Out of curiosity, what do you consider a real Mars mission? One that stays there several months? On that sets up a colony?
I would pay higher taxes if, with the exception of those going to fund the military and a few other basics, they were collected and spent on the state (or better yet, local) level.
Ummm…why? He’s not saying he’d get rid of modern agriculture, just the meat producing part of it. Given that it takes more calories in grain to produce meat then you get out of when it comes time to eating it, there would probably be more food available in his scenario, not less. Not that I agree with Maastrict, but your response doesn’t make any sense.
I’d pay more taxes for Universal Health Care, if for no other reason then I suspect I would ultimately end up paying less.
One that’s not fake, like the moon landing:D
Health care! Health care! Health care! Health care! Health care!
Universal Health Care. Although I think that by reducing the size of our military and general wastefulness, the tax hit could be near zero.
Also I’d pay more for vastly simplified government - goes along with the waste. There is no reason the tax code has to be reams and reams of paper nor should any bill be on more than one topic or consume more than a handful of pages.
One that goes there for the science and does real, meaningful exploration. I’d say that a real Mars mission is probably going to be the slow mission (i.e. on planet for a year), not the dash in mission (on planet for a few months).
It makes more sense when you realize that I simply mis-underheard him. I THOUGHT he was talking about replacing modern agriculture with organic farming.
It takes the plan from ‘totally fucking insane’ into the realm of ‘yet another misguided, granola eating, tree hugging plan to use tax dollars in order to push through a silly agenda…and save us from the evils of meat’. Look around man…does it LOOK like we in the US need to worry about the amount of calories gained per square foot?
Anyway, as I said, I simply read the post wrong.
-XT
I’ll never understand animal rights activists. I literally could not care less how my food animals are raised, as long as it results in tasty meat that is not harmful to me.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
xtisme and Simplicio, it might be helpful if I illustrated what I meant with a couple pictures.
First of all: Yes, I only meant the meat producing part of modern farming. The last time I heard, rice and bell peppers are not capable of suffering.
Take for example poultry. On the one end of the spectrum, you have the totally mechanized agri-industry that squeezes every last possible penny out of the way a chicken is held. That means a chicken, which is essentially a curious, social bird with an inborn need to roam around, is reduced to spending its short miserable life confined 24/7 to a cage the size of its own body. That is the current, high tech, way the Netherlands keeps most of its chickens.
On the other hand, we have the idiyllic picture of the “free range farmyard chicken.” Of course, that way of keeping poultry is only viable for hobby farmers, or poor rural farmers.
But there are a lot of possibilities in between. And they cost surprisingly little more. Take for instance a modern free range chicken farm.. Additional costs per egg about ten cents. Now you tell me people in the USA and Europe can’t afford to pay ten more cents for an egg.
I’m not talking about China or India, and I don’t know enough to weigh the evils of industrial farming with the need to feed hungry millions. But I do know that in the Netherlands, the chickens in the cages I first linked to produce eggs for our home market. Their suffering facilitates nothing more profound then a few cents worth of cheaper ingredients for the mayonaise we overweight Dutch put on our French Fries.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. My taxes are already astronomical and I dismiss out of hand the notion that it can’t be used more efficiently at the current level. Stop funding 80% of what you are funding, use that money for whatever noble cause you’d like, since me actually keeping my money is such a silly thought.
There is about $790 billion in new taxes coming soon to a theater near you, by the way. Those idiots in Washington have already decided what they’ll be raising your taxes for, no need to suggest anything–pork, more pork, and unsupportable ideas that will stimulate the economy immediately by spending money in a few years, effectively permanent expansion of the size of the government, just for a few items. Oh, and some more pork. Our kids will be paying taxes on that long after we’re dead.
Astronomical?
Wait, what would be astronomical, taxes in some multiple of your actual income, said multiple being 10 to a power between 4 & 9?
LOL. You rock. 
Do you mean, do I have $1.20 in discretionary income that I could apply to eggs if the price of eggs changed? Sure. Do you mean, would I pay $0.10 more per egg to alleviate the suffering of a chicken? Ehhh… probably not. Are you asking, would I give a dime to help alleviate the suffering of a chicken? Sure.
Mmmmm.
I wouldn’t pay a dime more. I think we over pay as it is.
The problem is not enough money, there is plenty of money to go around. The problem is waste. When I look at the salaries of government workers and compare them to the level of similar workers it’s outrageous.
We have clerks making 40K or 50K a year, for jobs that should be about a buck more than minimum wage. The benefits packages are outrageous compared to business.
It’s only when you get into levels like The President of the US and compare to a CEO do you find the salaries start to reverse.
Most of your tax dollars are wasted.
I would be willing to pay higher taxes to launch Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter into deep space.
Maastricht, I am not sure what you were attempting to prove with the link I removed, but that sort of thing is prohibited on this board, particularly without employing a warning and a “two click” method of getting to the photo.
Do not repeat this behavior.
[ /Moderating ]
Brit here,more money for policing and space exploration.
For me it would be a decent alternative to the car and its infrastructure. I would love the option of being able to take a bus, train or bicycle to where I need to go on a daily basis without having to waste a lot of time. Not that the government should take away private cars, I’d just like to have the option of not owning a car if I don’t really want one.
:dubious:As bad as Super Sweet 16 makes all Americans look (though now theres an English one), I doubt that any first world country really has this as a widespread belief.
How do you think managers get to work?
I’m sorry, but you’re wrong. Throughout North America, public transit is considered to be for poor people. Taking it has a serious stigma attached.
How do managers get to work? They drive. Just like everyone else.
It’s hard for Europeans to imagine this, because they’re used to mass transit being everywhere and thus, it’s just plain easier to get there via Tube or Metro or whatever. But we Canadians and Americans don’t have that sort of mass transit.
It’s a terrible cycle, which goes something like this :
- People think mass transit is for poor people.
- Therefore anyone who can afford it gets a car and drives
- Therefore the middle class all have cars
- Therefore they are completely unwilling to vote for politicians who will invest in better, faster, cleaner, more efficient mass transit. (I mean, it’s just going to benefit poor people, so who cares? I have a car! I’m not poor!)
- Therefore mass transit, where it exists, tends to be underfunded, inefficient, slow, ill-maintained, and general something you’d have to be poor and desperate in order to use and which you’re going to escape via getting a car ASAP
- Therefore, only poor people use mass transit
And so it goes, and so it goes.
In Europe, from what I can tell, everyone takes mass transit, and therefore it was to be good, or the middle class will flex its powerful muscles and raise an unholy stink until it’s put right.
This is why American college students are so amazed by the Eurail system.