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Old 2011-06-21, 20:16   Link #14321
DonQuigleone
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Quote:
Originally Posted by justinstrife View Post
So the Democrats had absolutely nothing to do with our current state? Interesting...

Both Parties have been steering this ship into the ditch that it currently is residing in, and I don't see either of them getting us out of this mess.
Well if we look at that last 4 administrations, under reagan times were good, but debt went waaaay up.

Under George Senior, debt continued to climb, times continued to be good.

Under Clinton, debt initially climbed, and then began to decline. Admittedly there was a republican congress when a lot of the deficit reduction was carried out. Prosperity continued.

Under George Bush Junior, the deficit started to climb again. Other then the dot com crash, times were very prosperous.

Under Obama Debt balooned, but the entire country was in a deep recession prior to him taking office.

I think the fact the country is in the largest recession since 1929 gives Obama a pass.

So overall all 3 of the last republican presidents presided in times of prosperity, and could have reduced the debt, but chose not to (and in fact made it larger). Of the last 2 democratic presidents, 1 pulled off a surplus and the other has a reasonable excuse.

Now I'm not really counting congressional influence here, but I think the Republicans clearly have the worst fiscal record, at least on the federal level. No republican government in the past 30 years has done anything meaningful to combat the deficit, or ever managed to have a budget surplus.

I don't want to make it seem like the democrats are guiltless either, but clearly the greater burden of responsibility lies on the party that racked up the debt. Which is the Republicans.
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Old 2011-06-21, 20:22   Link #14322
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DonQuigleone View Post
Well if we look at that last 4 administrations, under reagan times were good, but debt went waaaay up.
Under George Senior, debt continued to climb, times continued to be good.
i remember back when watching tv there were a lot of commericial about needing to buy America as jobs were sent overseas. i don't remember times being that good.
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Old 2011-06-21, 20:32   Link #14323
justinstrife
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DonQuigleone View Post
Well if we look at that last 4 administrations, under reagan times were good, but debt went waaaay up.

Under George Senior, debt continued to climb, times continued to be good.

Under Clinton, debt initially climbed, and then began to decline. Admittedly there was a republican congress when a lot of the deficit reduction was carried out. Prosperity continued.

Under George Bush Junior, the deficit started to climb again. Other then the dot com crash, times were very prosperous.

Under Obama Debt balooned, but the entire country was in a deep recession prior to him taking office.

I think the fact the country is in the largest recession since 1929 gives Obama a pass.

So overall all 3 of the last republican presidents presided in times of prosperity, and could have reduced the debt, but chose not to (and in fact made it larger). Of the last 2 democratic presidents, 1 pulled off a surplus and the other has a reasonable excuse.

Now I'm not really counting congressional influence here, but I think the Republicans clearly have the worst fiscal record, at least on the federal level. No republican government in the past 30 years has done anything meaningful to combat the deficit, or ever managed to have a budget surplus.

I don't want to make it seem like the democrats are guiltless either, but clearly the greater burden of responsibility lies on the party that racked up the debt. Which is the Republicans.
You should bring up Jimmy Carter too, as he had a play in this current economic mess. Also, Obama and the Democrats have put us in a 1.4+ trillion dollar a year deficit, with no end in sight. Explain to me how that gets a pass, when his best year, is 4x George Bush Jr's worst year?

The debt has gone up under each administration of the past 35+ years. The Government has also grown exponentially in that time, while America's manufacturing base has fled. Both parties are at fault, and for you to single out the Republicans, shows a very clear bias. The Democrats had controlled Congress since 2007, and the White House since early 2009. The Republicans now have the House of Representatives, but the Democrats still control the other two. The Democrats had the largest majority control of Congress and the White House, of the past 70+ years.

I admit the Republicans had a large part to do with our current mess, but you absolutely cannot say they had the majority. Not without telling me exactly what policies in-acted by them, caused what problems we have now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjPBtfpn8wI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMnSp4qEXNM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW5qK...eature=related
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Old 2011-06-21, 20:33   Link #14324
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No one living in those times would consider them good. There was still a lot of fear of mutual destruction between the Americans and Soviets in the early 80s. The vast spending was supposedly an effort to out spend the Soviets and force them to break their own economy. It seems to have worked, but at a large cost. A cost that is still being paid...thanks to other conflicts since the end of the Cold War.
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Old 2011-06-21, 20:50   Link #14325
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AP Exclusive: Medicaid for the middle class?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110621/...verhaul_glitch

Spoiler:
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Old 2011-06-21, 20:57   Link #14326
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This is why large complicated bills tend to go bad no matter which party is in charge. Our politicians can't decide whether to be more inept or more corrupt - its a race condition.
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Old 2011-06-21, 21:34   Link #14327
DonQuigleone
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Quote:
Originally Posted by justinstrife View Post
You should bring up Jimmy Carter too, as he had a play in this current economic mess. Also, Obama and the Democrats have put us in a 1.4+ trillion dollar a year deficit, with no end in sight. Explain to me how that gets a pass, when his best year, is 4x George Bush Jr's worst year?

The debt has gone up under each administration of the past 35+ years. The Government has also grown exponentially in that time, while America's manufacturing base has fled. Both parties are at fault, and for you to single out the Republicans, shows a very clear bias. The Democrats had controlled Congress since 2007, and the White House since early 2009. The Republicans now have the House of Representatives, but the Democrats still control the other two. The Democrats had the largest majority control of Congress and the White House, of the past 70+ years.

I admit the Republicans had a large part to do with our current mess, but you absolutely cannot say they had the majority. Not without telling me exactly what policies in-acted by them, caused what problems we have now.
I think there's a statute of limitations on this sort of thing, we can't hold presidents from 40 years ago responsible for current problems, even 30 is getting tenuous.

Now the 80s weren't perfect, but they certainly were better then the 70s, and there was consistent growth. Certainly if the government had wanted to, they could have ran a surplus. However, I was born in 88, so take that with a grain of salt. But my general perception is that the 80s were generally economically good years, while the 70s were bad.

Regarding the democrats today, there is nothing they could have done in the 3 years they've been in office to avoid a lot of the deficit spending they have had. Admittedly the stimulus was all their choice, but even without the stimulus they would have been left with the deficit the bush administration already had, and additionally the lost tax revenue caused by the recession. In comparison, Ireland is in a far worse state then the US, but we didn't have any kind of stimulus (it wouldn't work in Ireland anyway), we actually had a surplus before the crash, our current deficit is almost entirely caused by the huge loss of tax revenue, combined with shouldering responsibility for bailed out banks.

In the US, the debt has climbed by about 5 trillion in the time Obama has been in office, while the stimulus is less then a trillion, and it may have saved money by preventing further recession (and further loss of tax $). Most of that deficit would still be in place regardless of what he did. The problem is simply too entrenched for him to achieve anything meaningful particularly quickly.

The fact is, the administration can't work miracles. The financial flaws the US has are deep and entrenched. Frankly, if congress had moved forward with Universal Healthcare that would have been a very good first step. Most of the structural deficit is caused by innefficient healthcare, after all. And yet that was blocked by Republicans and conservative democrats, ostensably to save money. Other countries have succesfully brought in Universal healthcare under far worse circumstances, and with great success.

The basic flaw was the belief among the right that tax cuts are the ultimate way to grow the economy and increase the government budget. Admittedly, there is a level where higher tax doesn't bring in more revenue, but that's far below what the US charges. If there's one policy that I think Obama clearly made a mistake with it was extending the Bush tax cuts. Shouldn't have bowed to the pressure, though at least it was only a 2 year extension...

I think a better indication of how Obama's administration will have performed will come over the next term, after the economy has stabilised. If a republican gets elected it could be interesting, but my guess is that the presidency is a bit of a poison apple at the moment, the republicans are probably not going to try very hard for it.
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Old 2011-06-21, 21:47   Link #14328
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Quote:
blocked by Republicans and conservative democrats, ostensably to save money.
It was blocked to serve the interests of the status quo --- that of the pockets of the lords of the insurance cartel. If you follow the money, each politician against an overhaul was up to their nostrils in lobby money from the large insurance corporations. They aren't interested in competing in a free market nor are they interested in having to deal with people as individuals preferring to keep them in large "employee blocks" and forcing employers into corrals of costly benefit packages. Currently, they're able to leech from every point in the system with little benefit to patients, doctors, or employers. Do I sound angry yet?
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Old 2011-06-21, 21:51   Link #14329
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DonQuigleone

I can't say that I agree with even half of your post and your view of history. Your giving Obama a free pass on his incredible spending, yet bashing Bush for his, is laughable to me. One person runs up a debt of 20 thousand dollars a year on credit that he can't afford and that's evil. The next guy to take over runs up a debt of 80 thousand a year on credit, and he gets a pass.

And I am completely against Universal Healthcare, as I am also against Obama's Healthcare Reform. Yes Newt Gingrich was trying for something similar 20 years ago, but I wasn't old enough to vote then, and I would have been against what he was after had I been able to. Perhaps our Healthcare system wouldn't be so incredibly fubarred, if Lawyers hadn't jacked it up and twisted it into the mess that we have now?

I have zero faith in the Government being able to manage a fast food restaurant, let alone Healthcare or the economy. History of America shows that I am right on my pessimism.

Also, I don't see how putting the very same guys who helped contribute to our banking/housing crisis, in charge of the economy, is ever a good thing? But that's exactly what the Democrats did with Barney Frank and others.

Last edited by justinstrife; 2011-06-21 at 22:02.
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Old 2011-06-21, 21:54   Link #14330
ganbaru
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Ryanair boss sees China catching Airbus, Boeing
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...75K1TB20110621
Somehow I have some doubt about this one...
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Old 2011-06-21, 22:44   Link #14331
Ithekro
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Sounds like an unsound plan. Chinese may be able to produce in bulk to lower prices, but they don't have the quality one desires in a long term use airliner. Also Ryanair has all Boeing aircraft right now. Won't adding another company's aircraft just increase their maintenance costs since they have to import parts from two companies and train people to work on more types of aircraft?

China seems a lot like Japan was in the late 1950s. The products are cheap and cheaply built. Over time they might get to the quality of more recent Japanese goods (1990s era stuff), but that will take a while. Not only to get the industry to make the quality goods, but also for their workers and designers to become craftsmen and not accept crap produced by their factories anymore.
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Old 2011-06-21, 23:22   Link #14332
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Originally Posted by DonQuigleone View Post
I was more wondering how you get a bitcoin (bar buying one). From my (limited) reading it seems that you do so by solving cryptographic problems of some sort. Is this done by donating your computers time, and getting coins in return, or is it something else?
You download a client and literally mine for coins. Due to the difficulty of solving the problems, large groups of people tend to form pools to mine a single block (50 coins) together and get a share of each block mined.

I have some friends who can get about 1.3-1.6 coins a day with their gaming machines on 24/7. Depending on how your electric bill is figured, this may be crap. My video card isn't geared toward making these calculations so I've only gotten less than half of a coin for about 30 hours. I'd earn more money looking for spare change on the ground.
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Old 2011-06-22, 01:21   Link #14333
Jinto
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Originally Posted by Decagon View Post
You download a client and literally mine for coins. Due to the difficulty of solving the problems, large groups of people tend to form pools to mine a single block (50 coins) together and get a share of each block mined.

I have some friends who can get about 1.3-1.6 coins a day with their gaming machines on 24/7. Depending on how your electric bill is figured, this may be crap. My video card isn't geared toward making these calculations so I've only gotten less than half of a coin for about 30 hours. I'd earn more money looking for spare change on the ground.
So, you actually get payed for doing distributed computing there. I'ld like to know who pays for that (since this is a tradeing place someone pays for the computing power with real money - solving cryptographic problems has an interesting range of possible customers including hacker groups and secret service agencies)
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Old 2011-06-22, 01:29   Link #14334
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So, you actually get payed for doing distributed computing there. I'ld like to know who pays for that (since this is a tradeing place someone pays for the computing power with real money - solving cryptographic problems has an interesting range of possible customers including hacker groups and secret service agencies)
You're paid in freshly generated bitcoins, though... (I guess it's like working in a mint and taking your work home as salary.)
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Old 2011-06-22, 01:31   Link #14335
Xion Valkyrie
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Originally Posted by Jinto View Post
So, you actually get payed for doing distributed computing there. I'ld like to know who pays for that (since this is a tradeing place someone pays for the computing power with real money - solving cryptographic problems has an interesting range of possible customers including hacker groups and secret service agencies)
You're not getting 'paid'. You're getting bitcoins, which in a vacuum is worthless. However, because of its properties it has a lot of use as an anonymous, untraceable (mostly) medium of exchange. It's value is purely based on the amount of demand for them, which as of right now is growing. You're also not solving any real problems. The purpose of the problem solving is to ensure that bitcoin generation cannot be manipulated. The entire purpose is to create a new currency system that has no official backing and untraceable, but still stable and trustworthy. The problem solving + validation system via the p2p network ensures that the people mining for bitcoins are doing it legitimately and that the growth rate of bitcoins is going as planned. Everyone has access to the algorithms so the growth is predictable.

However, it's also much harder to generate bit coins. The algorithm for the overall system makes it so that as more and more people mine for bitcoins, the slower it is to get a bitcoin per hour of work put in. I believe the amount of bitcoins that can be generated is about 12 mil, and there's already 6 million in circulation.

Essentially, early adopters contributed some money towards this in the hopes of it taking off and thus profiting off of their initial investment. At this point, if you haven't already set up a mining system for yourself, it's really pointless to go in if you're looking to get 'free money'.
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Old 2011-06-22, 01:39   Link #14336
Anh_Minh
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Originally Posted by Xion Valkyrie View Post
You're not getting 'paid'. You're getting bitcoins, which in a vacuum is worthless.
What isn't worthless in a vacuum? (Well, I guess a working spaceship would be at a premium...)

Quote:
However, because of its properties it has a lot of use as an anonymous, untraceable (mostly) medium of exchange.
Eh? I haven't read up that much, but I thought everyone (potentially) knew everyone else's transactions. Sure, the accounts are anonymous, but how hard is it to link them to their owners? And once that's done, you can know their whole financial history.
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Old 2011-06-22, 01:52   Link #14337
Xion Valkyrie
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Originally Posted by Anh_Minh View Post
What isn't worthless in a vacuum? (Well, I guess a working spaceship would be at a premium...)


Eh? I haven't read up that much, but I thought everyone (potentially) knew everyone else's transactions. Sure, the accounts are anonymous, but how hard is it to link them to their owners? And once that's done, you can know their whole financial history.
There are no 'accounts' per se. My understanding of the whole system isn't that complete, but from what I've read you actually generate a series of addresses and use those for transaction. You can generate new addresses and change them as often as you want (although it's a hassle).

So although the transaction itself will be seen, it's not linked to any real information. The process itself is 100% anonymous. However, even though the transfer itself cannot be linked to you, usually the real item that you're buying/selling would. Ie, the transaction would usually be linked to some real transaction such as buying pot through some online dealer that accepts bitcoins and thus they can track you through that.

However, if both parties really cared about anonymity and the whole thing was set up correctly, then it's basically 100% untraceable back to the end user.
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Old 2011-06-22, 01:55   Link #14338
Jinto
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Xion Valkyrie View Post
You're not getting 'paid'. You're getting bitcoins, which in a vacuum is worthless. However, because of its properties it has a lot of use as an anonymous, untraceable (mostly) medium of exchange. It's value is purely based on the amount of demand for them, which as of right now is growing. You're also not solving any real problems. The purpose of the problem solving is to ensure that bitcoin generation cannot be manipulated. The entire purpose is to create a new currency system that has no official backing and untraceable, but still stable and trustworthy. The problem solving + validation system via the p2p network ensures that the people mining for bitcoins are doing it legitimately and that the growth rate of bitcoins is going as planned. Everyone has access to the algorithms so the growth is predictable.

However, it's also much harder to generate bit coins. The algorithm for the overall system makes it so that as more and more people mine for bitcoins, the slower it is to get a bitcoin per hour of work put in. I believe the amount of bitcoins that can be generated is about 12 mil, and there's already 6 million in circulation.

Essentially, early adopters contributed some money towards this in the hopes of it taking off and thus profiting off of their initial investment. At this point, if you haven't already set up a mining system for yourself, it's really pointless to go in if you're looking to get 'free money'.
I see... and yet I fail to see, how spreading virtual money for solving cryptographic problems makes any sense, when the solved problems are never sold and thus are virtually of no value. Open algorithms doesn't mean that you cannot have customers that pay you for solving cryptographic problems. I suppose the whole bitcoin generating concept is meant to resemble the generation of virtual goods in online games. In that sense it would make sense sort of... it could be an instrument of regulation. Under the assumption that users have an idea of what it costs (power bill, wear of hardware) to solve the cryptographic problems, an equilibrium should be reached where the bitcoin money creation in value is almost equivalent to the costs that come with solving the cryptographic problems. Now I could imagine, that the aforementioned assumption is not really true... which could be compromising in the long run.
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Old 2011-06-22, 02:04   Link #14339
Xion Valkyrie
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I see... and yet I fail to see, how spreading virtual money for solving cryptographic problems makes any sense, when the solved problems are never sold and thus are virtually of no value. Open algorithms doesn't mean that you cannot have customers that pay you for solving cryptographic problems. I suppose the whole bitcoin generating concept is meant to resemble the generation of virtual goods in online games. In that sense it would make sense sort of... it could be an instrument of regulation. Under the assumption that users have an idea of what it costs (power bill, wear of hardware) to solve the cryptographic problems, an equilibrium should be reached where the bitcoin money creation in value is almost equivalent to the costs that come with solving the cryptographic problems. Now I could imagine, that the aforementioned assumption is not really true... which could be compromising in the long run.
Like you suspected, the solving of the cryptographic problems is purely meant to control the rate of growth for bit coins when people are generating bit coins themselves. It's crucial to solve the fundamental problem of creating a currency system that isn't backed by any third party.

You can't just say okay, let's use this new currency, and everyone has 100 bitcoins. Cryptography is needed because these problems are known to be solvable in a certain amount of time, and no amount of computer hardware could 'break' the system and generate more bitcoins than designed. Using this system, everyone can generate bitcoins at a rate that everyone knows.

So yeah, it's essentially tying bitcoins to some tangible, real world commodity so that getting a bitcoin requires some time and money. Without speculation, each bitcoin would be worth exactly how much electricity it costs to generate them (+ the initial hardware frees). However, the rate of bitcoin generation also slows down as more and more are generated. This then essentially controls the 'supply' of bitcoins, while demand goes up when more people join in on this.
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Old 2011-06-22, 03:57   Link #14340
ganbaru
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Originally Posted by Ithekro View Post
China seems a lot like Japan was in the late 1950s. The products are cheap and cheaply built. Over time they might get to the quality of more recent Japanese goods (1990s era stuff), but that will take a while. Not only to get the industry to make the quality goods, but also for their workers and designers to become craftsmen and not accept crap produced by their factories anymore.
They have already started to produce quality product, even if they are still doing cheep one. The biggest issue would rather be the quality issue and the forgery; the ''production'' of false wine and false milk ( among other examples) isn't giving much hope for high quality.
To be realistic, I expect them to be soon a good competition for Bombardier and Embraer but for Boeing and Airbus it will take more than one decade and/or much industrial spying.
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