cognisonance

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Posts by cognisonance

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  41

  The dumest thing an elder ever said to me..

  by new hope and happiness in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  conversation with an elder...i said " did you watch due south yesterday" and he said " ive got far more important things to do".

  i mean that comment of his got me to thinking and wondering, and made me see he was missing out on living..and i think that comment was the straw that broke this boys faith, and started my i dont want to be a witness anymore.

  kind of wierd how a simple question opened my eyes.. and now as i write this i am watching " the rebel" a 1950s western series, and its great and its even better my 9 year old is watching with me..and there is nothing more important than being happy.. .

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  cognisonance

  For me it was this when I said I had doubts about the teachings rejecting evolution:

  Well even the "world" has the creation museum in Kentucky, so this shows that we aren't alone in thinking evolution did not occur...

  
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  4

  I don't want to be right!

  by cognisonance in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  or judging by the url, the alternate title would have been: why do people persist in believing things that just arent true?.

  key snippets:.

  one thing he learned early on is that not all errors are created equal.

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  cognisonance

  Or judging by the URL, the alternate title would have been: Why do people persist in believing things that just arent true?

  Key snippets:

  One thing he learned early on is that not all errors are created equal. Not all false information goes on to become a false belief—that is, a more lasting state of incorrect knowledge—and not all false beliefs are difficult to correct. Take astronomy. If someone asked you to explain the relationship between the Earth and the sun, you might say something wrong: perhaps that the sun rotates around the Earth, rising in the east and setting in the west. A friend who understands astronomy may correct you. It’s no big deal; you simply change your belief.

  But imagine living in the time of Galileo, when understandings of the Earth-sun relationship were completely different, and when that view was tied closely to ideas of the nature of the world, the self, and religion. What would happen if Galileo tried to correct your belief? The process isn’t nearly as simple. The crucial difference between then and now, of course, is the importance of the misperception. When there’s no immediate threat to our understanding of the world, we change our beliefs. It’s when that change contradicts something we’ve long held as important that problems occur.

  The campaign against smoking is one of the most successful public-interest fact-checking operations in history. But, if smoking were just for Republicans or Democrats, change would have been far more unlikely. It’s only after ideology is put to the side that a message itself can change, so that it becomes decoupled from notions of self-perception.
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  25

  How *exactly* you and your income are being affected by inequality.

  by cognisonance in

  1. social
  2. current

  i found this link really interesting: inequality.is and associated with the excellent robert reich documentary: inequality for all.. .

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  cognisonance

  Why are people mad when other people work really really hard and are sucessful ?

  No one is mad that people work hard and reap the benefits of their hard work. People are upset about the inequality that exists becuase of factors beyond their control (e.g. luck, rigged policies that benefit the wealthy and corporations at the expense of the poor and middle class, lack of actual equal oppurtunity, corruption, etc).

  The weathy aren't were they are just beacuse they worked "really really hard." Many a poor person also works "really really hard" and doesn't obtain the same success. Again this is due to factors beyond their control, not their work eithic or abilities. True some people don't work hard and these types are not limited to just the poor. Likewise, some wealthy individuals inherited their money, not earn it.
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  25

  How *exactly* you and your income are being affected by inequality.

  by cognisonance in

  1. social
  2. current

  i found this link really interesting: inequality.is and associated with the excellent robert reich documentary: inequality for all.. .

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  cognisonance

  If you tax the top earners too much, who is going to open the new businesses to employ people? Read Atlas Shrugged.

  I don't think concepts like rational self-interests that objectivism and libertarianism tout works (we humans are often irrational).

  But instead of exhanging opinions I'll ask you this:

  • You are implying that few (none?) will be willing to open businesses and employ people if top earners were taxed "too much" (if by too much we mean 1950s levels). Well who then opened businesses and employed people in the 1950s?

  It isn't business owners that "create jobs." It's the middle class and poor that are the job creators as they create the demand. When they have healthy income levels they fuel the economy. Supress the poor and middle class, then there is less people able to purchase the products and services that businesses provide. A healthy middle class and poor is a healthy economy.
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  25

  How *exactly* you and your income are being affected by inequality.

  by cognisonance in

  1. social
  2. current

  i found this link really interesting: inequality.is and associated with the excellent robert reich documentary: inequality for all.. .

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  cognisonance

  Typo: Meant $6,000,000 not $2 million rather...

  we need better wages for the middle class?

  we need unions to have a stronger say in the workforce.

  Yes he was suggesting this.

  Some of the suggestions (including taxes, so sorry about that, he did mention that, at least on the website) can be found here:

  http://inequality.is/fixable
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  25

  How *exactly* you and your income are being affected by inequality.

  by cognisonance in

  1. social
  2. current

  i found this link really interesting: inequality.is and associated with the excellent robert reich documentary: inequality for all.. .

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  cognisonance

  The thesis of Robert Reich's idea isn't that the US become socialistic like the scandinavian countries. Rather that our economic polices return to what they were in the 1950s.

  As regards taxing the top earners much higher... I don't think this was mentioned in Reich's documentary directly as I don't think it was one of the economic polices he was talking about (I'd have to watch it again). But nonetheless, and as an aside, taxing people more who make an enormous amount of money (like 1000x as much), where is the problem with that? It's not like it is causing any hardship. Consider two situations:

  Person A Makes $40,000. He's in what, the 15% tax bracket (after factoring in deductions).

  Person B Makes $30,000,000. He's in the 39.6% Tax bracket (assuming this is income, if it isn't it's mostly capital gains at 15% (I believe this was 25% in the 1950s)

  After standard deduction and person exemption Person A's AGI would be around $30,000. His effective tax rate around 13.5%

  He is left with a tax burden of $4050. So he has $35,950 (well not really after state, local, payrolltaxes, but let's ignore those).

  Person B Subtract the standard deduction and personal exemption (which is a gross simplifation because he will likely be able to write off a lot more in tax deductions by itemizing...) His tax burden is ($30,000,000 - 10,000) * 39.6% (just took the top rate as the effective rate will skew close to this): $11.9 Million. After taxes he still has $18.1 Million.

  So what happens if person A actually made $30 Million in income (or let's say capital gains too if it was taxed just as high) and had to pay 80% in taxes? He'd have a tax burden of 24 Million true, but he still would have $2,000,000.

  Now yes he paid most of what he earned in taxes, but please explain to me how he is not living very very very very well off on a "paltry" $2 million?

  Person A, most of his income will go to expenses. Person B, a fraction of his income goes to expenses and stimulating the economy. Most of it he will end up locking away in savings. You can only buy so much house, car, clothes, food before you have enough.

  I don't see why that would impose any hardship on the super wealthy.
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  25

  How *exactly* you and your income are being affected by inequality.

  by cognisonance in

  1. social
  2. current

  i found this link really interesting: inequality.is and associated with the excellent robert reich documentary: inequality for all.. .

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  cognisonance

  How does one "bail out?"

  With a cult you can just walk away (though at the cost of your family and friends).

  With an economic system you are forced to participate in... what option do you have to "bail out?" Unless you mean move. I suppose I could move to Denmark, Sweden, or Norway. But that is rather difficult to do. The mere fact that those countries have significantly less income inequality shows that change isn't impossibe:

  
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  25

  How *exactly* you and your income are being affected by inequality.

  by cognisonance in

  1. social
  2. current

  i found this link really interesting: inequality.is and associated with the excellent robert reich documentary: inequality for all.. .

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  cognisonance

  It's called internet attention span. Once it is past page two, it's old news and nobody will find it. There was a college thread today.

  That I can understand, my comment was more about this thread, where it didn't even get to make it to page 2 .
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  25

  How *exactly* you and your income are being affected by inequality.

  by cognisonance in

  1. social
  2. current

  i found this link really interesting: inequality.is and associated with the excellent robert reich documentary: inequality for all.. .

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  cognisonance

  Two months and no public replies? After bringing this topic up today on a thread regarding the cost and return on investment of college, I wanted to see if anyone replied to my old dedicated thread on inequality. Really? No one is interested in having a discussion on how to solve this problem?

  I would have thought that talking to a group of people that have been oppressed by a cult would be interested in how we are also being oppressed by many of the current economic polices in play in the US (and other countries that have a similar system).
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  22

  Is College Worth It? Clearly, New Data Say...

  by NewYork44M in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  a new set of income statistics answers those questions quite clearly: yes, college is worth it, and its not even close.

  for all the struggles that many young college graduates face, a four-year degree has probably never been more valuable.. here is the article from the new york times:.

  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/upshot/is-college-worth-it-clearly-new-data-say.html?hp.

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  cognisonance

  There are certain courses that REQUIRE classes that you really don't need for what you want to learn.

  I totally emphathize. I used to feel that way too.... Why exactly do I need to take an anthropology class to be a computer programmer? This was until I realized that liberal arts education helps people build the reasoning and critical thinking skills that will help them make decisions in all aspects of their lives, not just the career they wish to pursue. Education is not a synonymn for Job Training. It's more than that. Additionally, the reasoning and critical thinking skills, the ability to view things from different perspectives, helps people find novel solutions to problems, something that doesn't necessarily happen when eduction is merely about how to perform a task (such as programming a computer).

  I opted to take a terminal associates degree that had more computer science classes and less "fluff" as I called it back then. I'm now regretting that choice and am taking those "fluff" classes now. Back then I thought, why waste my time taking calculus and biology. What do they have to do with programming I thought... Of course if you want to figure out how to program computers to research cures for diseases or to deal with the mass amount of biological data we have acess to today, I guess these are just fluff classes too.

  I see so many young people in debt and they are Baristas at Starbucks.

  Fair enough, but this is anecdotal evidence, not statistical. I'm sure there are many more workers at Starbucks that don't have a college degree.

  College is a HUGE business.

  Yep. Sure is. And is why I would like to see the trend to capitalize it even more reversed and be something that all citizens can utilize if they choose to for free, or at least a reasonable cost.