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Comment Broader implications for health care (Score 1) 673

There are those who say we should not be responsible for seeing to it that the least-earners among us have health care, sick days, etc. But that whole petri dish thing... that's the result.

Joe the McDonald's window guy has flu/whatever, but he can't take a day (or 3 days) off (might not be allowed to, but can't afford to anyway so, the former is moot.) So Larry goes for lunch, and comes away with whatever Joe had as a bonus. And that goes on all day, for several days. While everyone else in the McDonald's catches it too, thereby extending the event even further, basically until every employee's immune system have handled the problem. And of course, there will be the occasional person who can't manage it -- for whatever reason... compromised immune system, preexisting disease process that complicates matters, old age, whatever. For them, matters can be much worse.

Either we admit that we need to take care of everyone, for everyone's sake, or we'll just keep running into situations where transmissible diseases have far more chance to spread than would otherwise be the case.

Odds are excellent that the only thing unique about the Disney event is that someone noticed it. Most people have probably been on the receiving end of such "petri dish events" many times. Anywhere you have a person with a transmissible disease in a condition suitable for transmission (usually not the entire course) that faces the public, the potential exists.

Anyone in that state should be in bed, properly isolated and medicated. Every time that doesn't happen, we're just shooting ourselves in the foot.

Comment Say... (Score 2) 128

If the car is really dirty, the heck with washing it. Just turn it in and have it reprinted. :) Ok, maybe not. But:

Reprint if you have a fender-bender. Hailstorm. Cat climbed in an open window and sprayed your seats.

Just reprint the car. Love the idea of having it melted down and re-using the material(s.)

I suspect the feds will have something to say about safety issues, though.

Comment Re:Good news (Score 3, Interesting) 422

If you ever look at interviews or post-war writings by historical figures when their diaries are also available, you'll find a huge disconnect in perception. During the war, you get "nobody saw this happening" and "it's all winding down now, and will be blown over in a few days"; after the war, you get "everyone was on-edge with the thickening tensions in the air" and "the end was nowhere in sight, and we were desperately afraid it would go on forever." People remember a completely different narrative.

Comment Re:Open Auto (Score 1) 128

Consider that Local Motors most likely found and are exploiting loopholes (e.g. hobbyist car-building from scratch, which is still quite active.) Consider further that they wouldn't have attracted a dime of venture funding without at least some plan to exploit existing legal loopholes.

So - you made the assertion, you get to prove it by naming at least one existing rule or law that could be used to slap them down.

Comment Re:Yes. (Score 1) 673

Actually, all the money spent on welfare, plus about $100bn (not very much), amounts to $7,125 per person per year in 2012. The rough growth is 3.5% per year or something crazy (total amount of personal income increases by roughly 3.5% per year), so estimate $7900 in 2015, or $658/mo in 2015 for each natural-born, resident, American citizen over the age of 18.

Even at over $1/sqft (I paid less than $1/sqft to rent an apartment), a livable, 224sqft apartment can sell for $300/mo, leaving $358/mo for food, utilities (heating 224sqft isn't hard--I heated my living space for $60/mo for 4 years), soap, toothpaste, clothing, and the like.

By using a dedicated flat tax replacing OASDI, we tie it to total income: regardless of wages, operating costs, or price dynamics, we get the same money. If businesses automate and don't lower prices, they make a bigger profit (not paying labor), and the dividend increases by that proportion (10% more profit means 10% more in the dividend); if wages increase, profits slim down, and the rich come closer to the income of the middle class, we're taxing the middle class same as the rich to fund the dividend. No matter what the shape of the economic situation, we get the same amount of money.

$1.28 trillion comes out of the federal budget, and an extra $0.34 trillion imagined from the state's welfare budget. I actually leave that up to the states: there will be less need, therefor they can slim their welfare programs, possibly even eliminate them; but I'm against mandating anything in that regard. $1.62 trillion total in 2012, $1.72 trillion was what I estimated as a minimum; and the current situation probably changes the numbers a bit, such that we can implement a somewhat smaller tax and reach the same market situation (I haven't examined this yet, but it's a distinct possibility).

The total tax difference is some 3% in the worst case, and that's unbalanced; I can get it down to 1% by adjusting the base income tax brackets (which are slashed in half, mostly), and the worst case falls on the high-income earners. The current public disposition is a 50% or greater tax, rather than a 39.6% tax, on this class; I propose a 40%-42% tax, only if necessary to meet my end goals, which is vastly smaller.

It works. It makes the poor and unemployed a continuous profit source, creating a market opportunity to support them and become very rich in the process. It has a 15-year transition plan for social security (after which current retirees are grandfathered), and a risk control in that it doesn't decree the dissolution of state welfare (which largely drops state welfare costs, but leaves states room to catch my miscalculations and implement some sort of food security for large, unemployed families--a thing that shouldn't exist, but the world is a shit hole). It encourages work by continuing to pay out the same monthly dollar amount whether you sit at home watching TV or go CEO for a major oil company making billions of dollars.

Of all the UBI plans out there, mine is the only viable one. The idea is not new, but it's so newly integrated into the political mindset that people treat it like a secret sauce you can pour on top to make everything better. It's a very dangerous and volatile concept, and *will* destroy the economy if implemented incorrectly. I need people to catch up so they can suggest improvements, instead of "hey let's give everyone $20k/year and pay them $5k/year for each kid they have!" stupidity that will only lead to hyperinflation and a Reichmark economy.

Comment Re:Good news (Score 1) 422

The difference is whether they're written from George Lucas's ideas of what's actually in the universe and how to construct a story about that, or some fan fiction writer's basement hentai word docs that he's cleaned up now that he's gotten hired to sit in for Uwe Boll. Is it Star Wars, as good or bad as it's going to be; or "random shit we made up and wrote 'Star Wars' on"?

Comment Re:Good news (Score 4, Interesting) 422

Yeah uh, the Jedi lived on ceremony, so didn't do shit like any rational human being. Obi-Wan let Anakin burn because it would be "of the dark side" for him to kill Anakin and put him out of his misery. This is the same reason Ben Carson talks about the world being 6000 years old and Homosexuality being a form of bestiality.

People aren't rational when given emotional conflicts. In your perception, the moment you backhand a woman, she realizes you are abusive and leaves; in reality, if you beat your woman regularly, she will be convinced you are a great guy and just things sometimes get a little out of hand, and maybe it's her fault, and she should defend you when people talk bad about you because they just don't understand. That's how people work.

Normal human beings are very broken.

Comment Re:Why would you want this? (Score 1) 178

Dude - this is nicotine, not heroin or meth.

Going cold-turkey on cigarettes is nothing more than an annoyance for most folks who do so. This vaccine only means that once your body is rid of the cravings (anywhere from 3 days to a month), you won't want to return to it, since doing so wouldn't give you what you were seeking when you did fall off the wagon, so to speak. After a year, you don't want to bother anyway - at worst you'll occasionally dream of lighting one up, but then feel perhaps a little guilty about the dream in the morning.

Comment Re:Good news (Score 2, Insightful) 422

It obviously won't really be Star Wars; it won't be the story Lucas wants to tell, and will instead be some sort of mass Hollywood shoveled shit designed to appeal to the modal average and draw in dollars.

Lucas did an okay job with the prequels. Arguably, he did too good of a job: the players are all too human, and Jar-Jar is too fluid and well-executed for the movie. It clashes with expectations: people want textbook epic heroes and villains played the way modern, bland actors portray them, not complex human characters thrust into an epic fantasy.

Comment Re:Can somebody clarify? (Score 1) 178

Nicotine is one of the most toxic substances available to the average person. It makes you much more susceptible to various cancers, organ damage, neurological damage, and so on. Alcohol does the same when consumed in high quantities, but has almost no negative effects in moderate consumption.

Cigarettes also make you stink like shit.

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