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[McTraveller]

The only thing there I can't say I agree with is the "We gave them tax cuts. They need to give us good jobs. We paid for it; they didn't deliver."

The reason I don't agree with that is because it's impossible for a corporate tax cut to create jobs.  This is one of the Big Lies™ of politics.  The only thing tax incentives do for business is change where the jobs are created, and only for businesses that could be located anywhere (they aren't going to impact creating, say, a local restaurant).

Spoiler: Much longer discussion on jobs (click to show/hide)

The only things that create jobs are sufficient demand for a product and/or willingness of capital owners to risk creating a new product/service to spend their savings (or take out loans) to hire people.

Then tack onto that, jobs can also only be sustained with sufficient demand; no amount of tax cut will keep a job around for longer than it takes a company to burn through its cash reserves.

The only way the government can "create jobs" is to use tax dollars to create demand for some product or service. So the government does create jobs: military, all the three-letter agencies (EPA, FDA, FBI, etc.), the four-letter agencies (NASA, NOAA, etc.), and the direct staff hires.

The reason corporate tax cuts don't generate jobs is they don't (can't!) create demand.  They also don't free up money for consumers to spend on new things which might indirectly create jobs.  This is because companies do not lower prices when taxes decrease; they keep their prices at the same level and they pocket the difference as higher profit.  Now theoretically this means the corporate owners have more cash and could therefore sustain demand (after all, the argument goes, money is money, so doesn't matter if it's in corporate owners' hands or the governments' hands, right?).  However, that money in corporate owners hands seems to empirically have a much lower "job creation multiplier" than money in the hands of individuals.

Regarding education - one problem with modern higher education is it seems to have shifted from "educate people so they are well rounded and know how to think" which is valuable for all career paths and life situations into something like "train people up in some specialization" which exacerbates situations like I imagine the poster above had - they got a degree in some field which is now in low demand, so there's no market for it.  I don't know how the government or education system or potential employers could ever guarantee a demand for anything.  So I agree that over-specializing adds fragility to the system.

I also wholly agree that the cost of education is ridiculous, and exacerbates many problems; the cost of med school is one.  I still think the solution there is to start fragmenting medicine into more tiers; there's no need for 12 years of education to be able to do basic medicine or non-surgical emergency care. I mean you should be able to do stitches, set basic fractures and cast them etc., with maybe a bachelor's and a couple years of practical training.  Just enough knowledge to know "this is more serious, you have to go to a specialist now."  You shouldn't need to be an MD or OD to run the machine to get an eyeglass prescription.  Stuff like that.

[Maximum Spin]

It's, just... the change being mentioned should bring some value back to college degrees? At least from my understanding of it? The jobs being aimed at probably going to be lowest level federal jobs that never should have had the requirement to begin with, stuff you could train someone out of high school to do in a few weeks -- a degree requirement on them existing was saying degrees are barely worth a dishwashing job. There's a lot of degree requirements out there nowadays that do that, devalue the worth of a degree just by the asking, that are there more to filter social class or some shite than anything to do with the actual value of the education involved.

Taking some of that away, necessarily shifting the degree requirement upwards to work that actually needs a solid background to do, that's, just... it's the exact opposite of saying degree holders are worthless.

My personal background is someone with a BA and AS that's currently netting like a third the goddamn poverty line off of it, that's planning on starting a federal job hunt if Harris wins (there's no point if trump does, he's explicit in intending to gut the absolute hell out of federal jobs), that'd probably be on disability if florida wasn't a fucking shithole. No personal school debt 'cause my schools were cheap and family helped, but parent's been struggling with it my whole damn life. I get how shitty it all is on a pretty damn personal level, ha.

The implication my degree actually might be able to get something other than friggin' gs-1 or something sounds like a blessing, not an insult, y'know?

With this, the part where I understand why someone might feel that a degree is being devalued is that I don't think it's likely that degree-requiring jobs will expand to fill the pool of degree holders any time soon. It's not "instead of a make-work job with an inflated degree requirement, you get a real job where your degree matters", it's more likely to be "instead of a make-work job with an inflated degree requirement, you get... nothing". It really does suck and I think what McTraveler said about the problem being the change in education to being oriented specifically toward getting jobs is exactly right about the root of it. It's absolutely a problem that many, many people have paid for degrees that likely won't benefit them in life in the way they expected.
Never mind about the rest of this, I should just have learned my lesson about not responding to trolls.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

nb: the rest of this post is off-topic and I'm only posting it because others have addressed me directly; please forgive and let your eyes skim past it if you understandably don't care. I promise I won't continue to derail the thread any further. In fact, I apologize for the interruption. I know it's probably unwise and I can be hotheaded and get drawn into fights. I regret the whole thing but since statements were made about me in public I feel obligated to address them in public.
[spoiler]

maxspin near hammer incident II electric boogaloo

How so? What rule do you think I broke? I genuinely do not get it. I specifically went and reread the forum guidelines just for this, to make sure I hadn't missed something, and I still don't see it.
I'm not picking a fight or insulting someone. Although I feel that I've been insulted to a certain degree, I don't think it deserves moderator attention, so I'm just going to point it out and let it go peacefully. I have not used bigoted language. I am not spamming, and as the topic was american politics, I didn't disrupt or derail the thread. (I might argue that a long screed directed against me is derailing, but I'm not going to start a fight over this either.) I haven't posted illegal or sexually explicit material. Finally, I also haven't violated the terms of use.

Please understand that this is not hostility. This business is genuinely tiresome to me. Can you please PM me and explain what you think is in violation of a rule? I have only tried to discuss something peacefully and neutrally on a discussion forum.


Truean, I don't generally remember anything that happened more than a few months ago, nor did I have any idea you were transgender, but, considering that I don't believe in a gender binary and have never had a problem with people doing what they want with their own bodies and lives, I really do not believe your accusations that I "chased you away from these forums for being transgendered", in your exact words. I think that's a lie, and I don't appreciate being lied about. Since I see you've private messaged me, I'm going to take this matter there, but I want it a matter of public record that I dispute your claim and I think you're behaving extremely manipulatively.

One example of your behaving manipulatively is where you've said "You following around a disabled lady that blocked you is not ok". One of the great things about the internet is that most people even with disabilities can participate much the same as anyone else. I once knew a blind young woman who played text-based games online with a screen reader. Furthermore, it's frankly nuts to accuse me of "following [someone] around" for... posting in a public discussion forum. I don't keep track of people who have claimed to block me, I barely keep track of who I'm responding to at any given time. If it's true that femmelf doesn't want to talk to me, that's fine, sorry for wasting everyone's time, let my reply languish in uselessness. But you surely see how framing talking on a public discussion board in an entirely normal and neutral way as some kind of harassment is deeply manipulative and wrong.

Anyway, I'm not going to continue this discussion in the thread, because that would be derailing; I'm only replying now because you already did. While I don't think you're "out to get me", or at least I didn't until certain accusations made just now, I do think your claim to be sticking up for me in private is extremely manipulative. If people have a problem with things I wrote or genuinely believe that I've broken some rule, please, by all means, I would appreciate it if they would discuss it with me directly in PM, as I'm not only willing but desperately trying to understand.[original spoiler ended here]
Edit: Just remembered I can spoiler this so I feel less bad about being in the way of discussion.

ETA2: I just read the thread you, by which I mean Truean, linked after claiming you convinced others not to report me. Certainly in that thread I was not at my kindest, and I apologize for that. I also unwisely let myself get sucked into the thread derail. However, I don't see how the thread supports any of your claims, and I do stand by the statement I made at the time that I hadn't violated any forum rules, at least until after others had already started derailing by acting uncharitably toward me. I'm leaving this out of the spoiler so you can see my apology.

[Truean]

Jesus, I tried to PM to resolve this to avoid exactly this type of thing and he basically denies everything and blames me only to still do this. While pretending he's being reasonable when I'm the one who PMed him last night asking to resolve this off the thread.

This is what I get for helping people and it might very well lead me to leave the forums again. No good deed goes unpunished.

For the love of God, I have repeatedly convinced people not to report him and he's still doing this to me? The fact that there are multiple people who want to report someone at all should be a red flag.... Be nicer to people; it's free. Just stop it please.

nb: the rest of this post is off-topic and I'm only posting it because others have addressed me directly; please forgive and let your eyes skim past it if you understandably don't care. I promise I won't continue to derail the thread any further. In fact, I apologize for the interruption. I know it's probably unwise and I can be hotheaded and get drawn into fights. I regret the whole thing but since statements were made about me in public I feel obligated to address them in public.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

maxspin near hammer incident II electric boogaloo

How so? What rule do you think I broke? I genuinely do not get it. I specifically went and reread the forum guidelines just for this, to make sure I hadn't missed something, and I still don't see it.
I'm not picking a fight or insulting someone. Although I feel that I've been insulted to a certain degree, I don't think it deserves moderator attention, so I'm just going to point it out and let it go peacefully. I have not used bigoted language. I am not spamming, and as the topic was american politics, I didn't disrupt or derail the thread. (I might argue that a long screed directed against me is derailing, but I'm not going to start a fight over this either.) I haven't posted illegal or sexually explicit material. Finally, I also haven't violated the terms of use.

Please understand that this is not hostility. This business is genuinely tiresome to me. Can you please PM me and explain what you think is in violation of a rule? I have only tried to discuss something peacefully and neutrally on a discussion forum.


Truean, I don't generally remember anything that happened more than a few months ago, nor did I have any idea you were transgender, but, considering that I don't believe in a gender binary and have never had a problem with people doing what they want with their own bodies and lives, I really do not believe your accusations that I "chased you away from these forums for being transgendered", in your exact words. I think that's a lie, and I don't appreciate being lied about. Since I see you've private messaged me, I'm going to take this matter there, but I want it a matter of public record that I dispute your claim and I think you're behaving extremely manipulatively.

One example of your behaving manipulatively is where you've said "You following around a disabled lady that blocked you is not ok". One of the great things about the internet is that most people even with disabilities can participate much the same as anyone else. I once knew a blind young woman who played text-based games online with a screen reader. Furthermore, it's frankly nuts to accuse me of "following [someone] around" for... posting in a public discussion forum. I don't keep track of people who have claimed to block me, I barely keep track of who I'm responding to at any given time. If it's true that femmelf doesn't want to talk to me, that's fine, sorry for wasting everyone's time, let my reply languish in uselessness. But you surely see how framing talking on a public discussion board in an entirely normal and neutral way as some kind of harassment is deeply manipulative and wrong.

Anyway, I'm not going to continue this discussion in the thread, because that would be derailing; I'm only replying now because you already did. While I don't think you're "out to get me", or at least I didn't until certain accusations made just now, I do think your claim to be sticking up for me in private is extremely manipulative. If people have a problem with things I wrote or genuinely believe that I've broken some rule, please, by all means, I would appreciate it if they would discuss it with me directly in PM, as I'm not only willing but desperately trying to understand.

Edit: Just remembered I can spoiler this so I feel less bad about being in the way of discussion.

"I want it a matter of public record that I dispute your claim and I think you're behaving extremely manipulatively." ~Max
What? I asked you in PM to deal with this in PM instead of derailing the thread last night. Now you're pretending / leaving a false trail pretending you did? Dude, people are trying to warn you this is gonna get you banned if  you keep this up:

maxspin near hammer incident II electric boogaloo

Great big red flag right there. Man, you act like I am somehow trying to burn you. People are trying to help you and you are still pulling this? Why on earth would I want to manipulate you. I gain nothing by it. I've repeatedly demonstrated across years that I'm not out to get you. I've saved you many times. If I wanted you in trouble, then I would just let you do your thing and not convince people not to report you, rather than attempting to help you. What do you think would have happened if I hadn't convinced all those people not to report you? If you carry on this way.... You'll get yourself in trouble and you are.... Wait, why am I trying to help this person....?

I give up trying to reason with this person. If it's off topic and you know it's off topic then why do it? You're actually calling me Manipulative when I have repeatedly defended you and asked people not to report you? You posted that pretending to ask me to deal with this in PM at 9:05 AM today 09/15/2024. I PMed you to deal with this last night at 08:06 PM 09/14/2024. Now you're going to pretend that you came up with the idea and asked me to deal with it in PM. A day after I PMed you to ask you to deal with this in PM, you post pretending you're the one asking me? You didn't ask me. I asked you. Who's manipulative?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(No subject)
« Sent to: Maximum Spin on: September 14, 2024, 08:06:59 pm

Hi Max,

Look, I dislike anybody getting Toady involved in things and I don't want anyone getting the banhammer basically if it can at all be avoided.Once again, I've have people asking if they should report you and I'm telling them not to because I don't like people getting reported. Your "public record" is actually harming you and you're hurting someone who has repeatedly helped you. When you're in a hole, quit digging.

I have repeatedly tried to convince others not to report you and yeah, it just happened again where people are asking me..... I don't know what to tell you. I really have done everything I could possibly do to convince others not to report you for a long time and I clearly haven't reported you myself. I clearly don't wanna.

There has to be a way for cooler heads to prevail on this, doesn't there? Can we just not? I've been trying to stay away from you anyhow. The only reason I came near that thread was because I saw someone in pain and I wanted to help them. Otherwise I don't go near you to avoid any kind of confrontation. Isn't that enough? Please, please can we have a nice time away from each other? The forums are big enough that this shouldn't be an issue.

Thank you,
Truean

You are actually claiming you didn't know I was trans? [genuine look of shock]  When you ran me off the forums for that and there's tons of proof?
Wow.... I don't even, the next level trolling denial.... There is a ton of examples spanning years and multiple people of this behavior pattern. You're "desperately trying to understand," what? You've been talked to repeatedly about this by many people for several years,

You say you didn't know I was trans? You knew I was transgender and multiple people have discussed this with you multiple times here and in discord:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=68850.msg7716986#msg7716986
"Aha, now I know why Tiruin was so upset on discord when I said "that guy", hahaha."
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=68850.msg7717045#msg7717045
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=68850.msg7716142#msg7716142
You repeatedly followed me when I was helping people who appreciated my help and pulled this:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=171257.msg7802194#msg7802194

This has been an ongoing problem and I have repeatedly convinced others not to report this person:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=157225.msg7889003#msg7889003
I've played peacemaker and tried to avoid fights between this person and others. Some of many examples:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=157225.msg7888971#msg7888971
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=157225.msg7889003#msg7889003
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=157225.msg7888945#msg7888945

I left the forums because of harassment from this while getting others not to report him:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=68850.msg7889579#msg7889579

No idea what I'm supposed to do. Bottom line, it was never about a debate, because someone was in distress and I helped.
I needed to be able to help her. I offered to delete the whole thing. Offered to leave them alone, because I avoid them anyhow.
I gave up and basically offered to do whatever as long as they got out of the way to let me help someone who has added an edit to this effect. I don't care. I'm not going to go out of my way to convince others not to report him anymore. I can't. I can't stop people from reporting him if he's going to be incredibly combative and drive me off again.

Frankly, I'm gone for at least a good while. I'm not going to keep helping people if I have to deal with this.

[Maximum Spin]

ETA: Ultimately, I know that someone openly telling lies about me is not a subject of American politics. I should just leave it and not respond. I hate being baited like this, though. I'm just gonna spoiler it and let it go.

Spoiler: Completely off-topic (click to show/hide)

Truean: I responded to your PM after posting. When things are done in public I prefer to resolve them in public. I explicitly stated that I had seen that you PMed me in the post, so no, I wasn't "pretending that I came up with the idea". You seem to be pretending I didn't respond to your PM, by posting what you sent and not my response, but whatever.

I don't remember any details about previous conversations with you and I didn't remember being told that you were transgender. It's not something I would've made any special note of because it doesn't bother me in the slightest and I don't care one way or the other. I don't understand why you would expect me to keep track of this or what it even has to do with anything. Whatever fight we may have had in the past I certainly regret; I know I've been hot-headed before; but I can categorically say it definitely never had anything to do with your gender identity in any way.

I'm sorry you feel this way. I'm not trying to get you to leave. I regret the extent to which this thread has been derailed already and I have no interest in contributing to it further. Please reconsider; as I said in my PM that you've decided not to acknowledge, I have no grudge against you and I don't understand why this has to be a fight. I can't promise that I'll never speak to you again because I don't really check who I'm responding to against some kind of mental list, but if you desperately want that to happen I can put you on ignore and it will be very unlikely that I will read your posts. If you want to respond to my PM to discuss this that would be fine. I'm only posting here because you're continuing it here, and I would prefer if this derailment ends here.

[Random_Dragon]

What did I miss this time? I saw someone making a very stupid "waaa people should suffer as I have suffered" post, got real tempted to mouth off at them for thinking that justifies voting for someone even worse, then realized that if they claim that was the final straw then they were already leaning towards supporting the fascist wannabes and thus didn't feel like bothering to respond because the only response that kinda bad-faith horseshit deserves is "go fuck yourself".

And now someone else is posting long-winded arguments with Spin and I'm not even sure what they're arguing over?

[Il Palazzo]

Communication is impossible! Abandon all hope!

[femmelf]

I said I was sorry and stupid in public and was just in a place of pain and should have said it better because I was stupidly stressed. I didn't want anyone punished for anything and I wanted some solution. What more does anyone want? Im sorry.

T helped me see that and directed me to the right places.
Max continues to harrass and troll like he always does. There's a bunch of links proving it up there I guess. That's kind of why I blocked them a while ago. And now T's been chased out for helping me and help Max not get reported. Great now I feel even more stupid. I'm sorry. I'll say it again. Im sorry

[Random_Dragon]

Okay I definitely missed a lot it seems, damn.

[Folly]

And now someone else is posting long-winded arguments with Spin and I'm not even sure what they're arguing over?

Looks like standard SJW discourse. It's probably best to just sit back and let them go at it. Hopefully one of them will learn their lesson about engaging in such follies.

[hector13]

Welp that was stupid so let’s go to something more sensible.

Um…

Mr Vance continues this utter nonsense about pet-eating immigrants.

I don’t know how this happens, that complete and utter falsehoods can be repeated again and again by major political candidates, and there appears to be no blowback.

Things like this make me fear for humanity’s future.

I’m not sure if the Trump campaign is just trying to turn a weakness into a strength, but anybody with an iota of sense can surely see that this is just completely untrue? Why is it not actually causing them any apparent damage?

[Folly]

anybody with an iota of sense can surely see that this is just completely untrue?

Humans are primarily motivated by desire, and fear. If you can trigger one or both of these fundamental instincts, then you can easily convince a person to believe almost anything.
Many Americans love their pets, and are afraid of something bad happening to them. It's a very easy lie to sell.

[Robot Parade Leader]

Looks like standard SJW discourse. It's probably best to just sit back and let them go at it. Hopefully one of them will learn their lesson about engaging in such follies.

Looks like a vulnerable person said sorry for a mistake, Max pounced, and Truean helped like she always has for years.
Max trolled like he always has for years and Truean proved it with a bunch of links while convincing people not to report Max, again.
All the proof against Max got denied as fake news.

So let's move on before Toady comes in, because we just lost T and we don't need the thread nuked.
_________________________________________________

Because I guess that's just what the republican party with Trump as the presidential candidate they choose does now. They just make stuff up and lie and find minorities to hate. It even got to my own relatives, the whole complete lie about the eating cats and dogs thing.
I don't even know what to say or how people get convinced of this crap.

Have some context with meme links:


I am honestly impressed Trump has somehow found just the best teflon coating ever because nothing sticks to him no matter what. Don't get me wrong. He's terrible.

This is a man who said he could shoot someone in 5th avenue and not lose a single vote and he still became president. I have no idea how he can say anything and just a ton of the country still loves him.

Trump is just saying totally openly racist stuff now and the KKK is loving it, so that's super terrible.

Those of us with any sense are just tired of this racist hate crap and want it over. The conservatives out there keep doing things and denying it. Being nice to them just leads to them backpedaling until they do more hate all over again.


Biden is denouncing the whole BS stuff being racist with the "eating cats and dogs," lie.

Trump is gonna be trump and keep just saying horrible bad things and I don't see how people can say it's cool when it isn't.

Who knows what blatant lie is gonna come out next?
I can't find a meme with the end of the world bingo thing saying "Who had cats and dogs?"

I don't get how people fall for this. Don't they think PETA would be outraged if this were true? It just isn't true, but they don't seem to care and Trump / J.D. Vance can just keep on doubling down.

[hector13]

People are moving on, but everybody seems to also need to throw in their two coins on the matter.

Does anybody else have an opinion they’d like to share before while simultaneously saying we should stop talking about it?

[Starver]

Does anybody else have an opinion they’d like to share before while simultaneously saying we should stop talking about it?

People should not say "decimate" when they mean "devastate". Not that it's important to me.

[hector13]

Apparently someone was shooting around Trump again.

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c8dp10d4vq2t

Does anybody else have an opinion they’d like to share before while simultaneously saying we should stop talking about it?

People should not say "decimate" when they mean "devastate". Not that it's important to me.

Before while you we talkin’ to me you?