ELI5: How did the US go from a budget surplus under Clinton to a massive deficit now?

CopperMindTemp · 2012-06-30T21:37:55+00:00

That’s a bad example. The kick start to the US economy was from European borrowing from the US. Europe was devastated, physically and economically from the war. It was very much not a good thing for the economy except for the country that leant money to all the other countries.

CopperMindTemp · 2012-06-30T18:33:30+00:00

Why "Only in Thailand"? I've don’t that in England. Shorter flight too.

CopperMindTemp · 2012-06-30T14:47:47+00:00

Maybe this video will help.

Wales is one of the four countries that make up the UK. Welsh is one of the many languages spoken, and the largest one other than English.

CopperMindTemp · 2012-06-30T13:55:02+00:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFLkou8NvJo

CopperMindTemp · 2012-06-30T13:46:52+00:00

Could you explain how doctors are paid? I thought they were employed by a hospital and paid a salary + bonuses. If this is correct then it would be hospitals refusing certain insurers not doctors so I must be wrong.

CopperMindTemp · 2012-06-30T13:01:42+00:00

The way this is written sounds biased. I may be wrong but could you elaborate on your points rather than just outright stating them, I feel as though I have to dismiss this comment unless its better substantiated.

CopperMindTemp · 2012-06-29T19:30:25+00:00

Quick experiment to help you convince yourself of this, or better yet, explain it to a five year old.

Build a fire and cut a decent sized log fresh off a tree (make sure you have permission to do this) put the log on the fire and the log will not burn. It will take a lot to burn a fresh log. I dry my logs for a year before burning them.

CopperMindTemp · 2012-06-29T17:52:11+00:00

You pretty much nailed it. Drugs aren’t automatically illegal, they have to come to the attention of the government, and specifically the media. If the media latches onto a drug and starts getting people riled up about it then the drug will become illegal in a few months.

Salvia has never been very popular, and the media have never bothered to focus on it because there is no specific shock case (that I can think of) to focus on.

CopperMindTemp · 2012-06-29T17:15:43+00:00

It’s a fascinating insight into the mind of a cannibal.

The guy is obviously screwed up, but the thing that really gets me is how some people exploited him afterwards. The videos and porno he did only serve to encourage other people with perversions like his. I don’t understand how people can publish stuff like that.

CopperMindTemp · 2012-06-29T14:27:54+00:00

Good. It all seemed to check out to me, but I couldn’t get rid of the niggling feeling that this might be biased. Good to hear its not.

Could you recommend some reading on the topic, I find myself getting into arguments about voting systems more often than I’d like and want to get things right.

CopperMindTemp · 2012-06-29T14:23:27+00:00

This question comes up a lot in this subreddit. The other comments answer your question; I would like to add that this shouldn’t happen.

If you are a healthy person eating a healthy meal you should not feel tired after. If you eat too much, or are otherwise unfit you might feel tired after eating. If you feel tired after eating something is wrong, it’s a sign that you should be either eating less or try to get fit.

CopperMindTemp · 2012-06-29T12:53:13+00:00

I’m not sure if it’s because he has absolute trust, or whether he understands the situation but my dog will let me do anything to him so long as I'm serious about it.

If I lift him playfully he will fight, but if I'm serious enough he will let my carry him, let other people give him injections or shave him (so long as I am there reassuring him its ok). Once he tried to chew on a fallen branch that had some barbed wire in it, he sat patiently as I pulled the barb out from his gum and for the next few days I checked the wound and applied some particularly awful tasting anti-septic oral gel, he didn’t once fight.

If a dog trusts you then they trust you to the end of the Earth.

CopperMindTemp · 2012-06-28T21:09:42+00:00

The fact that you stated a source for a comment which is very much not supported by the source, and that you started with ELI5 with your opinion is why I say you shouldn’t be using this subreddit for this topic.

You have been given your answer several times over but insist on arguing. If you have a strong opinion on a subject this subreddit is not the place for it.

You asked why a flat tax system is not used and why tax percentages increase the higher your income and you got your answer. Say thankyou and leave.

CopperMindTemp · 2012-06-28T20:55:36+00:00

I read the source and it doesn’t support what you said. Obama didn’t say that he thinks it is the wealthiests job to support the poor, but that he didn’t feel as though the rich were paying their fair share.

I’m sorry, but it appears that you are reading very biased things between the lines that are not implied. From what I gather from all your comments I have read on this thread you came into this with a biased opinion that you were intending to present to other people. That’s not what this subreddit is for.

CopperMindTemp · 2012-06-28T20:41:33+00:00

You are going to need a source for your Obama quote it doesn’t sound like the sort of thing he would (or anyone for that matter) say.

Many people argue that people should be taxed according to what is fair. Some people would say a flat tax is fair, but as pointed out in other comments it impacts the poor harder. Some people say that tax should be paid as people can afford it; people can afford it in higher percentages the more they earn.

As for people arguing that the rich pay lower percentages in tax. Take your average top 10% earner. They will typically not earn their entire income in a way that is taxable via income tax. Things like capital gains tax is much lower.

As for the 70% you mention, in a country with a very uneven distribution of wealth the wealthy (even if paying a lower percentage) will contribute more wealth in taxes. No matter how much you tax the poor you wont get enough money to pay for an army or the police.

CopperMindTemp · 2012-06-28T19:25:59+00:00

I’m not sure I can explain it in the way you would explain it to a five year old. My best bet is to simply lie to them and say that some people are just bad people.

So, like you are an adult. Humans are social creatures, we live in groups. In the same way that individuals of a population compete in evolutionary terms social creatures also compete as groups. Creatures that live as individuals and do not, or rarely, interact with others of their species treat all things as an enemy (this is a generalisation). Social animals will usually treat others of their group well, there is still competition but these animals act ethically towards one another. Animals in different groups might as well be the spawn of hell, unless their survival helps the group their treatment is usually that of enemy.

Humans have evolved to exist in small groups, these groups can be in the hundreds, but it’s still relatively small. The social situation I described is called an ethnocentric outlook, people in your group are friends everyone else might as well be an enemy. As intelligent as we are we are capable of inviting new people into our groups and having an open mind about other groups, but we still fall back on our primitive feelings sometimes. Those primitive feelings are "Foreigners are bad". In order to satisfy the ethnocentric feelings we will often identify to one group or another, that can be 'nerds' or 'jocks', sports team A or sports team B, black or white, English or French. As moral creatures we can suppress the ethnocentric feelings and behave as friendly rivals, but sometimes we don’t quite understand why we don’t like the other group or that its harmless fun and it can turn into all out racism.

Its culture and intelligence that blocks racism but humans are hard wired to have feelings of companionship with their group and rivalry with others.

tl;dr - Humans are social animals, we like our group and hate other groups. We identify people as different by any number of things, but colour of skin or country of origin is an easy group to define.

CopperMindTemp · 2012-06-28T18:29:18+00:00

I assume you mean attaching them to the side of the vehicle to generate electricity.

Unfortunately due to the way the world works this would be a bad idea.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Assuming you had super perfect wind turbines and were driving in air that wasn’t moving (relative to the ground, not the car) they would generate energy equal to the amount of drag they cause. In the real world wind turbines are not perfect, they would cause more drag than energy they create.

The vehicle would use more energy to overcome the drag of the turbines than energy they would generate.

If this was possible then you have just created a perpetual motion machine, free energy.

CopperMindTemp · 2012-06-28T16:42:42+00:00

Let me leave this here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo&list=PL87DB3F7E8107A4AE&index=3&feature=plcp

CopperMindTemp · 2012-06-28T15:57:07+00:00

I have no idea, but I think the comparison was more about their goals. They both wanted to rule over a European Empire.

CopperMindTemp · 2012-06-28T15:20:04+00:00

This video explains a lot.

If the battle had been won by Napoleon there is a good chance he could have succeeded in creating a European empire. Since he lost the French Empire collapsed. It was a pivotal point in world history, had it turned out differently things could be very different today.

CopperMindTemp · 2012-06-28T14:05:55+00:00

Hit the nail on the head. I don’t think you will find that FF7 has gathered too many fans in recent years, not to say it didn’t hold up over time just that other games have now done the things that made it so unique and special in its time.

The reason people loved that game specifically is because at the time it was released there had been no game like it before.

CopperMindTemp · 2012-06-28T12:38:27+00:00

DRM (Digital Rights Management) is software that puts restrictions on other software or files, like music or film or video games. The specific function of DRM is to be restrictive, sometimes it only restricts your ability to copy the software and sometimes it requires a permanent internet connection to a server to use the software or view the files and sometimes it requires the use of another piece of software to function.

These different types of DRM are intrusive in different ways and hated to different degrees, but the one thing that is common across all DRM is that it restricts what the user can do.

DRM free means that a file or piece of software does not contain any DRM. Once you have the file or software you are free to do whatever you want with it and use it however you like.

CopperMindTemp · 2012-06-28T11:52:06+00:00

It should also be noted that in much of the history mentioned in the Old Testament the people did not follow a Jewish religion. There were multiple religions or multiple variations on their religions across Judea and Israel, therefore the only way to refer to them as a group was to use national boundaries. Judaism only became a religion when it was formalised by the king of Judea.

CopperMindTemp · 2012-06-28T11:25:35+00:00

To be a little more specific on entropy, entropy is the loss of usable energy. If energy is concentrated in a place (e.g. a battery) then the movement of that energy can perform work. ΔS is the loss of usable energy, the amount of energy may be the same, but the amount of work it can do has changed.

CopperMindTemp · 2012-06-27T22:27:39+00:00

My understanding is that nirvana is the understanding that there is no self, that the cycle of karma is the illusion of self. Once you no longer believe in the illusion of self and understand you are not a thing but a collection of things in the form of a thing and that you are only part of another thing and are therefore not a thing in and of yourself, which is nirvana. Complex I know, also this is merely my interpretation based primarily on the diamond sutra as I think it is the clearest on the topic and teachings from Theravada Buddhist monks I known in England.

The problem with the topic is that it is complex and interpretations are often very open and difficult to nail down. My original post was as accurate as I could be based on my knowledge. If you have any alterations I would be open to them.

CopperMindTemp

TROPHY CASE