Reply With Quote
I hope so too. Ideas matter.
What please?
Purely professional curiosity, of course...
I hope so too. Ideas matter.
It's actually a reasonably priced decent table wine. 2014 Apothic Red Winemakers Blend. I like the tannin level and the mouth feel/after and it's relatively cheap....about $8. HEB has it on the bottom shelf LOL.I have some great wines in the fridge but it's a decent maintenance compromise.
as a rule of thumb, it's a mistake to think one gets more pleasure from a bottle of wine by paying more for it...but it is possible.
True...I generally stop at the $60 bottle range and have 15 or so in the fridge for special occasions aging...they are most definitely better but relatively speaking they aren't 3X better than a good $20 bottle.
no matter how much I ever make I can't see paying $250 for a bottle of wine...
Back on topic, Chomsky wasn't far off when he said what we've got now is socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor.
the financial panic of 2008 crystallized it: the losses of the financial sector were socialized.
we get fiscal austerity, the financial sector continues to get cheap money, tax cuts, deregulation and an implicit government backstop.
Last edited by Winehole23; 12-13-2016 at 09:49 AM.
^The hole
Here's my favorite. I drink it neat:
^^^good taste in booze
139.8 proof? It's like Everclear
ever tried it?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.25b58dd21839Sorry, plebe. No raise for you. (Richard Drew/AP)
Increasing income inequality is usually cast as the inevitable result of vast, impersonal forces like globalization and automation. But it's not, at least not entirely.
Now, I'm not just talking about how much inequality there is after Uncle Sam has taxed the rich and spent on the poor. It's pretty obvious that that can turn the haves into the have-a-little-lesses and the have-nots into the have-somethings. No, I'm talking about how much inequality there is before the government gets involved with taxes and transfers. Even that, as economists Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman show, has changed a lot more in some countries than others. Which is to say that while trade and technology have helped high-earners everywhere, other things have limited just how much it has — or not.
Just look at the difference between France and the United States. Since 1980, when inequality really started to take off, the bottom 50 percent in France have seen their pre-tax-and-transfer incomes go up by about 32 percent after accounting for inflation. The bottom 50 percent in the U.S., meanwhile, haven't seen theirs change at all. It's been a lost three and a half decades. Which is even worse than it sounds once you realize that Americans have been working longer just to fall behind. The French, after all, take Augusts off.
No, Everclear burns when going down. That 12 yr barrel proof is surprisingly smooth for it's proof. Great sipping bourbon.139.8 proof? It's like Everclear
"Capitalism is working better in France than the U.S."
... headline s up the whole article.
It's not the capitalism is working better in France, or any other social democracy, than in Ayn Rand's USA. Capitalistic materialism doesn't exist in a vacuum as the only dominant value.
It's that the social democratic societies are better organized to take care of all the members of society, rather than the USA social disaster of oligarchy, plutocracy, corporatocracy where the society is rigged to oppress and fleece the bottom 95%.
what are you talking about? We're a social democracy -- skewed to coddle the top of the scale.
no universal health care, unions busted, almost no employee protections, no family leave, no maternity leave, duopoly/monopoly regs not enforced, almost no consumer protections (that's decreasing), no free college education, 2 weeks vacation on average, no govt childcare, World Champion inequality, economic/social mobility stunted, ty social safety net to be tattered even more in the next year or two. It all amounts to a ty quality of life for a couple 100M people who living in economic precarity
America is not organized for the all of society, only for those at the top. "social"? G M A F B
leaving aside middle class en lements like social security and Medicaid, you're right. we're in partial agreement, oddly.
SS is not an en lement. It's a mandatory retirement savings program.
Medicaid is not available to the "middle class". Medicaid is one of the few humanitarian govt programs for America's own people.
Progressive, humanitarian America decided, in the 1960s, that even Americans are "en led" to some modi of health care (and that was before BigHealth started fleecing America), and Medicaid about to be reduced if not destroyed by the sociopathic Repugs so savings can be "spent" on tax breaks for BigCorp/1%.
all reasonable points, except for the destruction of Medicaid. the political pain would be too great even for sociopathic Republicans.
ditto with SS: older folks vote.
even though it just got theoretically easier for the GOP to trash the safety net, in practice it'll be just as hard as ever.
It's a mandatory tax.
We pay in, the government immediately spends the money with the promise that when we retire, they will tax somebody else to pay for our retirement stipend.
"savings program"
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions