What are America's interests?
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Tuesday, June 2, 2026 17:48
VIEWED: 19030
PAGE 10 of 16
Quote:Your list is 3 years old: March 5, 2017
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I've provided MY list about what I think we need, to seed the discussion. It's not the end-all and be-all of possibilities.
www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=60986&mid=1025569#
1025569
Ask yourself why none of the tasks on your list have been finished. Once you discover who has been very efficiently vetoing/roadblocking/sabotaging/suing/underfunding/delaying your plan, you need to decide what to do about them. Once you've done it, then your plan can start moving forward. Or you can take it easy, do as little as possible, and give up.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Is there anything left that would bring liberals and conservatives together to demand some kind of sacrifice from the American public? And even if that happened, would the public respond? I’m starting to wonder.
Sure, there definitely could be. But not with this orange sh*t head in office. He's a divider, scorched earth sales person who values winning and subservience (I was going to say loyalty, but he doesn't give a sh*t about that - only what it might bring him). He's has done more to divide this country than any other leader in the history of this planet could.
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To answer, I think one needs to delve into 'what are people's interests?' We are people before we're citizens.
But at the start I have to reject nearly all arguments based on 'human nature'. For just about every supposed rule about human nature, I can provide many exceptions. And studies of non-monetary cultures still in existence today show that there's no correlation between environment, technology, means of survival (hunting, fishing, gathering, ad hoc agriculture) and resources v social or economic organization, or the reason why cultures give to answer why they do what they do. Groups of people do what they do because that's what they tell themselves people do. (And people who don't do what they do are also defined as either not people, or not proper people - they're some lesser existence.)
That said, no peoples set their infants out to survive on their own - all peoples understand the need to care for the young. And the young are demanding of attention and interaction! or they grow up severely mentally stunted. No peoples live as isolated individuals (like bears or tigers). No peoples live without language. And no peoples live without at least rudimentary tools and technology.
But even things we assume are 'natural', like nursing mothers caring for their infants, aren't universal as they can be substituted with other mothers or animals that provide milk. Nuclear families are not the norm across peoples. Pair bonding is optional. Even the role for males is up for grabs. All that needs to happen is that males don't exist in fatal competition for resources with females and offspring. It's not how 'fit' the males are that determines species survival - sterility beats virility. But it's not even fertitliy that determines species survival. Those offspring need to survive long enough themselves to have offspring of their own that then survive ... in at least replacement numbers. If not, the species dwindles and dies. Offspring mortality beats fertility. (As a separate group, the Spartans ignored that and met their demise.)
Also, technology makes up for a lot of human frailties. Technology allows human survival at numbers greater than the immediate resource limits.
So for me, the questions are - what kind of technology do we want, and, how do we want to arrange ourselves to ensure survival? It's pretty much up for grabs, I think.
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Silent generation 1928-1945
Baby boomers 1946-1964
Gen X 1965-1979
Millennials 1980-1994
The Silent Generation was that group of people born during the Great Depression. The baby boomers were born during the US post-war boom. Gen X was that group born as US global dominance was beginning to be eroded by recovering and emerging nations around the globe. Millenials were born into voodoo economics (also called trickle down or peed-on economics).
These graphs are misleading though, because they're driven by NUMBERS of people in each generation as well as money. Obviously there's very few of the Silent Generation left, so as a group they have very little of the total wealth in the country. AS INDIVIDUALS though, they're far wealthier than any other generation.
Quote:The Baby Boomers still have large numbers left. Subsequent generations are smaller in size because the birth rate has been below replacement.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/2018/03/16/the-graying-of-wealth
/#76d3ec7c302d Faring the best were the 75+—an age bracket largely occupied by the Silent Generation (born 1925 to 1942). This group experienced a 32% increase in median household net worth and a 60% increase in mean net worth. Today, the net worth of a typical retiree is $264,750. This amount shrinks moving down the age ladder: The Silent hold roughly 1.3 times the amount of wealth as Boomers, more than twice that of Xers, and 23 times that of Millennials.
One reason why the Silent Generation fares so well in median comparisons is that its wealth is more evenly distributed than younger generations (i.e., its Gini coefficient is lower). One quick indicator of inequality is the ratio of mean to median. Among 75+ households, the ratio is 4.0. Among younger age brackets, it rises—to a peak of 6.2 and 5.8 among 55-64 and 45-54 households, respectively.
On top of that, Baby Boomers have had a full lifetime of work, while later generations are decades behind.
A PER CAPITA YEARS-ADJUSTED accounting would be FAR more accurate.
Bonus graph.
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Are you going to argue that wages have not been stagnant in the last 20 years and have not even gone up with inflation?
Are you going to argue it's untrue that health insurance has become unaffordable for most people, and that homeowners insurance isn't far behind?
Are you going to argue that a college education has not become a life-long burden for most future adults to pay off the rest of their lives?
Are you going to argue it's untrue that credit card interest rates are more than double what they were 20 years ago despite the fact that the FED interest rate is near zero?
Are you going to argue it's untrue that after outsourcing most of our manufacturing jobs overseas we have now manufactured most of our tech jobs overseas and the majority of jobs left for us to fight over are low paying service jobs?
Are you going to argue it's not true that nearly 80% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck in 2020?
If the answer to any of those questions is no. Then plug them into the graphs and use your goddamned brain for once instead of needing a fucking link to do your thinking for you.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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That's easy for you to say.
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
That's easy for you to say.
Yeah. It is.
I'm usually proven right with time. That's because I don't ingest much news and let other people do my thinking for me, and instead base my opinions off of other people and their behavior and the fact that history repeats itself. Always.
No surprise you didn't want to answer any of those questions though.
Does this mean I win again?
Thanks for playing.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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I'm usually proven right with time.
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
I'm usually proven right with time.
Not this time.
I'm afraid that you've imbibed in far too much of the Kool Aid.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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