Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Dsarker]

Lets say you have a choice between two extremes - compulsory voting with no abstain option or completely free voting. Which would you choose?

[kaijyuu]

Neither. I'd picket the horrible voting system we'd have in place.

[Impending Doom]

No, it's more like having two quacks who prescribe homeopathic remedies while insisting on how good they are, when it's plain they are just sugar pills. Moreover, they refuse to start prescribing anything else.

And you are the guy who stubbornly insists on trying to treat his cancer with that, and shouts at everyone who says that maybe chemo would be better. Guess how the above scenario usually turns out.

Usually? they both end up just as dead in the end. One just has to suffer a lot of really nasty side effects for a few years before they go.

I know it's a metaphor, but just sayin'.

[Aqizzar]

What you said wasn't a governing ideology, it was a vague complaint against bad stuff being bad.  They are non issues politically.  It's like complaining about a doctor who proscribes medicine when you have a fever instead of proscribing that you have a lower temperature.  Then you get a second opinion and he proscribes a different medicine.  Then you bitch about not having any choices.  If there was a third medicine that you are denied by the cruel two doctor system that would be a legitimate complaint.  But what you are asking for is for a doctor to proscribe that you no longer be sick.

No, it's more like having two quacks who prescribe homeopathic remedies while insisting on how good they are, when it's plain they are just sugar pills. Moreover, they refuse to start prescribing anything else.

And you are the guy who stubbornly insists on trying to treat his cancer with that, and shouts at everyone who says that maybe chemo would be better. Guess how the above scenario usually turns out.

Okay wow, this argument is getting fucking crazy.  What was this thread for again?  Oh right.


This is among the most important things you need to see:



Courtesy of a study by the Congressional Budget Office, commissioned by the government itself.  For everyone outside of the Top 20% Income Earning households, their effective wealth relative to the size of the country has noticeably shrunk over the past generation, the Wealthiest 20% except the very top has kept pace with overall economic growth, while the wealthiest 1% of households have seen their share of the nation's combined wealth rise dramatically.  As if anyone needed to tell you that, but this study is significant for two reasons.

One, it was asked for the Congress, and delivered by the body established to give them numbers.  Anybody who denies these numbers as less that facts, especially Congressmen, has no quantifiable platform to make an argument from.

Two, if you are not a member of the wealthiest 1% of America, which is a combined household income of roughly $300,000, your share of the nation's economy has at best remained static.  If your whole household is making less than $300k, which by the way is about six times the median household income, you have lost out on economic growth during the last 30 years.


Meanwhile, Denver sucks.  And if you can ignore the godawful sidebars, Scott Olsen still can't talk which is indeed due the skull fracture itself being right at the speech center.  They're hopeful he'll regain his speaking ability after more brain surgery.

[Dsarker]

Simply can't speak or can't communicate? I'm fuzzy on brain areas.

[Derekristow]

Simply can't speak or can't communicate? I'm fuzzy on brain areas.

In the article it says he just can't speak.  He can still hear and talk through writing notes. 

It's rather convenient that Oakland was both the first to take a massively violent approach and the first to hit exactly the wrong person upside the head.  Doesn't get much more media friendly than a young white war veteran.

[KaelGotDwarves]

Oakland and other cities are taking it to the streets again Nov. 2nd, in some places as a general strike. I will be joining them in Oakland.

[Dsarker]

Well, I'm nowhere near any of this stuff, so I can merely wish you well and that you be safe, Kael.


Not saying there's anything out there that could harm you, but just in case.

[mainiac]

Okay wow, this argument is getting fucking crazy.  What was this thread for again?  Oh right.

Income inequality is a concept I understand and which the solutions to are well known.  His complaints that the democratic parties were sellouts were neither.

[mainiac]

No, it's more like having two quacks who prescribe homeopathic remedies while insisting on how good they are, when it's plain they are just sugar pills. Moreover, they refuse to start prescribing anything else.

I'd really like to see your degree then, dioctor.  And I'd really like to see how you know that SCHIIP didn't result in any children getting healthcare or the repeal of don't ask don't tell didn't result in any gays receiving more equal treatment under the law.  I'd really like to know how you know that the affordable healthcare act didn't result in more healthcare opportunities for the poor and how none of it's healthcare opportunities won't work.  I'd like to know how you know that the hundreds of soldiers who are still alive because we got out of Iraq don't matter.  I'd like to know why it doesn't matter that we did the ARRA or the payroll tax cut.  Why the Dodd-Frank ammendment doesn't matter.  Why it doesn't matter that Raptor fighter jet got canned.

I will freely admit that I wanted more on every one of these issues.  However saying that none of them did the slightest bit of good?  Comparing them to sugar pills?  Which one of us is naive?

[palsch]

Because in 160 areas, people chose to pick the conservatives over the others.

I'm sorry to bring this up again, but I actually ran the on this for another forum after the last Canadian election.

Data from here.

Of 308 seats, 145 were won with an outright majority (>50%) of the votes. That's roughly 47%, with 53% won with only a plurality.

The Conservatives actually did better than average, holding an outright majority in a full 107 seats of their 160 seat total. But that's still far from them having clear majority support in a majority of wards.

Lowering the threshold, 42 seats were won with less than 40% of the vote (11 Conservative) while two were held with less than a third (Vancouver Centre by the Liberals and Ahuntsic by BQ).

These numbers are pretty good comparatively. In the 2010 UK elections, out of 650 seats, 432 were won with less than 50% of the vote. That's a full two thirds of Parliament, almost exactly. 110 (17%) were won with less than 40% and 10 seats were won with less than a third of votes behind them.

That's why I'm not a fan of FPTP. You can (and commonly do) have well under 50% of the voting public supporting the winning candidate. Even if you agree that you need a single representative for a given population, a representative elected under FPTP was likely dependent on only a minority of that population's support.

Under AV (or IRV; lots of different names for the same thing) a candidate needs at least the consent of 50% + 1 of the voters. They don't have to be their first choice, just ranked above other candidates. AV isn't necessarily more proportional on the national level, but it means the elected individual is more representative and answerable to their constituency.

For Westminster style parliaments it simply makes more sense.

And yes I'm still sore about that referendum.

[Chaoswizkid]

Oakland and other cities are taking it to the streets again Nov. 2nd, in some places as a general strike. I will be joining them in Oakland.

If you'd like, you could try incorporating that Nov. 2nd is All Soul's Day. Something about putting a focus on everyone as opposed to a select few. I wouldn't elaborate the metaphor too far, because then it might seem you're equating the top 1% with Saints. Just a thought though.

[Andrew425]

Because in 160 areas, people chose to pick the conservatives over the others.

I'm sorry to bring this up again, but I actually ran the on this for another forum after the last Canadian election.

Data from here.

Of 308 seats, 145 were won with an outright majority (>50%) of the votes. That's roughly 47%, with 53% won with only a plurality.

The Conservatives actually did better than average, holding an outright majority in a full 107 seats of their 160 seat total. But that's still far from them having clear majority support in a majority of wards.

Lowering the threshold, 42 seats were won with less than 40% of the vote (11 Conservative) while two were held with less than a third (Vancouver Centre by the Liberals and Ahuntsic by BQ).

These numbers are pretty good comparatively. In the 2010 UK elections, out of 650 seats, 432 were won with less than 50% of the vote. That's a full two thirds of Parliament, almost exactly. 110 (17%) were won with less than 40% and 10 seats were won with less than a third of votes behind them.

That's why I'm not a fan of FPTP. You can (and commonly do) have well under 50% of the voting public supporting the winning candidate. Even if you agree that you need a single representative for a given population, a representative elected under FPTP was likely dependent on only a minority of that population's support.

Under AV (or IRV; lots of different names for the same thing) a candidate needs at least the consent of 50% + 1 of the voters. They don't have to be their first choice, just ranked above other candidates. AV isn't necessarily more proportional on the national level, but it means the elected individual is more representative and answerable to their constituency.

For Westminster style parliaments it simply makes more sense.

And yes I'm still sore about that referendum.

We maybe should make a seperate thread for this.

I don't see how AV would work for the places were the Conservatives win with 40% of the vote or above. The Liberals and the NDP would just have their vote split more evenly.

Also FPTP promotes regionalism,

[Vector]

Actually On Topic

[scriver]

Hah! Greece. Now there is an excellent example of how people were willingly part of the whole system when it was still giving them honey, and now pretends to not have known anything or have partaken in it when it's turned to acid.