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it's a joke to think the "war on drugs" is working (or any other "war on xyz" for that matter). It began in the 70s and we are still "fighting" it today.
But we arent really fighting it, local law enforcement dont want to clean up the streets. they want there to be illegal drugs out there, that gives them more power to violate more laws and seize more cash.
In 1998, the illegal cannabis industry was valued at $75 billion alone. (source: UN Economic and Social Consequences of Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking)
In 2005, they estimated it at $113 billion. (source: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), World Drug Report 2005 (Vienna, Austria: UNODC, June 2005), p. 127.)
It's a huge growing market, and police forces are making BANK on it themselves.
If you legalize it, police will stop having to focus on non-violent drug users that aren't bother anyone, and have to focus more on stopping violent crimes and solving murders, etc. Police don't want to do this. It's boring work, it does nothing for ego, and it doesn't help pay for a new armored car. It would also result in the reduction of needed police. And it's too easy to argue that any reduction in police force size is an inherently evil thing to do and unions will fight it.
Police do not want to hand over their revenue stream to state taxes or the overwhelming constitution-stomping authority granted to them under the guise of winning an unwinnable war. If they wanted to actually win the war, they'd stop the supply, but it's simply easier to bust people carrying a pinch of a plant that grow in the ground, not the people growing it.
Last edited by Braineack; Aug 12, 2016 at 08:46 AM.
I have yet to hear an argument against abortion that isn't rooted in religion,
As a psychology major who did some counseling before getting into machinery sales:
1. Women have a history of mental illness because they are women.
2. Some hide it better than others.
3. Many otherwise "normal appearing" women are a few sentences away from collapsing into tears when subjects like molestation, rape, or previous abortions come up in a clinical (safe) environment.
4. Many women carry a huge amount of unspoken guilt related to abortions they may have had.
5. Guilt and other feelings manifest themselves sometimes as self-injurious behavior such as overeating, mutilation, and situational self-sabotage.
Children don't generally develop the capacity to process abstract thought until around age 7 years, but that's a little late to decide to flush them.
McCorvey revealed herself to the press as being "Jane Roe" soon after the decision's issuance and stated that she sought an abortion because she was unemployable and greatly depressed.[5] [17] In the 1980s, McCorvey asserted that she had been the "pawn" of two young and ambitious lawyers (Weddington and Coffee) who were looking for a plaintiff with whom they could challenge the Texas state law prohibiting abortion.[18]
McCorvey's second book, Won by Love, was published in 1998. She explained her change on the stance of abortion with the following comments:
I was sitting in O.R.'s offices when I noticed a fetal development poster. The progression was so obvious, the eyes were so sweet. It hurt my heart, just looking at them. I ran outside and finally, it dawned on me. 'Norma', I said to myself, 'They're right'. I had worked with pregnant women for years. I had been through three pregnancies and deliveries myself. I should have known. Yet something in that poster made me lose my breath. I kept seeing the picture of that tiny, 10-week-old embryo, and I said to myself, that's a baby! It's as if blinders just fell off my eyes and I suddenly understood the truth — that's a baby!
I felt crushed under the truth of this realization. I had to face up to the awful reality. Abortion wasn't about 'products of conception'. It wasn't about 'missed periods'. It was about children being killed in their mother's wombs. All those years I was wrong. Signing that affidavit, I was wrong. Working in an abortion clinic, I was wrong. No more of this first trimester, second trimester, third trimester stuff. Abortion — at any point — was wrong. It was so clear. Painfully clear.[3]
In February 2005, McCorvey petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn the 1973 decision with McCorvey v. Hill, arguing that she had standing to do so as one of the original litigants and that the case should be heard once again in light of what she claimed was evidence that the procedure harms women, but the petition was denied because the Supreme Court considered the matter to be moot.
On January 22, 2008, McCorvey endorsed Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul. McCorvey stated, "I support Ron Paul for president because we share the same goal, that of overturning Roe v. Wade. He has never wavered on the issue of being pro-life and has a voting record to prove it. He understands the importance of civil liberties for all, including the unborn."[24]
As a psychology major who did some counseling before getting into machinery sales:
1. Women have a history of mental illness because they are women.
2. Some hide it better than others.
3. Many otherwise "normal appearing" women are a few sentences away from collapsing into tears when subjects like molestation, rape, or previous abortions come up in a clinical (safe) environment.
4. Many women carry a huge amount of unspoken guilt related to abortions they may have had.
5. Guilt and other feelings manifest themselves sometimes as self-injurious behavior such as overeating, mutilation, and situational self-sabotage.
"Why can't a woman be more like a man?" Maybe we could write a song, or even a movie about that/s
I do believe a man is capable of being emotionally damaged by having an abortion performed on his fetus. I also believe he can be emotionally damaged by its subsequent birth in some cases.
Legally, I've thought it interesting a woman has sole right to choose to end a pregnancy without the consultation of the man and yet the man is legally bound to the welfare of said child. Odd.
Id be curious to know how much of that forfeiture money is being sunk into lobbying against legalization. Recreational is supposed to be on the ballot in november here. And there's this group(s?) trying to get it taken off the ballot all together. They act as if the state will implode into lawlessness the moment it becomes legal.... I dont think even they really believe that.
Too low of an import tax is effectively welfare for the third world.
[devil's advocate]
This argument presupposes that some kind of import tax is inherently proper. Why are import taxes necessary, and why should nations with differing wage standards be prevented from freely trading?
What sort of taxes or duties would you suggest be levied upon products and services generated in NYC, Los Angeles or Silicon Valley, but delivered to customers in West Virginia or Mississippi? Should these taxes cover only things like Hollywood films, software, and television programming, or would they extend to financial services, skateboards, and Tesla cars?
This argument presupposes that some kind of import tax is inherently proper. Why are import taxes necessary, and why should nations with differing wage standards be prevented from freely trading?
What sort of taxes or duties would you suggest be levied upon products and services generated in NYC, Los Angeles or Silicon Valley, but delivered to customers in West Virginia or Mississippi? Should these taxes cover only things like Hollywood films, software, and television programming, or would they extend to financial services, skateboards, and Tesla cars?
[/devil's advocate]
Regarding the second question, technically speaking, import/export taxes between the states are illegal - but were they not illegal, I would recommend import taxes be placed on NYC/LA/SV residents for products or services generated in WV/MS in order to pay for the import subsidies paid to WV/MS residents to be able to afford products/services generated in NYC/LA/SV. This would serve to protect NYC/LA/SV jobs from being relocated to poorer or lower wage areas where said goods can be made more inexpensively.
First Point: Because our government's minimum standard of living is far higher than other countries' citizen-defined minimum standards of living.
Import taxes are inefficient and not inherently proper. With that being said, an import tax on domestically acquirable goods would serve to raise prices of those goods such that it becomes more competitive to make or produce those goods here. While most of the "essential" items (food, water, shelter) wouldn't see a first-order increase in price (shelter would see a definite third-order increase in price), the non-essentials would see a noticeable first-order increase in price which would be more than offset by the fact that the unemployed and underemployed now have jobs and are able to afford the "essentials" themselves without nearly the reliance on gubment cheese. The free-trade effect means that as long as some other country is willing to produce for peanuts and ship for grapes, then we have to produce the same products while surviving off of peanut butter and jelly. If we have the GDP potential to support steak and lobster (which we couldn't, because it would go through it's own second order price increase if we all decided to afford it), then why are we living on PB&Js?
The inherently proper method of evening the playing field would be to let employers and employees independently decide how much an hour of an individual's time is worth, but since I don't see that happening anytime soon, the import tax is an economically feasible band-aid...it worked for light trucks.
This argument presupposes that some kind of import tax is inherently proper. Why are import taxes necessary, and why should nations with differing wage standards be prevented from freely trading?
What sort of taxes or duties would you suggest be levied upon products and services generated in NYC, Los Angeles or Silicon Valley, but delivered to customers in West Virginia or Mississippi? Should these taxes cover only things like Hollywood films, software, and television programming, or would they extend to financial services, skateboards, and Tesla cars?
[/devil's advocate]
Several countries have successfully dumped products on our doorstep at below cost prices. They do this in order to bankrupt entire industries--textiles and steel being the most obvious. The product dumping is state-sponsored, and when the industries in our country have collapsed, then prices can rise and economies of scale can keep the offending country on top.
Last edited by olderguy; Aug 14, 2016 at 10:51 AM.
Reason: for clarity
Even with import taxes applied, there is still a diminishing returns effect. If we institute a import tax on all goods except those which we are incapable of producing domestically (large quantities of rare earth magnets and 100% blue agave tequila, for example), then wages and prices will eventually increase until it again becomes cost competitive to import domestically producible goods. This would allow the US economy to float above the global economy but only to a limited extent. The actual economic problem follows:
It is impossible for a freely trading country to ascend to this:
So long as much of the world is willing to live like this:
The challenge, then, is how do we as a country ascend to a "modern utopia" whilst hanging onto the anchor of the "free world"?
I believe you have it ***-backwards. The reality is, that the select few can live like in the top pic, as long as the vast majority are forced to work and live like in the second pic.
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