Buh Bye, Europe Hello Islamistan
 

So, you get my point?

Buh Bye, Europe Hello Islamistan
 

That is why I said North Africa and Persia. Algeria, Morroco, Tunisia and Egypt are growing by leaps and bounds. So is Persia. The Oil rich countrys are growing a lot also, they just have so much money they have to import tons of labour. Because they have so much money they don't have the employment problem of North Africa.

Buh Bye, Europe Hello Islamistan
 

America has never really followed the rest of the world on this. Our birth rates are not as low as the rest of the developed world. However, I think that today we are slightly below the 2.1 parity point but our immigration keeps us on the positive side (reason 3345789 that closing of the border with Mexico would be a bad idea).

Buh Bye, Europe Hello Islamistan
 

SSA was passed in 1935, baby boom started 1946, and birthrates started declining after 1957.

Buh Bye, Europe Hello Islamistan
 

If your point was, there are a huge number of factors, and this isn't a subject easily distilled into a couple paragraphs, then yes. But it wasn't at all clear to me that was your point.

The Old Country
 

No one has explained to me why an economically screwed up Europe is good news. Isn't the EU one of if not the biggest trading partners of the US?

Buh Bye, Europe Hello Islamistan
 

If America doesn't count, then you are generalizing to the whole world based on . . . Europe.

Somehow this seems problematic to me.

Buh Bye, Europe Hello Islamistan
 

I understand all of that, but it all contradicts Hello's argument. If the safety net causes the birthrate to drop, then you would expect the birthrate to be lower in the late 50s and early 60s than it is now, when the safety net is less solid than it was.

What causes a reduced birthrate? Prosperity is surely one thing -- the knowledge that you don't need lots of kids to support you. But this country has been prosperous for quite some time, and the birthrate has fluctuated substantially during that time. Greater opportunity for women is probably a more significant cause than any other factor -- as women pursue educations and careers, they are less likely to have children, particularly earlier in their lives. If you don't start breeding in your 20s, you are likely to have fewer, or even no, kids.

Buh Bye, Europe Hello Islamistan
 

In case you missed that part of Geography class, there is more to the world than the USA and Europe.

Most Developed: Japan, Canada (minus immigratoin) - negative growth rate
Pretty well developed: South Korea, Taiwan, Chile and Singapre - low to zero growth rate.
Underdeveloped - High growth rate - Phillipines, Honduras, Guatemala, Egypt, Algeria etc.

Buh Bye, Europe Hello Islamistan
 

Sorry, on the basis of Europe and a tiny, tiny bit of the far east. My :rolleyes: mistake.

Buh Bye, Europe Hello Islamistan
 

The big exception you left out is Russia. They have probably the biggest negative growth rate and they are not very well developed. So clearly female education, access to birth control (developed Latin American countrys have higher birth rates than their counterparts in the rest of the world) and woman's rights are a big factor.

However, having said that, their is high a correlation between increasing PCI and decreasing population growth rates. It is a pretty safe bet if you want to reduce a populations growth rate you just increase its PCI.

Buh Bye, Europe Hello Islamistan
 

I don't think it contradicts it at all, and the women's rights thing is surely not the strongest correlation... at least because some places outside of Europe (I'm thinking Japan and Korea) don't exactly have the strongest and most balanced history of this stuff.

As for prosperity, I think you need prosperity before people let the government really start massively spending on retirements security. A poor America might not tolerate the spending that a rich America does for something like Social Security. But hey, we have money, let's do it.

Other factors: People's willingness to trust this system. Over time, maybe this system gains trust (some time after the Depression and WWII). People reaaaallly adjust their behavior and expecations accordingly.

Immigration: immigrants need some time to get used to this idea too. I'd bet immigrants have disproportionately more children than native born Americans do (only considering what they do when they get here). Evidence to the contrary would make me raise my eyebrows.

Your women's rights thing surely plays into it. But how do we get a society that accepts and advocates women's rights? Well, it goes right back to the bedpan theory. I don't need Martha to change my bedpan no more, so what do I care if she don't need me no more.. I don't really need her so much either (partly because I don't need kids either... b/c uncle Fritz is gonna change my bedpan).

Anyway, there are obviously a lot of interrelated causes here. But I'd bet dollars to Fringey's dinner that the strongest correlation you could find by regression is between declining birthrate and the increasing guarantee (if "guarantee" and "trust in" could be measured) of a social umbrella, especially for the elderly.

Buh Bye, Europe Hello Islamistan
 

Since you seem to think that whoever has the biggest population wins, why don't you submit this plan to our Chinese and Indian overlords?

free trade
 

Spanky, read this if you want to see how free-trade-supporting Democrats can come out against CAFTA. DeLong is pro-free trade in a big way.

Buh Bye, Europe Hello Islamistan
 

That one went completely by me.

free trade
 

Did you actually read what the Blog said. These comments are from the "Center for American Progress". Not exactly an unbiased source. Not really a free trade group. The purpose of a free trade agreement is to increase free trade. And CAFTA does that. All these criticisms of CAFTA critisize it for not doing things that have anything to do with free trade. Its only crticisms are:

1) by imposing, for example, obligations to provide certain forms of intellectual property protection....

Is this such a terrible thing. Protecting intellectual property.

2) the rule of origin in the textile provisions is sufficiently restrictive that it may impede the ability of industries in the DR-CAFTA countries to remain competitive....

This makes no sense to me.

3) The refusal of the Administration to include enforceable labor standards in the agreement, despite the well-documented absence of basic international labor protections in some of the DR-CAFTA countries, is a missed opportunity....

This is a free trade agreement. Not a international labor agreement.

4) the Administration is not dedicating the long-term resource and financial commitments necessary to realize the environmental goals of the agreement.

They should be happy it has environmental goals. Again this is a free trade agreement.

5) The Administration's insistence on a provision that forbids DR-CAFTA countries from using test data submitted by one pharmaceutical company to approve a similar drug of another pharmaceutical company could increase the cost of much-needed drugs in the region....

This needs more explanation but is getting pretty nitpicky.

6) Existing safety net programs such as extended unemployment insurance and trade adjustment assistance (TAA) already fall far short of needed support. Yet... the Administration has tightened the eligibility requirements....

Again - nothing to do with the Free Trade Agreement.

7) On DR-CAFTA, as with each previous trade agreement, the Administration has failed to engage in bipartisan consultation.

This is such BS. It is either a good agreement or not whether or not he kissed up to egotistical and childesh congressman.

As much as the Dems try and cloud the issue, this Agreement reduces tarrifs and subsidies. That is always a good thing. Every group that matters (to me anyway) supports this agreement. Are you saying the DLC is wrong to support it?

free trade
 

Newsflash: Under the rubric of "free trade," your party is negotiating treaties to weaken things like environmental protection, workplace safety, etc. If you don't like this, you have a problem with CAFTA.

I think the authors' problem is with the specific form, not with the concept of intellectual property.

It's protectionism for (American) textiles.

That's their problem, eh? Are you in favor of forcing American workers to compete with workers in other countries who lack even the most basic enforceable labor standards? That's not a level playing field.

Whatever.

It's policy. Not fashionable in comtemporary GOP circles. You guys usually just let the lobbyists do it.

It's says "the Administration has tightened the eligibility requirements." That's CAFTA. Do you like the actual deal, or your fuzzy conception of it?

I think points 1-6 were establishing that it's not a good deal, and then 7 suggests why.

If DeLong is against it, I trust his judgment. Not every treaty is good just because someone slapped a "Free Trade" label on it.

free trade
 

Newsflash: "My party" is doing nothing of the sort. The people in your party a bitching because environmental protections and labour stuff were not added to the treat. The appropriate word is added. They are trying to use this free trade agreement to pursue another agenda. Again - like I said this is a free trade agreement.

I may not like the test ban tready because it does not also include banning mines. But that doesn't make the test ban treaty bad.


Well it would be nice if he explained it. Unlike you, just because this guy says so is not enough for me.


While that may be true, it still reduced the protection of American textiles. So what is there is not the best, but it is a lot better than the restriction we have now - is it not?



You are going to force these countrys to adopt all our OSIA safety regulations? These countrys are a lot less developed so they can't afford to pay their workers the same or have the same regulation requirements. It would be nice if their economies grew to the point where they could be on par with our workers, but, of course, it is going to take them longer to get there if the free trade act is not implemented.

This is just a smoke screen. This is a free trade agreement. We just need to cut down the trade barriers. There is no way to make the playing field even. Even if those these disparities exist the free trade agreement is better for all countrys involved. That is the basic theory of free trade. If you are against free trade, just say it instead of hiding behind all this worker and environmental stuff.



Interesting - that is the same argument my seven year old niece uses.

No idea what this means.



My understanding is that this has nothing to do with the treaty. With or without the treaty the administration is tightening the eligibility requirements. Why they are doing this I don't know. I am not going to make assumptions. But this is a separate issue from free trade and CAFTA.



Yes letting congressman who are not really for free trade anyway, try and attach "labor protection amendments" is really going to help. Thats like having having Henry Hyde get his say on a contraceptive bill. Not really productive.



That is nice you trust him. Good for you and him. Some treaties are not really free trade treaties that are called them but this one is. This one does exactly what free trade treaties are supposed to do . It reduces tariffs and subsidies. The more you ad "Labour protections" and "environmental protections" it becomes less of a free trade treaty and more of us telling other countrys how they should treat labour and the environment. I believe that reducing tariffs and subsidies in this country is good. I also believe that other countrys benefit from this to. I would also like to see other countrys develop better labour standards and environmental standards but am not willing to use free trade agreements as leverage to get these governments to adopt what we believe are the environmental and trade standards they should adopt. In addition, these sort of "riders" when attached to free trade bills are often smoke screens for protectionism. That is why it is better to separate these issues from the free trade agreements and let the agreements do what they are defined to do - increase free trade.

The Old Country
 

FWIW, that's not what I was saying.

One telltale clue to this from my original post was the reference to the Amsterdam street vendor. Being pro-women's rights and anti-exploitation and all, had I supported Europe's demise, I never would've referred to her providing discounts in a positive light.

Carry on.

free trade
 

So, what exactly are the proper subjects to be included in a free trade agreement? I assume that forbiding a governmental subsidy to a local industry is one. Why? Because this makes the competition unfair, and penalizes the firm not getting the subsidy. That's why Boeing is pissed about Airbus.

Similarly, if a country doesn't enforce labor and environmental laws, businesses that operate in that country have an unfair advantage. Their costs are kept artificially low relative to businesses in other countries by the actions of their governement. Thus, Not Free Trade.

How are the two different?

One objection to CAFTA is noted by David Broder in his column http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...61502158.html:

• But the administration is not prepared to do what Clinton did in the Jordan agreement -- to apply exactly the same remedies to violations of labor and environmental standards that it would impose for violations of the agreement's commercial standards. To many Democrats, that represents retreat.

free trade
 

Newsflash: "Labor" does not have a "u". You in America now, boy.


Carry on.

Abortion journal
 

19 year old finds out she's pregnant. She decides she's going to have an abortion, scheduled for the 30th of this month.

So she creates a LiveJournal to write about and document the situation and her feelings over the next few days, and presumably after the procedure.

It's been vetted by a friend, and I think it's real.

Does the Holocaust Rule Apply
 

• Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, took the Senate floor yesterday and likened American servicemen to Nazis (link in PDF):
  
  "When you read some of the graphic descriptions of what has occurred here [at Guantanamo Bay]--I almost hesitate to put them in the [Congressional] Record, and yet they have to be added to this debate. Let me read to you what one FBI agent saw. And I quote from his report:
  
  On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. . . . On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor.
  
  If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime--Pol Pot or others--that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners."

http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/

Does the Holocaust Rule Apply
 

Is it too soon to start talking about the Senate and House in 2006? I haven't seen any numbers or calculations about safe seats, but isn't the GOP looking worse and worse?

Social security is going nowhere, and may divide the party between those who want to do something and those who insist that something includes private accounts

We'll still be Iraq come primary time, and there are only meager rumblings from the Hill about getting an exit strategy.

Bush's approval ratings are way low, with only the Hill's lower (thanks Tom Delay, and Bill "video diagnosis" Frist)


Maybe there are enough safe seats, but if the Dems can play things right (and they've shown they can't), it seems like the GOP is ripe for picking.

Does the Holocaust Rule Apply
 

The Nazi analogy was stupid and overblown.

Though I'm not sure if "hey, we treat prisoners a lot better than the Nazis did!" is really the argument we want to make.

Does the Holocaust Rule Apply
 

Frist now says that the Schiavo autopsy reports show that the case is closed. No thanks to him, of course (and no admission that he was wrong, wrong, wrong.... but hey. Humility wouldn't be Jesus-like, would it?)

Something I don't understand: Wouldn't a CAT scan or X-ray have shown that Schiavo's brain had shrunk in half?

free trade
 

Do you know anything about what that treaty says? If so, can I see your source?

Why do you think that?

That blog seems to think it's part of the treaty.

And then there are Democrats who are pro-free trade. Like me. You never want to talk about us.

Does the Holocaust Rule Apply
 

Why are you more outraged by the analogy than the treatment of the prisoners?

Does the Holocaust Rule Apply
 

If you read that, and your first thought is, how dare a Democratic Senator compare us to Nazis, Soviets, and the Khmer Rouge?, then there's something wrong with you.

Does the Holocaust Rule Apply
 

Are you surprised? Would you be surprised if dtb were outraged by a grammatical error in the speech?



Seriously, I don't think club is outraged by the treatment of the prisoners at all. But he doesn't want to say that, so he criticizes the author's sloppy analogy. This is one reason why I think the analogy was stupid -- it gives people an excuse to express mock horror ("you're comparing American soldiers to Nazis!") rather than address the real issue.

Does the Holocaust Rule Apply
 

What are you, a Bilmore sock? Things could be better for the Rs, but its waaay too early to discount the '06 possibilities. You have Dean in charge of the DNC, making silly statements and trying to raise money one piggy bank at a time. Durbin is up, I think, in '08, but if the Illinois Rs get their act together, he is certainly vulnerable. There are others.

That said, I recently got a fundraising letter from Thune's new PAC. They asked for input on a lot of topics, inlcuding who we would like to see run on the R ticket in '08 (for prez), who we should target in '06 (listing 10 or so Senators from various states), and what issues we should focus on/are important to us.

A pretty good litmus test for me has been the asbestos wars. Feinstein = good. Durbin = Bad. Kennedy = Really, really Bad.

And so on, and so on.

If the Ds can wrangle somebody like Warner in VA to run in '08, I'd give them their strongest odds (and perhaps even greater than 50/50 at the moment). But I can't figure out how they would get a moderate or conservative Dem through to the general election.

Anyway, I'm just sayin. The Rs are making a LOT of fundraising noise about how they've lost seats in the midterm elections during every 2-term R president's second term since 1495 or something. They are mobilizing their base discretely. They are selecting their targets. Meantime, the Ds are stuck with Dean and his mouth til.....

Hello

SS annecdote
 

Interesting annecdote on SS from the DebtSlave files:

My mother is turning 65 shortly. She went to talk to the accountant to determine if she should start drawing now or at 67 or at 70.

They crunched numbers and determined:

(i) that, if Mum waited until she was 70 to draw down (thus getting larger payments), she would need to live to 86 before she would see a net gain (ignoring present value discounts).

(ii) If she put her payments from age 65-70 into a money market fund, by age 70 the account would generate more revenue than the additional payments she would receive from SS if she waited until 70.

Obviously, she's expecting her first check in a few months.

BR(My mother, who is virulently anti-Bush, was deeply unamused when I responded to (ii) with "ah, so you're going the private account route")C

Does the Holocaust Rule Apply
 

Besides, Nazis wouldn't listen to rap.

Does the Holocaust Rule Apply
 

My guess is Bayh.

SS annecdote
 

Did their number-crunching not include the income she would earn if she continued working from 65-70?

Does the Holocaust Rule Apply
 

See the second half of this. You have moderates from both parties supporting a bill, and the more extreme types opposing it.

SS annecdote
 

(i) What do you mean by "net gain"? Gain over what??

(ii) What's the point? I think that would be true of any annuity. It's the nature of a fixed annuity.

Fringey, since you are the expert and my eyes glaze over when I hit the word "pension," could you explain to me why this story should not leave people troubled about their pensions? Are the facts unique to United?

Does the Holocaust Rule Apply
 

Wow. There's some pretty intellectual stuff on that page:

So They Are Limousine Liberals!
"Clinton Limousine Service & Rental"--entry in Limousine-directory.com

http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/

If bilmore can post comics . . .