And more here: Two-party system#Third parties. Third parties serve only as "spoilers" or ways to move the "Overton window."

I'd recommend you read up on Duverger's Law, so as to understand why third parties have never, and will never, succeed electorially in America. (A new party has come in only following the disintegration of one of the major two, most recently being when the Republicans emerged following the disintegration of the Whigs before the Civil War.) Your only choice is between whichever is the (slightly) lesser of two evils.

If you think your vote doesn't matter, then why vote at all? As I understand, that's one of the main reasons voter turn-out is so low.

This is, frankly, a stupid suggestion. You forget that the government has tanks, bombs, fighter jets, UAVs, machine guns, etc., and vastly outgund and outpowers the public; a successful armed rebellion is totally impossible , and has been for some time now. Further, an attempt would be counter-productive, as it would only provide the excuse needed to crack down further on the people.

Oh yes, dearie me, whatever are those oh-so-poor buggy-whip makers and telephone operators going to do? We just have to pay these people for the rest of their lives so they don't starve, since their jobs are gone forever![/sarc]

Remember, it's the Luddite fallacy.

Once upon a time, over 90% of human beings worked in agriculture; now it's only a few percent. Were there no longer enough jobs to go around? (Look up the "lump of labor fallacy" and "comparative advantage" sometime.)

Let me guess, "this time it's different"? That's what Luddites have said every time, and it's been shown false every time.

So it's like that bit from the South Park episode "Sexual Harrasment Panda"

Kyle: "Isn't that fascism?"

Gerald: "No, because we don't call it fascism. Do you understand?"

So as long as we don't use the s-word, it's okay, then? Whatever you want to call it, you're still talking about paying people to do nothing on a long-term or permanent basis, without trying to get them to do something others are actually willing to pay for ("work"); the money for that has to come from somewhere (TINSTAAFL), and that can only by extracting it from the productive. That is, ultimately, what you are talking about, yes?

You should also familiarize yourself with the term "frictional unemployment." Yes, old jobs go away, and new ones are created, and through no fault of their own, people end up temporarily unemployed, until they develop new skills. I'm all for a temporary safety net such as unemployment. (You are capable of comprehending the difference between a temporary safety net and permanent subsidy of the unproductive, aren't you?) I'm on disability, myself. However, I'm trying to find work and make my way to getting off assistance, including use of resources from Division of Vocational Rehabilitation (my ideal program; get people retrained, back to work, and no longer suckling the public teat).

However, I spent time growing up in rural Alaska (in a community without electricity, sewer, or running water). I had classmates (in the single K-12 school) whose parents had been on the dole since before these kids were born. The families all had children spaced uniformly apart in age (the exact spacing that maximized benifits). Most of them dropped out high school and went straight onto the welfare rolls themselves. The effects of this long-term indolence was visibly corrosive. Furniture and toys were mistreated, uncleaned, and discarded; the state would provide new ones. No one was even looking for work, and you'd have to force them to make even the slightest effort to do so. Alcoholism was rampant. Welfare reform did clean this up some, exactly by forcing them to put in some effort at becoming productive human beings rather than wallowing in squalor.

So, I put to you, if you can make a basic living without having to work, then why would you work? Many people I've known in my life would rather just play WoW all day if they didn't have to have a job to have food & shelter. What makes you think they wouldn't under your system? And how would you keep the rest paying for them to do so instead of joining them?

And lastly, the recession was mostly due to people, and governments, living beyond their means, racking up increasing debt on a belief that endless growth would allow them to make the payments indefinitely. We're now paying the price, and yes, that means taking a hit to our standard of living, and working for less pay.

No, but I would remind you that something is worth what the market is willing to pay for it.

First, I've never seen any street musicians or street theater in the city I live in, nor do I go to bars. And further, simply playing music may be a matter of skill, but not creativity; when someone is playing Mozart on a piano, the only creativity involved was that of Mozart; it is songwriting and composing that is the creative part of music, and from I can hear (the same four chords endlessly repeated), that is very much lacking these days.

As for me, I've been unemployed almost two years, and the only job I've had since graduating college over six years ago is math tutor. I'm good at memorization and solving (calculus level) math exercises; the sort where there is only one right answer, and one only needs to apply the right algorithm; no creativity involved. I don't even have the kind of mathematical creativity to find new theorems or tackle the unsolved problems. As for hobbies, I mostly just read.

If every human being is creative, why have there always been so many starving artists/musicians/actors/etc.? Contrary to the "everyone has a novel in them" nonsense, most people have very little creativity. And before you ask, I count myself firmly in the uncreative group. I have no artistic talent of any kind, and I know it.

Why? Because socialism fails every time it is tried, and due to immutable human nature, always will. And make no mistake, your proposal, which amounts to forcibly taking money from the productive to support the lazy and indolent, is the very essence of socialism. As they say, if you subsidize something you get more of it; if you subsidize people to sit around and not work, you get more people not working. Then, you get the people who are working seeing more and more of their money stolen and given to layabouts; they will increasingly become bitter and resentful, either doing their jobs with less effort (and concomittant decline in quality), or giving up and joining the unproductive themselves, requiring yet more to be extracted from the workforce that remains. The inevitable result is poverty and collapse, as seen with the fall of the USSR. So no, it's not "worth a shot." It's a "cure" worse than the disease.

Spaghetti code, perhaps written with a Noodly Appendage?

Guy wearing binoculars notices some object
Binoculars sense this and draw attention to object by putting some kind of HUD symbol on screen
Guy wearing binoculars notices HUD display object
Binoculars sense this and draw attention to object by putting some kind of HUD symbol on screen
Guy wearing binoculars notices HUD display object
Binoculars sense this and draw attention to object by putting some kind of HUD symbol on screen
Guy wearing binoculars notices HUD display object
Binoculars sense this and draw attention to object by putting some kind of HUD symbol on screen
...
Binoculars and/or Guy's brain explodes
???
Profit