Politics Thread: Silicon Valley Edition

[Malcador]

I'd hate for you guys to think I'm telling you the UN is irrelevant. I'd hate that because I'd hope you'd figured that out a long time ago. It's a polite fiction, a lie we all tell ourselves. Wars still happen. Genocide still happens. Human Rights abuses happen and not only does the UN look the other way they put abuses in charge of committees to investigate abuses. Of course it really was conceived as a means to prevent another World War. But I think Robert Oppenheimer and company have done a much better job of that than the UN has. 

 

Just my $.02

 

Wouldn't say it's the UN that looks the other way, absolving the 5 members with the cheat code that like to play games with people's lives by framing it that way.

[injurai]

I'm finding it irritating that Mecca and Medina are closed to non-Muslims, and Jerusalem is continually used as a wedge to further disenfranchised the Jewish peoples by shrinking the world that they can inhabit.

 

Coming off the coat tails of the Holocaust, and returned to a homeland which they were driven at knife's edge away from. It's no wonder that they have had to play turtle with knife. The world responsible for driving a people's from it's homeland, and the world responsible for the mass slaughter continue to take the least responsibility for their roles. Germany first of all should be ashamed to even show up for such a vote, the least they could do was abstain. Once again America bears the responsibility of eating Europe's sin, and the Middle East will never find end to hunting the Jew.

[Gfted1]

Werent Jews driven out of Jerusalem a few millennium ago? Jewish diaspora.

 

Why do they get to claim ownership for eternity?

[injurai]

You'll notice they don't have exclusive ownership. Israel is a highly diverse country. Unlike the surrounding region which is 98% Islamic with the rest mostly being Zoroastrian or other non-Abrahamic faiths.

 

Zionism was wrong, but it's done. Does the rest of the middle east claim ownership to their land for eternity? You can play that game endlessly, and as of now that region seems the least keen on globalization out of the whole globalized world. Yet they benefit amongst the most by it, and even further have tried to nationalize their land lottery.

[Gfted1]

 

 

The world responsible for driving a people's from it's homeland...

 

Oh, you mean "the world" as everything that ever happened in history, not anything to do with the last few thousand years. Got it.

[injurai]

That's not actually how I mean that. I mean the world limited to, the world of. That world.

[Guard Dog]

Drop a stone in a pond and the ripples spread: http://dailycaller.com/2017/12/22/australian-government-worried-us-will-take-jobs-after-massive-tax-cut/

[Epaminondas]

I don't mind people saying that we shouldn't lower taxes because we need the revenue. I don't even mind people saying we shouldn't lower taxes because the government can spend it better than the citizens. One is pretty standard liberal fare while the other is bat**** crazy, but at least both are principled arguments. What I do mind are lies about the tax bill. ...And the lies are counter-productive in that, when the goods start coming home to the tax-payers, they will realize that the detractors were lying. If I recall it right, both the Regan and Kennedy tax cuts were unpopular when passed and greatly popular over time. This tax bill has an advantage over Regan's in that everything can go into place straight away. It would have been nice if the Republicans hadn't been so idiotic as to take until the end of the year to get it through because it could have been retroactive for 2017. This might still hurt the Republicans in 2018 because the full effects won't really come into focus until the 2019 tax season, but it will be popular with people. I really could have used not having to run numbers to see whether I should itemize or take the standard deduction for this years taxes, but oh well. Middle class mooks just need to muddle through.

[Zoraptor]

You'll notice they don't have exclusive ownership. Israel is a highly diverse country. Unlike the surrounding region which is 98% Islamic with the rest mostly being Zoroastrian or other non-Abrahamic faiths.

 

lolwut, try ~91%. In terms of Israel's neighbours, literally none of them are 98% muslim, and their largest minorities are christians. Indeed, the palestinian population of the West Bank was 20%+ christian, though most have left now- due to Israeli pressure specifically. Every single one of Israel's neighbours except Jordan has a 10% or more christian minority. Lebanon even has 40%.

 

Isn't most of the MidEast made of artificial countries since the boundaries were drawn up to divide up the remains of the Ottoman empire at the end of WWI? At least going by your definition of an artificial country.

 

Most are not truly artificial countries- only Jordan, Lebanon and Kuwait are. And oddly enough 2/3 of those are theoretically fairly sensible religious ethnic mixes. Turkey, Yemen, Oman, Iran and Egypt are all old countries; Iraq and Syria are old provinces. The old colonial powers drew arbitrary lines on maps where there had never been true borders before, but, say, the general principle of Iraq/ Mesopotamia/ al-Iraqiyya and its general shape including areas with a lot of Kurds and the sunni/ shia split is a very old one. 1948 proposed Israel was 100% artificial though, whether it's still artificial now is a matter of opinion.

[Guard Dog]

 

By rooted in reality I was more referring to acknowledging that things that are facts, as facts. Something diplomats don't really do.

see, this is what I mean

Symbolism wields tremendous power

 

Actually, it does not.

 

Edit: Sun Tzu would agree with you by the way. He wrote "War is a moral contest won in the temples before ever being fought on a battlefield".

 

In all due deference to both the great general and yourself, I disagree. Symbolic gestures that change nothing are meaningless. Outcomes and results are the only things that matter.

Edited December 22, 2017 by Guard Dog

[Epaminondas]

Symbolism is important for people who buy into the symbols. The people voting at the UN might not buy into the symbols since they're behind the curtain, but they're playing a part for an audience. The problem with the UN is that the symbolic gestures that it makes are manifestly impotent. If people cease to believe the UN wields moral authority, then it becomes completely irrelevant. I don't have much use for it as an institution, but it *has* served to provide legitimacy to many American endeavors globally and we should at least recognize that we're part of the problem when it comes to the UN.

 

I'm more interested in outcomes rather than history, but there's no way to know what will happen if we see an actual dismantling of the UN. Anyone who says he can say for certain how that all shakes down is more than welcome to propose his prognostication here. However, my prognostication is that UN pretty much continues in status quo fashion until it whimpers itself to death in a corner some considerable time from now. The alternative, that it completely crashes, makes my prognostication irrelevant because I'll be more concerned about keeping my family alive than making global predictions. That's not because the UN fell apart so quickly, but nothing has inertia like a big bureaucracy. If the UN came to a crashing halt immediately, some other horrible event will have caused it, and *that* is scary.

[Darkpriest]

UN is glorified League of Nations. It's long gone past the purpose and its real efficiency and credibility is long gone, and all due to its own decisions.

Edited December 23, 2017 by Darkpriest

[Volourn]

The UN has always been anti Isreal as evidenced by the fact way too disportional resolutions are against it. Let's be honest, if not for the US THE UN would have already  called for Isreal's total destruction.   But nazi organzations do that.

[Blarghagh]

Total destruction? How'd that go down?

[Chilloutman]

Total destruction? How'd that go down?

 

Kinda like in Germany 1940

[Malcador]

Reminds me to donate to UNICEF this year.

Edited December 23, 2017 by Malcador

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

 

 

Total destruction? How'd that go down?

Kinda like in Germany 1940

he said “destruction of Israel”, not “genocide of all jews”

So I assume blue helmets will soon be seen patrolling Jerusalem, or how am I to imagine this?

If Israel is unable to take over Palestinan land, all Jews will be rounded up and killed by the NazBol Gang.

[Darkpriest]

So first fund cuts are official - 2018 will see over 200mil less USD to UN from US of A

[Malcador]

UN is glorified League of Nations. It's long gone past the purpose and its real efficiency and credibility is long gone, and all due to its own decisions.

Which decisions ? And by UN staff or things like the Five?

[smjjames]

 

UN is glorified League of Nations. It's long gone past the purpose and its real efficiency and credibility is long gone, and all due to its own decisions.

Which decisions ? And by UN staff or things like the Five?

 

 

A whole bunch of things really, and it sort of depends on who you ask. Having countries not known for excellent human rights standards on the Human Rights Comittee is one.

 

It still functions as a place to air grievances without resorting to violence and as a nerve center for diplomacy.

 

The UN has definetly had it's impact on history and it's hard to tell at a glance whether we'd be better off without the UN or with it.

[ShadySands]

Why Some Homeowners Are Scrambling To Prepay Their 2018 Property Taxes

 

Part of the Republican tax overhaul that President Trump signed into law last week has homeowners around the country doing something unusual: rushing to pay their 2018 property taxes well before the due date.

 

That's because the new law includes a $10,000 cap on the amount of state and local taxes people can deduct on their federal returns. Before, if someone paid $24,000 in property taxes — as some people in higher tax states like New York and California do — and then paid $20,000 in state and local income taxes they were allowed to deduct $44,000 on their federal tax return. Now that number is capped at $10,000. The change could cost some people thousands of dollars.

 

"I'm sending my checks in today," says Vanessa Merton of Hastings-On-Hudson, N.Y. She estimates the law change will cost her between $6,000 and $9,000. She hopes to delay that hit by pre-paying next year's taxes before December 31 so she can deduct them on her 2017 taxes.

[Epaminondas]

Yeah, I have at least one friend who's going to be hit hard by the SALT changes. I have another friend who insists there's a new cap on capital gains, which I don't believe to be true. Capital gains are pretty much the same except that, since the marginal rate determines the Capital Gains rate, that might end up changing it. Maybe an actual accountant can speak to that. There will be some people who will pay more in taxes. I'm irritated at the carried interest loophole. I understand the idea is to encourage investment, which is the idea behind capital gains, but I think it's abused. Mostly, I prefer the government not use taxation as a means to encourage one sector or another. If a business model, service, or product provides something good, it will manage to thrive. There are cases where the government sped along an industry greatly, but, contrary to popular views, I don't think those industries would have failed, merely taken longer to get off the ground. Meanwhile, the taxes in the aggregate have gotten so confusing and so ridden with special interest loopholes that any one industry taking longer to get off the ground doesn't make up for the stupidity that is our bureaucracy. The only except, and this is because it's such a multiplier, would be if the child credit actually encouraged more people to have children. I actually doubt it does, but if we could improve our birthrate in this country, we could do something that's pie in the sky right now, which is grow our way out of deficits. Seriously, the West is in the process of killing itself off by the slow suicide of low, no, or negative birthrates.

[smjjames]

The only problem with increasing the birthrate as a solution is that you won't see them entering the workforce a year or two from now and won't help any kind of short term solution. So, if you rely on an increased birth rate as a solution to growth, you won't see growth until 16-17 (technically 15, but this is accounting for up to a year attempting to concieve and then gestation time)  years later at minimum, probably longer.

 

Given that, you have to think of solutions that help growth now and in the short to medium term because trying to boost birth rate does nothing for that and if you don't deal with the problems hindering growth now, the hypotnetical baby boom is just going to hit those same problems.

 

Also, the birth rate is actually declining everywhere, yes, even Africa, though they have a longer way to go. It's a result of developing countries catching up to developed countries. Plus some of that negative is coming from the demographic shift of baby boomers dying off.

 

Keep in mind that population growth isn't going to happen forever, it would require infinite resources. Population is going to increase until it reaches some sort of equilibrium.

[redneckdevil]

That's a good thing that population growth is actually declining though right?

[smjjames]

Good for the planet in general, yeah, but everybody is still facing the demographic shift (more of a slow earthquake really) that is coming from the baby boomers (from the last period of massive population growth) retiring out of the workforce. The US actually has a positive birthrate from immigration, but that doesn't change the demographic shift.