Fucking 'dogooders' are going to ruin the world.

The BBQ Pit
61

No, nothing close to it. They paid 94% in marginal taxes. For example, suppose you make $250,000/year (this put you in the highest income tax bracket through WWII, though it was in the millions shortly before that). Income taxes are calculated in levels, so, creating a totally imaginary tax code, your first $10,000 could be untaxed, the next $20K at 20% ($4000), the next 20K after that at 25% ($5000), the next 50K after that at 40% ($20000), the next 50K after that at 70% ($35000), and everything over $200K at 90% ($45000).

In this scheme, you’ve paid $100000 on $250000 in income, so you have an effective tax rate of 40%, which is pretty high but nowhere near the 90% you would hear people bitching about (the tax laws were actually structured so that nobody had an effective tax rate higher than 77%).

This way, nobody is penalized for making more money and jumping to a higher tax bracket (the “make-one-dollar-lose-five-thousand” argument from people who don’t understand math). It just gets slower-going the higher you get. You have the right to eat regularly, the logic goes, and government won’t take food from your mouth, but you don’t necessarily have the right to eat filet mignon regularly, and the government is going to make you work a lot harder for that.

I think I have the actual tables on another computer somewhere if you’re really interested.

62

Oooohhh! Geez, thanks for taking the time to explain that. Big duh on me (yep, I’m one of those who doesn’t understand math). :stuck_out_tongue: Ignorance defeated, no more digging necessary.

63

The Focke-Wulf Fw200 Condor could fly from Berlin to Tokyo, which is a lot further than the distance from Dieppe to New York. Similarly, the Amerika Bomber project was designed and built by the Nazis specifically- as the name suggests- for bombing the US, and it’s believed that on at least one occasion a Ju-390 was flown to within 20kms of New York, basically to prove that it could be done.

If they wanted to make it a one-way trip, then the Germans had several planes capable of bombing the continental US. The difficulties involved in having an aircraft which could bomb the US and then make a return to Axis territory were what prevented them from actually doing it; although having said that, by late 1944 they had the aircraft and the ability to do it, but had more pressing concerns than what amounted to extraordinarily expensive (and resource-intensive) Propaganda Stunts that would have been of limited use militarily.

64

After being called a second time on this, I would’ve thought you would’ve re-checked your figures. Damn, you suck at math.

If 1/1000 of 1% of all Muslims = 1.2 million, then reversing the math (1.2 million times 1000 times 100 (because that’s what a percentage is)) gives us a total of 120 billion Muslims. You are off by many, many orders of magnitude.

Given an actual total of 1.2 billion Muslims in the world (I am correct in assuming that’s the figure we’re working with, right?), then 1/1000th of 1% = 12,000.

Regardless of how the rest of your argument goes, you can’t argue with math. If you’re going to argue, argue that the percentage is wrong or something.

65

Thank you, sir. I was here to post this myself. Urgh.

66

I like the logic here. The Nazi’s didn’t have the technology to bomb the US,* therefore they weren’t a threat to us. On the other hand, terrorists do not have the technology to build a nuclear bomb, but it’s a certainty that they will do so within your life time and use it on an American city. Because a bunch of ignorant fanatics living in caves are more likely to significantly advance their military tech base than the most technologically advanced, industrial nation in the world.

*Which is wrong, as Martini Enfield has pointed out, but I’m just talking about the logic of your post, here.

67

Look, arguing that we have nothing to fear from Islamic terrorists is just silly. Sure, there aren’t that many terrorists relative to the Islamic population, and most of the people who would be willing to carry out terrorist attacks against the United States aren’t in the United States, but rather stuck in some third world country.

But terrorism IS something to be concerned about. Sure, comparing Islamism to Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan isn’t helpful, because the situations aren’t parallel, and the world is different nowadays. But a couple of thousand people were killed by Islamic terrorists here in the US, and hundreds more have been killed in Spain, Bali, and the UK.

As for the contention that terrorists are ignorant fanatics living in caves, that’s bullshit. Terrorists have been engineers and doctors. It isn’t likely that any terrorist is going to mine the uranium, separate out the U-235, build a bomb, and fly it to New York from some cave in Afghanistan. But the hard part of building the bomb is getting that U-235, and there’s a lot of U-235 floating around the world. And that bomb isn’t likely to hit New York carried by a bomber or ICBM, but rather in a shipping container.

Thing is, all these terrorists they arrest look like bumbling losers and dreamers when they arrest them beforehand. But the fact that no terrorist has gotten hold of a nuclear bomb and successfully used it against New York doesn’t mean that therefore the risk is zero.

Neither does this mean that acting as if it’s 1941 all over again would be helpful. We’re going to experience more terrorist attacks in the future, and even attacks on the scale of 9/11 aren’t a truly fundamental threat. But look at the attacks in Britain, or the just arrested terrorists in Germany. These aren’t ignorant fanatics living in caves on the far side of the world.

A comparison to the Virginia Tech shootings is helpful, I think. One guy with a gun can go nuts and kill lots of people, and it seems to me that imulses behind the Virginia Tech shootings and the Columbine shootings isn’t too far removed from the impulse behind 9/11. Same sorts of people, just that one set had some help from a wealthy Saudi businessman who happens to be a fanatical Islamist, while the others worked alone.

68

Yes, I know all about the FW200. The Germans made somewhere between 2-300 of them. The fact that the plane had the range to make it to NY is immaterial. I’ll concede that the Germans might have been able to pull a Doolittle on New York, but that’s a long way from saying that they were a credible “threat” to the U.S.
As for the math, I freely admit that I’m a dolt when it comes to math, but DtC said that 1/1000 of all Muslims were “radical extremist nutjobs”. How is that figure not 1.2 million?

69

He didn’t say 1/1000, he said 1/1000 of 1%, or 1/100,000.

70

Well, when you put it that way, it makes terrorism seem like a serious, difficult, but ultimately manageable problem.

But let’s not forget that our responses to a terrorist attack can be more costly than the terrorist attack itself. Thus the need for a tough calmness, not hysteria.

71

Oh my Og… Do you mean that the average Joe out there is going to have to have the ability to be calm in a crisis? Take some personal responsibility ? Be like the folks on the SDMB, all cool, calm, rational, smarter than the average bear and willing to communicate that fact? Bawahahaha

Why do we / you all seem to think that everyone will ever be able to do this? Even 20% of the voters? Much less the full population? The majority are going to do what ‘Hillery’ tells them to and all the rational rhetoric in the world will fall on deaf ears.
'If it isn’t on CNN, it isn’t worth knowing is the battle cry of the masses in todays world.

Being snarky will not make the world a better place and the politicians know this, that is why they do not try to court the SDMB folks. Those kinds of thinkers are not a meaningful group as a voter block. To few and too ineffective. Best be trying to reach the masses instead of putting them down. We will live and die as do the masses.

YMMV of course… :wink:

72

Huh. Remind me again who assaulted the US on its own soil. Twice.

73

The core information that is omitted in this screed is that Belgium was overrun by the Netherlands, who were in league with Holland and the Dutch in a nefarious plot to force most of Europe to speak Hollandaise. I think Peggy Fleming was involved.

74

They have plans for the US too! They’ll make us dizzy from watching windmill blades turn, effeminate from smelling tulips, then they’ll drain our Great Lakes and we won’t be able to stop them!

(Apologies to Chris Cerf)

75

The Japanese, in Hawaii and the Philippines.

76

Alaska too.

77

Americans United to Beat the Dutch!

You can’t hide your lyonaise!

78

The British. More than twice, in fact. And we have tanks now, so ner.

79

Yeah, well, my great-something grandpa raided England with old John Paul Jones.

80

Seems to me we had some problems with the Messicans a few times, also.