Bonam
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Posts posted by Bonam
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The solution to this problem, as to most social problems, is technology. In 10 years, automatic realtime translation will be seamless and extremely accurate. Once technology allows an anglophone who has never learned a word of French to interact as effectively with a francophone as another francophone, there will be no need for bilingualism requirements. Then it will just be a matter of governments changing policies to accept the new reality. They will be slow and resistant to do this, but sooner or later reality triumphs over politics.
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57 minutes ago, Zeitgeist said:
All coal power generation was ended in Ontario, 40% of Canada’s economy. Liberals achieved this.
Yes, Ontario is one of the few jurisdictions in the world that embraces a large % of nuclear energy in its energy mix, making eliminating dirty fossil fuels quite easy. France is another great example. Unfortunately, very few other places on Earth use nuclear to that degree. Nuclear had finally been gaining ground in the 2000s, but worldwide overreaction to the Fukushima incident has caused many areas to cease construction of new nuclear plants or shut down existing plants, reverting to more fossil fuel use. A single incident, which killed not a single person, has caused idiotic world leaders to condemn tens of millions to early deaths through additional fossil fuel burning (3 million people die prematurely each year as a result of air pollution caused by fossil fuel - mainly coal - power plants).
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On 11/27/2018 at 11:43 AM, bcsapper said:
I guess you'd have to define right wing then. I probably have a different definition. I think it just means anyone you don't like.
The world has been paying lip service to AGW since the eighties, without ever taking a concrete step to address it. Allowing everyone to set their own goals and then fail to meet them in order to placate those (left wingers?) who want a worldwide level playing field before anything actually effective is considered. Your second paragraph there is the only one that makes any sense to me and it does so with a "should". Nothing of consequence was ever achieved with a "should". The left is perhaps worse than the right because of their hypocrisy, but in the end it's not going to get done regardless of who is in charge, so it doesn't matter.
If the left cared about AGW, they wouldn't be so dead set against hydro and nuclear, the two technologies we've had for decades that could have realistically replaced vast amounts of coal burning power stations. Yes, hydro alters rivers/lakes, may drown some historical lands, and affect fish populations, and yes nuclear has the issue of dealing with radioactive waste, but these issues are tiny and manageable in comparison to the predicted effects of AGW, so anyone who believes in the dire consequences of AGW and is rational would have no intellectually honest option but to support these technologies. But they don't. The left has spent decades railing against any possible solutions to reduce CO2 emissions other than forcing people to change their behaviors. For the left, just as for the right, it's all a matter of ideology, and the debate over AGW and what to do about it is just one aspect of that clash of ideologies.
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3 minutes ago, bush_cheney2004 said:
Elimination of payroll taxes has already been proposed several times (e.g. Sen. Rand Paul) in favour of a value added tax (VAT) and other tinkering, but such ideas are dead on arrival because of the practical and political problem with transition funding and entitlements restructuring. Social security and Medicare are the so called "third rail" in American politics....touch it and your political career will die.
Good thing I don't have a political career, so I can just say things that make sense rather than worrying about it.
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2 hours ago, TTM said:
Corporate tax revenue as a percent of overall tax income has decreased fairly constantly overpost WW2 even though profits have not. Some of that, but not all is offset by the ~50% of payroll taxes paid by businesses. The rest of this tax burden has shifted from corporations to individuals, and disproportionally to the poor and middle classes since the payroll tax is capped at a little over 100k. Corporate tax revenue again dropped significantly with the tax cuts this year.
All money ultimately ends up in the hands of individuals. Corporations may build up temporary cash piles during slow economic times, but not permanently. Eventually, money goes to employees (as salaries/bonuses), owners/investors (as dividends/capital gains), as well as suppliers and vendors and other companies. Taxing companies is inefficient because their finances are complex and ascertaining how much tax a company owes is difficult and can easily be skewed by different accounting methods and legal practices, which large companies employ to great effect. It is also inefficient because it causes companies to plan their business practices around tax efficiency, rather than optimizing growth and competitiveness. In contrast, individual taxes are much simpler compared to corporate taxes. Additionally, companies can easily move their headquarters, operations, or profits around the world to try to evade tax rates, while individuals would have to physically move, a prospect that is often less attractive.
I would suggest that corporate taxes ought to be eliminated completely, but the revenue should instead be gathered by taxing the beneficiaries of corporate profits... investors. Right now, most types of investment income are taxed at rates much lower than wage income. I would recommend that direct corporate taxes be completely eliminated, but that all dividend and capital gain income be taxed at the same rates as wages.
That, together with my above post about eliminating payroll taxes, would constitute actual tax reform, not just tinkering with the brackets a bit while eliminating some deductions and expanding others.
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I think payroll taxes need to be reworked. They are counter-productive to the fundamental idea of a "progressive" tax system and increase complexity by having multiple parallel and separate tax rates and brackets. You have the normal income tax brackets, then you have social security which is an extra 6.2% on both employee and employer but actually goes down to 0% after $132,900 in income, and then you have the medicare tax which is 1.45% for both employee and employer, but an additional 0.9% medicare tax is employed on incomes above $200,000. Then you have the standard deduction, which applies to the tax brackets for income tax but not for social security and medicare tax. The net result is a complex mess, before you even consider itemized deductions, tax credits, investment and business taxes and their varying tax rates, etc.
I think payroll taxes should be eliminated completely and income taxes raised correspondingly (in a net revenue neutral way) so that it's all part of one set of more easily understandable tax brackets. The level of progressiveness of tax rates could then be more easily understood by laymen, rather than the current situation where tax rates actually shift multiple times from progressive to regressive to progressive again as you scan through the income spectrum.
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9 hours ago, Argus said:
Yeah, I wrote to my Conservative MP about immigration telling him they were going to bleed votes if they didn't come up with a proper response and all I got back was bland mush with nothing specific. But I'm liking more about this than the immigration part. I like his commitment to free trade between provinces, and getting rid of corporate welfare. I also like removing the CRTC from the telcom regulating business to encourage more competition. I also like his tax proposals, though I have doubts that is workable. Ie, that it will produce the same amount of money and not a whopping big deficit. On the other hand, he's promised to eliminate the deficit within 2 years of taking office.
Yes, some decent ideas in there on multiple fronts. We'll see how it does in the next election. Canada's politics has been fairly dynamic with parties coming and going fairly frequently. Can't say I'm a fan of the name, though.
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7 minutes ago, Argus said:
So here is Bernier's new party and its platform. I have to say I'm liking a lot of what is says.
Looks pretty good to me as well. Better than the current mainstream parties, anyway.
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3 hours ago, bush_cheney2004 said:
Indeed....Orion is arguably the biggest fave for winter and spring for many observers because it has so many objects.
I'm surprised there is no movement yet to ban all the sexist names...like "Witch Head" nebula, or "Witch's Broom" in the Veil Nebula.
Shh! You'll catch their attention.
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On 11/4/2018 at 10:39 PM, JamesHackerMP said:
Merde....oh well, I guess I'll have to do that eventually...in the mean time I'll be careful what I drive over lol.
In the mean time, I haven't used it much as I would like to have, so it probably doesn't need collimation yet, I would think.
What exactly do you all like to look at? preferred objects?
Jupiter and Saturn.
The Moon.
Andromeda.
Globular Cluster, like M5
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I was quite into it years ago and had a 6" Celestron reflector but I've let the hobby lapse. Definitely pretty fun to go out there and look at things, but don't expect to see or take images like you see NASA posting. Some of the coolest objects to look at in my opinion were globular clusters.
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Personally I think political parties should be banned, completely. Every representative should have a singular job, to represent their constituents, not to be a part of a party. Issues should be debated on their merits, and representatives should vote on them based on their own opinions and the interests of their constituents. That's how it's supposed to work. Not these monolithic organizations we call parties, which prioritize party power over the country and over constituents, and where the ability of politicians to gain and keep power depends on the party bosses rather than on the people they represent. Parties are evil, they are the antithesis of democracy, they are leeches sucking the lifeblood out of democratic nations.
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42 minutes ago, turningrite said:
I'm not sure there's space here to list and elaborate on all the relevant issues, however, below I've listed five, for starters.
Miscommunication. By "such as?" I didn't mean "such as which issues?" but rather "such as which parties will address this?" Argus understood. The answer, of course, is none.
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5 hours ago, turningrite said:
parties that are willing to rein in the immigration nonsense that's hurting so many Canadians.
Such as?
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I think it would be good for US politics. It would enliven debate, enable the possibility of meaningful legislation passing on certain issues when 2/3 parties agree on it even if the 3rd doesn't, and dis-entrench partisanship a little bit I would think. The politics of countries that have more than 2 parties seems more dynamic and more changeable as compared to the US with its 2 heavily entrenched parties.
I think it would be great if moderate democrats were in a separate party from the SJW types. I think it would be great if moderate republicans were a separate party from libertarians, and the social conservatives could be their own party too.
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5 hours ago, eyeball said:
Only by force.
Force is the tool of religion. The only tool of science is truth.
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20 hours ago, eyeball said:
Then his Goa'uld was implanted
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On 10/15/2018 at 1:01 PM, JamesHackerMP said:
Well, the crux of my argument, "can religion & science co-exist"?, assumes that it's not just a bunch of baseless ancient superstitions or as you put it
Why does it assume that? If one starts with false premises, one ends up at incorrect conclusions.
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That's all well and good but regardless of what the founders intended, today, the federal government has a large and well armed military force (the US Army, Navy, and Air Force). The National Guard is not the primary source of manpower for the military.
Regarding the potential for the federal government to get tyrannical, it seems unlikely that it would do so by blatantly employing the military against its own citizens (an order that the military may not follow, in any case). Rather, it would use various paramilitary organizations (specific local police forces, mercenaries, security companies, hired protesters, etc) to beat up and intimidate opponents, intelligence/surveillance (through agreements with private companies like Google/Facebook/etc as well as through the intelligence agencies), taxes/regulation/bureaucracy to destroy the businesses of whoever it deemed as undesirable, the justice system / show trials / false evidence to imprison opponents, etc. This has been the standard method for most dictatorships out there... rarely is the military used directly, its only a last resort, usually leading to a failed state (i.e. Syria) rather than a continuation of the power of the dictator.
And it is against tactics like this that a well-armed population could indeed present a credible deterrent. Whether the founders intended it or not, today the US government could be capable of tyranny, and private firearm ownership could indeed provide a deterrent to such tyranny in some cases.
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Every fantasy book needs its villains.
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47 minutes ago, dialamah said:
Is Feminism more or less destructive than the Muslim Horde?
No need to choose, they're "allies" together against the "white male patriarchy".
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Are you sure? This article notes that burka banning results in more women wearing the veil, more women staying home, and increases attacks on Muslim women.
That article doesn't provide any numbers, just opinions, no more authoritative than yours or mine. It doesn't compare how many women now leave their homes without burkas to how many decide to wear one in protest or stay home. It just notes that maybe some women stay home. And it says that a few interviewed individuals wear it in protest.
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How does banning the burka increase the freedom of those who either want to wear it or are forced to wear it? If a woman, by family decree or religious belief, must wear a burka in order to leave the house, but the government disallows burkas on the street, where is her freedom increased exactly?
There's a lot of Muslims that are religious but not fanatical. By default of their beliefs, they may force the woman to wear the burka. But realizing it is against national law, most of them being law abiding citizens, and being pragmatic enough to realize that never allowing women to leave the house period is impractical, will change their ways.
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Banning burkas, inasmuch as it removes a personal freedom, is wrong, regardless of how many countries have done it or how many people support it.
Banning burkas is a difficult issue I think. In the most basic sense, yes, people should be free to wear anything they want, and the government shouldn't interfere. On the other hand, the burka is associated with the oppression of women and their deprivation of rights and freedoms by a misogynistic culture. By banning the burka, on the one hand, you interfere with the freedom of those people who genuinely want to wear it of their own choice, but you increase the freedom of those who would otherwise be forced to wear it.
It is tempting to take the libertarian stance that the government should infringe on freedoms as little as possible, period, regardless of the context. But if infringing on the freedom of garment choice for some individuals who might genuinely want to wear it vastly increases the freedom from abuse and oppression for many other individuals, there's a strong argument for that to be considered.
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Canada's Bilingualism Racket
in Federal Politics in Canada
Posted · Edited by Bonam
Real people also have to guess which of the possible meanings of a phrase is actually meant when speaking to each other in the same language. This guessing is based on the context. There is no reason that machine translation cannot, with further development, be able to use context as deeply as humans do to inform its understanding (and therefore translation) of phrase meanings. That's why I gave a time of 10 years in the future, not this year or next year, because there's still a ways to go until the algorithms exist to do deeply context-aware translation.