What do you all think of the Tea Party?
As far as I can see, the liberals in the Democrat Party, and the spineless progressives in the Republican Party are leading this country down the economic road to oblivion. That being said, I am open to a new party that more closely matches my philosophy and desires, and will promote policies that will serve society rather than enslave it.
While I am not a member of the Tea Party movement, I sympathize with their intent, at least with what I perceive as their intent: that being smaller, less intrusive government, and a return to the founder's original intentions in this regard. However, my understanding is that this movement is just grass roots, with no real central national platform, and certainly with no vetting process for the candidates that it backs.
Can this movement be successful without organizing at the national level?
Is this movement viable? Will it become, like the GOP did just prior to the Civil War, the dominant party of the country?
Just interested in opinions...
While I am not a member of the Tea Party movement, I sympathize with their intent, at least with what I perceive as their intent: that being smaller, less intrusive government, and a return to the founder's original intentions in this regard. However, my understanding is that this movement is just grass roots, with no real central national platform, and certainly with no vetting process for the candidates that it backs.
Can this movement be successful without organizing at the national level?
Is this movement viable? Will it become, like the GOP did just prior to the Civil War, the dominant party of the country?
Just interested in opinions...
For example: You decry the "isolationist" nature of the Libertarians and cheer "muscular defense"... from what? Who is attacking America (besides our own police forces)? Do you cheer the killing of hundreds of thousands of INNOCENT Iraqis? Is that the "aggressive offense" you approve? The libertarians would say, "Don't go kill a bunch of people for no reason." I suppose you'd say, "It's okay to kill hundreds of thousands of people who never did anything to us, so long as we get to kill some who might have had bad thoughts about us." (Note: Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.)
Look at the horrible mess that is Afghanistan and Iraq. More Americans killed than in the 9/11 attacks. TRILLIONS of dollars wasted. MILLIONS of new enemies made. Wouldn't you want to kill the people who have occupied your country and bombed you indiscriminately for years? All for what? What good has come of ANY of it?
Yes, we got bin Laden. We could have done that without the invasions, the crippling of our economy, the thousands of dead Americans or the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis.
So, defense, yes. I'm sure Libertarians are pretty uniformly in favor of strong DEFENSE. But mass homicide to pursue a jingoistic imperialistic agenda? You have to be a Democrat, Republican, psychopath or utter moron to buy that crap.
Country Club Repubs hate us, but we're doing all the work. You would not believe the dogfights in the Central Committees. The old line GOPs folks think you open a "Victory Center" for a few months, lose the election, close the Center, then do it again in 2 yrs.
Yeah, sure.
Well, I have been active in the Greater Boston Tea Party for the last 3.5 years. It is a way to get people activated. It started off as protests, and evolved into a political education movement.
The ignorance of the US Constitution, US history and the ideals of liberty is rampant in our society. The biggest part of the fight is education, both on what government should/should not be, and we also educate people on getting INVOLVED. We have classes on the Constitution, lectures from organizations like American Majority and The Leadership Institute on political activism, and have speakers from local media, political groups and think tanks.
The biggest problem of "the right" is the lack of unity on the central core issue - our government is out of control in the power it has amassed and wields, and the national government is all-powerful. Government has to shrink incredibly, regulations slashed / eliminated, and power and money needs to stay as local as possible, i.e. not go to Washington.
There is no central Tea Party organization, although there are several large nationwide organizations - e.g. TeaParty.NET, Tea Party Patriots, Tea Party Express (the latter - mostly a PAC). MOST Tea Parties focus on fiscal / constitutional issues, and stay away from the social ones. We can't get Libertarian types and Social Conservatives to agree about abortion - but we can get both to agree to DEFUND Planned Parenthood!!
There are "socially conservative" Tea Parties out there. If you are thinking about joining a Tea Party, review their principles, mission statement and what activities and speakers they have. That will tell you a lot about the organization and allow you to see if it matches your interests. There is in-fighting, just like there is between various factions of the Republican Party.
Our (GBTP) mission statement:
We are a group of citizens who are concerned with the increasingly burdensome reach of government. Our mission is to educate and advocate for the restoration and defense of public policy that promotes limited government, free markets, free speech, individual liberty and personal responsibility, all tenets of the Constitution of the United States of America and the Bill of Rights.
We advocate citizen engagement through civil discourse, community involvement and online activities that promote peaceful and productive social change.
The Tea Party movement (again - not anything "more" than 100's or 1000's of individual organizations) will not become a party - third parties will loose in the current structure.
They typically are very amenable (if not exceptionally supportive) of Ayn Rand and her ideas and her works. The Greater Boston Tea Party has hosted Yaron Brook as a speaker several times, and we enthusiastically supported and participated when Andrew Bernstein was a speaker at a Worcester Tea Party event.
The lesson from recent decades: those who have some value to get from the government (the looters and moochers) have actively lobbied and become part of the government. Those who work for a living also have to participate and work to STOP the looting and mooching!
We encourage our members to become involved in campaigns, at the local, state and maybe even national level (e.g. US House & Senate). We encourage members to "Adopt a Candidate" - whether by donating time and/or money. And if there is not anyone you can get behind locally - find someone from neighboring towns & cities or states! WE freedom-loving and get-the-government-the-hell-out-of-my-life types have to be part of the process.
Many Tea Parties do not endorse candidates. Our assumption is that people are smart - we help to educate them on the issues and candidates, hold candidate forums and debates, and encourage our members to make an informed choice. There are many times when disagreements will occur on candidates, and people "hold out" for the "perfect candidate". Being from Massachusetts, "perfect candidates" are almost non-existent!! I was not a huge fan of Brown, but all I had to do was to replay Liz Warren's "You didn't build that" speech in my head, and I was motivated to work against her! In 2010 we doubled the number of Republicans in our State House seats. We survived 2012 by only loosing a few. When I say "we" - there are 30-40-50 Tea Parties in MA.
The Tea Party focuses on the need for political activism - it educates and stresses the need for people to become active. It took us decades to get us into this hole - it will not be fixed in 2-4-6 years. The Tea Party is a "gateway" to activism - it is not need an end in itself.
We need to inform, educate and activate!
P.S. is there hope, or is it best to give up and "Go Galt". I fight now. There are good people left. Also, our country had our "Nat Taggerts" (Founding Fathers) that left us a legacy and it seems a betrayal to let it die. What's the final straw?
Sadly, this is a very BAD assumption. The "average" IQ is 100. SAT scores have declined every year for 40 years and a recently published study surmises a 14 point drop in IQ among western nations in the past century. That means there are a LOT of stupid people out there.
Beyond that, the majority of voters (women) are economically stupid. Studies indicate women are 4 times less likely than men to have a good understanding of economics. The Cliffs Notes version is this: Women are more risk averse than men, tend to vote for social welfare programs to "feel" more secure, happily trade freedom for the illusion of security, spend all future revenues on the "buy now, pay... never" plan and are driving our Country into bankruptcy. Correction: We're already there.
You're not going to convince most women to give up their goodies, so that's a lost cause. Among the morons who vote are those who (male or female) will not give up their goodies either.
So bottom line is this: While it never hurts for people to understand what is happening and why, the majority of people don't want to hear it, won't listen to it, and will continue to vote to bleed the working class dry until there is nothing left... hence the premise for "Atlas Shrugged".
So gather the workers into the Gulch, let the world burn down around you. Repel those who show up late having first destroyed America then claimed victimhood. Let them die.
When the smoke clears, rebuild. And when you do, don't repeat the mistake of the 19th Amendment... which is at the root of all our troubles.
1) The socialists have dumbed down our educational system, on purpose, so the masses would be incapable of seeing what is going on for themselves.
2) The entitlement mentality is something the socialists have spent decades drumming into the heads of these functionally illiterate people.
3) The progressive and liberal politicians and power brokers have turned these people into slaves, whose only job is to vote for them.
I see these folks as victims, in a very real sense of the word, of scheming, calculating, evil politicians and power brokers.
Most of these folks see themselves as "victims," but not in the real sense of the word, but in the calculated mindless way their slave owners have brainwashed them into believing.
As such, I'm not sure I like the "let them die" mentality -- but I recognize that it is an inevitable conclusion to their condition. God will hold their slave masters accountable for their suffering and death.
I totally agree with the "when the smoke clears, rebuild" mindset. It is probably all we have left to do at this stage.
What I don't agree with is the assumption that women are economic morons. I know a LOT of women who are more economically savvy than the best of the men.
The "trade freedom for security" assumption of most women might be correct -- it seems to be part of their makeup. But I don't always see this translate into politically socialist action.
Where I see it most is in their personal life. They give up their "freedom" to become the wife of a man who will give them "security."
Where I see this breaking down is in the number of men who would rather whore around with a bunch of women instead of growing up and taking their responsibilities as men seriously.
If the men were really acting like men, then the comments made about women would be irrelevant. Since so many men are acting like grown boys, the women default back to the government as the provider of security -- and in that case, your comments are probably much more accurate.
There is a real reason why the family is the basic unit of society, and why the "traditional family" is the best paradigm.
That, at least, is how I see it...
Regarding women as economic morons - I only report what I've read. You're free to do your own research - but please, you're clearly smart enough to know that "I know plenty of..." is not a persuasive argument. In the first place, you are selecting the environment (those people whom you know). Second, you're picking the subjects (how do you judge the economic acumen of women with whom you choose not to associate?). Finally, how do you judge their economic knowledge at all? Is it because they know that 3 for $4 is not as good a deal as 4 for $5? Just google "men women economic knowledge". Note that there is nothing in this search that is in any way biased. Read the top 50 articles and get back to me... with an admission that I was right! ;-) (There's even an article that BLAMES MEN because women have less political knowledge!)
1) http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/per... -- A few anecdotes, some opinion, and few studies which added ancillary information. Their conclusion is mixed -- more women say they are inexperienced with investments, but a lot more are looking into retirement options. Lots of quotes by "generic people," like "personal financial experts say" -- with no reference to who they are. It is what you would expect from USA Today.
2) http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2010/01/1... -- Pew Research is a reputable organization. The executive summary really doesn't say that women are financial morons.
3) http://www.catalyst.org/knowledge/opport... -- nothing about how financially moronic women are.
4) http://www.citelighter.com/business/econ... -- nothing about how financially moronic women are.
5) http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2... -- this is "worldwide" and not "in America," plus it is political acumen, not economic.
6) http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PDACJ748.p... -- A fluff-based international report, but nothing on how financially moronic women are.
7) http://www.unfpa.org/gender/empowerment2... -- this is fluff about how educating girls is more important than educating boys, so we need to get with the program.
8) http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/foc... -- this is a discussion about how women are oppressed and in order to have freedom, they need to have more control over the economic decisions.
9) http://gstudies.asp.radford.edu/sources/... -- a keynote address at a women's conference in New Zealand.
10) http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration... -- a report from the fed on women in America. The link to the PDF is: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/...
The closest the 97 page report came to calling women economic morons is the frequent references to how women, and "especially women of color" live in poverty.
So, BambiB, I'm not going to keep going for the next 40. Suffice it to say, my comment about using Google to try to do "real research" is not a valid direction stands. Zero of the first 10 items talked about how women are economic morons. Many of them actually made positive comments about women's economic situation and understanding.
Strip Women's Suffrage!
(or, I guess, just "strip women" -- it all depends on your point of view)
I have always had a hard time with blatant generalizations. "All women are..." kinds of lines just make me wonder what is going on in the head of the one saying it.
Hail is frozen rain, and dry to the touch until you hold it long enough.
Ever played badminton? The 'bird' is featherless...
Rain is rain, hail is hail.
The original shuttlecocks WERE made with REAL feathers, but that has NOTHING to do with birds having feathers.
BBZZZZNTT! wrong!
Bingo! Yahtzee! and Uno!
Baby birds do not yet have feathers.
rain... I got nothing on that one.
Do Igloos have doors? Is a doorway the same as a door?
(I'm just trying to be funny here. I actually agree with both statements, because I sense the meaning behind them both.)
kiwis [the bird, not the fruit - wait, it's true for both] do no have feathers
a rain of arrows is not wet. Neither is a rain of kiwis [the fruit]. No, not fair. I take the most sensible path below. OK, all rain - that is, water falling from the sky, IS wet.
hmmm...the word was "door", not "doorway", so I'm taking it as the actual physical object that impedes entry. Do igloos have doors? Do tents have doors? Yurts and tipis have doors. More thinking needed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igloo
"When kiwi chicks hatch, they are fully-fledged. It takes just a short time for their feathers to dry out once they hatch."
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Do_baby_kiwis_...
SNAP!
And a doorway opening counts as a door (perhaps I should have said "doorway". Plus I think an igloo opening has some sort of hide/flap "door" anyway. :)
Thanks for biting.
I would generously send you the cloud that is dumping water on my house at the moment...nope, gone again. sorry, no rain for you! and really, I would trade Sioux City, Iowa, for anywhere, AZ in a heartbeat. 89degrees & 98% humidity. yeeeccch.
2,3,4,6,7,8,9,10 are apparently irrelevant (by your own admission). If you believe any of these articles contain data that tends to prove or disprove the statement "Women in America have inferior knowledge of economics compared to men in America", I will be happy to revisit them.
Articles 1 and 5 tend to support my assertion, the former with statements such as, "Women are gaining financial independence to an unprecedented degree — they now make up the majority of college graduates, are nearly half of the labor force and are becoming the primary earners in many households. Yet most remain uneasy or uninvolved when it comes to talking about and managing money.
The repercussions of their lack of knowledge are ones everyone, not just women, will have to bear the burden of, personal finance experts say."
Number 5 does refer to the WORLDWIDE disparity in knowledge between men and women in poitics. The last time I checked, the USA was part of the world, and the lack of economic knowledge I've been speaking of is as applied to political decisions. Unclear whether this directly supports the thesis.
Where are the articles that say women are on the same level in economic knowledge as men? Were you unable to find even ONE article that contradicts what I've been saying?
As for finding "even ONE article that contradicts what [you've] been saying," what I found is that none of the *AGREED* with you -- and it was *YOU* who said I would.
None of them discussed how women are economic morons. One (from USA Today, like *that* is a resource *anyone* would use to prove *anything*) had a few anecdotes and used unfounded references -- so it was not any help to your cause.
However, your failure to find information is NOT evidence that the information does not exist. It may be evidence of your inability to do research.
By the way, how much did you find that said women are equally knowledgeable regarding economics? I don't see that you've presented anything in that regard (besides your opinion). If I missed it, please let me know. If I didn't, then please admit that you've not presented anything besides your naked opinion.
I do note the common theme in your "refutation" of my case: USA Today isn't credible. Harris isn't credible. The National Council on Economic Education isn't credible. Presumably anyone who disagrees with LeeCrites... isn't credible.
I won't argue your stats or studies. I spent a number of years doing social research, and I can tell you from personal experience that many of the studies that show counter results never see the light of day.
Not all -- there are a LOT of honest social scientists who publish results which prove their thesis wrong.
The same can be said of medical research -- except I know darn few "honest medical researchers" who publish results which are counter to their proposals. Actually, I know none that do.
The comment you made was that the majority of women were economically stupid. My personal experience (wife, six daughters, grand-daughters, mother, aunts, etc) is counter to that. The women I know were all more fiscally intelligent than their husbands. I know my wife is.
She can talk circles around professional financial planners (who seem to all be male), leaving them wondering what just hit them.
Part of the process that we, as sentient individuals, must go through when we read something is a "sanity check."
Does what we are reading "sound right" to us?
Does it mesh with our personal experiences?
If the people you know were part of the research group, would that have significantly changed the outcome?
If after answering these questions, you wonder about the study, then there is a chance the study is not valid.
Remember, the average social survey will ask a small group of folks, perhaps as few as a couple of hundred, and then make generalizations for society as a whole.
When they give a "margin of error," it is the potential error of the statistical analysis based on the actual results received, not the margin of error of the results reported and society as a whole.
You want me to admit you were right? Okay. You were right.
Did that change anything? I still only know a few females who are financial morons; I still know a large number of women who are more fiscally responsible and literate than their husbands.
1) You are not an expert in economics. Based on your admitted lack of knowledge, what are your qualifications for determining whether someone else is an expert in economics? Your praise of the financial acumen of women in your social circles is the equivalent of someone who failed mathematics lauding the (basic) arithmetic abilities of some associates - utterly unaware that algebra, geometry, calculus or differential equations even exist.
2) You appear to be unaware that seven women is not a representative study. Or maybe you meant more than seven. Does 15 cover it? Have you thought that maybe the men in your family may be abnormally deficient?
3) Your wife can talk. A lot.
4) You have difficulty accepting any study that is contrary to your personal prejudices.
5) You have no knowledge or understanding of statistical methods or representative sample sizes, and hence no comprehension of the mathematical foundation of any study or any kind. You wouldn't know a confidence interval if it bit you.
6) You are in error regarding "margin of error". But since you have no actual knowledge of statistics, this is not surprising. If you don't know a normal distribution from a chi-square, you're just talking through your hat.
Did you do any research? Or are you just sharing your "gut" feeling? If the latter, maybe you can save everyone a lot of time, effort and money: What's your "gut" feeling on how to cure cancer? Proof of Fermat's last theorem? The solution to getting women to vote responsibly instead of for massive government? And if your gut doesn't inform you on these matters, why should anyone (yourself included) trust it on another topic you know nothing about?
In 1976, I was part of a team that wrote a program which ran (in the background) on a University of Texas (Austin) science department computer. It ran for basically the whole school year until it exhausted the computer's number range, looking for a set of numbers that might satisfy the equation with N > 2. It failed (of course), but we could not say, at that time, that the failure was because a set did not exist or that the set of numbers simply exceeded the mathematical capabilities of the computers we had access to.
My "gut feeling" was that at some point, a set of three numbers would be found which satisfy the equation. I guess Andrew Wiles proved me wrong on that one.
Working on that is what gave me the hobby of doing number theory, even today. Right now I am part of a group working on a "fix" to the equation being used to calculate PI.
Here is what I noticed. The "proof" is based on the fact that for every right triangle (meaning one of the angles is 90-degrees), the equation A^2 + B^2 = C^2, where A and B are the lengths of the two legs, and C is the length of the hypotenuse. It works out rather nicely.
But they *assumed* that A^n + B^n = C^n would also work with a right triangle. Pourquoi?
Why the assumption? That was not explained in the proof, so I am looking into it.
My husband was at U of T Dallas in grad. physics just a few years after you.
My team worked on a set of N values which were prime (3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, and 19). As I recall, the last three generated numbers so large so fast that it didn't take long before they were larger than the computer could deal with.
We were actually out of ASU (Angelo State, San Angelo), but because of faculty friendships, we could use the UT/A computers, as long as the programs did not interfere with their normal business.
We wrote the programs on punch cards, and the faculty member who lived in the area would take them home on the weekend and deliver them to someone at UT/A to run for us.
Now, does that date me, or what??????
To answer your accusations, I *DO* know about both social and medical research. In social research, I am one of the ones who helped develop the "Expanded Likert Scale" back in the 1980's. As I said in the post you replied to, I spent a number of years actually DOING social research.
Here is the point you need to take home from this post: When people accuse others of a laundry list of things, especially without any background information to do so legitimately, what they are really exposing is their own heart.
Apparently you decided what I said was an offense, so your idea was to go on the offensive and "put me in my place." Unfortunately, your attempt used a significant lack of real information, so it really did not speak of *me*.
Although I have to admit, doing a lunch group of me and a group of women gets me looked at differently and when I'm with a group of dudes... ;-)
I see that in voting trends. I am a libertarian -- darn few folks seem to openly state that about themselves. But for me, I watch both ends of the political spectrum say the same exact kinds of things about the other end. Each side thinks the other side is filled with idiots or the mentally unstable or <fill-in-the-blank>.
Who am I to say that women do/do not vote responsibly? If you asked them, as individuals, they would have what they felt like was a reasonable justification for their vote. It might not agree with mine, but that is why we have a pluralistic system. I express myself when I vote; you express yourself when you vote.
I believe we fought the sexual revolution in the 1960's, and lost, big time. We now have broken homes and single mothers and rampant capital punishment for the crime of being pre-birth.
Men no longer have to "buy the cow" in order to "get the milk," if you remember that old phrase. So they don't. Nobody has to bother with curtailing their breeding habits. So they don't. In a society where the social order has all but vanished, who else will women look towards for stability and protection? They probably have reasonable justification for voting like they do.
When this social order collapses, and I am sure everyone in this conversation understands that it will, then those who survive will have this historical lesson to build from. The sexual revolution destroyed the greatest country in recorded history. I'm betting when "the smoke clears," and we "rebuild," which was one of the original comments, that this will be something the new social order will make dang sure doesn't happen again.
Out of curiosity, do you think it's a person's responsibility to understand what they are voting for or against? Because it occurs to me that if women understand what they're doing (destroying America) and they vote to do it anyway, then they are certainly culpable in irresponsible voting.
Conversely, if they don't even understand what they're voting on, are they not irresponsible for voting their ignorance?
I saw an entertainment program once where guys had set up a booth to collect signatures to "End Women's Suffrage". The majority of women (apparently) agreed that women had "suffered enough" and signed the petition.
Note: this was "entertainment" TV, and so probably cherry-picked for the entertainment value of the results. But I think it's illustrative of the level of understanding that most women have regarding economics, and that the majority of voters have regarding many other issues, regardless of gender.
In short, the average American voter is a moron. Okay, I admit it. I'm probably setting the bar too high. But Obama was elected TWICE and Bush was elected TWICE before him. Is there an alternative hypothesis that better explains the reality?
Address the particular issues if you want to have any credibility:
1) Is the universe of all women you know a statistically-significant sample?
2) Is it a random sample?
3) Is it a representative sample?
4) Is the sample of less-knowledgeable males statistically-significant, random and representative?
5) What's the confidennce interval for your conclusion and to what level of certainty?
If you have any of the expertise to which you allude (knowing about "both medical and social research") then you should also know that what you've proffered is nothing but an unfounded opinion. Here's your chance to back it up with real facts.
Your turn!
My credibility has nothing to do with answering your list of queries. Anyone with google skills can answer questions -- and many think they are doing "real research" when they do it. Only the illiterate truly believe "googling" a topic is "doing valid research."
However, I'll take a stab at them, just for giggles and grins.
1) Yes, the "universe of all women [I] know" is a "statistically significant sample." Research and studies are published frequently based on these kinds of groupings (and less). Many are called "case studies" because they take a small, (previously) known, number of individuals, and study them in depth. In a lot of cases, the grouping becomes part of the "name" of the study (e.g. Voting attitudes of 2005/2006 Phi Beta Kappa graduates from the University of Texas). The point is that the grouping you identified could be called a "valid and significant sample."
2) It would be called a "naturally random" sample, but not a "statistically random" sample. If you understood those two terms, I'm thinking you wouldn't have asked this one. Even as stupid as you think I am, the risk of me being able to stuff this back at you would be too great.
3) Being "representative" is also part of a larger discussion. What makes a sample "representative" in nature? Would my sample be "representative" of society as a whole? Possibly not. Is it "representative" of peer groups like mine? Possibly. Is it "representative" of my peer group? Certainly.
4) The answer to this is the same as the answers to the preceding three.
5) "Confidence Level" is a SCWAG (scientifically calculated wild a** guess) of how close to my results another (set of) researcher(s) would come if they repeated my study. One way of looking at it is: if we asked another husband of my peer group the same question, how confident am I that he would give the same answer? The "confidence interval" is 100% minus the confidence level -- so if I was 90% confident that another husband in my peer group would report the same thing, then my confidence interval would be 10% (expressed as 0.10).
Since I acknowledged that there were fiscally irresponsible women in my peer group, there would be husbands who might report the opposite of what I did. So if an outsider repeated my empirical observations, they would find both groups. They would be able to crunch numbers and puke out a CI that would probably be more "statistically accurate."
One of the problems with people who have studied social research or studied statistics is that they think they have a corner on the knowledge of doing it. While they might have "theoretical" knowledge, the "boots on the ground" are the ones who really understand how it works.
Another problem with many educated-only folks is that they tend to view other folk's "empirical data" as "nothing but unfounded opinion." There is the assumption that if it is not gathered using "pure scientific principles" that is is somehow invalid.
That is why I mentioned I did both medical *and* social research. Anyone with a clue about either would understand why I would have mentioned both. Anyone with that much of a clue probably wouldn't stomp on me for "...[not] even know you [don't] know..."
Yes, what I said was an "opinion." Every single research study ever written is an "opinion." Significant work has been done to try to make that opinion objective instead of subjective by performing a number of (theoretically) repeatable steps. But in the final analysis, someone looked at numbers and formed an opinion based on them. They would then pick someone to peer review it. Do you think they would pick someone who felt differently than they did? That is what gets published: an opinion two researchers shared based on numbers gathered by one of them.
Using "pure principles," studies have proven such brilliant things as how drinking orange juice is a leading cause of death ("What percentage of people drank orange juice within 48 hours of death?").
I have never taught statistics, although I did get an A in both classes. I have never taught social research, although my undergraduate GPA was 3.978 and my graduate GPA was 4.0. Doing research studies has helped to support my family.
Sorry, BambiB, but my "credibility" is not something you have the power to take or give. This has been an interesting bit of banter, but I'm not interested in wasting more time attempting to "prove" something you seem predisposed to reject out of hand.
2) Agreed that it is not a "statistically random" group. Given that all are filtered through your personal association with them, I disagree that it's even a "naturally random" group.
3) Your sample is not just "possibly" unrepresentative, but almost certainly unrepresentative. How many different religions are represented? Races? Economic levels? And then there's the personal filter from 2 above.
5) If "Confidence Level" is a "SCWAG", what do your call your own estimates? Have you even polled your sample group? Or are you just applying your personal prejudice, projecting the desired results? The studies I've mentioned contain REAL RESEARCH, with hard, reproducible results. Have you done any testing to determine the level of economic knowledge of your sample group? Or did you just "assume" the results you wanted? In short, how is your opinion any different from that of the guy who says, "I believe what I believe and it's true because I believe it"?
>> ...the "boots on the ground" are the ones who really understand how it works.
Not if the extent of your research is, in sum total, one opinion.
>> Yes, what I said was an "opinion." Every single research study ever written is an "opinion."
Incorrect. While it may be true that research RESULTS in opinions, I have yet to see a study that contained NO DATA, and consisted purely of an opinion. (Can you cite a single study of any kind, in any field, conducted at any time for any purpose that contained no data?)
>> They would then pick someone to peer review it. Do you think they would pick someone who felt differently than they did?
Some do. Some don't. While certainly some ego enters in, some researchers start out with a hypothesis which their research later contradicts. That is the purpose (and value) of peer review - to ferret out inconsistencies in data, methodology and conclusions. Honest researchers follow the data. Others reach a conclusion, then look for anything they can find to support their bias, but even dishonest researchers present evidence. (I'm thinking specifically of Michael A. Bellesiles' "research" into gun ownership in early America - where he cited to records that did not exist.) What research have you done?
>> Sorry, BambiB, but my "credibility" is not something you have the power to take or give.
Agreed. Others will have to read your comments and determine whether they think your research supports your conclusions. I don't see any research at all, consequently I personally perceive your comments to be unsupported opinion. Of course, if I'm mistaken in this belief, it shouldn't be a problem to present your actual data - instead of only a naked opinion.
That you refuse to accept my own empirical evidence based on my life's experiences is your issue. Basically what you are saying is that unless YOU have REAL RESEARCH to back up what YOU say, then it is worthless. You should be judged by the rules you use to judge others.
In presenting my opinions based on my own experience, I *AM* presenting my "actual data." Everyone seems to understand that but you.
In this study, done for the National Council on Economic Education, the purpose was to determine what young people and adults knew about economics. The results in the Major Findings section speak for themselves.
1) http://www.ncee.net/cel/WhatAmericansKno...
"What American Teens & Adults Know About Economics"
(Prepared for:The National Council on Economic Education)
Major Findings
"Males are more likely than females to get an “A” or “B” (adults: 51% vs. 17%; students: 12% vs. 6%)"
"Females are more likely to get an “F” than males (adults: 42% vs. 15%; students: 67% vs. 54%)"
Get that? Men are 3 times more likely to score an "A" or a "B". The women are 3 times more likely to score an "F".
Here's a graphic: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2006...
Note, this isn't a "fluff" piece. It's not an opinion piece. They're not some guy saying, "I know a bunch of women who are stupid about economics." The NCEE study is a, "nationwide sample of 3,512 U.S. adults aged 18+ and 2,242 U.S. students in grades 9-12". This significantly trumps your sample of "some women I know" and your methodology of "I think they are smart about economics."
Not to belabor the point, but you asked:
2) http://www.scienpress.com/Upload/AMAE/Vo...
Behavioral Biases in Economic and Financial Knowledge:
Are They the Same for Men and Women?
Andrey Kudryavtsev1 and Gil Cohen
"[W]omen are more strongly affected by...hindsight and anchoring bias" regarding economic and financial knowledge.
3)https://www.econstor.eu/dspace/bitstream/10419/67721/1/732597579.pdf
What do people know about the economy? A test of minimal economic knowledge in Germany
"We found a gender effect, revealing that women had less economic knowledge than men. However, the magnitude of the difference is nevertheless surprising, given that women participate in the economy today much more than in past decades." (Note: This deals with the deficient economic knowledge of women in GERMANY, so you may choose to disregard it as inapplicable to AMERICAN women's knowledge. But since cites have been made to the Weimar Republic for the proposition that men are equally stupid, I thought I'd include it.)
4) "The Gender Gap of Economics:
Why Do Men Think More Like Economists?
Evidence from the Survey of Americans and Economists on the Economy"
This isn't actually a different study, but rather is an attempt to explain the woefully deficient knowledge of women regarding economics as revealed in the NCEC study (#1 above)
In relative part:
"Male adults are more interested than female adults, who are more interested than male students, who are more interested than female students. These differences are highly statistically significant: ... groups' interest in and knowledge of economics line up: Male adults score higher than female adults, who score higher than male students, who score higher than female students.
But why would differences in interests lead to an interaction effect between gender and education rather than a simple level effect? There is a logical explanation. The longer a student stays in school, at any level, the more opportunities he or she has to learn. Some learning opportunities come through formal classroom instruction; others are a byproduct of social interaction. In both cases, though, the probability that a person takes advantage of opportunities to learn about a particular subject depends on how interesting he or she finds the subject. Since men find economics more interesting than women do, the longer they stay in school, the greater the disparity in their knowledge becomes."
5) You've already cited the study saying that female knowledge of politics is deficient compared to men: (http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013...). I'll only point out the economic policy is indeed political in nature.
Your turn.
Incorrect. While it may be true that research RESULTS in opinions, I have yet to see a study that contained NO DATA, and consisted purely of an opinion. (Can you cite a single study of any kind, in any field, conducted at any time for any purpose that contained no data?) "
I never said they had no data -- in fact, I specifically said they DID have data, and that the opinion was based on the numbers they had.
Just to help you, here is what I said: "But in the final analysis, someone looked at numbers and formed an opinion based on them."
So you are arguing what I said, even though your own reply shows you agree with it. Are you kidding me? Are you so bent on arguing that you will even take a point where we seem to agree, and argue both sides of it, just for the sake of argument??????
My comments were my opinions based on the peer group I am in. Since my peer group is NOT reflective of your preconceived ideas and attitudes, which seem to be loosely based on someone else's research of some variety, I tossed that in.
Your inability to accept that someone else might have a valid experience that is contradictory to your prejudices and attitudes is your problem, not mine. Deal with it.
But it doesn't matter one way or the other because it's completely irrelevant to the discussion.
Your personal "experience" may be contradictory, but - and if you have ANY statistical acumen at all you should state plainly that you understand and agree to this - your personal experience is IRRELEVANT to the question of whether women's knowledge of economics is on par with men's NATIONALLY and in the process of forming NATIONAL ECONOMIC POLICY.
I did not realize you meant only to say, "In my little corner of the universe, which has no relevancy to the discussion at hand, there is a purely localized and limited exception to the general rule: I know a handful of women who may not meet the National trend and may be smarter than the males in my personal social group regarding economics".
I accept responsibility for mistakenly believing that you had some intention to be relevant.
Suffice it to say your attitude and unwillingness to see what is actually being said make you one of the funnier folks I have debated in a while.
I said it was representative of my peer group. Do you not even actually go to the trouble to *read( the comments before you jump on them?
In this study, done for the National Council on Economic Education, the purpose was to determine what young people and adults knew about economics. The results in the Major Findings section speak for themselves.
1) http://www.ncee.net/cel/WhatAmericansKno...
"What American Teens & Adults Know About Economics"
(Prepared for:The National Council on Economic Education)
Major Findings
"Males are more likely than females to get an “A” or “B” (adults: 51% vs. 17%; students: 12% vs. 6%)"
"Females are more likely to get an “F” than males (adults: 42% vs. 15%; students: 67% vs. 54%)"
Get that? Men are 3 times more likely to score an "A" or a "B". The women are 3 times more likely to score an "F".
Here's a graphic: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2006...
Note, this isn't a "fluff" piece. It's not an opinion piece. They're not some guy saying, "I know a bunch of women who are stupid about economics." The NCEE study is a, "nationwide sample of 3,512 U.S. adults aged 18+ and 2,242 U.S. students in grades 9-12". This significantly trumps your sample of "some women I know" and your methodology of "I think they are smart about economics."
Not to belabor the point, but you asked:
2) http://www.scienpress.com/Upload/AMAE/Vo...
Behavioral Biases in Economic and Financial Knowledge:
Are They the Same for Men and Women?
Andrey Kudryavtsev1 and Gil Cohen
"[W]omen are more strongly affected by...hindsight and anchoring bias" regarding economic and financial knowledge.
3)https://www.econstor.eu/dspace/bitstream/10419/67721/1/732597579.pdf
What do people know about the economy? A test of minimal economic knowledge in Germany
"We found a gender effect, revealing that women had less economic knowledge than men. However, the magnitude of the difference is nevertheless surprising, given that women participate in the economy today much more than in past decades." (Note: This deals with the deficient economic knowledge of women in GERMANY, so you may choose to disregard it as inapplicable to AMERICAN women's knowledge. But since cites have been made to the Weimar Republic for the proposition that men are equally stupid, I thought I'd include it.)
4) "The Gender Gap of Economics:
Why Do Men Think More Like Economists?
Evidence from the Survey of Americans and Economists on the Economy"
This isn't actually a different study, but rather is an attempt to explain the woefully deficient knowledge of women regarding economics as revealed in the NCEC study (#1 above)
In relative part:
"Male adults are more interested than female adults, who are more interested than male students, who are more interested than female students. These differences are highly statistically significant: ... groups' interest in and knowledge of economics line up: Male adults score higher than female adults, who score higher than male students, who score higher than female students.
But why would differences in interests lead to an interaction effect between gender and education rather than a simple level effect? There is a logical explanation. The longer a student stays in school, at any level, the more opportunities he or she has to learn. Some learning opportunities come through formal classroom instruction; others are a byproduct of social interaction. In both cases, though, the probability that a person takes advantage of opportunities to learn about a particular subject depends on how interesting he or she finds the subject. Since men find economics more interesting than women do, the longer they stay in school, the greater the disparity in their knowledge becomes."
5) You've already cited the study saying that female knowledge of politics is deficient compared to men: (http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013...). I'll only point out the economic policy is indeed political in nature.
Your turn.
1) If you want to find out who did what, you have to find out who did what. I will talk about the first item. NCEE is known for its bias in educational instruction. They are part of the movement of "inclusion" and "diversity" -- neither of which mean what a normal, sentient person would think they mean based on the definitions of the words. They are a far left liberal/socialist group, whose directions are to (en)force their ideologies.
2) If you want a research project done with "answer bias," then Harris Polls is the place to go. I've done work with them for a number of years, and realize their studies and conclusions are generally okay, but don't take them to the bank. Find a Harris Poll that has been peer reviewed and published in a top-of-the-line journal. Go ahead. Quick.
There is a reason you won't find them. You probably don't want to hear that. But you are not a professional in the industry, nor are you particularly literate in social research, so you have to hear the truth from someone.
3) Without knowing the answers the participants had to select from, it is impossible to take the quiz from the information provided. However, several of the "best answers" are wrong.
For instance: "When a person rents an apartment, who benefits from the transaction?" How do you answer that question? It probably depends on your experiences in renting apartments and landlords. It is possible that the mother/wife would have a different opinion than the father/husband would -- and both be giving a legitimate answer without being an economic moron.
"When deciding which of two items to purchase, one should always:" Again, how do you answer that question? How many of us have watched at the checkout counter as a mother counts change to make the purchase? For her, cost is the only consideration -- which can I get for cheap enough that I can get more things on my grocery list. She is not an economic moron for not taking the quality and benefits of the item into consideration -- she would be a moron if she DID.
"In the United States, who determines what goods and services should be produced?" Why is the government part of that answer? Really?
Or a real classic marxist question: "Since the resources used in the production of goods and services are limited, society must:"
If you really want me to consider your argument to be valid, you had dang well better use a resource that is legitimate.
4) It is obvious (to someone who actually works in social research) that their data points might have issues. They talk about the male/female differences in the "Major Findings" at the start, and "Summary" at the end, yet never show those differences in the details. That is a major trigger to anyone who had done legitimate social research. It does not mean they were wrong, but it does mean they probably did not do the level of analysis needed to make the conclusions they came to. A peer review would have shown that -- but Harris Polls does not submit to peer reviews.
5) The Harris Poll people don't really do statistical analysis. You seem to love the Chi Squared, so where is it? Where are the standard deviations? Where is the Confidence Level?
6) This was done by Harris Interactive. This site pays folks to take the survey, and the first howevermany people who log in get to take it. I know people who do this for a living. They have multiple accounts with multiple "personality profiles" so they can be a middle-aged woman and a old dude and a college student.
The conclusion BambiB is that you have been snookered by a cheap imitation of a real social research study. For people who are professionals in social research, what you are holding up as the pinnacle of knowledge is similar to the tabloids on we all see on the grocery line.
Find a legitimate study to work with or shut up.
In law they refer to the burden of "going forward", that is, presenting a case for your position. I have done that. It consists of several full-blown studies, complete with data. Your "case" so far consists of "I know some women" and "in my opinion". I leave it to others to decide which is more credible. But to use your OWN argument in opposition: YOU have used vague assertions and unsupportable conclusions and your, "direction [is] to (en)force [your] ideologies". YOU are not "peer reviewed" YOU are not, "published in a top-of-the-line journal". It's clear YOU are not, "particularly literate in social research". In YOUR OPINON "several of the "best answers" are wrong". YOU "don't really do statistical analysis." Where is YOUR "Chi Squared... standard deviations... Confidence Level"?
I refuse to be "snookered by [YOUR] cheap imitation of a real social research study."
Finally, applying your own standards to your arguments, where are YOUR peer-reviewed studies in top-of-the-line journals with statistical analysis and complete data sets? Where is any evidence that you are even qualified to have a credible opinion?
Your argument is all smoke-and-mirrors... minus the smoke and without the mirrors.
Your illiteracy and your self-absorbed attitudes are simply too great to work with. Even after analysis of your primary study shows you are supporting a socialist agenda and tabloid research study, you persist in attempting to push your argument.
Say what you want, you are no longer worth my time and effort. I bow out of your personal attack threads thinly veiled as meaningful dialog.
My "agenda" is truth. I ask "who is responsible for the impending economic death of America" and the best answer I can find is "female voters". Your response seems to be, "not the 13 females I know."
You've presented no facts, no research, and have no truth on your side. You've retreated to name-calling and essentially responding to scholarly research with the equivalent of a 5-year-old's argument, "Is not! Is not!"
Feel free to produce facts and research worthy of review. Until then, I welcome your silence.
I wish you'd been more worthy of my time.
Then you do not understand the term. Not a problem; your understanding is limited enough that this is expected.
It was not a "selected" group. It was what nature happened to put into my current sphere. I did not select them, they did not select me, we just all "happened to be here" -- a naturally random selection of people.
While I agree that the associations may be "natural", there is absolutely NOTHING random about them.
I will grant that initial contact with any given individual may be "nearly" random (at least within the context of your personal "universe") - but you cannot rationally form an opinion about someone's economic acumen by saying, "Hello, my name is..." To form a rational opinion requires greater contact, and to have that greater contact, they must meet whatever criteria are important to you to justify greater social contact. In short, you filter your associates through your preferences, thus the sample group (your friends) is more properly termed a "naturally SELECTED" group.
I don't believe "naturally random" even has a rigorous definition in statistics (though I may be wrong and would be happy to see one). A quick google search indicates that the most common use of the phase is in relationship to making one's hair appear "naturally random", that is, it seems, to control the appearance of randomness.
Not only is this not true, you know it -- it is part of what you have been hammering on me from the start. I never talked about "female voters in America" -- I spoke about the ones I knew.
You know that, and you have hammered on me about that over and over and over again.
Keep up with your own line.
Sorry you were unable to figure that out and recognize that your comments were irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
and I object to "Repel..". Late is late, not a reflection of one's morality, intelligence or character . Fransisco is late - indeed, absent - from a breakfast that he, John and Ragnar have had together every year for 12 years. Does that mean that the door should be shut in his face when he shows up?
Blanket judgements are [almost] always wrong.
I wonder why anyone who believed the institutionalized theft system as devised by women was okay would even be on this web site? If anything, Rand railed quite specifically against the sort of socialism women have constructed and which you (apparently) endorse... or at least do not condemn.
If you want to be a sucker twice, that's fine - as long as you're not doing it with someone else's resources. Perhaps you are just more forgiving than I. Personally, if someone is stealing from me, and then is disadvantaged because of the method of theft, I feel NO obligation to help them in any way. Some might even call it "karma".
As for the tests: It's the trend that is important. That trend (a sample of millions of college-bound students) has been uniformly downward for 4 decades... a solid indication that whatever enables a person to do well on the test (knowledge, intelligence... luck?) has been in uniform decline for 40 years. You're free to ascribe the decline to a drop in luck... but I would disagree. In addition, the research that indicates a drop in intelligence, is actually a separate study which did not reference the SAT. It is my own conclusion, with which people are free to disagree, that the drop in SAT scores is due to something other than "bad luck". One contributing factor is almost certainly that there are more stupid people going to college, thus more stupid people taking the test, and consequently, the scores have gone down. But I don't believe it accounts for all of the 40 year trend.
One thing that worries me, however, is:
"When the smoke clears, rebuild."
What if the rebuild instruction manuals are written in Chinese? Or Russian? Or even Mexican....
I say, give the criminal aliens 6 months to get out. Provide free bus service to the border. Help them fill out the paperwork to immigrate legally. At the end of six months, put a bounty on their heads. Any caught will be tattooed with "criminal alien" across their foreheads and do two years hard labor before being tossed (literally) over the border.
I'd station Marine sniper teams on the border, and televise their kills non-stop, 24/7/365 to Mexico saying, "this is what awaits criminal invaders". Within 7 months, there would be no criminal alien problem.
But alas, women will vote to be "kindler, gentler" and bring these criminals into the fold where their standard of living will go up - and ours will go down.
I pay the bills online...and the 'bride' never asks where we stand.
She got the movie(s), though, and showed an interest in the book. I am the Randian in this household....
I 'pushed' the young out of the nest, and she keeps their rooms ready for occupancy.
I keep the money in focus, but if I suggest that we need an omelet pan she will argue until she turns 'blue' that we have gone along just fine without one. Then she will drive to the store and buy a year's worth of peanut butter just because it is 'two for one'!
Go figure....
traveling display of titanic articles including canned goods. the pickles looked perfect.
Na...I like peanut butter, but not three times a day.
I have things in my pantry I probably will never use -- but I know someone who will.
You just gave me an idea: I'm going to hide my gold in the peanut butter filling my pantry.
With any luck, a thief will hate the stuff.
spaghetti sauce has a onger shelf life than peanut butter. which is sad. also, cans of tuna and crab. tuna over peanut butter
P.S. anyone that wants to try the recipe, just message me!
But you caught the idea. People will be going hungry in the not-to-distant future. A large percentage of our population may (will) starve to death and/or be killed by looting mobs of others who are hungry.
Who makes the omelets?
We had some nicely sliced ham that needed to be used, and we are always 'drowning' in various cheeses (two for one strikes again), so I made a tasty omelet with some hot sauce thrown in. Oh yeah, I am the egg cook here ever since I learned to love them from Atkins!
Just wish I had that darn pan....
When will my room be ready?
And can I bring my cast iron pans and wok?
Actually...since the 'bride' doesn't like to use them...and I will not cook Cajun without them...I think that I will put you in my cookware section of the Will.
I don't much care for cell phones. I have one. Prepaid. $100 a years. I typically use substantially less than half the air time (and it rolls over.) Besides that, I have VOIP land line. That costs me another $100 a year. So how many of you have paid over $200 a MONTH for phone service you don't need? (hint hint ;-)
The general thinking now, or at least was prior to the election was the Tea Party would become a controlling force within the Republican Party. The intent and purpose was to keep the Tea Party a Grassroots system and not turn it into a disconnected political party.
I stopped participating in party events and fund drives when the Republican controlled congress ,and President, passed and signed into law the Campaign Finance Reform bill. And then when the seemingly Republican leaning Supreme Court stated that it was constitutional, I lost all faith in the GOP. I guess I'm looking for a new home where political parties are concerned.
Long before this, I was introduced to the Nolan Chart. I was more "libertarian" than the dude trying to talk me into joining the party.
So during a few years of wandering about, I realized that to be true to myself, I had to embrace the political party which most closely matched my personal philosophical mindset.
Once I started telling people I was a libertarian (notice I never capitalized it), I started realizing how fun it was to laugh at the stupidity of both major parties.
I started using phrases like:
-- "It's not my fault, I'm a libertarian."
-- "When you come to your senses, come back and we'll chat."
-- "The biggest difference in the two major parties is their name."
I wish you luck on your journey.
I am a registered Republican, and have been for quite some time. When I owned my company, I donated freely to their cause.
But I have never received anything like a "renewal" request form, unless you are really talking about fund raising. My party affiliation has never been in question, and I am sure that I would have to personally make this change in my state, since primaries are only open to registered party voters.
Just curious....
Maybe carolyn62 will come back and straighten this out?
What are you doing up so late? I have nowhere to go tomorrow, and am a night owl by nature. I'll be watching movies until dawn...African Queen is in the player!
O.A.
\
Yes, we've gone beyond the point of no return IMO but reading Atlas Shrugged left me with a sense of peace knowing this. Full of angst before reading but now I know exactly where we're headed. Anyone else at peace?
I saw the question why does God get the benefit for good but not the evil in the world. An excellent question. Check your premises, evil by who's definition. I have had the good fortune of slightly expieriencing the after life. There is a God and everything we think of as evil,tragic is nothing but a cog in in his workings. "The big picture" I've heard it called and I wonder if whoever coined that term knew just how right they actually were. As a member of mankind I feel remorse for innocent loss of life, its only natural. After my expierience that remorse is tempered by the fact that "The Big Picture" is at work. So in answer, Yes, god gets the blame for the bad things too. there could be a devil at work, don't know myself, have'nt met him,,,,,yet anyways.
Two things I know, seriously folks, On the day you die you will understand fully EVERYTHING that has happened in history and why. Your concious will never have a question ever again. You will smile at all of it and the sense of peace you feel is not within a mortals grasp of recognition. I do not think the human mind in the condition we know it could handle it. JMO
As for the gold and silver hoarding. I have a question I deem valid. When society crumbles as I believe it eventually will will gold and silver still be of some value? personally I think not but I'm of an open mind on the subject.
I think food, water,heat and mostly defense are the only things worth having. Shiny metal will be a forgotten thing of the past within a month, maybe less.
Great exchange indeed.
I prepare for the worst and work for the best. Though I am cognizant of the effectiveness of working in the middle, I am comfortable doing what needs to be done at the fringes. As each of us has every exposure, in my view, it is best to have some experience everywhere. I feel I can survive in the wild and/or society, but I would (and do) rather live in society!
OH45458 said it well with the engine that runs on air statement. AFAIK, that does not yet exist in a form that I can get my metaphysical arms around. In any case, I feel that $3 gas is the worst crisis this country has ever faced, and we are feeling it. $40 gas is completely unworkable and only serves to encourage the enviro-whackos.
So, I am an engaged member of the Tea Party, and the Republican Party. I am also a member of the NRA, even tho' they generally just want money! I know many other Tea Partiers that do the same. I know many deists and atheists in the Tea Party, and I know many others that would object to their inclusion. The point is that if you have faith in your righteousness (not necessarily in the religious sense), you will divert from the battles that will end your involvement! That is what living in a free country is all about! I hate the current state of Hollywood, but I would die for my neighbor's right to go to a theater of any kind! I am retired military, BTW!
I think that anyone who agrees that production is the best activity to engage in is welcome at any Tea Party. As long as you keep to that goal, you will do well.
Being a member of the NRA may mean something if you are capable of using skills to think of subversive says to bring down this regime. Think HARD and come up with some ideas that will bring this regime to its knees.
My Ideas so far is (1) become a moucher on the goverment - bleed them till they can't operate any longer and pay off their henchmen. (2) Keep money in the form of gold/silver so that they can get to it and seize it. (3) take every green back out of your bank AS SOON AS IT IS DEPOSITED and leave just enough to pay your mortgage, utilities and such. ALL other purchases (FOOD - etc.) You pay with cash.
One of these fine days the banks will crash and they will seize everything in your account and THEN what will you live on.
GET RID of IRA's and such because THAT is what the Banks and the Government will seize when they are ready.
Put every source of money in gold/silver (food storage, survival tools) because they WILL NOT WARN YOU IN ADVANCE when they seize everyone's assets.
Just one day you will wake up and everything you "Thought you had in the banks and money accounts, retirement plans, will have disappeared - and you will still own money on your house and you will need food, and gasoline, water, electricity - and how are you going to pay for it.
Your won't unless you have a hidden stash.
Don't be stupid and hide it in a save in your house. They can seize that in seconds.
Don't keep it in your sock drawer
Don't keep it in an old coffee can
Be creative. Hide it where you can get to it but where nobody will look.
In your spare tire, Under your attic insulation, In a plastic tube (sealed) ((NOT a METAL PIPE OR CAN) somewhere OFF your property or where the signs of digging can be observed. (If you have a rock yard - that is a good place, just be sure you rake it over and have it look normal
BE CREATIVE. Think like those in Galts Gulch.
Write me if you are open to ideas or have ideas to pass on. The more WE do that the better it will be for all of us Galtists.
But that was then and this is now. Forget about trying to save the country; it's too late for that. There are more takers than makers now and that's just the way it is. Concentrate on saving YOURSELF.
Don't get me wrong, if there were a hidden valley with a shield powered by an engine that runs on thin air to render it invisible, where I could disappear too, at this point, after the last election, I might just go there.
However, I believe that this country wasn't always as it is today, and that a great deal of effort and money has been spent over generations by the left in this country to bring it to its current state. Its likely to take as long, or longer, to straighten it back out, if that's possible.
I guess it depends on what faith you put in the intelligence of mankind, and whether or not you believe it is possible to re-educate those who have been brain washed, or those who have simply been too lazy to date to realize that you can't redistribute wealth by the force of arms, and expect those who create it to keep on creating it.
Too many people in this country believe that their government 'creates' wealth simply by re-distributing it. We who believe otherwise need to be vocal and convincing in correcting this error in understanding.
The Atlas Shrugged movies are a step int he right direction. However, as I stated, it took generations to get where we are today, and likely will take longer to get us back to rights. Since I don't think there is anyplace to go on this planet to hide from the looters, I believe our only choice is to re-educate them: convince them or their error in thinking.
Regards,
O.A.
So is your answer to do as they did in the AS book, to drop out, hide away, and let the ones who are in error destroy all around them until they die off from starvation and\or brutality? Aren't you thus having "faith" that their struggle and demise will nevertheless leave a habitable planet on which to begin over again?
I believe this was the major error\paradox of the Atlas Shrugged book. Of course AR wrote it before the advent of MAD, and the rise of militant Islam.
Inasmuch as I am a deist, then yes, in AS jargon, I am a mystic. However, I do not believe that God directly intervenes in our daily lives. I "do" believe in my power over my own life, and do have confidence in my ability to reach other people, though must admit I am not always successful.
I believe God is like the Universe, and has existed concurrently with it, and is in fact dependent upon it. Binging infinite, like the Universe, I believe God has revealed Himself, either deliberately or accidentally, to mankind in infinite ways over time. (Please excuse the masculine reference. It is used out of habit due to my Catholic upbringing, and for lack of a better pronoun to to describe a being that has no gender, or otherwise describable form. I believe calling God "It" just isn't right either.) For the purpose of answering your question, and for the sake of brevity, I will concentrate on one aspect of God that best serves this task.
It says in the book of Genesis in the Old Testament of the Bible that man was created "in God's image." Now I believe that this is accurate, but rather than being an actual description of God, as is common in Judeo\Christian tradition, I believe it is a metaphor. To explain this, I must now turn to a brief description of the human body.
The human body is an incredible machine to be sure, and it would take a doctor of medicine to do the subject justice, but I do not need to go into that level of detail to explain my understanding of the subject at hand.
Suffice to say that the human body is a machine with an engine, the body, and a computer that runs it, the brain. Now modern medicine has taught us that the body itself can be kept alive absent the brain. However, I will submit that in such a state, the body has lost its purpose. It needs the brain to have purpose for existence, otherwise it is just a collection of tissue, meat on a platter so to speak.
Thus is my understanding of God. God gives the Universe purpose.
I hope this explains things to some degree, though I must admit that this subject deserves its own thread, and likely a different web site altogether.
If the latter, I must admit that unlike Moses, I have never had a personal discussion with God, and I do not believe anyone else has recently, and so cannot speak to his purpose in all matters. In that respect I only have the bits and pieces left to us indirectly through the ages from our imperfect human ancestors. If the 60s taught me anything, it is that you shouldn't throw out the baby with the bathwater: not everything old is wrong. Therefore I am not yet ready to discount the the information passed down to us through the ages, but I am perfectly willing to state that the information may be inaccurate to some degree. Personally, I believe that the universe around us is evidence of some higher intelligence, but in the end I cannot tell you His purpose with any degree of precision.
If the former, then I guess we are getting into the realm of Galt's radio speech...
Assuming a human is raised and nourished to adulthood, he or she is programmed by nature with certain instinctive behaviors, and many more environmental\cultural behaviors, both of which influence his or her pursuits.
Instinctively, humans as creatures of this Earth will pursue their basic needs first and foremost, those being nourishment, shelter and reproduction, very likely in that order. How they obtain those needs are programed to a large degree by their environment and culture. How efficient they are at obtaining these needs determines whether or not they have time to pursue anything else. What they pursue is of course entirely subjective, and thus very possibly unique to each individual. However, I believe a humans pursuit of basic needs, which are common to all, is what you were asking about, so I will pursue that line of thought from here.
Humans, like most other creatures on this Earth, are creatures of habit. Whatever has worked for them in the past will likely be continued ad infinitum until such time as it doesn't work. Thus their pursuits of their primary needs, if successful, typically become habits. And habits, as most of us know, are hard things to break.
I believe that is what most here at the Gulch are trying to do, some by exploring ways to reeducate the populous, others by abstaining from supporting the culture that has trained a populous of destructive parasites.
Don't get me wrong. Most of us "are" parasites. Any person employed by a company is a parasite. The only question is whether or not he or she is a beneficial parasite, like the bacteria that lives in our digestive system, and profits its host, or a destructive one, like a virus or plague bacteria that destroys its host.
Have I ventured beyond the scope of your question?
Galt whole point was that human instincts are a Red Herring. Each of us must think to survive.
dogs smell. cats climb. bears shread...
What does man do?
But even pursuing this line of thought if deviating from my main point, that being that people are programed from birth to obtain their needs via some method. The problem with our society today is that too many of our young have been programmed to be dependents. Self reliance, and self assurance are all too often not being taught any longer. We need to find a way to train people in this skills, a task that will now be especially hard given that too many people are destructive parasites out of habit now.
Contrary to Ayn Rand's idealized vision, most humans do, in fact, still operate on that unthinking animal level. Actually, even animals have a surprising capacity for shrewdness and deception, a survival tool for every creature, from tiniest insect or microorganism to the largest mammal.
We have not yet reached the evolutionary step of abandoning the limbic system and working entirely only out of our frontal lobes. The welfare freeloaders are not intentionally malevolent; they are behaving as the culture taught them. And if they can plant guilt and pity in the hearts of the self-sufficient towards the "less fortunate", and legislate it by government force, are they not the top of the food chain; are they not an exemplar of efficacy for survival?
By manipulating the human tendency (instinct, drive, built-in directive) to care for one's own and one's kin's survival, they have engineered, by pure opportunism, a society where the more able are enslaved to the less able--another case of consent of the victim. Such systems and practices become entrenched and grow like a cancer. And our system has escalated to the breaking point.
How to turn this around ethically, morally, and non-violently when dole recipients will shriek against being deprived of their accustomed share? Ayn Rand's restatement of the Golden Rule would be a good place to start: neither sacrificing oneself for others nor sacrificing others for oneself. We must assert this moral principle unremittingly against the entitlement mentality--those who have taken for granted, without any thought of the ethical implications, that they will be given, and it never occurs to them to ask from whom it is taken.
Those who might have the slightest compunction or twinge of conscience about this economic cannibalism rationalize the taking/giving by santimoniously claiming that the rich got rich on the poor people's back and ought to "give back". "Social justice" is trumpeted until enough people actually believe that expropriation of those who have more is moral and should be a legal requirement. And who feeds this poisonous idea to the masses? Those who want power over them. With the hunter-gatherer's disregard for private property and individual achievement, they consider everyone fair game for rape and pillage. Only these days it's called a more polite "redistribution".
Without property rights there are no other rights, and no freedoms. That's how some people become more equal than others. Everyone wants to get the most for the least effort. Only, if others do it it's greed. If you do it, it's your right as a matter of social justice. We have our work cut out for us, people, to re-educate this culture. There is no physical Galt's Gulch. This forum is as good as it gets.
I'd be happy to see this discussion taken to another topic. How does that work?
Animals DO have instinct, humans do not. See Galt's speech, The New Intellectual, 121:
An instinct of self-preservation is precisely what man does not possess. An “instinct” is an unerring and automatic form of knowledge. A desire is not an instinct. A desire to live does not give you the knowledge required for living. And even man’s desire to live is not automatic . . . Your fear of death is not a love for life and will not give you the knowledge needed to keep it. Man must obtain his knowledge and choose his actions by a process of thinking, which nature will not force him to perform. Man has the power to act as his own destroyer—and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.
Now as for human cooperation, division of labor, social organization, mutually beneficial interchange, I would not call employees "parasites", more like symbiotic participants. Nor would I call employers or entrepreneurs predators or exploiters; they, too, are partners in a symbiosis.
The best protection against parasitism is the premise of individualism, of relationships by individual consent. That is a stage of development far above the animal world where nature's algorithm is still at work to eat or be eaten.
Can humans who have reached a state of enlightened self-interest define a purpose beyond mere survival? What are your ideas about that?
As to your question, my initial opinion is that I think not. Evolving to a purpose beyond mere survival would entail that this need be guaranteed, something that I believe is impossible with the state of our society and technology at this time. Perhaps in the future, should we develop a machine that produces food on demand, like in Star Trek, then maybe, but even then we would be a slave to the technology. I believe that survival will always be a primary need, usually overwhelming all other considerations.
So, we've been working to re-educate the looters / convince them of their error in thinking for, what, going on sixty years now?
Have we made any progress in that regard?
At what point do we realize that we've lost that battle, and move on?
I for one believe that we passed that point some sixteen years ago.
Send me a humidless cloud of rain please. lol
Rocky's not a girl and he wants to post a recipe....
Piss me off I'm headin' for the fudge...dead give away.
Maybe if I attached it to something I don't have a use for... like that broken down refrigerator...
Laura soap scrubbed my favorite pan for blackening fish, and it has never been the same. ;-(
My response. 1) Israel does what it has to do to survive. I'd give them the benefit of the doubt. Especially since all hell is breaking loose around them, for instance, Syria, Egypt. 2) If the Tea Party has pulled the GOP is so right-of-center, how come the last two GOP presidential nominees were McCain, who's hardly a favorite of conservatives, and Romney, who was as moderate as you can get? 3) There are exceptions, but the nature of conservatism is NOT to tell people what to do. Just look at Bloomberg, Michelle Obama are their campaigns to tell us what to eat and drink, Ever see a conservative try that? 4) Milktoast Romney start a war? Seriously? And 4) "You're full of sh*t."
One to balance the budget and two to pay off the debt.
A requirement would be however to stop paying people to do nothing.
Or over paying people to do little (top level workers)
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