The Goat Pen

British common law countries are way closer to police states than here. Im always a little surprised at what I learn from following sports over there. They do things like close certain areas to fans of one team, or designate pubs in the area around Wembley for neutral games and forcibly segregate (like you wanted to go to that pub? tough shit, its only for Man City fans today, not Arsenal or whatever). Im not sure if they still do this but at one point within the last 20 years if you ended up on the wrong teams area basically the police would round you up and hold you until it was time for kickoff and drop you off at the stadium and weird shit like that.

up until recently we never equated violence between opposing teams fans at our sporting events. Americans lived and died by sport but after the event we took the jerseys off and went back to work. The worst we did was throw snowballs at Santa...however lately a giants fans gets beat so severely he has brain damage at Dodger stadium. Its been ratcheting up.


meanwhile there is no shortage of Muslims beheading videos out there

Should there be ISIS-beheading-westerners videos out there? It's what they want, obviously - same as the white supremacist live-casting his killing spree. The stated goal of all these terrorists is to pit religion vs religion, race vs race. The internet is the prime facilitator. Apparently millions of people want to view these god-awful atrocities for some reason.

I don't know why I view your posts.

This is not supposed to happen!

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/18/politics ... index.html

our company analysts are saying moderate growth until spring of 2022, then they expect the global pressures to cause a recession in our economy

sardis wrote:This is not supposed to happen!

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/18/politics ... index.html

In related news, 8 out of 10 Americans are proven dumbasses.

Tariffs are causing major problems. I still don't understand his insistence on them unless he really is plotting with China and Russia to overthrow the US without firing a shot. Completely undermine the economy, funnel money into the hands of a select few and deny the masses food and water, get out of the nuclear treaties that keep Russian nukes from proliferating and improving and then, one day, they have the drop on us and Trump walks away with amnesty and thousands of sex slaves while we all go to the salt mines or die.

But he's too stupid for all that, even though I think he secretly would prefer such a scenario instead of having to suck up to the hilljacks by humping the flag.

Saint wrote:

sardis wrote:This is not supposed to happen!

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/18/politics ... index.html

In related news, 8 out of 10 Americans are proven dumbasses.

Tariffs are causing major problems. I still don't understand his insistence on them unless he really is plotting with China and Russia to overthrow the US without firing a shot. Completely undermine the economy, funnel money into the hands of a select few and deny the masses food and water, get out of the nuclear treaties that keep Russian nukes from proliferating and improving and then, one day, they have the drop on us and Trump walks away with amnesty and thousands of sex slaves while we all go to the salt mines or die.

But he's too stupid for all that, even though I think he secretly would prefer such a scenario instead of having to suck up to the hilljacks by humping the flag.

how is it undermining the economy. The stock market just reached its high for the year.

If extremely low unemployment (including the lowest on record for blacks and Hispanics), low interest rates, being a net energy exporter (read: no longer dependent on the lunatic Middle East for our oil), and GDP growth that exceeds the Obama era, is “undermining the economy,” then bring it on.

http://wws.princeton.edu/news-and-event ... -countries

And it's hurting our business since there are no suppliers of newsprint in the US. Not sure what country y'all are living in but this one sucks pretty bad right now.

Also, my cable has been fucked up for the last 2 weeks and the ISP swears there are no problems.

I

SECURITY!

he gone

It is kinda funny to hear about how good the economy is doing when I see farmers around here dropping left and right. I'm talking about people who are 3rd and 4th generation, farming the same land that their great grandpappy's did (cue up "Rain on the Scarecrow") that just can't make it anymore. Yeah, we've got less unemployed people overall, but you know that as soon as we have any kind of hiccup those people who have gotten a job in the last couple of years are going to be the first to go. It's not like these new people have all of a sudden gotten stable, secure careers. They're just waiting for the other shoe to drop. But yeah, life is good down at the trailer park these days, Billy Bob is making $12 an hour and the Natural Light is flowing. Yee-haw...

“Rising inequality affects virtually every part of the country, not just large urban areas or financial centers,” said Estelle Sommeiller, a socio-economist at the Institute for Research in Economics and Social Sciences in France and co-author of the paper. “It’s a persistent problem throughout the country — in big cities and small towns, in all 50 states.”

Between the years 2009 to 2015, the incomes of those in the top 1 percent grew faster than the incomes of the bottom 99 percent in 43 states and the District of Columbia. In nine states, the income growth of the top 1 percent was half or more of all income growth in that time period.

A recent trend

This trend is a reversal of what happened in the United States in the years during and after the Great Depression. From 1928 until 1973, the share of income held by the top 1 percent declined in nearly every state.

The report from the EPI attributes that growth to a different atmosphere for workers, where the minimum wage generally was steadily rising and they were able to join unions and bargain for rights.

Today, while unemployment remains low and the economy is doing exceptionally well, wage growth has remained stagnant

The bureau of labor statistics says this

Compensation costs for private industry workers increased 3.0 percent over the year compared with an increase
of 2.6 percent in December 2017. Wages and salaries increased 3.1 percent for the 12-month period ending in
December 2018 and increased 2.8 percent in December 2017. The cost of benefits rose 2.6 percent for the 12-month
period ending in December 2018 and increased 2.3 percent in December 2017.

The lowest paid sector - state and local workers saw a 12 month increase of 2.4%

and why would we compare wages earned for people during the great depression to current day?

We could nuke the economic capacity of the rest of the world back to post WW2 level and that would probably make america great again for a new 50s and 60s renaissance...

sardis wrote:I don't know why I view your posts.

insightful

hedge wrote:It is kinda funny to hear about how good the economy is doing when I see farmers around here dropping left and right. I'm talking about people who are 3rd and 4th generation, farming the same land that their great grandpappy's did (cue up "Rain on the Scarecrow") that just can't make it anymore. Yeah, we've got less unemployed people overall, but you know that as soon as we have any kind of hiccup those people who have gotten a job in the last couple of years are going to be the first to go. It's not like these new people have all of a sudden gotten stable, secure careers. They're just waiting for the other shoe to drop. But yeah, life is good down at the trailer park these days, Billy Bob is making $12 an hour and the Natural Light is flowing. Yee-haw...

The thing is however - with only college educated representing about 30% of the workforce, and skilled labor representing equal or less, those billy bobs outnumber farmers by about oh 350:1.
While I'm pro farmer and I believe food/water should be part of our national security, protected by the constitution and therefore supported by the federal government with the same focus as our military, if you are a 350 acre , two tractor, rent the combine in the fall farmer, you're one bad season or your son taking a job in the city away from bankruptcy year to year now - and have been for decades. Giant Corporation farming and land development is where local farms are going.

Its definitely in the best interest of this country to keep the Billy Bob's, Ray-Rays , Raul, Nyugen and Prasun's employed at $12 or whatever an hour rather than the alternative - and it should be a priority.

Thats one of the biggest problems I have with progressives. They don't talk in terms of employment, they talk in terms of quality of life provided by a benevolent government.

Have any of you felt that the people in Washington are particularly benevolent to the residents of this country as a whole?

The unlikely presidential run of Andrew Yang, who is proposing a $1,000-a-month “freedom dividend” to every adult in America, rolled Friday into San Francisco, where some 3,000 supporters listened to the New York tech entrepreneur warn about how artificial intelligence and robotics are taking jobs.

The 44-year-old son of Taiwanese immigrants who met each other at UC Berkeley has already surpassed expectations — virtually nonexistent when he got into the race — by inspiring enough donations to qualify for the Democratic primary debate in June.

Yang outlined his idea for guaranteed universal income to a young, exuberant crowd of mostly Millennials at an outdoor soccer field lined with food trucks on Mission Bay Boulevard North.

His plan, he said, would give the 68 percent of Americans who don’t have college degrees — the ones most likely to become unemployed — a basic income that would help boost spending and the economy while the country invests in technical and vocational training for them.

“The money is not a solution. The money sets the stage for the solution,” he told Joe Rogan during a podcast that has been credited with helping Yang’s popularity to soar on social media. “We need to reconstitute meaning for many, many Americans. ... This is very much about human empowerment.”

Yang has also thrown his support behind universal health care, a $1 billion fund to help local journalism, wages for NCAA athletes and mandates that police officers wear body cameras. But it is the proposed freedom dividend and promises to help truckers that have garnered the most attention, including among libertarians like Rogan and conservatives like Fox’s Tucker Carlson.

The opposite of Donald Trump,” he said to raucous cheering, “is an Asian guy who likes math.”

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You guys should read up on this guy. He's going to start attracting attention very soon.

He wants to make Puerto Rico a state. He supports a path to citizenship for illegal aliens, albeit with an 18-year waiting period and combined with pledges to secure the border and deport illegals who don’t enroll in the citizenship program. He wants to create a massive bureaucratic system to track gun owners, restrict gun ownership, and require various “training” programs for licenses. He wants to subsidize local journalists with taxpayer dollars and fine media outlets that contribute to fake news or don't fact check their stories.


He may turn out to be a nut, but on paper, he's killing the current crop of democratic idiots out there.

Have any of you felt that the people in Washington are particularly benevolent to the residents of this country as a whole?

You don’t have to go to Washington. When you go down to the DMV, the Post Office, or (God forbid) the VA hospital, do you feel the governmental love?

Can you imagine going to a government-run emergency room with severe chest pains, and relying on people like THAT to save your life? Shudders....