What is a Liberal, and What is a Conservative?

But we are discussing the test, Political Compass.
By making this "simple example" you have done nothing to persuade me to believe that THIS test (political compass) is not biased, and if it was, then the scores rather being way left, would be in the middle.I am a contridiction to your view. I do not believe I am a conservitive, but the questions on the test forced me to answer "liberally". I'll make a question that would make someone answer like a conservitive.A prostitute while doing her job, becomes pregnant, (intentions) she gets an abortion because it would make her lose money in the long run, she is in debt, so she decides she has to keep working, and gets the abortion, she got the abortion when at a stage called "partial birth" making what she did illegal.Do you think the abortion was justified because of the Prostitute's financial difficulties?I intentionally made that question make you want to answer NO.Right?This is eggactly what the test made me feel, (but the other way around of course) Same stuff.

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"Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you."Ephesians 5:14

Yeah, that's why I corrected your improved statement, just to be more clear what they were really trying to express.I am still not sure why you decided to attack that with a sermon on economics. I'm just the messenger.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

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But I have bias. Let's say I'm fairly tall and tired of being considered weird for it. So I use a measuring tape that I cut the first foot off of. That makes my measurement of everyone's height one foot taller than they are - more people who are not really tall are made to appear "tall", according to the "true" average. That throws off my scoring scale.

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Perhaps we are talking past each other, hehe. Oh well. For shits and giggles I'll give this one more try and then we can agree to disagree.Your above analogy is not comparable to what I am trying to portray. Changing you analogy, people with any height at all are called tall and those that can curl their tongue are considered short. In other words, by distorting questions so that both liberals and conservatives would answer the same wouldn't allow the question to differentiate between them, just as regarding everyone above 1 inch as being tall. By moving the scale to such a degree that even conservatives would agree with liberals would put both into a moderate position. Therefore, either liberals or conservatives ranking as moderate does not tell us the bias of the questions involved. And then again, I might just be talking out of my ass.

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The owner takes a bigger economic risk than a worker.

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Eh, not always, and I'm not even sure it's often.

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Try parasites, especially in the sense of the exessively greedy CEO's that take salaries many many times higher than workers (do they really even work twice as hard?)

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That's reason number #79 why I really, really love where I work.I am what you might call a mid-level product specialist that gets a higher-than-average hourly rate for the industry I'm in, but the partners of my business only make about 5-6 times what I make.

Or get another job.....

No, you didn't state that intially, its not up to me to read your mind. Besides, once you start providing computers, you have drastically increased the cost. Also, then you run into the sticky question of how much of a computer you are going to provide, and by whom. ...... Not a simple proposition at all. The same can be said for television, however we don't provide free cable to everyone to offer them the discovery channel. We also don't provide free tvs. The internet can be a useful source of information, and I have used it as such, but it is a huge assumption to say that everyone else would use it likewise. There are quite a few people that would look at teh computer and internet access and ask why their taxes were wasted.

lucky for you.personally I think anyone who gets a million $ bonus should be shot in the interests of improving the economy.heh.

assumes another job is available and is anywhere near equivalent.you are operating under the impression that staying employed at the level you were at (with salary, benefits, seniority and any other perks) when the economy went south (due to shrub mismanagement and knowledge by wallstreet that he would be bad for business) is at all possible when there are 3/4's the jobs at any level above McJobs as before.for the employee looking to bail, the options are to find a job at or below his previous level (unless he can show he is underutilized, and might be able to nudge up a notch). for the emploer they can fill a job with sufficient or greater skills. this is not an equal situation.it is a common fantasy of the conservative world, that just any old job will do, and this false assumption makes their conclusion that the employee has as much "freedom" to change as the employer invalid.couple that with unemployment and disemployment (those off the official "unemployment" records but still not working) and the employer has many more opportunities to fill a working position than any employee has to change employers.try Forbidden

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

narrow minded is narrow minded. what I said was you could provide access to everyone in america for less than the tax give-away.that you take that to only mean a cable to your house is your narrow thinking on the matter. the obvious problem you saw of what to do with the cable means that a system must also be provided to use it. this is thinking through to the logical conclusion. and NO it is not a significant increase in cost, using today costs you can get an addequate computer for $200 compared to cable internet at $60 per month. with bulk order the cost would be way down. and that is assuming a fully functional computer with some opther useful software (wordprocessor, spreadsheet, etc) rather than an access machine.thank you for admiting that you have used it to learn something or I would say your need to be here had just decreased significantly.There are MANY people that look at the tax give-back and ask "why was their tax money wasted" -- another false argument.enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

Funny, you seem to be the one casting the argument as either or. I suggest you read your own link. You always have the freedom to look for work elsewhere. You are never guarenteed a job. The constitution guarentees many things, but work is not one of them. Ideally though, the US has one of the LOWEST unemployment rates in the world. We complain when our unemplyoment rate hits 6 percent. For example, in 2002, the US had an unemployment rate of 6%. Meanwhile, Franch had an unemployment rate of 9% and Spain had 11%! Of course, there weree countries that had lower unemployment than even the US. Japan had unemployment of 5% and the Netherlands had only 2%!
Even though 2002 was a bad year economically, the unemployment rate was around 6%, which is VERY low. By contrast, 1982 to 1983 had nearly 10 % unemployment in the US!!!! Now, I would be the first to say that the situation is not a dichotomy between roses and crap. There are still many problems we need to address, but your characterization of employees as helpless victems is both sad and groundless.

Do these unemployment rates include the people who are dropped off the count of unemployed people regarldess of if they found work or not?

See, I frankly think we would have been better off using that money to reduce our debt...... The government already spends too much. That is part of the reason why the national debt is still ballooning ( and this the fault of both parties).
As for my argument that many would not want such a service, or conssider it a waste is NOT a false arguement. I didn't say everyone would feel that way, but I have family members now who don't have computers and don't want one. You can't tell me that this sentiment isn't held by at least some of the population without lying. You are also assuming that internet access is a huge boon, any more than TV access is. Many people enjoy and utilize these outlets, however it is hardly universal.

Not sure the exact methodology, but here is a link to a list of US unemployment for the last 60 years:http://www.econstats.com/BLS/blss_m4.htmI will look to see if I can find a corrarating list published by the US government. (should corraborate)

Top Picks (Most Requested Statistics) : U.S. Bureau of Labor StatisticsThis is a link to the US dept of Labor. You can choose which specialtiy category you wish to look at. The fifth choice, the civilian labor force unemployment rate is the general rate.This is a much better site, you can alter the years, choose to plot a graph to give you a visual represntation of unemployment spikes.This message has been edited by Darwin Storm, 09-01-2004 09:20 PMThis message has been edited by Darwin Storm, 09-01-2004 09:23 PM