NY Times Story on Pilot Population Decline

(remember the prepends?)

In 1993, he
showed a group of children a drawing of a chubby black child dressed
up as a policeman, followed by photos of several adults, each of whom
had two of the three traits: being black, chubby and dressed as a
policeman. Asked to decide which person was the boy as a grown-up,
most children chose a black adult even though he was either not
overweight or minus a police uniform. "Kids appear to believe," says
Hirschfeld, "that race is more important than other physical
differences in determining what sort of person one is."

Being chubby and being a policeman are changable traits. Skin color is
not (unless you are a rock star). Therefore, the conclusion (in this
summary) is not warranted by the (apparantly flawed) experiment.

The Hammond and Axelrod experiment was interesting though.

Jose
--
Get high on gasoline: fly an airplane.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

That is my point. Today's Capitalism demands that producers meet the
lowest price in the marketplace, or face insolvency. That means that
if one producer is willing to reduce the cost of production through
unethical or immoral means, all the other producers are FORCED to do
the same or go broke. The cost-cutting efficiency of Capitalism is
commendable, but Capitalism's continual dive to the bottom begins to
cause problems after a certain point. That issue should be addressed.
Surely, even you can see the truth in what I'm saying.

Hmmm. In light of a prevous post about arbitrary groupings, I find what
you say interesting. What is the difference between outsourcing from
California to Nevada, and outsourcing from California to Korea?

I for one, would be willing to pay a little more for goods produced in
the USA, wouldn't you?

No. I'd pay more for higher quality (where quality matters). Higher
quality is often foreign. Higher quality per dollar is also often foreign.

Jose
--
Get high on gasoline: fly an airplane.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

The way I understand it, Congress has used the money generated by SSI
payments to fund other federal spending. And now government is faced
with the issue of a shortfall in funding SSI recipients as a result of
the "baby-boom" bulge in the retirement aged population.

Also, when SSI started, there were a huge number of wage earners who
were being tapped to pay for the retirements of a small number of
workers. This spread the burden around very thinly. The pyramid has
inverted.

Jose
--
Get high on gasoline: fly an airplane.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

In article ,
Larry Dighera wrote:

Wouldn't you characterize streets awash in homeless retirees a burden
on society?

it's not an either-or situation...

What is your rationale for that statement?

The Federal government is not the only possible provider for senior
citizens (notice I didn't say the Feds were a solution).

Do you (Larry) really think that only Social Security prevents the streets
from being awash in homeless retirees?

Maybe families should care for each other. nah, that couldn't possibly work.



That's not the way FDR saw it.

so what?

--
Bob Noel
(goodness, please trim replies!!!)

"Jose" wrote in message
et...
The way I understand it, Congress has used the money generated by SSI
payments to fund other federal spending. And now government is faced
with the issue of a shortfall in funding SSI recipients as a result of
the "baby-boom" bulge in the retirement aged population.

Also, when SSI started, there were a huge number of wage earners who were
being tapped to pay for the retirements of a small number of workers.
This spread the burden around very thinly. The pyramid has inverted.

Jose

Agreed. I think people living longer for a number of reasons has added to
the list as well.

My point is, the government TAKES our money to fund our retirement because
we all realize far too many people cannot be trusted to fund their own
retirement. But the government themselves have proven they can't be trusted
with the money as either.

That's why it ticks me that I can't opt out and do my own thing. We all know
there are much better deals to be had. And many of us would manage our own
fund much better than the fed has.

In article ,
Larry Dighera wrote:

The way I understand it, Congress has used the money generated by SSI
payments to fund other federal spending. And now government is faced
with the issue of a shortfall in funding SSI recipients as a result of
the "baby-boom" bulge in the retirement aged population.

That's not the only cause of the shortfall.

--
Bob Noel
(goodness, please trim replies!!!)

"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
...
Maxwell writes:

Apparently you are just not old enough to simply look around yourself to
answer that question junior.

I have, and I don't see any indication that people are spending large sums
of
money on electronics. Most people have a standard complement of
electronic
gadgets, but their total cost still isn't very significant.


Then you must be blind as well.

"Larry Dighera" wrote in message
...

What is your rationale for that statement? That's not the way FDR saw it.


FDR was wrong.

On Apr 28, 6:07 am, "Matt Barrow"
wrote:
wrote in message

ups.com...

On Apr 26, 1:37 pm, kontiki wrote:

. On top of that, the BIGGEST benefactor
odf rising gas prices IS government. Federal and state governments
make more off a gallon gass through taxes than the oil companies do.

I'm sure others can offer similar "horror stories".

All true, maybe. But all irrelevant to your comment about government
profiting off of RISING gas prices. Taxes are "per gallon", not a
percentage of sales price.

The only way government benefits is through more income tax collected
on the rising profits of the company. All of which is a good thing.

On Sun, 29 Apr 2007 21:30:29 -0400, Bob Noel
wrote in
:

In article ,
Larry Dighera wrote:

Wouldn't you characterize streets awash in homeless retirees a burden
on society?

it's not an either-or situation...

What is your rationale for that statement?

The Federal government is not the only possible provider for senior
citizens (notice I didn't say the Feds were a solution).

The federal government is the only entity that is not subject to
Enronization of workers retirement funds. Or do you know of others?

Do you (Larry) really think that only Social Security prevents the streets
from being awash in homeless retirees?

I believe that most workers are too shortsighted to provide for their
old age themselves. I have no source to support that, but I have
lived long enough to understand human behavior a bit.

Maybe families should care for each other. nah, that couldn't possibly work.


And what do you propose for those without families, or whose families
are unable to afford supporting older workers?



That's not the way FDR saw it.

so what?

So better minds than ours have hashed this issue out long ago, and
come to the conclusion that SSI was a beneficial plan in the '30s, and
I don't see how the situation has fundamentally changed from that
time.