What percentage of your tax money should go to a government space agency?
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What do you mean by 'tax' (Score:3)
Sales taxes, income taxes, property taxes, capital gains taxes, etc.
Also, given that I think most of those taxes are far too high, I should answer 95% ... on the condition that 0% of my taxes go to military budgets...
The question is not 'how much of what I already pay should go to space exploration?', but rather: 'how much is wasted elsewhere....?'
And, % measures are worse than useless.
gus
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What do you mean by 'tax' (Score:5, Informative)
Historically, the budget of NASA has been anywhere from 0.5 to 1% of the overall Federal budget.
Actually it went as high as 4.41% during the Apollo years.
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Right but some of that has been transitioned to war department research that does the same thing. Whether it's a civilian agency or a military one the work is being done, and eventually those benefits spin off to the civilian world (and of course, it's paying the same companies to do the work either way).
Though i agree with the general premise, which is that more research into solving complex problems will lead to more elegant solutions to everyday problems, and that's nothing but good for everyone.
Re:What do you mean by 'tax' (Score:5, Insightful)
Once we were just going to back to LEO the advancements didn't seem as (comparatively) grand.
The advancements from NASA didn't seem as grand.
If you spend money on any type of research, there will be some advancements that will be useful to others. That program could be NASA, the military, NSF, etc.
If you're real goal is technological progress, then we need to ask: where will research money result in the greatest advancements?
And the answer to that question might not be NASA.
Re:What do you mean by 'tax' (Score:5, Insightful)
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Historically, the budget of NASA has been anywhere from 0.5 to 1% of the overall Federal budget.
Actually it went as high as 4.41% during the Apollo years.
That's when they were still the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, rather than the current and ongoing Notions About Space Adventures.
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The bigger question is why do you continue to live in fear? And let that fear dominate how you live your life based on the actions of other people?
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Peace?
I can't Imagine any other possible outcome, if there was no millitary at all.
Re:What do you mean by 'tax' (Score:5, Insightful)
There have always been people who want power over others, and who have an unquenchable lust to get more power. Those people gather dupes and form armies to gain power over their neighboring countries. Humankind is going to have to change more than most people can imagine before that is no longer true.
In the presence of such people, a neighbor either has a military, is killed, or is enslaved. The last 2 are technically peace, the sort of peace that pacifists either desire or are deliberately blind to.
Re:What do you mean by 'tax' (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, we call them "Senators."
Re:What do you mean by 'tax' (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone would build a military, and then take over as much as they could.
Peace requires everyone to agree. War is decided unilaterally.
Re:Peace requires everyone to agree. (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually he did let the inspectors in. You seem to have conveniently forgotten that part.
That was kind of the problem. They kept finding nothing. Bush kept claiming they were just really good at hiding them. Which was a crock of shit.
By invading iraq you made yourself, your friends, your neighbours and your children less safe. The next country to want to resist so called 'american imperialism' (Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Russia, China for example) aren't going to fuck around. They're going to have distributed WMD facilities, better weapons, they'll be dug in, hidden etc. And you're not going to discover the extent of the programmes until it's too late. While you've been building sand castles in the desert and murdering innocent people by the thousands they've been building bunkers, air defences and god knows what, in god knows where.
Also, i value you, your friends, your neighbours, your children as lower priority than the Iraqi's, because you decided to illegally invade them. Keep that in mind for next time you want a random expedition somewhere. Because the rest of the world doesn't trust you, and doesn't really have a problem with you getting yourselves blown up. Although, and to your credit, you've been on the right side of libya (eventually), no one is on the right side with syria, and the mess you've made with Iran has left all of us, including your own government baffled. You went along with short term thinking, propaganda and nonsense because it 'felt right' even when all of the actual evidence was that Iraq was willing to comply, albeit begrudgingly. It didn't do saddam hussein any favours that he was trying to convince Iran he had WMD, while trying to convince the rest of us he didn't.
What you should have understood, and people with brains did understand before you invaded:
1. No one likes having inspectors forced on them. He was always going to make a show of not complying.
2. Iraq had more problems in the world than just the US. Notably Iran. If you can't tell the different go find a map.
3. The path to maintaining freedom from the US is to have a distributed set of nuclear weapons that can reach major US cities, pointed at them. 24/7.
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Unless you mean no military in the entire world. In that case, it would just take 20 minutes longer, tops.
Even if you somehow made every military person, facility, and piece of equipment disappear, some wackjobs somewhere would assemble a new one and try to takeover the new defenseless world, or at least the part they like and can conveniently oppress.
Sorry, but even if 99.9% of the people were pacifistic by nature, that remaining 0.1% wou
One doesn't just occupy half a continent (Score:3)
Even if USA had no significant federal army, it'd be quite difficult to effectively occupy it. USA spans half a continent and there are some 300 milliion people or so... How many nations in the world would have manpower to occupy it (and resources to transport those soldiers over the oceans)? I think the only options might be India (which seems like a rather unlikely occupier), China and possibly Russia (though I really doubt they could pull that off). I guess China could theoretically occupy USA by investi
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Re:One doesn't just occupy half a continent (Score:4, Funny)
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military spending (Score:5, Informative)
The US on the other hand... Let's put it this way, how many groups, countries, and fruitcakes have declared they want the USA destroyed and/or it's people dead?
Pretty long list, isn't it.
How many tymes has the US fought against democracy in other nations? How many tymes has the US aided and supported dictators? Too many tymes on both accounts, and that's why some people hate the US. Let's start with Iraq. During the 1980s the Reagan and Bush Sr admins supported Saddam Hussien. All the while Saddam was using WMDs against Iran and Iraqis in Iraq, Reagan and Bush Sr supported him. US support for Saddam didn't end until he ordered the invasion of Kuwait. And why did Saddam do that? Because Kuwait was Slant drilling [wikipedia.org] or directional drilling into an Iraqi oil field [wikipedia.org]. After Iraq was driven out of Kuwait the UN gave Kuwait those oil fields. So theft pays for some.
Next, above I mentioned Kuwait, which is not a democracy, and Iran. Iran was a democracy. In 1953 the intelligence agencies of the United Kingdom and the United States under the name TPAJAX Project overthrew the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh [wikipedia.org] and installed the Shah as dictator of Iran. And the Shah's secret police were just as bad as others torturing activists who opposed him. Or take East Timor [wikipedia.org]. Portugual decolonized East Timor in 1975 and as a newly independent nation East Timorese elected their own government. However with the support of President Ford and Henry Kissinger Indonesia's President Suharto [wikipedia.org], a Major General, invaded East Timor. After the invasion an estimated 200,000 East Timorese, one third of the population, was killed. Up to 100,000 [gwu.edu] were killed in the first year alone. Maybe half of what was left were rounded up and put into "camps controlled by Indonesian armed forces."
How about closer to the US, um? Ever wonder where the saying "Banana Republic" comes from? Banana Republic [wikipedia.org] comes from when United Fruit Company and other US owned agricultural corporations used US military might in Central and South America to force their will onto others. Teddy, er Theodore Roosevelt [wikipedia.org], and other US presidents used Gunboat diplomacy [wikipedia.org] for such things.
There are a number of instances like this that provide reasons people hate the US. If the US didn't carry such a big stick and use it then people wouldn't hate it.
Falcon
Re:What do you mean by 'tax' (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a reason why nobody tries to attack this country very often. It's because of our military.
I live in a country that has a pretty tiny military (that pretty much only gets used for UN-style peacekeeping and disaster relief work) and an even smaller military budget. There's a reason why nobody tries to attack this country very often. It's because we generally get along with everyone else, don't meddle in other countries' internal affairs, don't start wars, yadda yadda yadda. Costs us next to nothing.
It seems the reason why the US needs a large military (apart from the influence of the military-industrial-infotainment complex over its government) is because of the actions of the same military all over the world.
All of it. (Score:5, Funny)
Get me off this dirty stinking rock!
Re:All of it. (Score:5, Funny)
Dirty? Stinking? My home this is!
Re:All of it. (Score:5, Funny)
Dirty? Stinking? My home this is!
I knew Yoda. Yoda was a friend of mine. You sir are no Yoda.
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FYI (Score:5, Informative)
I think there should be a way to donate to individual government agencies. Here's already a way to donate to the US treasury [treas.gov], but no way to specify how much goes to your favorite program.
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Re:FYI (Score:4, Interesting)
If I gift the US Treasury, do I have to pay taxes on that earned income?
Re:FYI (Score:5, Informative)
It's deductible, like any other charitable contribution, which means you have to itemize to see a benefit. For most people, the standard deduction is higher.
Re:FYI (Score:5, Informative)
Donating to specific agencies won't work -if there were a significant such donation to NASA, the legislators would just defund the agency the corresponding amount, and then in future years without a donation, the actual budget would tend towards the lower level.
Re:FYI (Score:5, Interesting)
In my country we are allowed by law to give away 2% of our taxes to whichever piece-o'-the-pie we feel like it. NGOs, research funds, the Military, Health, Space Research, you name it.
If you express no option, it all goes to the Government.
So you get to choose and donate that tiny amount to whatever you feel is good. I am donating to Health because Health sucks around here, it's so fucked up you'd faint by just being shown a glimpse of it.
I would honestly make that as much as 50%. 2% is a joke, but better than zero.
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Re:FYI (Score:4, Funny)
In my country...
Which country are you from?
Romania, I think.
If you only think you know what country you're from, I'd suggest the answer might be The Netherlands, perhaps around Amsterdam. By the way, would you mind picking me up some local brownies? I, uh, love chocolate.
5% seems affordable... (Score:2)
I would even pay more tax to fund it, so healthcare or education don't have to suffer. It would of course mean that I spend less on the least important thing I waste money on right now: entertainment. So, that would probably mean that the RIAA would sue NASA for lost revenue. And that would mean that NASA would spend 5% of all tax money on lawsuits. It seems a bit of a catch22.
-- yes, going off-topic in just 5 short sentences.
I'd gladly give 5+% (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe I'm delusional but as far as I'm concerned space exploration is very important even if it's primarily a long-term thing (meaning a lot of private interests and politicians see no value in it).
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It's more like "I earn my paycheck. Keep your greedy thieving hands off of it."
But I was trying to be nice about it. Maybe he genuinely does want to spend his own money on space projects. But usually, the "I'll gladly pay more" line means "I'll pay $10 of my own money so I can spend $10 million of others' money on my pet projects".
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To be honest, yes, I wouldn't complain if 10+% of my taxes went toward space exploration.
Being stuck on this planet is a serious liability. I don't care if I personally don't make it off Earth but we need redundancy.
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I need the redundancy from the money in my paycheck -- so I can save up and pay my bills if something bad happens.
If we have donation-supported private space exploration, we can each get what we personally value. I can keep my paycheck and have savings to pay my own bills, and you can spend yours on space projects.
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Re:I'd gladly give 5+% (Score:5, Interesting)
The first expedition to Antarctica was in 1892. Antarctica is far more habitable, has more resources, and is warmer than the Moon. It even has air. Yet, we don't build anything there. Everything is flown in. Yet you want me to believe, if we were in an even more desolate place for 1/2 the time, there would be this thriving base, with manufacturing, and mining, etc.
We don't build anything in Antarctica because we don't need to. If you lived on the moon, and your job was to figure out how to utilize what resources were available to create building materials or whatever else is needed to become self sufficient, then yes, you would learn how to do it. I'm not suggesting there would be a thriving economy and we'd be shooting gold bricks back to earth. Stop putting words in my mouth. I simply said if NASA had been dedicated to figuring out how to colonize space, we'd have a presence there with some infrastructure built so we don't have to take it all with us in one rocket. Missions would be cheaper.
What you described is a pipe dream. Saturn V cost over $1.17B for each launch. You can't build a moon base when the cost is $11,700 per pound (to get it to the moon.. not including landing it on the surface). Even if we continued the funding they got back then, it would still be a pipe dream. Stop kidding yourself. Life is not a sci-fi novel.
Well, I think that price tag could be argued, but that's about what each shuttle flight costs. We were doing 4 of those a year for the last few years. If we had done 4 a year since 1973, that would have been 152 launches. Apollo had something like a 3 to 4 times greater useful payload than the shuttle. Much of the space station was built by the shuttle.
I'm not living in a sci-fi novel....I'm simply stating how things could have been if we had just had a goal. Nothing I outlined above is beyond the realm of plausibility even with reduced NASA funding.
Re:I'd gladly give 5+% (Score:5, Informative)
You are not an island of rugged individualism.
You only think you earned your paycheck all by yourself. In reality, you were probably publicly educated for at least part of your life, you enjoy the benefits of publicly funded infrastructure which makes your job possible (as does your employer if you're not self-employed), your business and home are protected by police and fire departments which are publicly funded, and you enjoy so much more from society that I can't even begin to list it all. You get paid for the work you do, yes, you earned it in that way but don't forget for a second that you only have the opportunity to earn that paycheck because thousands of others came before you to set up groundwork which makes your job possible. There is little evidence that this could all be achieved equitably and fairly if left to purely market based solutions. The only thing that's asked of you is to reinvest into the system in proportion to the amount of prosperity you've managed to extract from it.
You are deeply immeshed into your society and civilization and you have a responsibility to pay it forward. You may disagree with what your money is used for, I do as well when I see how the US uses our military, but there are mechanisms to fix and adjust that, imperfect as they are.
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That's a lot of talk. But well over 60% of the Federal Budget is for "transfer payments".
Transfer payments are money taken from an individual who earned it and given to another individual who didn't earn it. They don't pay for roads or police or fire protection or soldiers or teachers or infrastructure. They pay for old folks to take a 30-year vacation. They pay for women who didn't bother getting a husband or a job before having a baby. They pay for farmers to not grow crops.
No one is complaining abou
Re:I'd gladly give 5+% (Score:5, Insightful)
You're talking to someone who agrees with the fundamental idea of the welfare state, so you're not going to convince me with the shopworn rhetoric of taking from the hard working folk to give to shiftless. I disagree with a lot of its execution, but wealth redistribution is a legitimate and fundamental activity of government, which is exploited far less than most of the right would have you believe. The few cases that do exist have to be sexed up with racism to be made more appealing (e.g. Reagan's mythical welfare queens).
As long as there are homes without families, and families without homes, wealth redistribution will be necessary. As long as there is both food enough to feed all, and still people going hungry, wealth redistribution will be necessary.
I'd rather a person who refuses to work--not someone who can't work just someone who simply refuses to--be fed and kept alive than allowed to starve and die. The reality is that there will be very, very few of those people, and a ton more that really need the help and will be thankful for it and are willing to also work hard.
The biggest problem I have with The Right in the US is that they seem willing to not help anyone for fear that someone might get something without working for it. It's a sort of "cut off your nose to spite your face" situation, except it's carried out through passive disregard and not active malice.
There's room enough for all this, and without exploiting those hardworking "decent" Americans, and some space exploration, if we cut down on the imperialism and make industry and business pay their fair share.
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Well, the US is doing some really expensive stuff that scandinavian countries don't do:
- fighting wars
- maintaining a massive amount of political police like homeland security
- keeping a large proportion of your population in prison (not only do those cost money, they also don't create wealth)
- having a space program
- paying interest rates because taxes in the past did not cover expenses (in Norway interes rates are an income to governement)
This might explain why taxes are higher in the US.
Essentially a soc
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The "I'll gladly pay more" people, like Warren Buffet, are usually simply being deceitful. They can already pay more if they'd like to. They don't really intend to pay very much more. They want to spend. (In Warren Buffet's case, he wants taxes raised because he directly makes money selling products to avoid taxation. If he pays $1 million in additional tax, he can make a hundred times that.)
More directly:
I'll gladly pay $10 more in taxes if the government uses the tax money collected from everyone to b
Choosing where your tax goes (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's say recipients of federal taxes get to chose whether they want their funding allocated from the fixed federal pot, or the discretionary pot - yes, you could have a split, but let's keep it simple. Those that chose the discretionary pot go onto a list on the tax return and people get to select, and possibly allocate percentages, which agencies they want their discretionary taxes to be allocated to. How many US taxpayers are going to tick the NASA box over, say, the TSA box?
Of course, it would never work get through congress. NASA and the like would end up with a larger budget than the DoD, and we couldn't possibly have the US putting the benefit of all mankind ahead of national self interest, could we?
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I would imagine that only a portion of the taxes would be allocated for the discretionary spending. The DoD would already get a big chunk...as well as the welfare programs.
The discretionary spending could still list the DoD and welfare programs for those that want even more in that direction. But it would list others, like NASA.
I've thought of this solution myself. The problem sits on how you determine how much non-discretionary spending goes to each place. Politics will still drive it. Unless you make
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It's a nice idea in principle but I suspect it'd have some nasty side effects.
For one, people aren't entirely rational (they want lower taxes but more government services). As much as I distrust Congress they at least have to discuss it before doing something monumentally stupid with the budget, and there's a certain amount of inertia against screwing with funding critical services.
California, where every other year there's some spending initiative on the ballot, is a good example of why letting people dire
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The vast majority (Score:2)
Because roughly 80% or more of taxes should fund the military, which the space program would fall under. The rest should fund the basic infrastructure for the government to fulfill it's constitutional functions. (Operate the court system, post roads, maintain the buildings needed to house the main branches of government, etc)
Note this does not include the vast majority of what the government currently does, which falls well outside the limits of the constitution.
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Note this does not include the vast majority of what the government currently does, which falls well outside the limits of the constitution.
Please read this post as sung, thanks.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The preamble, at the very least, sets the tone of what the founders expected government to do.
Re:The vast majority (Score:5, Informative)
This means to prevent wars between the states.
This means to promote the welfare of the Union by maintaining the governmental infrastructure required by the constitution.
This does not mean relieving individuals of the responsibility for their own lives as to do so would make the following an impossible goal.
This can not be achieved under a government that wields total authority over your every action, including how you provide for yourself and family. The more power you place in the hands of a ruling authority, the less liberty you will have. Today we have only an illusion of liberty, revocable at the whim of the government at any time. It's being usurped a little more virtually every day.
Re:The vast majority (Score:5, Interesting)
That's your reading.
Mine is:
insure domestic tranquility
Prevent wars between states, but also keep crime to a minimum. Basically, ensure that people are not threatened by any domestic source (the next line deals with external sources).
promote the general Welfare
Work to make life as good as possible for the average citizen. That would include affordable healthcare, the interstate highway system, food and housing for the poor, etc. Basically, work to raise the standard of living.
secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Progeny
Make sure that the United States remains a free democracy. Fight against corruption, make sure people have a say in their governance. It does not mean "every man for himself, fuck the poor!". It does not mean that the government can't collect taxes or enforce laws and regulations. It means that such laws must be created by the people.
So you see, I read the same words, but come to a much different conclusion. One in which the government has a much more expansive role. One in which the government exists to benefit the people by working to raise the standard of living, and protecting us from threats (both external and domestic; violent and corrupting) that might undo that progress. Unless you have some sort of papal infallibility going on, I don't see why your reading is the one that we all must follow.
I think we can agree, however, that regardless of expansive or restrictive interpretation, the government isn't really living up to its goals.
Re:The vast majority (Score:5, Insightful)
I have read the Federalist Papers, but there is a danger in using such contemporary documents to discern the founder's intent. They weren't gods or prophets or even really any wiser than people are today. They couldn't even begin to imagine the sorts of problems we currently face. Deifying them won't get us anywhere.
We need to do whatever we think is best, within the confines of the written rules. When we start limiting our actions based on what we think was going on in some guy's head hundreds of years ago, we end up in the same boat as religions -- fighting tooth and nail over the meaning of some half-forgotten sentence. Arguing over intent is a fool's errand, and will leave us hobbled and unable to adapt to new problems.
A Lot More Than Actually Does (Score:2)
More than what we do now... (Score:2)
I used to dream of going to the moon as a kid...now I wonder if my great-grandchildren will ever go.
Just look at Tim Schafer (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe NASA should start a Kickstarter project...
NASA Kickstarter - Moon Missions (Score:5, Interesting)
$10 (unlimited) our thanks and we apply to name a start in the andromeda galaxy after you.
$20 (unlimited) standing room only admission for 1 at a launch. Includes your name read in sponsor list during the prelaunch countdown starting at T-2days.
$100 (unlimited) as $20 with access to the buffet table. And a copy of a signed poster by an astronaut.
$200 (unlimited) as $100 and your name gets engraved on hardware that will get to the moon.
$10k (90 of 90 available) 10 sports available per launch in Ground Station Mission Control for each launch after the first.
$20k (10 of 10 available) 10 spots at mission control for the first launch.
$10M (3 of 3 available) seat on launch vehicle. Will be seat #3 and not one of first 3 launches. Must pass physical, money not refunded, but seat may be passed to another.
ZERO...nothing (Score:2)
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"Subsidized" research and development that employs chemists, physicists, and rocket scientists?
I can get behind pork like that!
No background information given. (Score:2)
The reason the answers are all over the board is nobody has any background on what the budget is for NASA, and what it's been in the past. To get the massive Apollo program advances the numbers were between 2-5% of the federal budget. They're now .5%.
The Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] is actually very good.
Not just NASA (Score:2)
Fortuitous choice of poll options (Score:5, Interesting)
The partitioning of the poll options has resulted in the most uniform distribution of results I've ever seen. Interesting.
So close! (Score:2)
I don't remember a poll that was so even. OK I'm off to get a haircut, an unrelated event.
9-9-9 (Score:2)
MY government doesn't have a space agency (Score:3)
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Guess your sister does not grasp personal responsibility.
Re:Sign O' The Times (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Sign O' The Times (Score:5, Insightful)
Or even adoption in the case where circumstances change after giving birth. Then again, some might say that death is the preferable option to the foster care system in the US.
Thoughts and questions that have popped in my head (Score:5, Interesting)
It's interesting you said that.
Folks throw that option out all the time, and yet couples have a real hard time getting babies in the US. They have to import them from Third World Countries - China is a huge exporter of children. If there was such an abortion "crisis" and adoption was truly a viable alternative, shouldn't there be babies - white babies - filling up the adoption agencies?
Driving North on I-95 between Daytona and Jacksonville, FL, you'll see an anti-abortion billboard every 20 or so miles. Every single one has a blonde haired and blue eyed baby. Pretty little thing. You'll see the same billboards on a route 10.
Why aren't there ever babies of color? I never see a black one. And I wonder how the abortion "debate" would go if the billboard showed a black mother, surrounded by more back children, and holding a new black infant with a caption, "Where's the welfare office at?"
I'd also like to add that laws that would ban abortion would just stop poor women from getting them. The poor would breed more.
A well to do mother would hop on a plane and get an "appendectomy" - to allude to a Joan Rivers joke. Prosecute them? Prove it.
Regardless of my personal views on it, I think it's ludicrous for the government to be involved: it can't be enforced. And it would cause problems with conservatives' other values: less government regulation, increasing the rolls of the parasitic poor, increasing crime, etc ....
Re:Thoughts and questions that have popped in my h (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember a big stink about a black minister putting up a billboard in New York. As I remember it went something like this... "The most dangerous place for an African American is in the womb." It was referencing the fact that African American's have about 3 times the number of abortions vs the general population. So that kind of stuff is out there. If it's out there in a proportion to the population, I don't know.
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It's interesting you said that.
Folks throw that option out all the time, and yet couples have a real hard time getting babies in the US. They have to import them from Third World Countries - China is a huge exporter of children. If there was such an abortion "crisis" and adoption was truly a viable alternative, shouldn't there be babies - white babies - filling up the adoption agencies?
There are. The adoption crisis is not a lack of children who need homes. It's a layer of red tape so insane that makes adoption very difficult. Piss off a government worker who is handling the process just once, and they can tie you up in the red tape. To protect the children, the government made attempts to make sure 'unfit' parents couldn't adopt. But all of those laws, stacked with all the ones before and after, have made the process almost impossible in some locales. Have a cousin who got caught urinati
Re:Sign O' The Times (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sign O' The Times (Score:4, Informative)
Ever heard of abortion? Oh or are you a religious nut?
Ever heard of Prince [wikipedia.org]?
Re:This scale is absurd... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes. My health is fairly irrelevant in the face of my progeny's very survival. I want my children to walk on Mars, and my children's children to visit Pluto. I want to spread my genes across the galaxy, and not have them wiped out by a single-planet extinction event. We should not store all our eggs in one basket, but get them as spread out as possible. I'm willing to sacrifice just about anything to make sure that happens because nothing else matters more.
The free market and research universities will take care of malaria and AIDS. I'm not terribly worried about either, frankly, and both will be better solved by just about anyone other than government. The best discoveries of science are reached through curiosity and directionless research. They are also less about money and more about putting the time in with a bit of inspiration.
It really does take a government to do a massive project, though, on the scale of interplanetary travel. Sure, there are companies now that can put satellites in orbit, and go on short low-orbit joyrides, but I don't see any company today that could do an Apollo mission, much less one to Mars and beyond. There are a handful of things that government can do better than the free market, so why not let the government focus on them and let the rest be handled by other organizations? There are no immediate commercial opportunities to be had by putting human beings on Mars. Someday, there may be, but we're not there yet and companies aren't usually in the business of doings things unless they can get paid for it. It's still something that's important, and so government should do it.
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Mass murder, destruction of the economy, and enslavement of the whole society come to mind. That the government can do it best is not an argument that the government should do it.
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We're currently at 0.5%.
If you want other parts of the budget (most notably social services) cut by 95%, but keep NASA spending the same, then suddenly it becomes 10% of the budget. If you think that qualifies as dumb, then ...
Ah, I see. You're trying to lure me into a name-calling match. I won't give in.
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Not the whole budget, just certain things that are using far more than they need.
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Re:You People are a bunch of Statists!!! (Score:5, Informative)
The free market didn't "discover America".
The free market didn't build any of the national railroads.
The free market didn't build any of the national highways.
The free market didn't electrify the nation.
The free market didn't get phone service to everyone.
The free market didn't build the Internet.
All of those things were big expensive projects that either required direct government action, severe kickbacks to private companies, or heavy handed regulation of private companies.
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I see that retort a lot, and nearly all of that is wrong. So I don't know if you're serious, trolling, or joking. Leaving out "discover America" and the patronage system of the 1400s, most of the projects you list happened almost exclusively because of the free market. Granted, without government mandate, electricity and phone service would only be available to 99% of the population. The national highways were effectively paid for by use taxes (the gas tax) and built primarily by private contractors. M
Re:You People are a bunch of Statists!!! (Score:5, Informative)
You are a sadly deluded fool.
ALL of those developments required heavy handed government intervention of one sort or another. They require such meddling precisely because of the sort of Ayn Rand mentality you are trying to advocate now.
Re:You People are a bunch of Statists!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Free market didn't clean the air above LA.
Re:You People are a bunch of Statists!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Where the hell is your faith in the free market?
I don't have any "faith" in the free market. In place of faith I have an economics degree from MIT, where I learned that there are many things the free market does well and other things that it doesn't do so well but that society wants done regardless. I also learned that talking about what society wants is a shorthand notation - society isn't monolithic, that there is a distribution of viewpoints and that some people, such as yourself, will be disgruntled with the direction their fellow citizens want to go in. The fact that many of them have a different view of things than you do doesn't make them stupid idiots.
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The free market wants me to pay each and every time I hear a song, watch a video, or take a dump. They want to cover every square inch of stuff with advertising. The free market can take a flying leap into the nearest volcano.
Oh, contrar. In free markets copyrights do not exist. Copyrights are government granted monopolies, therefore they can not make a free market.
I'd prefer a freer market than what we have now, a bunch of government interference. As for statists [wikipedia.org], they come in various sizes and shapes.
Falcon
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Tell people that anyone that makes it to the moon and back can sell anything they bring back with them, and/or that they are relatively free to exploit space and the services and resources space access makes possible.
Then step back to avoid multiple private-rocket exhaust plumes. Also be prepared for a glut in the "moon rock", "space tourism", and "recovered space artifacts" market.
Of course, that would mean allowing relatively-wide access by private indiv
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Would it be a better allocation of resources than figuring out how to grow crops on the ocean? Absolutely not. Any Mars or Moon "colony" can be done more easily in the middle of any Earth desert. Packaging it up and blasting it out of orbit is a waste of resources.
Mariculture is currently a sustainable industry on its own so I don't see why we should inject government funding into it when it's not needed at all. In any case mariculture is only temporary since the oceans are only temporary. The same goes for the deserts.
Then there's interstellar travel. Somebody prove Einstein wrong and I'll gladly donate my income towards the project.
Why must interstellar travel be faster than light?
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