President Donald Trump

Needless to say, this joke would have worked a lot better if I had said I was just in Pattaya.

i'm for for nationalization of important things required to function

schools, roads, public transport, utilities, firemen, police, etc

but i've seen the ineptitude way too often when it's "other people's money"

like i love the national parks system, and it's something i champion a lot, but even after slashing their budget, they still have 1.4 billion

most of that money goes not to direct park initiatives and ranger salaries but rather consultancy firms

whenever you book a campsite from the national park online or on the app, the money goes directly to booze allen hamilton, the same firm snowden worked for iirc

1.4 billion is slightly less than the operating cost of wendy's corporation - let that sink in how wasteful government management is

but i still wouldn't want the parks privatized, rather be slowly bled then have it sold wholesale

Brother, the NPS is probably the single most successful agency in the entire government.

They serviced 350 million people last year, equal to the entire population of the united states, while profiting

What are you even talking about right now. The NPS budget is 5$ per person

nps is not profitable

Slowly bled, what a way to say it.
Some things in life aren't here to balance themselves financially.
In the end it's all a matter of how much do you want X or Y (in this exemple parks).

isn't food more important than all of the above?

ye it's called tradeoff. and we decide democratically.

Yes, so it's not absolutes?

I wouldn’t say it’s about importance, it’s about whether having a monopoly would make it more efficient, or if it’s a service we think everyone should have. Greatest example of this is the FAA. It just doesn’t make sense to have 40 companies do that.

We can debate the benefits of certain things being publicly owned and whether it should be a monopoly or a corporation that is run independently or some other arrangement.

The point I was trying to make is that nationalization is just a tool and I don’t give normative weight to nationalizing that would make me want to nationalize even if it was less efficient.

Within the limits of the constitution of the country you are discussing, no.

Otherwise you need to change the constitution first

yes it would be, i didn't include everything

to the extent at which gov takes command is hard to say and i'm not studied up on it to have a big opinion towards keeping it the same or reforming it but from my perspective it seems to be working

i do however get incredibly tilted whenever i see signs outside gas stations that only serve soda and potato chips that they accept food stamps - if you're on food stamps you shouldn't be allowed to buy things like mountain dew

more importantly, if you're on foodstamps, you shouldn't be wanting mountain dew - it underscores a fundamental flaw in the problem

How dare you tell someone what they can or cannot drink just because they are poor!

The best production of the U.S. was during slavery and when kids were working instead being at school .
Like trump said no hollydays , people should work 6 days a week , 12 hours a days , no insurance , no pension and no vacation .
Minimum wages too !
Was glorious time , people (and kids) were much happier back then .
We should go back to that time to make sure Marxism, leftism , socialist , never comes back again .
It’s so evil .

lol incredibly tilted.
Man you really are the guy that yells as soon as green light comes up.
You actually reminds me of this scene:

Food is more important yet civilized countries don't need to nationalize the food distribution system. Because as normal, competition works. Nationalization CAN be an option (which i detest, but i can see the rationale) for sectors without competition.

Btw i deeply disagree with limits about how to use welfare money. They just create useless attrition. To you really want the SNAP beneficiary to stay there and buy eligible items for other people getting cash back for that and then buy the soda? just accept they are going to buy bad stuff.

People keep having the same urges and needs everyone has even if they are poor. Worse than that: people who are poor have worse preferences and worse attitudes to life and worse behavioural pulsions, which is why they are poor even in a country like the USA where any normal person can be very well off.

In order to be poor in the USA you need to be a complete failure at life right? so if you are going to try to help them, you cannot forget what they are.

I think we’ve long arrived at the point where America is just an overflowing toilet and maga is the **** that rose to the top

the immigration and naturalization act forbids the naturalization of communists.

lying in your naturalization interview is ground for denaturalization.

if that guy had any communist sympathy at the time he got the American citizenship, that should be revoked as per the law.

I know people like you don't give a **** about the law but it still exists

Lucy is there anyone who will mourn you when you’re dead?

Mongo doesn’t count

Edit: also consider the content of your post before you make what will be your 72nd post in the politics subforum of a dying poker forum of the day and try to say as much as you can in a single post

Agree

as expected.

also...

viktor: the democrats did this!

And yet you don’t seem to think like that when it comes to “subsidies” universities….

i hear you, but the entire concept of food stamps is to force good behavior out of the poors - for example they can't use it for ready to eat sushi from the supermarket despite that it's 100x more responsible a purchase than a 6 pack of diet coke

being able to buy junk food and soda comes from the bureaucratic nightmare of properly enforcing it - it's easy to say no prepared food a la restaurants because they should be trying to purchase things efficiently and not just use it to dine out each night

so i see the issue with "if we ban soda then how do you define soda? if we ban beverages then that means people can't get needed milk or water (nightmare scenario being a family on foodstamps without access to drinking water not having any water - although i think they could show some 3rd world grit and tough it out filling up water bottles at public bathrooms and fountains as opposed to buying water) so they allow soda because they don't want to exclude water and milk

likewise, how do you allow say corn tortillas, but then draw the line at doritos?

and again, they allow redemption at convenience stores because there are probably a few families without vehicles and the only nearby place is a corner shop or gas station which also has some basic groceries available despite that most convenience stores don't have those

so i get it, they don't want to let people slip through the cracks - but then the ultimate result is only 78% of food stamps are redeemed at grocery stores and the rest spent inefficiently at higher markups and predominantly junk food like chips and soda

there needs to both be a mechanism for it to be allocated efficiently and for there to be enough disincentive that nobody would want to opt into a food stamp lifestyle and have that be a choice rather than the culmination of a series of unfortunate events - and unfortunately 13% of all americans are on food stamps - so there clearly is a bit of "lifestyle" factor in it because that means one of two things are happening - we're a society on the verge of collapse where one out of every 8 americans is too poor to survive without welfare or that we're a nation of freeloaders who exploit the fact that we don't want to leave anyone behind

i know a lot of people growing up who exploited government handouts - only working seasonal jobs or working off the books because they didn't want to have an official income large enough to get them booted off the program - i don't know enough to know to what level the amount of people on welfare are "faking it" but it's definitely greater than 0

We had this in the past. You'd get a coupon to redeem for bread, milk, peanut butter, etc. Staples that were calorie dense and cost-effective.

This was considered dehumanizing.

So now, instead of people throwing away excess milk and peanut butter, you have people sitting outside the grocery store selling their EBT for 50 cents on the dollar and buying gas station food.

I vote we bring back the prescribed foods and simply leverage the extensive delivery industry to distribute it all. Force people to sell their bread on facebook if they want to turn it into drugs.