Maggie's FarmWe are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for. |
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Monday, April 8. 2013Monday morning linksPhoto: Dunkin Donuts wedding cake (via Laughing Squid) Princeton gals: It's about class, not feminism Medicate Your Children to Guarantee Compliance Should the Modern Man Be Taking Testosterone? Testosterone deficiency is exceedingly less common than Fascinating Documentary About Kasparov vs. Deep Blue MSNBC — All your children are belong to us "The Meritocracy As We Know It Mostly Works To Perpetuate the Existing Upper Class" Getting a liberal arts PhD will turn you into a train wreck Teamsters Face Pension Meltdown Kentucky’s Runaway Pensions - Nonprofit groups have been living well off the taxpayer, too. Democrats Starting to Worry about ObamaCare Here Comes Obama's Raid On YOUR Retirement War on Poverty: Despite the $15 trillion U.S. taxpayers have spent since the war on Delingpole: An English class for trolls, professional offence-takers and climate activists Jobs Report? What Jobs Report? Hey Look, Gay Marriage!
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First off, how would a liberal arts Ph.D. know that they've turned into a train wreck? Have they ever seen one? It's given they have no experience "doing the math" on one. So really, it is just something they've read about in books.
However, I read untold numbers of essays on how the liberal arts degree is not to give you mundane job skills or improve your employability but rather an education. Yet, here is another in a long line of fully edumedicated liberal arts graduates griping about not being able to find a job or low expectation of lifetime wages. Really, they got their education, they were able to look down their long noses at the plebeian STEM students who were developing economically-useful skills, but now, they complain when reality sweeps over them and it turns out the family estate is not going to keep them in the manner to which they've become accustom. Time was when the offspring of the upper class could find passage to some distant outpost in the Empire to seek their personal fortunes, but that did entail leaving the Capitol and the smart dinner parties. Sadly, and due to no small part of the liberal arts majors, the Empire is no more and so fortune if it is possible must be sought among the tenements and in the, dare we say, Midwest and Southern provinces. QUOTE: James Delingpole: An English class for trolls, professional offence-takers and climate activists We're not saying Delingpole is a beslubbering, milk-livered canker-blossom. Should he be fed to the crocodiles, hanged by the neck, given the electric chair? Does he run bloody well near a pedophile ring? We're just asking questions here. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/25/stephen-colbert-fox-news-libya_n_2016188.html Take your meds, let some fresh air into the room, and come back when you're sober.
The "we" is an inadvertent admission that the comments are coming from not a single Zachriel, but from a team of Zachriels. Call them The Z-Team. I do, or better said DID, as I decided to stop spending time replying to the inanities of The Z-Team. Let others take up the burden, if they so desire.
I've got to say that our vitriolic contemporary political discourse would be much less aggravating if the swearing and invective was more interesting.
Yes, gripping proof of the decline of the Liberal Arts is the dearth of the erudite takedowns of days past.
Perhaps we are become a feudal system? QUOTE: Lancre operated on the feudal system, which was to say, everyone feuded all the time and handed on the fight to their descendants. -- (Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum) I think you need the subjunctive mode.
regardless, forums like MF encourage creative and adult forms of invective, abuse and condescension. for this we should thank the gods. PROTIP: Zach, no one in this century uses "beslubbering". my beagle would bitchslap you stupid if he heard you say it. OT, but it's a great day to quote Mrs. Thatcher. There's something to fit all of our present day social and political problems in her collected wit and wisdom:
Appropos, the Speaker of the House: "The trouble with you John, is that your spine does not reach your brain." Addressing Democrats, confused as to why spending at the national level does not help poor people: "They are casting their problems at society. And, you know, there's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours." And, finally, a cautionary word to all would-be Congressional "statesmen", like John McCain and his ilk: "To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects." Testosterone: You mean they're lying to me to sell me something? Those bastards!
Meritocracy: The feminists are fighting to level out our society. Maybe there is something good we can say about them. Teamster pensions: Stolen by their union leaders and apparatchiks. Kentucky pensions: NGO parasites sucked the blood, too. Benghazi Barry's raid on retirement funds: Soon everyone will the the rich whose money is stolen. "Under the plan, a taxpayer’s tax-preferred retirement account, like an IRA, could not finance more than $205,000 per year of retirement – or right around $3 million this year."
It's not clear what the last phrase ("around $3M this year") means, it's so poorly written. Nonetheless, this idea of limiting what people can put away for retirement is crudely punitive and otherwise makes little sense because the federal income taxes on retirement savings like IRA accounts are only deferred, not avoided. In fact, the tax rates on the eventual, mandatory withdrawals from retirement accounts are at less-favorable ordinary rates rather than the much lower capital gains rates that apply to long-term investments...which is one reason why traditional IRAs are not the right choice for everyone who's saving for retirement. It would make at least some sense if the Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) tables from the IRS were modified in order to speed up the timing and amount of the mandatory annual withdrawals from retirement accounts, but a subtle technical change like that doesn't give Obama the chance to make a big thing of flogging the many successful people he hates. As someone who is retired and had both a regular and a Roth IRA, a 401k, a 403b and savings/cds for my retirement; I'm not sure limiting an IRA to a million or 3 is all that restrictive. When you are 40 saving a few dollars with an IRA seems really smart and like you are beating the IRS. But when the time comes to withdraw it the IRS gets the last laugh and the larger the IRA value/withdrawal the louder the laugh. You will indeed pay the taxes and if the IRA is in the millions the IRS cut will be quite large. The government just might be doing you a favor to disabuse you of the belief that your IRA will save you taxes. (Of course everything changes if you die before the IRA begins disbursement and that is a different story.)
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