Voodoo Economics don't work because the rich have a lower Marginal Propensity to Consume - they tend to spend a smaller proportion and save a larger proportion of their income than the poor. Here, we have something that might convince the rich to actually cough up some of their dough instead of just sitting on it. That should help both the economy and us, the poor.

I'd feel better about that if thought the DPRK's ambassador represented a people instead of just an illegitimate government. I don't have a lot of hope for the DPRK peacefully reforming. I'd like to be proven wrong, mind.

He's a 52 year old IT manager who was fired. He probably didn't have a good chance of getting a new job (in IT at least) anyway.

Sure, Marx and Engels were revolutionaries, but the governments they were fighting against were about like the current government of Iran.

Why wouldn't it have happened if the government stepped in? Does government intervention rule out private charity? What makes you think that people *usually* give more in such a vacuum, and the case you cite isn't just a fluke? There is plenty of unmet needs out there right now, and I don't see private charities stepping up to the plate.

You're right that we can't expend infinite resources on a single individual, but I would think that universal health care systems would tend to use a triage system rather than a hard cutoff. Also, public funded universal health care doesn't rule out private health care. If you don't like a central planning group (which, hopefully, would have some level of democratic oversight), then you're quite welcome to use your own money to buy health care on the open market. Universal health care would just make sure that everybody gets *some* level of protection vs. our current allocation system of "screw you, you're poor." It's not like universal health care would make private practices illegal, you know.

It looks more like the idea is to enable governments to see if random migrants are criminals, and maybe make it easier for migrants to cross borders. I don't see anything in TFA about access to socialized services. I suppose nations could handle that simply by issuing IDs to their own citizens - no need for a transnational ID system there, unless different nations want to work out some sort of exchange. TFA mentions something about this cutting down on corruption (by making it unnecessary to forge IDs saying that the migrant is a citizen?) and something about an electronic remittance system. Does anybody have more details on this? What is in it for the migrants? If I never leave my native member country, would I have to sign up for this system?

Or, you know, we could RAISE TAXES! Or rather, undo the reckless tax cuts that the previous administration put in place.

Our American medical dollars might be stretching further if we did more *preventative* care. There's a lot of uninsured people who just wait until they have to go to the emergency room - and then don't pay the bill, raising the costs for people who *can* pay for health insurance. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, right? Also, I think lack of access to health insurance is a major driver of lawsuits. If you get hurt, you want somebody to pay for the bill, even if it is a bit of stretch to think it was their fault. Some level of socialized medicine would do a lot to make our economy more efficient. (I would prefer a public single-payer system to an individual mandate, though.)

Sorry to be horribly obvious, but money is just a way of allocating resources. If you want more education, then teachers are going to have to eat and will need a place to live. They need chalk, blackboards, paper, books, etc. That's resources that won't be going to doctors, or some other sector of the economy. If you use certain chemicals to make drugs, that's chemicals that aren't going to research. The only difference between raw capitalism and pure socialism is how our votes on resource allocation are weighted - under raw capitalism, the 'votes' of the rich are weighted, under socialism, our 'votes' are equal, at least in theory.

I don't think most people even care about their genes winning out. They care more about getting it on and maybe having kids. And for quite a few people, the second thing is just a side effect of the first thing. If everyone cared about their own genes, let alone their 'race,' then the Europeans wouldn't be 'losing' the population game, would they? It's not like there is some vast Muslim conspiracy to sterilize the Crusaders, is there. I might care about having kids myself, but why should I care about the fate of my 'race'? If my genes want to mingle with those from elsewhere, more power to them. Sounds more like a win-win than a loss. On the other hand, I *do* care about my kids living in a free society.

Ironically, the neo-Nazi helps demonstrate my point. Assuming that the neo-Nazi isn't horribly misquoting the Talmud, it does appear that Jews used teach that "gentiles are less than human," but they're getting along with modern democracy just as well as anybody else. Everybody's religious texts say some crazy shit, but we're mostly able to get on with life despite that. There is no reason to think that Muslims are any different.

Yes, countries that institute Sharia have zero respect for non-believers, but that's because Sharia is a body of religious law. Countries that institute religious law tend to not be respectful of non-believers for some reason. Instituting religious law is incompatible with a modern democracy period, regardless of which religion we're talking about.

What is needed is the development of a Muslim Democrat movement similar to the Christian Democrats of Europe or arguably the Republicans of America. I wouldn't vote for them myself, just as I probably wouldn't vote for Christian Democrats and don't vote for Republicans. However, it is much better to have loyal democratic opposition than a disloyal antidemocratic opposition. It's better to have Social Democrats than antidemocratic Revolutionary Communists. The Muslim Brotherhood looks like it is headed in this Muslim Democrat direction, but only time will tell.

You might argue that Christians are more likely to accept democracy than other religions, given the whole "render on to Cesar that which is Cesar's" thing. Are there any non-Christian religions that are compatible with democracy? Could these provide a model for Muslim Democrats?

"If you truly believe the militants in those ghettos are just gonna wake up and embrace democracy I have a bridge you might be interested in." 1) How long did it take militant Catholics or militant Puritans to wake up and embrace democracy? 2) It's not the militants we need to win over, just the silent majority of regular Joes (or Achmeds, as the case may be). Militants can be isolated. 3) As for why Muslims in Europe might not be integrating... Based on American history, when immigrant communities don't integrate, it's usually because they are facing discrimination from the 'natives,' and are banding together for mutual protection. If Muslims aren't integrating, maybe the problem isn't on their side.

"you can't have a dialog with someone whose faith teaches that you are less than human, which is exactly what a Dhimmi is, no different that the 3/5ths rule the USA had for blacks." And we to some extent worked out the Black thing, at least to the point that we now have a Black president. It did take a Civil War, but it was mostly politics. It certainly didn't involve wholesale religious conversion or genocide, which would seem to be the only solutions to the "Muslim Problem" if you are correct.

Yes, believe it or not, suicide bombers are people too: http://muslimmatters.org/2008/04/19/the-psychology-of-the-suicide-bomber/

However, since ordinary people are quite capable of violence against the Other, being unable to get nuclear material is probably a better explanation.

Um, you may be mistakenly assuming that young liberals get their news from the 24-hour news networks. I don't have TV at the moment, and even if I did, I'd just watch PBS Newshour. I get most of my news online. I don't know how many people in the young liberal demographic are like this, but I do know that the 24-hours news networks suck. It could be that Fox News is just more popular among the young people that watch 24-hour news.