worst relationship experiences either. The human race would not be this far along (nor would there be so damn many of us) if that were even remotely true.
When we have bad experiences, we overvalue them.....because we're afraid. Worse, we often see and here about terrible things on the news and in social media and CONFUSE things that happen around us with things that could happen to us. They are not the same thing. The world is a messy place. But nowhere near as messy as you believe.
Friendships/dating/relationships are childishly easy...if you can find common ground, and have that kind of courage.
That's ok...
If there is anything I have found to be true, it is this. The value in finding exactly what you want is usually less than the value gained by being open to discovering things you never even considered. If you're single, and don't want to be, you have hopes and desires on the table. Hopes to find connection on many levels... physically, emotionally, intellectually.
But....are you letting past experiences guide you? Or are you letting them narrow your focus so much that nothing becomes possible?
I've asked myself that time and again over the last 14 post-seperation/divorce years. Here's what I've discovered after a lot of work and a mountain of mistakes.
Romance? It's the kids who have it right, not most of us. The young recognize what it is to make a friend. This "friends first" nonsense? It isn't even necessary for them. Making friends is a function of being alive. A dog knows how to do this! We forget this, and hide behind such euphemisms as "friends first" or "I'm only here for friends" and even that whole nonsense of "friends with benefits".
The truth of the matter is all THREE of those ideas are about as unfriendly as you can get, because they are steeped in cynicism. And although some of that cynicism is directed towards others, most of it is about ourselves. We are all damaged goods in some way, but you do not have to succumb to damaged thinking.
What the young lack is NOT experience. A child knows how to love. Hell a cat knows how to love! And it takes almost no time at all to develop friendships and even love....if your heart is open and you let it.
Is it? Can you?
What do the young lack that we posess then? All they lack is the stability of adulthood, which is way more about investments in time and learning how to live, than it ever is that overly used nonsense we call "maturity". Maturity is just the bulls*** story we tell ourselves.
Romance is not for the timid. Caution is a waste of time. Common sense, and heeding lessons learned however is not. They are distinctly different things.
Every man is not a crazy creepy violent stalker. Every woman is not the embodiment of my worst relationship experiences either. The human race would not be this far along (nor would there be so damn many of us) if that were even remotely true.
When we have bad experiences, we overvalue them.....because we're afraid. Worse, we often see and here about terrible things on the news and in social media and CONFUSE things that happen around us with things that could happen to us. They are not the same thing. The world is a messy place. But nowhere near as messy as you believe.
Friendships/dating/relationships are childishly easy...if you can find common ground, and have that kind of courage.
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