Global Warming - Fact or fiction?

[jjp]

I have worked hard to put myself through school and to get a good job so that I can take care of myself and everyone else has the same opportunity!

That is a fundamental difference in view then. In practice opportunities are not equal. You can't choose the circumstances you are born into. If your parents are poor your chances of remaining poor are a lot higher than if your parents are rich. And as stated by someone else already that is more the case for the USA than for many other countries with less theoretical freedom, on a side note this so called "social-mobility" for example isn't very great in Germany as well because of how the educational system is organized.

Working hard is not enough, you need a certain amount of luck as well and the chances for success are not equal.

[CABAListic]

Doens't that lead to everyone paying more? I mean if there are people who can't afford it then the ones that can have to make up the difference, so they have to pay more and the ones that couldn't afford it before have to pay now, so they end up paying more too! I just don't like the idea of having to pay for something so that someone else will be taken care of. I have worked hard to put myself through school and to get a good job so that I can take care of myself and everyone else has the same opportunity!

Then you have profited from the society already, as schools, universities etc. are usually social institutions (and need to be cause otherwise the owner could select who is given permission to enter and who isn't). You have probably used public means of travel or car routes, all of which are financed by the state via taxes. For your use of these public services you pay back a (more or less reasonable) amount of your income. Taxes are a fundamental example of solidarity, and really, social health care is not any different from that.

Consider what happens if someone has no health insurance and now actually needs a costly operation. For matters of morality you can't deny it to him, no matter if he can pay it or not. If he really can't pay it, ultimately someone else will, which is usually society. Isn't it then better to back it up from the beginning?

[warmi]

Taxes are a fundamental example of solidarity, and really, social health care is not any different from that.

No they are not.
Taxes are commonly understood as a necessary evil that should be kept to minimum required to keep a society going.
And this is not just the American view for it is common across different cultures - there are plenty of people in Europe who will use all legally available means to avoid paying taxes.

The problem with taxation is that it tends to take away money from people who have personal investment in making sure that their money is being spent wisely and puts into hands of people who generally lack this sort of motivation.
It is never a good thing - there are some problems which are only solvable by common taxation and the risk of money being wasted is outweighed by the benefit but these are rare.

[CaseyB]

In practice opportunities are not equal. You can't choose the circumstances you are born into. If your parents are poor your chances of remaining poor are a lot higher than if your parents are rich.

I completely disagree! My parents didn't have any money and school here is VERY expensive! I worked the whole time I was in University, sometimes two or three jobs to pay my tuition. Even that didn't cover it so I took out a loan and when I graduated I still owed $40,000 which I am in the process of paying back. That was the trade off and as a reward I have a much better standard of living than my parents had at my age! This is a flaw in your follow up post about universities being social institutions. In the US they are not, they are a business and you pay dearly for a degree! As I said there, there are jobs here to help pay tuition and there are banks that are willing to loan you money! Nothing is free, but nothing is impossible!

[jjp]

In practice opportunities are not equal. You can't choose the circumstances you are born into. If your parents are poor your chances of remaining poor are a lot higher than if your parents are rich.

I completely disagree! My parents didn't have any money and school here is VERY expensive!

I didn't say it was impossible, I just said that statistically speaking your chances for success depend by a large degree on how wealthy your parents are. Or don't you think for example it is unfair that others - unlike you - don't have to take jobs and a loan to go to university because their parents can pay for them?

I do pay a very moderate amount for studying at a renown university. And I have the freedom to decide if I want to concentrate 100% on my studies, take a job or even spend time working on projects that don't get me any money at all and also don't gain me anything at university but still add to my education. I would not have this freedom if it wasn't for solidary systems. In turn of course what I am gonna pay in taxes should offer the next generation the same freedom I am enjoying right now.

[FrameFever]

Even that didn't cover it so I took out a loan and when I graduated I still owed $40,000 which I am in the process of paying back.

Did you study in Yale?

Here in Germany I have to pay 30€ for a semester.

[CABAListic]

In practice opportunities are not equal. You can't choose the circumstances you are born into. If your parents are poor your chances of remaining poor are a lot higher than if your parents are rich.

I completely disagree! My parents didn't have any money and school here is VERY expensive! I worked the whole time I was in University, sometimes two or three jobs to pay my tuition. Even that didn't cover it so I took out a loan and when I graduated I still owed $40,000 which I am in the process of paying back. That was the trade off and as a reward I have a much better standard of living than my parents had at my age! This is a flaw in your follow up post about universities being social institutions. In the US they are not, they are a business and you pay dearly for a degree! As I said there, there are jobs here to help pay tuition and there are banks that are willing to loan you money! Nothing is free, but nothing is impossible!

What if you had been physically disabled? Could you still have done all the jobs you took for your education?
Besides, even with your situation, you have clearly not had equal chances to a student with rich parents. That one would not have had to work at all and could have concentrated fully on his studies (though, if that had made him a better or worse student is questionable). He would not have had to pay off a loan after graduation, giving him another headstart over you for which he has not done anything at all, quite in contrast to you.

I do admire you for what you achieved, but it's still far from general. For example, you do need a certain amount of help from your parents. The early childhood is the phase where the human brain builds much of the foundation for its later achievements, and if you did not receive adequate stimulation from your parents (which you have little influence on), then you will have an extremely difficult time learning some things later on. Plus a lot of poor families expect their children to work as soon as possible to acquire income for the family, there is no time for them to work for higher education.

Saying a person is solely responsible for his fate may be right in many cases, but overall I consider it ignorant and arrogant (I didn't even mention Birmanese people or the likes...).

[warmi]

Here in Germany I have to pay 30€ for a semester.

No you are not.

You will be paying for your education till the day you retire.
Just like someone was paying for yours ...

Is it a better system ? Perhaps .. .but don't kid yourself that 30 is all you paying for this.

In fact, had your choice been not to go to college you would still pay for it.

[jjp]

You will be paying for your education till the day you retire.
Just like someone was paying for yours ...

Well, wether you study or not - indirectly there is a gain for everyone from the education of others.

[KungFooMasta]

CABAListic, are you suggesting that physically disabled people cannot have a good education and a job? Everybody has problems, its ultimately up to the individual to make due with what he/she has. The only limit is yourself. You can sit around and blame outside influences for all your problems, but it doesn't get anywhere.

[jjp]

CABAListic, are you suggesting that physically disabled people cannot have a good education and a job?

Physically disabled, intelligent, no money but because of the condition not able to finance studies via a job. In that case you have to hope for charity on a case-to-case basis. Solidarity systems take care of situations like this "automatically". No one is talking about blaming your surroundings for your problems. That doesn't get you anywhere at any place in the world.

[CaseyB]

Did you study in Yale?

Not even close!! I went to a school called DeVry, it's actually a chain, believe it or not!

What if you had been physically disabled? Could you still have done all the jobs you took for your education?

They would have been different jobs, but I could have done some jobs.

[CABAListic]

CABAListic, are you suggesting that physically disabled people cannot have a good education and a job? Everybody has problems, its ultimately up to the individual to make due with what he/she has. The only limit is yourself. You can sit around and blame outside influences for all your problems, but it doesn't get anywhere.

Not at all. Actually, most disabled people I hear from (don't know any personally, sadly) are very resourceful guys. Still, it does limit their possibilities. Many of the jobs offered here for students to finance their studies are jobs as bartenders and similar which are not available to them.

To sum it up, if you believe that everyone should be exactly where he's worked himself to, then you should be interested in equalising the starting point. Otherwise, the competition is simply not fair.

[Kencho]

Did you study in Yale?

Not even close!! I went to a school called DeVry, it's actually a chain, believe it or not!

Sorry if this is just some lack of language knowledge, but you refer to "chain" like McDonalds or Starbucks? I think there are joint ventures between institutes, universities and colleges here, where you can have certain advantages when moving from one to the other, but a chain? I can't even guess how that would work, in an educational way, that is

Being disabled only offers you two chances: Tear down and be depressed and "surviving" for the rest of your life, or be a lively person with will to overcome the handicaps (that are there, no matter how "accessible" we try to do everything). I know a few from the second group, and they certainly are resourceful (I know -but not in person- a tetraplegic digital painter!), and always help me thank for the barriers I don't have and empowering me to take advantage of all my capabilities.

[CaseyB]

Many of the jobs offered here for students to finance their studies are jobs as bartenders and similar which are not available to them.

I worked at an electronics company where I sat at a table and tested circuit boards, a software development firm where I moved around Java GUI components and a Funeral Home. Really the Funeral Home is the only job I could not have done from a wheel chair

To sum it up, if you believe that everyone should be exactly where he's worked himself to, then you should be interested in equalising the starting point. Otherwise, the competition is simply not fair.

Real life is not fair!

[warmi]

Solidarity systems take care of situations like this "automatically".

Actually it is very easy to make a case that this sort of solidarity system goes against everything socialism is supposed to stand for.

Imagine this scenario:

A guy in Germany wants to go to college. So off he goes , after X number of years he becomes an engineer and starts earning a good salary.
His education was financed by all working citizens , majority of whom never went to college.
So you have another guy who never went to college , he is a janitor and makes a lot less money, yet he is expected to shell out part of his salary so some other guy can enjoy his dream.

In the end we have a scenario where people who have much lower earning potential, financing others who will end up making a lot more money than they ever will.

Now look at what happens on the other side of the pond.

A guy wants to go to college so he gets himself a loan to finance his college education.
After X number of years he, just like that guy in Germany, becomes an engineer and starts making a lot of money.
He himself pays of his loan without having a local janitor contributing a cent.

So in the end both guys had a chance to become an engineer , except the guy in US did that without forcing the poorest among the society to contribute to his success without them getting anything in return.

Now , tell me which system is more just and spreads the costs of education in a more logical manner ?

[CaseyB]

Sorry if this is just some lack of language knowledge, but you refer to "chain" like McDonalds or Starbucks?

Yup, exactly like McDonald's or Starbucks! There are "branches" all over the US and the curriculum is consistent across all of them, so it doesn't really matter which branch you go to. This just shows how far off of Yale it was!

[jjp]

Now , tell me which system is more just and spreads the costs of education in a more logical manner ?

It is about equal chances and freedom. In the first example the janitor would have had a better opportunity to get a higher education himself, it matters a lot less how wealthy his parents are for example. His children have the opportunity to get one without being at a disadvantage over the children of for example the wealthier engineer. And do consider that the engineer will pay a lot more taxes than the janitor as he has a higher income.

[Kencho]

Warmi, you're aware Germany is a capitalist country, aren't you? Same as here, by the way. You live with the wrong idea that the whole EU is a communist spawning pool or something alike However, socialism, communism, anarchy... all them would work great. But unfortunately life's not fair nor perfect, so such systems must be delegated to utopian societies. The same as the true capitalism, by the way.

[warmi]

Warmi, you're aware Germany is a capitalist country

Yeah, I familiar with this fact ... probably even better than you but that's another story...

[KungFooMasta]

Now , tell me which system is more just and spreads the costs of education in a more logical manner ?

It is about equal chances and freedom. In the first example the janitor would have had a better opportunity to get a higher education himself. His children have the opportunity to get one without being at a disadvantage over the children of for example the wealthier engineer. And do consider that the engineer will pay a lot more taxes than the janitor as he has a higher income.

Unless the need for janitors stops, there will always be janitors, and these janitors will always be paying for other people to have an education, etc.

[CABAListic]

warmi, you're disregarding two major points here.

First, the janitor pays a lot less taxes due to his lower incomes, and these taxes don't just pay for universities (actually not even a very noticable amount at the moment). It also pays for the school which he visited, for the roads he uses every day, pretty much for all the infrastructure he's profiting from daily. The university graduate, gaining a higher salary, pays more taxes as he's profited from society even more than the jailor.

Second, there is a strongly increased chance that the university graduate will actually bring new wealth to the country with his ideas, potentially creating new jobs. It is therefore in the interest of the jailor that we have as many graduates as possible so that the land keeps prosperous, and his children will also find a job in coming years.


All in all, though, I'm afraid this is where we'll have to agree to disagree. Our cultural differences are apparently too much apart as to find a common position here

[tau]

h
I agree 100% -- global warming is complete BS. It's total folly to extrapolate, and base conclusions on, 100 years of data in the lifespan of the earth. Not to mention that a single innocent Vesuvius or Mt. St. Helens does more pollutive damage to the atmosphere in a single week than humans could possibly imagine they could effect in 1,000 years.

Wooo Haaa, that's a strong argument
Well, while people are trying to argue about simple facts, let's conduct an experiment and use some math.

Get in your room and seal it tight, so no air come in/out, keep breathing, you will emit CO2, wont you? do you feel like the temperature goes up in the room? while it's very simple example, park your car in your living room and keep it runnig for an hour, then enter the room and observe it, I'm sure you will see a lot of smoke and oily dust all over the place. that oily black dust falls on polar ice and causes it to absorb sun warmes, thus start to melt: let's conduct another test, wrap yourself in white sheet and walk in miami, you notice it feels cool, now, wrap yourself in black sheet, and walk under the sun... do you feel a bit warmer? that's how ice melts there...

the volume of Earth atmosphere can be easily calculated now days, as well as the amount emissions, and it was done by many scientists. That's why they started to warn everyone about the danger of "global warming", because it has not an arithmetic progression, but logarithmic one, you can prove it by just simply boiling the water and watch the temperature rise pattern...

Ignorance will make the world go round, that's for sure

[tau]

Capitalists need socialists to stop the world becoming an exploited, horribly divided wasteland, and socialists need capitalists to generate the wealth to fund the programmes that no business would ever be able to justify to its inherently selfish stockholders. You can't have one without the other.

Man needs a Woman to create a good person Indeed

this analogy is quite true in my everyday observations, men are always a bit more "capitalistic" (supporting family, etc), while women are always a bit "socialistic" (sensitive, supportive, caring)...

[tau]

If the environmental lobby had tried that the past 30 years, we might actually be farther along than we are, and "environmentalist" wouldn't be synonymous with "nutjob".

Claiming "environmentalist" is synonymous with "nutjob" is pretty massive flame war bait. C'mon - not a good way to have a reasonable discussion of global warming.

Well, US is a backward coutry, where non-green means to be a capitalist who helps country to grow, but in fact, being green does not mean to be "communist/socialist".

People think that running green business is much less profitable then in reallity (expenses for additional tools to catch CO2, etc), however it's proved that recycling the waste can bring back much more money (caught CO2 can be reused in plastics, city waste in energy and building materials, etc), etc. It's all about people being afraid to leave their comfort zone of established stereotypes....