Venezuelan President Survives Drone Assassination Attempt (cnn.com) 411
The Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, has survived an apparent assassination attempt involving drones that exploded close to him while he was speaking at an event in Caracas. State television showed Maduro abruptly cutting short his speech during a celebration of the National Guard's 81st anniversary. From a report: In a tweet, the president of Venezuela's National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello, called the incident at the military parade a "terrorist attack against the president and the high military command blaming the opposition for the violence." Venezuela's international government broadcaster, TeleSUR, said on Twitter that the Venezuelan government confirmed an attempted attack on Maduro. Venezuela's vice president for communications, Jorge Rodriguez, later addressed the nation on live TV at the request of Maduro. He said people heard explosions that corresponded to drones and heard drones detonate near a parade for the occasion.
Alleged Drone Assassination Attempt (Score:5, Insightful)
If it was an actual assassination attempt against the Venezuelan President is dubious, given there were at least two explosions and he was healthy enough to appear on live TV a couple hours later. How far away the explosions were from him was only vaguely referenced, but apparently was close enough to the parade that he thought they were fireworks. He was on a stage, which was presumably to the side of the parade's path. A few people supposedly responsible were arrested, so it's not like an anonymous attacker was controlling the drones (or they were, but a convenient patsy was arrested). That said, no evidence was given that drones were involved.
Assassination? Or Hoax? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll wager dollars to doughnuts that this is a hoax, staged to make Maduro into a sympathetic figure. The rate of inflation is approaching a million percent a year; they've just lopped five zeroes off the value of the currency. The Venezuelan people are fleeing across the border as fast as they can.
Anybody who could afford a drone has already left, and the first world nations don't care enough about South America to bother to assassinate him. Therefore: Probable hoax. He'll use this as a pretext to consolidate power and steal all the rest of the money.
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The drone in this case could have been a consumer-level device carrying an IED. There's no indication that it was a multi-million dollar Reaper or similar 'first-world' aircraft.
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Yeah... If the CIA wants someone dead, they probably wouldn't have missed. Besides, they are way more crafty in their ways of killing people... they would have made it look he died of food poisoning or a lone psychopath took him out.
Re: Assassination? Or Hoax? (Score:3)
Re:Assassination? Or Hoax? (Score:5, Informative)
I'll just share this fine catalogue of CIA competence:
https://www.nbcnews.com/storyl... [nbcnews.com]
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Like they haven't missed with Castro?
Re:Assassination? Or Hoax? (Score:4, Funny)
The drone in this case was most likely a propaganda-level device carrying a sympathy bomb.
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Considering he didn't offer any evidence of the attempt, I think you're correct this is a hoax.
There's still plenty of money to be had (Score:2, Insightful)
And if we're going to engage in conspiracy theories I wouldn't put it past the American CIA to arrange a hit. We've been attacking them economically for some time now (yeah, yeah, authoritarian regime and all that, talk to me about it when we stop doing business with the Chinese and the Saudis) so an overt attack wouldn't be out of cha
Re: There's still plenty of money to be had (Score:3, Insightful)
The simple truth is that centrally planned economies are not workable and that when you go around nationalizing businesses, no one wants to invest in setting up a company there. Add on currency
Straw that breaks the camel's back (Score:2)
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No one cares about Venezuela. It's a shithole. If someone kills this dear leader there are a hundred more waiting to take his place. He's not special. Eventually Socialism runs out of other people's money and this is the result. Enjoy.
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attempting to destabilize Venezuela
Obviously, that isn't necessary. But there comes a time when the country is destabilized enough, and enemies (including the CIA) start planning for what comes after the destabilization. "He's unpopular enough that we can kill him now" - not a smart thing to think, probably, but in issues like these CIA has a track record of being monumentally stupid, so it's not impossible.
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That's not how it works. Heads of state don't allow direct assassination of other heads of state, it's self preservation.
Supporting a coup, that's kosher.
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Re:Assassination? Or Hoax? (Score:5, Insightful)
...and the first world nations don't care enough about South America to bother to assassinate him
Translation: "I don't know enough about geopolitics - who does? - to really have any fucking clue who would or wouldn't want Maduro dead... but damn it sure is easy to send bold declarations like the above ripping forth from my asshole...
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Anybody who could afford a drone has already left, and the first world nations don't care enough about South America to bother to assassinate him. Therefore: Probable hoax. He'll use this as a pretext to consolidate power and steal all the rest of the money.
That is, unfortunately, not true. I have a good friend whose parents refuse to leave because they support Maduro even though things get worse and worse. The kids have all left the country, and the parents are getting by just fine, but the country is getting more and more dangerous as time goes on
Re:Assassination? Or Hoax? (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if not a deliberate fraud, accidental explosions can be turned into causes for war.
"Remember" the Maine" was a political response to an apparently accidental explosion on the USS Maine that helped trigger the Spanish Amercican War. The Reichstag fire in 1933 was used by the Nazi party to blame the Communist party in Germany, a vital part of their rise to power. The history of the modern Middle East is filled with the political results of bombings and _accusations_ of bombings and murders, some of them entirely fake.
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The quaint age of this expression is betrayed by the inflation charts...
And to allow him to properly crack down on what's left of the opposition...
This implies, there is some money left to be stolen. Unfortunately, Socialism is so bad, even the most equal comrades are still fairly poor compared to those suffering under KKKapitalism.
Re: Assassination? Or Hoax? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's funny how people just associate socialism and communism to any government not working out.
They are a democratic presidential republic like the US.... a failed one you can say that fell into dictatorship.... but that doesn't make them commies....
Democracies are not unfailable.... look at the US at the moment... look awefully close.... but I'm sure US will elect someone saner and things will be back to normal after the next election given the deeply ingrained democratic culture and education. That said if a few more populist elections happen .... US could go the way of Argentina...
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Re: Assassination? Or Hoax? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: Assassination? Or Hoax? (Score:4, Insightful)
Keep in mind that Trump is not promoting tariffs and trade wars--he is simply reacting to tariffs in other countries. The media conveniently forgets to mention that Trump has said he will sign a trade agreement tomorrow with any country that agrees to sign a bilateral agreement where both sides agree to lower tariffs to zero. That's his definition of free market. I disagree with him on a lot of things, but I agree with him on that.
Re: Assassination? Or Hoax? (Score:5, Informative)
he is simply reacting to tariffs in other countries. ... I don't see a big difference.
The EU has tariffs on US products in the range of 6%, the US has tariffs on EU products in the range of 4%
Jumping up and putting tariffs in the range of 20% on selected EU products makes no sense IMHO.
Re: Assassination? Or Hoax? (Score:5, Insightful)
50% higher tariffs aren't a big difference?
Maybe you should go back to school.
Re: Assassination? Or Hoax? (Score:4, Insightful)
Technically correct, factually irrelevant - due to the tiny difference between 4% and 6%.
What might be relevant is the amount of subsidies each 'nation' pays to their producers.
Got any stats on that?
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The US has been nickel and dimed by it's trading partners since WW2. Why is it fair for the EU to impose 6% while the US is only imposing 4%?
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This is true. The Chinese import technology, not products. As soon as they have the technology they don't need your products anymore. Access to markets in China is abysmal at best. Though, the US is not the only country facing this issue with China, and the US is not in a trade war "just" with China. All of the free market countries that would have unilaterally agreed with us going after China are now more likely to side with China in this war.
US, and us against the world is not a strategy. If Trum
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The difference is even smaller when it comes to the tariffs that US exporters actually paid in 2015 — a weighted average of 1.4 per cent on non-agricultural goods sold in the EU, and 2.1 per cent on non-agricultural exports to Canada. EU exporters to the US paid an average weighted tariff of 1.6 per cent; Canadian exporters 1.3 per cent.
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On the other hand are the subsidies that America has. How much government money is given to farmers?
US farmers [wikipedia.org] received about $172 billion in 2010. The EU is considering cutting its subsidies [reuters.com] down, by 2027, to $438 billion. Right now, it's about 3 times the US farm subsidies - and may "only" be 2.5 times that amount, in another 9 years.
With America it's like the playing field is never tilted enough in their favour.
Because it usually isn't. Your own request about farm subsidies shows as much.
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Yeah, it's not even alliterative. At least go for crooked Clinton. No, wait, it's ambiguous who you mean with that. Hateful Hillary?
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I just refer to them as "Billery".
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No, let them keep doing it. It makes it clear that they're aren't interested in any sort of intelligent response lets everyone know to ignore them.
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And yet all you're going to get is "Trump is doing great. Hillary would have been worse" no matter how improved their conversation skills are. That doesn't make for an interesting conversation.
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Re: Assassination? Or Hoax? (Score:3, Funny)
I tried saying "widely-known enemy if the working people, influence peddler, bribe solicitor, anti-freedom extremist, and paid agent of the Chinese intelligence services Hillary"... But it just didn't have the same ring to it.
Re: Assassination? Or Hoax? (Score:2)
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"Trump has done nothing good,"
Spoken like someone who doesn't have and IRA/401k.
And lets face it, a video of him doing a porn star in the Oval could be released today and if The Street is happy, he's reelected. We don't give a fuck about appearance anymore (listen to him:-) we care about results. He'll keep the bear market rocking and will be reelected and voted for by the people who whine about him.
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"bear market rocking"-- the BULL market.. my bad.
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"It's funny how people just associate socialism and communism to any government not working out."
That's because socialist and communist governments NEVER work out. Your pattern recognition abilities aren't too good, are they?
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Let's see.... USSR, Vietnam, N Korea, Laos, Cambodia, the whole Eastern Bloc, Zimbabwe, pre WW2 Germany China before they turned semi capitalistic. and now Venereal. He's right! They all worked out great and didn't kill, starve, and torture tens of millions of their own.
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It's funny how people just associate socialism and communism to any government not working out.
Perhaps because the socialists and commies, including Bernie Sanders, praised Venezuela back when oil prices were high, and only fell back on the standard lack-of-purity excuse when Venezuela ran out of OPM and the failure became obvious.
Socialism Flowchart [twimg.com]
Re: Assassination? Or Hoax? (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny how fans of socialism always proclaim "that wasn't socialism" every time it fails.
Re: Assassination? Or Hoax? (Score:4, Insightful)
As hard as it may be to understand, socialism is fundamentally a pretty vague concept and can be be implemented in a lot of different ways without the state control of the economy that has messed things up so badly in Venezuela.
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"That utpoic Socialism conversion isn't working out so great for them. But one more central-planning initiative is sure to fix it..."
It wasn't working for Chavez either, he just had better control by paying party members a stipend.The key word here is "work", which the majority of the Venezuelans don't. 1/3 of the of people earn their livings by thievery. They can't produce their own food and you have currency now that is so worthless that the largest domination bills aren't counted for trade, they'
Re: Assassination? Or Hoax? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Soviet Union showed that a planned economy is workable.....it just doesn't grow as quickly.
Laughable. The Soviet Union ended up dirt poor after decades of lying to each other about what was actually being accomplished. Lost the cold war simply by running out of money. Classic quote from the era: "we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us." What definition of "workable" is that?
Never mind the police state.
Re: Assassination? Or Hoax? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it was actually worse than that. The Soviet Union managed to miss educating its people for the current world's economy. That's why it is still centered on exploitation of mineral wealth. They still produce world class academics, but have no real way to get them into the economic life of the country. The West and Orient have figured out how via startup companies...well, China is rather using a sledgehammer here with their state owned companies, but they are not very efficient nor resourceful.
However, the worst thing the Soviet Union did to their people was make them reliant on the State. Putin needs to keep this charade up or he leads nothing. Too many of their people are susceptible to Kremlin propaganda. With no initiative of their own, they are also prey to the few oligarchs who have transitioned from state ownership to "private" ownership.
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Laughable. The Soviet Union ended up dirt poor ... What definition of "workable" is that?
Read some history. Or even just the Wikipedia page. While it ended up a mess, the Soviet had impressive economic success at first.
Beginning in 1928, the course of the Soviet Union's economy was guided by a series of five-year plans. By the 1950s, during the preceding few decades the Soviet Union had rapidly evolved from a mainly agrarian society into a major industrial power.[15] Its transformative capacity—what the White House National Security Council of the United States described as a "proven ability to carry backward countries speedily through the crisis of modernization and industrialization"—meant communism consistently appealed to the intellectuals of developing countries in Asia.[16] Impressive growth rates during the first three five-year plans (1928–1940) are particularly notable given that this period is nearly congruent with the Great Depression.[17] During this period, the Soviet Union encountered a rapid industrial growth while other regions were suffering from crisis.[18]
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"Simply by running out of money"? They had to match the military budget of the whole NATO - an organisation created by wealthy and summarily far more populous countries.
Re: Assassination? Or Hoax? (Score:5, Informative)
"We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us" is funny hyperbole.
It was not hyperbole in the slightest. Saw it with my own eyes.
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>It was not hyperbole in the slightest. Saw it with my own eyes.
Exactly. Screw the dumbass Western socialist idiots who have never experienced the idiocy of equalizing pay yet propose it with the foam in their mouths.
There are no formerly Soviet socialists. None left. The ones that left are either professionals or senile.
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Had nothing to do with that - otherwise the majority of the former soviet republics wouldn't have even less freedom nowadays than they had back then.
The state of the economy coupled with nationalist uprisings - that later became outright wars - were the factors that brought the USSR down.
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Ask, for example, the Turkmens again about their freedom.
Re:Um... you do know the USSR (Score:5, Interesting)
Germany and Japan were both really destroyed by WWII (they lost, were occupied, and Japan had been nuked) and they recovered within a couple of decades to become world class, dominant economic powers; by 1990 Japan had surpassed the Soviet Union despite much less population and far fewer natural resources. Well, make that, West Germany recovered; East Germany under a Soviet style government/economy didn't do so well. After what Japan went through in that war and their subsequent recovery, no one else can complain about starting over from a devastated country.
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Dude they own your president. That is as workable as anything gets....
Dude, read my post again and notice I that that it is about the Soviets. Russia 2 is about the mob and the corrupt kleptocracy. It's a do-over of the old Soviet police state apparatus, with mafia instead of communists this time. It does work somewhat better economically but is still terribly inefficient.
To distract the long suffering Russian citiizenry from their miserable economic state, Putin sets out on his foreign adventures. Yes, they did manage to put their man into the office of the presidency of the
Re: Assassination? Or Hoax? (Score:5, Insightful)
The example of Venezuela doesn't show the failure of central planning. A trained hamster could do a better job with central planning than Maduro does.
This is the with the right leader it would work! argument and it is complete bullshit.
Re: Assassination? Or Hoax? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it is the "Venezuela provably has the wrong leader" argument and if you can't see the difference, you are bullshit.
Better planners would only delay the inevitable coming collapse and prolong the Venezuelan people's suffering.
The problem with collectivist systems is base human nature. Collectivist systems must overcome base human nature to succeed, capitalist systems leverage & harness that same base human nature towards constructive ends.
All collectivist forms of government like socialism and communism are authoritarian by their very nature. The State tells people where they'll live, where they'll work, what work they'll do, how much money they will earn/receive, what sort and how much education they receive, what level medical care they will get, etc etc etc.
Anytime you put people in authority over others without unavoidable and direct consequences for abusing that authority, those people placed in authority will generally become increasingly authoritarian, capricious, corrupt, and cruel the longer the situation exists as was shown by Milgram's experiment.
Socialism and communism provide people with food, shelter, medical care, and work. We have an institution here in the US that provides the same things, but very few are willing to participate voluntarily.
We call it the prison system.
Strat
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Ok, so which planner made Hong Kong into an ultra rich city? Singapore?
I don't know about Hong Kong, but in Singapore it was Lee Kuan Yew.
Nope just a Drone with a Samsung (Score:5, Funny)
Note 7 being used as tv camera.
Wrong Weapon (Score:2)
Dolphins are still the preferred choice for bomb-carrying tasks. Far more reliable than drones, Teslas and Samsung phones that all tend to explode prematurely.
It's normal (Score:2)
Lack of details ... (Score:5, Informative)
Sounds that may be explosions were heard during his speech. That much cannot be disputed.
Maduro says right wing plot, Colombia president, yadda yadda ...
However, fire fighters on the scene said it is a gas tank explosion inside an apartment near where the speech was.
Neither side gave more details, and in this climate and culture of conspiracies, it is hard to get to the real facts.
Long version of the above on the BBC [bbc.com].
Also pictures on Twitter (Score:2)
What you are saying sounds more likely as there were pictures on Twitter of an apartment on fire.
The fact that no-one was killed and that a drone explosion would have been far away from a building if it was trying to get close to the president means that an apartment explosion makes way more sense.
Not gonna help (Score:2)
Killing Maduro today isn't going to fix Venezuela's agricultural self-sabotage and failure to diversify the economy from oil exports years ago under Chavez.
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Since we're quoting Bernie (Score:5, Informative)
His point was that 3 "Banana Republics" had more equally distributed wealth than what is ostensibly the Greatest Nation on Earth. He was right to point that out, but like all popular politicians fighting against the American oligarchy he's got to be careful how he says things least people take quotes out of context to smear him.
Re:Since we're quoting Bernie (Score:4, Insightful)
Yay! Now everybody makes nothing because the paper they print is worthless! Go equality?
Look, I want to take care of the entire world, I'd love it if we had a way to do that. I just don't want to see everyone pushed into poverty in the name of "equality." And maybe the Nordic states are managing on selling oil without corruption stealing that, but it's amazing how many experiments that attempt, but fail, to bring about True Socialism (TM) leave everyone starving.
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"People are fucking stupid creatures."
The bulk of Venuzuela's problems are not due to a lack of democracy. They seem to follow from years of foreign sanctions, bribes, manipulation of elections, and the increase in corruption that facilitates.
A large part of the opposition was going to lose the last elections by a big margin so they boycotted them claiming they were non democratic.
Big media reports lean heavily towards the opposition's narrative, hinting it's top down socialism that's the cause of Venuzuel
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Yes, and his point is correct: wealth inevitably produces inequality. A society has a choice between lifting everybody out of poverty but accepting inequality (US) or keeping everybody in abject poverty but with equality (socialist states). What socialists promise is that they can deliver US-style wealth with Venezula-style equality and that is an impossibility; some socialists de
Re:Since we're quoting Bernie (Score:4, Insightful)
So, in context, you're saying that the "American dream" is equal levels of poverty for all? Because that's what Sanders is promising in context.
You get your pick: wealth for all or equality for all. You cannot have wealth and equality for all: it's a logical impossibility.
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So, in context, you're saying that the "American dream" is equal levels of poverty for all? Because that's what Sanders is promising in context.
You get your pick: wealth for all or equality for all. You cannot have wealth and equality for all: it's a logical impossibility.
I saw what you did there. [wikipedia.org]
You know better.
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No, it's not a "false dilemma", it's an economic fact, both observed numerous times in reality and well understood theoretically: if you want to help poor people, you need to accept increasing economic inequality. On the other hand, if you adopt policies that decrease inequality, everybody ends up worse off; in particular, you make poor people worse off,
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You get your pick: wealth for all or equality for all. You cannot have wealth and equality for all: it's a logical impossibility.
You should reread what "logic" actually means.
And you should perhaps check how the world outside of the us works ... it is quite easy to have comfortable wealth and equality ... e.g. check Europe, especially Scandinavia, or Japan, Korea, and now emerging China.
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Nowhere did I say that you couldn't. You can make various tradeoffs between wealth and equality, and Europe has chosen to impoverish its citizens somewhat more in return for somewhat less inequality. But the fact remains: if you want to help the poorest members of society, you can only do that by increasing economic inequality.
So, the question you haven't answered is why you think it is a good idea to impoverish poor people further in order to reduce
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Well, let me try to put it another way.
When government takes from high income earners and gives to low income earners, everybody ends up poorer in the long run.
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Ok, lets do that check.
Sweden - https://www.thelocal.se/201702... [thelocal.se]
Norway - https://www.tnp.no/norway/econ... [www.tnp.no]
Japan - https://www.bloomberg.com/grap... [bloomberg.com]
Korea - http://english.hani.co.kr/arti... [hani.co.kr]
China - https://www.scmp.com/news/chin... [scmp.com]
Any more specious arguments you'd like to make?
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Northern European countries manage to provide everyone with a decent quality of life and relatively affluence, so that's demonstrably untrue.
An obsession with personal wealth is what causes inequality and poverty.
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French nobles did, indeed, exist in a zero-sum world: they enriched themselves by taking stuff from the poor.
We exist in a world that's closer to a free market; in a free market, people enrich themselves by providing value to society and lifting other people out of poverty.
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People in Northern European countries have less economic inequality than Americans, and they also have less wealth.
Less personal wealth, as in cash and assets. But they also have excellent healthcare, the kind that costs you a fortune in the US. They have the kind of society that you have to pay for a walled enclave or extremely expensive area to get in the US. Their state education systems are high quality, the kind of thing you pay handsomely for in the US.
The numbers for the US are misleading too, because of the massive wealth inequality. Take a look at these tables: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Earning over $200
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Yes, and if you're, say, a single mother and earn $0/year you still $20000 in disposable income in the US [cbo.gov]. That income is close to the median income for a single person in Germany. How about that?
Having come to the US with nothing, that's not my experience. I'd rather be poor in the US than be poor
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So, in context, you're saying that the "American dream" is equal levels of poverty for all? Because that's what Sanders is promising in context. You get your pick: wealth for all or equality for all. You cannot have wealth and equality for all: it's a logical impossibility.
Facepalm 1: What you just said is you can't pick wealth for all, some have to be poor.
Faceplan 2: The average moves, we're all richer than 100 years ago. Many of the things we have today didn't exist even for kings or Rockefellers.
We often define wealth in terms of luxuries and what other people can't have, in that sense there'll always be things in limited supply. There will always be shitty jobs that are last pick, at least until we automate everything. But everyone can have electricity, running hot and c
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I'm talking about absolute levels of poverty. It is meaningless to talk about relative of poverty vis-a-vis inequality, because relative poverty means the same thing as inequality.
So, what I said is that if the US followed Europe's example and tried to reduce inequality, then Americans, both rich and poor, would be worse off. Conversely, by adopting policies that reduce inequality, European countries make their citizens, both rich and
Um... sure you can (Score:4, Interesting)
The fear that comes from knowing that could be you is a big part of how our ruling class keeps the working class divided among themselves. You fight against single payer healthcare because you're afraid if the other guy has healthcare you won't get it. Only fear can make that work because it's been demonstrated multiple times that single payer healthcare works (Canada, Germany, France, all of Scandinavia, I could go on...).
Money is not necessarily power. It only becomes power when you can force someone to do something they otherwise would never consider doing. That's not fixing your plumbing. That's going to Afghanistan to fight for an oil pipeline we didn't need.
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I'd rather stab my penis with an icepick - lengthwise through the opening than live under "socialism"
You'd be hard-pressed to find a country on earth that doesn't have some kind of socialistic policy, even if it's military, police, or firefighting.
Good luck with your icepick fetish. Count me out.
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Good luck with your icepick fetish. Count me out.
Count me out too!! However I have a friend who used to do ice climbing (frozen waterfalls and stuff like this), probably he sells his picks for a reasonable price?
Assassination Attempt Or Accident? (Score:5, Interesting)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/04/venezuelan-president-nicolasmaduro-cuts-short-speech-panic-amid/ [telegraph.co.uk]
Re: Assassination Attempt Or Accident? (Score:2)
Well obviously the drones blew up the gas tank by accident. It was an honest mistake; Maduro is himself quite a gas bag ...
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Maduro says it was an assassination attempt by drones, BUT firefighters say a gas tank in an apartment exploded. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/04/venezuelan-president-nicolasmaduro-cuts-short-speech-panic-amid/ [telegraph.co.uk]
The first thing I thought when I heard this story was that it would have to be a large drone to carry much explosive power, and would need to get quite close to the person to pose much danger. Not something you'd be surprised by. Something definitely didn't make sense.
The media is in too much of a hurry to report than to think about it.
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better luck next time to rid the earth if this scum
Missed him by that much! We'll try again.
Dammit, I already need more shoe fax paper.
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Re: too bad (Score:4, Insightful)
The bombing might be fake. ...
The news is not
Re: too bad (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: too bad (Score:5, Informative)
Even if Maduro died tomorrow, the Army is controlled by the Chavistas, and those generals have a vested interest in making sure the regime stays afloat (they're as corrupt as hell and a new government would almost certainly lock them up). Killing Maduro would probably makes things worse since the Chavistas would both be able to blame the US and simultaneously lock up opposition leaders. The best that can happen is a revolution coupled with a colonels revolt or coup. At that point the Chavistas would probably flee the country with suitcases filled with gold and US currency.