Friday, August 15, 2014

SAR #14225



Life is a series of first-person essays, most of which need editing.

Watts Happening? The militarized, out-of control cops in Ferguson, MO – and their KKK supporters – rather routinely not only shoot young blacks, they routinely harass journalists, shoot near (or at) and gas them. If this is how they treat journalists, imagine what it is like to be black there. Is there any reason to suspect that Ferguson is an aberration?

Quitters: Statoil, Norway's state-owned oil company, has joined the growing list of companies which have failed to find any of the purportedly immense bonanza of petroleum beneath the Barents Sea. There's always next year.

Water World: While ICCP and the media keep focusing on “by 2100” as though climate change suddenly ends then, it does not. If we do not act now to stop the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the two or three foot rise by the end of this century will become twelve to fifteen feet by 2200. But two things: 1) we do not care what happens 20 years from now, much less 200, and 2) we're not going to change. La.

Location, Location: In July, home sales in Southern California are down 12% year/year.

Liberal Bias: The right-wing American Enterprise Institute agrees with those lefties at the Economic Policy Institute in finding that cutting unemployment benefits did not boost employment in any way. Economists find that unemployment is driven by declines in aggregate demand, which could be mitigated by government stimulus programs.

Ooops: The good news on the employment front is that new claims for unemployment only went up 21,000 last week. Wait until the upward revision next week. 
 
Like! This: Facebook is tracking you on all your electronic devices – phones, pads, desktop computers – in order to identify what advertising you see prior to making a purchase. All the better to manipulate you. 
 
Socially Secured: Social Security turns 79 this year, and it is in excellent health. Social Security costs are not out of control. Costs are projected to rise from roughly five to six percent of GDP before leveling off. Americans across all political and demographic lines support higher Social Security taxes to close the projected shortfall. Taxing the earnings above $117,000 that are not taxed now is a preferred solution. Social Security costs are not a threat to our children and grandchildren, the for-profit private health insurance system is. Social Security began building up the trust fund in the early 1980s in anticipation of the Baby Boomers' retirement. The trust fund is projected to keep growing for another five years to almost $3 trillion. The average retirement benefit is $15,600 a year. It needs to be raised, significantly. Social Security is fully funded through 2033. After that it can continue to pay 75% of the promised benefits indefinitely. Not bad for an old geezer.

Preventive Marriage: The Southern Baptists are encouraging people to marry earlier in order to “prevent sexual sin” during sexual maturation. They did not suggest any particular age, but my own experience would suggest somewhere about 15. Just to prevent sin, mind you. 
 
Porn O'Graph: Democratic wastrels.

4 comments:

mistah charley, ph.d. said...

just a paragraph from the wikipedia article on 'marriageable age':

In France, until the French Revolution, the marriageable age was 12 years for girls and 14 for boys. Revolutionary legislation in 1792 increased the age to 13 years for girls and 15 for boys. Under the Napoleonic Code in 1804, the marriageable age was set at 15 years for girls and 18 for boys. In 2006, the marriageable age for girls was increased to 18, the same as for boys.

my personal reflections - i think it IS appropriate to have different ages for boys and girls

the revolutionary ages seem appropriate - napoleon's are too old

one would have to keep maturing while married - neurologically adolescence is from 12 to 24 - and the structures of education, work, social life, and childrearing would need some rearranging to be supportive

ensuring lifelong partnerships among those paired so young would be challenging

Charles Kingsley Michaelson, III said...

Seems to me the 'problem' with sex before marriage is confusing lust with love. That religion can't cope with the biological imperative says more about religion than biology. That the state or it's surrogates feel they need to regulate the unregulatable is the problem - not the urges of children who are physically mature before they are mentally mature.

Making pre-marital sex physically, biologically, and psychologically safe (or safer, anyway) instead of trying to control hormonal urges via guilt and shame and superstition would seem a far better approach.

kwark said...

RE "Preventative Marriage" The problem with sex before marriage is that we have chosen to ignore reality and define it as a problem. But marrying early is a great way to increase the divorce rate - that's it, it's really the divorce lawyers that are pushing this notion!

Blissex said...

«Social Security began building up the trust fund in the early 1980s in anticipation of the Baby Boomers' retirement. The trust fund is projected to keep growing for another five years to almost $3 trillion.
[ ... ] Social Security is fully funded through 2033.»

An interesting detail about this is that apparently this is only true if illegal immigrants continue to come to the USA (and remain illegal), as Joe Biden said.

The reason is that a large part of illegal immigrants are not paid in cash under the table, but they have regular jobs subject to tax witholding.

Thus they pay into social security when they give their employer other people's or fake social security numbers, but since they don't have a social security number of their own and anyhow because of their illegal status they are not entitled to get any social security payments they have contributed towards.

IIRC someone estimated that the social security trust fund would have already been depleted, or much sooner than 2033, if it were not for illegal immigrants paying in without getting anything back.