I see a lots of charts saying things are improving, which is great, but unless I missed it I can't see the piece that says "We spent $xxx on initiative YYY which caused this improvement."
Warren Buffett’s Best Investment
161–170 of 212 posts
Re: Warren Buffett’s Best Investment
#162I wish Bill or Warren would have run for presidency as an "outsider" instead of Trump. I guess our only hope will be their successor Mark (Zuckerberg)
when I read comments on the internet like this, where people wish for a single influential person to run the country like, i begin to wonder how many Americans are out there who believe in and long for a "philosopher-king" system without any of the check and balances that the Federal Government has in place...
a country like Singapore, with the benevolent dictator Lee Kuan Yew, perhaps? Whose single-mindedness and ability to execute has made the country one of the most successful (by several measures) in the world?
Perhaps the US will benefit from blowing up the existing structure, whose rigidity was supposed to prevent demagoguery but appeared to have failed in the new era, and so we're left with is all the bureaucracy and no benefits.
Re: Warren Buffett’s Best Investment
#163Ghostery identifies 10 trackers and uBlock shows 7 advertising scripts, which seems like a lot for a page that you'd think shouldn't need advertising. The page doesn't even display if you block some of these scripts. This is terrible.
Firefox's 'Reader View' makes it readable.
Re: Warren Buffett’s Best Investment
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
SO there is a minimum age - how about a maximum one ?
There is no maximum age requirement. The requirements are well-articulated: http://americanhistory.about.com/od/uspresidents/f/president...
I wouldn't be averse to an amendment establishing the maximum age of eligibility for any elected federal office to be 130 years old on election day.
I figure that if we ever get people to routinely outlive that mark, we may have a problem getting the elder generations to voluntarily yield power to the younger.
Re: Warren Buffett’s Best Investment
#165For anyone interested in why polio hasn't been eradicated, it is likely related to the capture of Osama Bin Laden. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vacci...
not likely related at all, but interesting story!
How is it not related? Polio was on the brink of eradication with the last strongholds in Pakistan... CIA spooks Pakistanis into thinking vaccinations are not good...Citizens refuse Rotary polio vaccines... polio remains present in Pakistan.
Re: Warren Buffett’s Best Investment
#166Re: Warren Buffett’s Best Investment
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is quite false. Catholics split the democrat/republican vote ~50/50. They voted for Gore, Bush, Obama, and Trump with small margins. [1] They care about this question, but not very much. Evangelicals, on the other hand overwhelmingly vote republican. Catholics, in general, are the most liberal religious denomination in the US. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/how-the-fait...
> Catholics, in general, are the most liberal religious denomination in the US. More than Jedi? Or even Scientology?
Generally, religions with a leadership hierarchy are more authoritarian than those that are tenets-based and decentralized. Thus, those religions tend to take political direction on the liberal-conservative axes from their leadership.
Based on their treatment of heresy and apostasy, and self-policing of their own "ethics", I would consider Scientologists to be extremely conservative. While the leadership never endorses any candidate, the membership generally votes conservative-libertarian. I would guess that many of them voted for Trump in the last election, though I have no hard data to back that up.
Of the mainstream religions, Mormons (70%) are the most reliably Republican, followed by Southern Baptists (64%), Nazarenes (63%), and Presbyterians (60%). The most reliably Democratic are African Methodist Episcopal (92%), National Baptist (87%), God in Christ (75%), the "historically black" churches, along with Unitarians (84%).
Catholics break 44% Democrat, 37% Republican, and 19% no-preference, a distribution that closely matches the whole of America.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/02/23/u-s-religiou...
Catholicism is often the most liberal religion in Mexico and Latin America, and members from that cultural region are often considered liberal among other Catholics. As Pope Francis is from there, and I consider him to be very liberal for a Catholic, I would expect Catholics worldwide to gradually become more liberal as his tenure in office continues.
Re: Warren Buffett’s Best Investment
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Without going into an argument about the relative importance, shouldn't at least some significant portion be distributed towards solving the human and civil rights, liberties, and justice abuses here in America? I would guess that a country with stable institutions, high GDP per capita value, democracy and the highest absolute military spending this issue could be addressed in the ballot box. In the richest democra…
> this issue could be addressed in the ballot box I don't believe that is true. Recent history is especially illustrative of this.
>Recent history is especially illustrative of this.
Are you referring to Trump's election?
Well, some people's problems were solved by the ballot box, and they got their man elected. The fact that you disagree with the politics doesn't negate the system working as intended.
Re: Warren Buffett’s Best Investment
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Without going into an argument about the relative importance, shouldn't at least some significant portion be distributed towards solving the human and civil rights, liberties, and justice abuses here in America? I would guess that a country with stable institutions, high GDP per capita value, democracy and the highest absolute military spending this issue could be addressed in the ballot box. In the richest democra…
> this issue could be addressed in the ballot box I don't believe that is true. Recent history is especially illustrative of this.
More money wouldn't help that cause though. The US doesn't need the billions to solve issues, it already has it. The lack of solutions in the US is due to people not working towards them, not the resources being lacked.
Re: Warren Buffett’s Best Investment
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you conflate "insider" with economic class, there's no benefit to using the term anymore.
It is very fair to say that there is a class of people of various professions who have a great deal of influence but not a great deal of money. To what degree would you buy my notion that most of those people work for people in a higher economic class? Where do you see decisions being made independent of (or out of proportion to) their economic impact?
Now you're going in a different direction. I'm just saying that not all wealthy people are "insiders".