Here is my appeal of a violation I received for an answer I gave:
Dear Yahoo moderators,
When I stated in my answer that Yahoo staff were idiots, I meant no offense to idiots, per se. In fact, I think that it is admirable of Yahoo to employ these marginalized members of society and provide them with a livelihood in these difficult economic times. In my answer, I was simply referencing Yahoo’s exemplary unbiased hiring policies, that are among the best examples the job market can show as far as providing opportunity for the differently-abled. That Yahoo has such an overwhelming majority of staff falling in this category is by no means a mark against them; it is no less than heart-warming to see such compassion at work, that no matter what the detriment to the technical functioning of the site or the interaction between staff and site patron, Yahoo remains loyal to their staff. My keyboard is damp from my tears, I admit.
So, you can see that I meant nothing insulting to this neglected category of the workforce, but was only saluting Yahoo for its vision and compassion. Please restore my answer and points, and, if this is being reviewed by one such challenged individual, may I say God bless you, and please enjoy your bus ride home.
My appeal was DENIED!!! I do not understand why, given the clarity of my appeal, and how polite I was. Why was this turned down?!
How is it hate speech when I was complimenting Yahoo on their open-minded hiring policies?!
Thank you so much for sharing this. It’s likely that no human read this at all. Appeals are simply denied these days, if not ignored completely.
This is from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is international law and was signed by the US:
Article 22.
Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.
Article 23.
(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.
Article 24.
Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.
Article 25.
(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.
Article 26.
(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
What do you say?
Yes
Obama, and his quest to be a dictator – is a violation
Nation’s Budget: in shambles
Why: Low tax revenues, high spending, both related to the recession and looming demographic aging crisi
What to Do: Do what has to be done.
Problem #1: Low tax revenues
Solution: Raise top tax rate on rich to 70% and cut bottom tax rate on poor to 10%
Result: Higher tax revenues, as the majority of revenues come from a minority of top income earners, more than offsetting the cuts for the poor. Greater income equality, increasing marginal dollar utility by transferring income from rich to poor, therefore lifting total spending, boosting the economy.
Argument Against: This is the definition of socialism, depriving economic freedom.
Response: Economic freedom in a capitalist economy is an illusion, as people are forced to participate in employment, or die. The rich use this to exploit workers through unreasonably low wages. Higher taxes on the rich is just paying for the public services and benefits that they don’t pay workers enough to purchase on their own. The more money in the hands of workers can then be used to maintain low personal debt, further strengthening the foundation of the economy.
Problem #2: High spending
Solution: Narrow the number of people eligible for benefits by raising retirement age from 65 to 70, establish more requirements for eligibility , and cut early benefits 20%, and remaining benefits 10%. Change private healthcare system from treatment-based to preventative, through use of new technologies. End wars in Middle East, and and all open combat operations. Focus on domestic national security and sideline policing of foreign world.
Result: Cutting benefits reduces strain on Social Security system, preventive medicine costs less in the long-run than ongoing treatments, and drawing down active military operations cuts unnecessary war-based spending that most foreign countries don’t really want.
Argument Against: Politically impossible, technically unfeasable, and dangerous for world situation.
Response: Grow a pair, because the working/retired population ratio is shrinking fast, and somebody’s got to work to pay for it all, work TOGETHER and increase funding for R&D, and we simply don’t have the resources to maintain our empirical military dominance of the world, much to the dismay of foreign peoples. *sarcasm*
Problem #3: A Baby Boom generation of politicians who are short-sighted, and can’t agree on anything important.
Solution: Vote them out in 2012, and elect politicians who aren’t solely focused on the next election, with a complete disregard for long-term consequences, and understand that short-term pain is a small price to pay for a past of political and financial recklessness and a future of lasting prosperity.
Result: A better livelihood for our children and grandchildren.
Argument Against: Try and think of one.
Response: Whatever it is, it’s BS.
For those of you thinking I’m some political nutjob: I’m 16, and actually have a future I hope I can look forward to. Do the right thing.
I’ll take any responses.
I’d say that the first solution is somewhat simplistic, rich already contribute disproportionately to taxes and consumer spending, taxing them more would reduce consumer spending. Many people would also just relocate their money elsewhere where taxes are lower. I’d agree that taxes on the rich need to be raised to increase revenue, but 70% is somewhat extreme and I’d make it lower. I also don’t think making taxes lower for the poor is fair. A better way to increase revenue might to be put in place taxes, regulations that increase manufacturing.
I agree with number solution number 2.
That problem isn’t limited to baby boomers. You can’t tell me the average young person who loves MTV isn’t short-sighted. It’d be better just to get politicians who aren’t out of touch.
or be sensitive toward the rest of the British population who may be losing their livelihoods and who are facing financial hardship. I realise that they should not be made to feel responsible for the country’s economic plight but if they funded the whole occasion it may go some way to making us believe they care about our country’s predicament. Whats your thoughts people
Why should the tax payer pay for a lavish wedding for the already super wealthy Royals? We are suffering major cuts in services, increased taxes and severe financial hardship. It is like asking beggars on the street to donate their Big Issue money to fat people so they can feed their faces with junk food from McDonalds. An insult. They should fund the wedding themselves. Prince Charles takes millions from the Duchy of Cornwall – let him pay for it. Leave the poor tax payer alone. After all, it may end in divorce a few years from now just like his parents who had a lavish wedding at the expense of the tax payer. And if you think that is beyond the realms of possibility, just remember that this couple split up once already, even before they got engaged. That is surely a sign that things are not as perfect as the press and media would have you believe.
We’re gonna have to do a research on cultures. Not literally foreign cultures, just a culture different from my own. Could be of my neighbor. A friend. Someone. We have to do interview.
The topics suggested were:
Life stages (pregnancy/delivery/infancy/parenting/childhood/puberty/adulthood/old age/death)
Family Life (Family structure/family relationships/play and leisure)
Economic Life (Livelihood/consumption pattern/fashion)
Religion
So basically we have to choose (or make up our own) topic from the suggested things inside the parenthesis. Then we have to interview them, and then compare how their culture differs from my own.
For example, death. Different people would probably have different traditions, practices when someone passes away. And you also have your own way. You need to compare.
And this would be a lengthy paper, so I need a ”juicy” topic. Unfortunately I find most of these boring. Although Religion came to my mind, like, interview an atheist.
I think if you were doing Religion it would probably be more interesting to interview someone who’s religious. Just because they would have more to explain regarding their religion and culture, that’s just my thought though…
I think if you choose the right person/culture you can get some really "juicy" and interesting info with the topics that were suggested to you. You could find out how that culture views pop-culture topics like same-sex marriage, same-sex adoption, evolution, homosexuality, abortion, etc.
Well that, combined with stricter regulatory measures for the Mortgage and Derivative Products.
Anyway you cut it, we need to create new jobs here at home (instead of outsourcing our workers’ livelihoods to China and India), before realistically hoping for a lasting economic turnaround.
.
Yes, this would be a good way to revive the economy. The bazillions of dollars of ‘bail out’ money was a foolish waste. Bush and Obama spent 3 times more than was spent on FDR’s New Deal, that pulled the USA out the great depression by creating jobs building infastructure. The New Deal gave real working people real work building tangible infastructure such as roads, bridges, hospitals, schools, parks, ships, etc, etc. This improved infastructure, and thus the real wealth of the nation. The Bush-Obama ‘stimulus package’ pissed away bazillions of dollars on wall street speculators, bankers and financier’s who use the money for little more than commodity speculation to drive up prices, and on silly grants and social programs that discourage work, and produce nothing of any value or use. It would have been better if the fed threw money out of airplanes, to ‘stimulate’ the economy, at least that way there would not be government dis-incentives to work, or governmetn subsidized volitility and instability causing higher commodity prices.
In the 1930′s New Deal, tens of thousands of men were employed for a few dollars a week to build national parks, roads, pavilions, rest rooms, campsites, etc.. using hand tools such as shovels, saws and axes. In the 2010′s stimulus spending, tens of thousands of teens were paid several dollars an hour to roam around aimlessly in mobs around national parks with clipboards conducting surveys about deer ticks and the opinions of campers. See the difference? … the 1930′s plan created ‘real’ jobs that improved the infastructure that americans have enjoyed for 80 years; the 2010′s stimulus pisseed away money on ‘fake’ projects that created nothing of use or value, and serve only to annoy campers and others, and put tax money into the hands of the same greedy reckless financiers and speculators that caused the mortgage crisis, and the resulting recession and high unemployment that stripped the retirement, incomes and savings of US workers.
SE LA = provides our nation with 1/3 of our seafood. Thousands of people make their living in the Seafood industry and the greed of BP has ruined it for these poor people that have nothing to fall back on. They also ruined the Gulf and the vast marshlands of Louisiana. This problem will still be present when our children are old. Once the crude oil gets into the marshes (seafood breeding grounds), the marsh will die and so will the marine life and then the shore birds.
What an ecological and economic mess BP is responsible for.
BP officials are nothing but fat, greedy , pigs who couldn’t give a darn about the environment . Its not their front door so who cares. Not them obviously. Make them get in there physically and clean it up. Pigs.
How would you refute this argument? Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a challenge. I myself am neutral. It’s a request.
Part 1: "Education is NOT FREE, and never will be. You can pontificate about how no one should have to pay for it as much as you want, but it ultimately will not resolve the fact that the upkeep of schools, supplies, and educational research costs money. People will always have to pay for education, whether they do it through the market, or through government taxes. It’s only a question of who and how much.
1) What type of school system will provide the highest quality education at the lowest possible cost?
Without a doubt, without debate, without room for dissent, the economic system that will provide the best education at the lowest possible cost overall is a privatized, free market system. What this means is that rather than the government siphoning off your income for the funding of "public education," you as the consumer make a choice in the market with your own money about which school you would like to purchase services from, either for yourself or for your kids.
Reasons why this system is by a nearly infinite shot the most efficient:
- In public education, the income of school officials is not directly dependent on the performance of the school they are in charge of. Since the government forcibly collects and channels large amounts of money directly from tax payers to schools, the schools themselves have no direct incentive to use resources efficiently and strive for higher achievement. Now, obviously, the government can try to do things like impose state standards, and have a bureaucrat walk around once and a while and "check" the quality of a given school. Obviously, in extreme situations, even public employees can be fired. But the point stands that the economic livelihood of those who manage public schools is not dynamically dependent on the success of their school. In a private system, however, the relationship would be dynamic, because it would behave the same way as it does for a business in any other industry. A school that was not performing well would see a gradual decline in enrollment rates, leading to a direct loss of money to the school, leading to the shareholders electing a new principal-E-O.
- Competition in the market place mandates efficiency. Often people who think they disagree with this principle are actually disagreeing with something else, or are alienated by the fact that the "empirical evidence" doesn’t seem to support free-markets. Truth is, it does, and they’re wrong (Obama’s pathetic attempts to paint the Bush era as one of "laissez-fair capitalism" is one of the most dishonest acts of slander I have seen in a long time). Just think about it. If two schools are competing in the same area for students, then both of them have to perform at a certain level, or else risk being shut out of the market by their competitor. This system encourages both schools to find innovative ways to cut costs, and to look for creative solutions to problems. The overall result of this competition is that costs are lowered and quality increases. This principle works successfully in 99.9% of industries, so why should we assume it won’t apply to education? Education is not fundamentally a different type of commodity from anything else; it follows the same economic rules as any other service. People just instinctively resist treating it like a normal economic good because of all the "fundamental right" sentiment that is attached to it.
- The free market allows choice, which helps economic mobility enormously. Under the current system, people pay a lump sum of their annual income to the government, in exchange for the right to a public education, along with the requirement that they go to the public school in their "zone." While this seems like a reasonable way to manage the system, there are key problems with the "zones." For one, compulsory zones make students captive consumers, providing even less incentives for failing schools to improve the quality of their service. Once can easily imagine an anecdote about a dedicated student from a poor neighborhood, who, despite his significant economic disadvantages, has nevertheless transcended the circumstances in which he has been brought up and reached a high performance standard as a student. Under our current system, if this student lives in the ghetto, he is forbidden from taking the bus across town to the well-managed suburban school where his academic potential could be fully realized"
2) To what extent is education a "fundamental right" that people deserve regardless of their ability to pay for it? And if it IS a fundamental right, what is the best mechanism for providing it to the disadvantaged without disrupting the system we agreed is best in answering the first question?
While the free market is without a doubt the most efficient economic system, it is a legitimate charge to argue that it is not always the most just one. People who are born in significantly disadvantaged economic circumstances will indeed find it a challenge to move up substantially in the world within the span of their own lifetime.
So, is education a fundamental right? I personally still cling to traditional views of earned property, regardless of your disadvantages going into life, but I am highly sympathetic to the opposite perspective. What I am about to describe is a possible system that provides welfare to the less fortunate without tampering with the fundamental framework of a f
framework of a free market system.
One word: vouchers.
The government collects taxes, disproportionally from the rich. It then redistributes these taxes disproportionally to the poor, in the form of education vouchers. Let’s say these vouchers are for $10,000 dollars a year per person. These vouchers are now redeemable at any school as a contributor to the price of tuition. This way the poor have the resources to PURCHASE their education without disrupting the price mechanism of education in the market.
And it’s that simple. This avoids the public bureaucracy, and maintains the competitive forces that makes schools efficient, all the while allowing the disadvantaged to get opportunities-
That’s it. So, to all those who don’t agree with it (I already said I’m neutral), could you please refute it? I like to read people’s arguments, because it teaches you different ways of viewing issues. Thank you all!
In handing out vouchers, you’re increasing the demand for more expensive schools. This is because more people are now able to afford more expensive education. Because the privatization of schools would render school prices subject to basic free market principles, as the demand increases so does the price. Basically schools would just increase their prices. If you hand out $10,000 vouchers, the least expensive education would become $10,000. The $10,000 vouchers would then just be a waste of money (for the wealthier tax payers and the government that then has to eat the opportunity cost associated with distributing the vouchers). So now government is paying for absolutely nothing except the perpetuation of a system conducive to socio-economic inequity, and the average American would end up paying A LOT more for education then they do currently. You could institute a price ceiling, but then you’re using the same bureaucratic tactics you criticized earlier.
Granted the alQueida attack caused more loss of life; but the economic attack has caused more loss of livelihood
Also the dollar figure is greater in the economic attack
The WTC was a one off. The economic attack is on going. Its full effects will not be seen for a decade.
And it is not only the loss of livelihood, it is the psychological damage that accompanies it, to the worker and his/her whole family.
What were their means of livelihood back then [before their industrial revolution in USA]?
What were their means of livelihood back then?
*Back then refers to before the Industrial Revolution in the USA
Don’t you remember your American history?
The general answers seems to be that Americans, even in the colonial period, had the highest standard of living in the world.
Adam Smith noted that wages were higher and prices lower in the North American colonies:
"The wages of labour, however, are much higher in North America than in any part of England. In the province of New York, common labourers earn *23 three shillings and sixpence currency, equal to two shillings sterling, a day; ship carpenters, ten shillings and sixpence currency, with a pint of rum worth sixpence sterling, equal in all to six shillings and sixpence sterling; house carpenters and bricklayers, eight shillings currency, equal to four shillings and sixpence sterling; journeymen taylors, five shillings currency, equal to about two shillings and ten pence sterling. These prices are all above the London price; and wages are said to be as high in the other colonies as in New York. The price of provisions is every where in North America much lower than in England. A dearth has never been known there. In the worst seasons, they have always had a sufficiency for themselves, though less for exportation. If the money price of labour, therefore, be higher than it is any where in the mother country, its real price, the real command of the necessaries and conveniencies of life which it conveys to the labourer, must be higher in a still greater proportion."
Book I, Chapter 8, paragraph 22
