Negatory

You can have organizations that pay more equitably that aren’t run by single persons. This is not black or white.

Yeah, but a pilot in a cyber role probably won’t have the tactical understanding to be truly excellent when compared to someone that was actually trained properly. In fact, I could see that as part of why we aren’t as good in some aspects. I’m wondering how many homegrown cyber folks end up in leadership.

I didn’t say anything like that and you know it.

Counterpoint: The money they make is entirely from the labor of the people they employ and the machines they run.

I am not disagreeing with many of your points. And I, along with many of you, are plenty well off. I get that. No shit we all have Roth IRAs and TSP and retirement and stable socialized jobs that allow us, very fortuitously, to be some of the lucky people in society. But most people can't, and that's the problem. To just say there is no limit to wealth in society and entirely detach from reality by saying that how much the top 1% makes isn't connected to how much the working class makes is asinine. Because if they had incentives to give that money to workers as opposed to stock buybacks or letting it sit in stock options, maybe society would be better? Also, it's not like the system we have today has been around for very long, yet you guys talk like it's holy and could never be altered. Since 1913 to now, the top end capital gains tax has ranged from 13%-77%. The personal income tax for the highest bracket has ranged from less than 10% to greater than 90%. My argument is that Reaganomics and the policies that were implemented in the last 40 years have disproportionately helped the rich while making it harder to live and generate wealth for the vast majority of future and younger generations. That is the argument I want you to address. For example, Millenials only hold 3% of total US wealth, whereas baby boomers held 21% if you go back in time to when they were the same age. https://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-less-wealth-net-worth-compared-to-boomers-2019-12 Purchasing power hasn't change at all in decades. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/ Inflation adjusted home costs have risen nearly 40% in the last few decades. https://dqydj.com/historical-home-prices/ Education costs have tripled since 1980, after adjusting for inflation. https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college These all began their upward trajectory after we decided that horse and sparrow (which literally comes from the sparrow getting to eat out of the horse's shit) economics (reaganomics) were what we were going to do as a nation. My argument is that these are real, society defining, problematic issues that we need to address. We can fix some of these problems with the right market and governmental incentives/tax structure. Or you guys can keep hanging on to republican/neo-liberal fiscal conservatism which just saw over 20% of all circulating US dollars created just this year along with $4T in debt and the Fed swelling to over $7T. This is a crisis that you guys aren't addressing because your TSP appeared to go up in value, and I want to know why or when you think the current system will improve. Finally, here's an additional hypothetical to one of your points: Why not just give the trillions directly to billionaires and the top 0.1% only because they're the "job creators" (actually pretty close to what already happens with large company bailouts of people like Boeing that just did stock buybacks over the last 10 years; socialize losses, privatize gains, right)? Don't give literally anyone else money, especially working class. Those billionaires, by the logic in this thread, will create all the jobs and totally donate to charity and fix the roads and trickle all over society if they just have a little more money.

Naw man, let’s have an intellectual debate if you’re capable.

Here’s a hypothetical, what if the top 1% made it quadrillions of dollars a year? Would that be too much? Quintillions? There’s no limit, right? Everything is ethical, Ayn Rand, right? Because folks on the right like to argue that going from $10-15 an hour for low wage earners would be untenable for the economy but that giving 3 individuals a quarter of a trillion is okay.

I do know the difference. Increase personal capital gains taxes, it isn’t that hard. Or do something more imaginative, I don’t think people care. Whether you like it or not, disparity or perceived disparity has gotten so bad that the majority of one political party candidates proposed a wealth tax and weren’t laughed out of their races. Welcome to America where CEOS compensation has increased 1000% since 1975 while working class compensation has increased closer to 15-20%. The best part is the working class folks (that’s you guys), such as those in the military making 100-200k, will continue to perpetuate this trend. https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-2018/

How about the money that’s pumped into the fed disproportionately going to a small swath of society? That’s moral, right? And of course we all made money on the stock market. But you’re blinded to it’s bigger long term disparity effects because you “got yours.”

Eh, the blunt truth is that wealth or debt transfer aren’t as much of big boogeyman words for a huge amount of people anymore after the stock market literally entirely detached from reality this year. Tens of millions are suffering and the top 1% or .1% were disproportionately (and ironically) the group the poor people’s wealth was “transferred to.” Just Bezos, Musk, and Zuckerberg made ~$250B this year while the majority of the world was suffering. I’m not saying they shouldn’t make money - they should as they provide services that are in demand - but this is plainly immoral. I get that most people can’t fathom what making over 200,000 times what the average, well off, family makes. But what if the system only had them make... $25B? What if it was only $25M?!? Oh they couldn’t live comfortably anymore probably. And socialism amirite? Philosophically, many will scream foul. “They earned it!” But that requires the current iteration of the capitalist system and tax structure we have set up now to, at a baseline, already be “moral” or “fair” in the eyes of society, and that’s just an opinion. An opinion you’re gonna have a harder time defending if things continue. Why is 2020’s system morally superior to say the 1960s when top tax brackets would be taxed at 90%? Back when people could graduate college debt free working part time and then immediately buy a house with their union job. More and more, working class people are starting to wonder if, just maybe, the current iteration of the system doesnt work for the average American. IMO, reagonomics did what it was supposed to do; it defeated the USSR. 30 additional years was a tragedy, and it needs an immediate revision.

How many flag officer 17Ds are there?

Hasn’t it always been known that there need to be 2 doses for that vaccine? Another example of the media making a misleading story.

Yeah. When BLM was focused on police brutality it was a much more tolerable movement. And no one’s a racist for thinking that.

It’s bad. I’ve heard many say that an “11/10” on the scale of how bad it is would be an understatement. Solarwinds stores network topology, configuration, and credentials for all of those organizations. The Air Force is also a prime user. If the network was a bank, the hackers would have access to floor plans, schedules, vault keys and maybe even have an inside man still depending on the level of compromise. CISA/DHS is saying that if you have Solarwinds installed (or Orion) that was updated since March of this year, you need to assume everything in your network is compromised. It’s actually insane how big of a deal this is. Many affected companies and organizations are literally talking about entire server rebuilds of everything. SIPR is just one example of a potentially entirely compromised network: https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-12-18-pentagon-orders-shutdown-classified-networks-solarwinds-orion.html#

It goes without saying that Sim would only post extremely biased, out of context, bullshit. But I went through the trouble of figuring out what was manipulated, so I might as well share it. The context that’s missing is that, immediately before this clip starts, he says “If we can not make significant progress on racial equity, this country is doomed...” He’s saying the country is doomed if the growing minority groups continue to be treated unfairly, and they need to work together if they want to fix it. If you want to check, watch the whole video. This is at ~1:14:30

I agree that it is a weird, mainly unfounded, dem talking point to say that requiring a voter ID is racist. There just really isn’t data to support that claim. Even Jimmy Carter headed a study back in 2005 that concluded that, while the actual tangible benefits of requiring IDs may be low, it would still be worth it from a “trust in the system” perspective, and it would not likely significantly affect voting turnout. Just phase in the law over 4 years and be done with it. It would probably help improve society’s perception of election integrity at a minimal cost.

You mean like Polio? For things like measles, you have to hit ~94% and somehow we did that back when people trusted science. Source: 1) https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/herd-immunity-and-coronavirus/art-20486808 First of all, Pfizer and Moderna are the only approved vaccines, so let's focus on those. We know for sure that, when it comes to COVID, it's way better than not being vaccinated at all (up to 95% effective) and that it has been proven to significantly reduce the severity of COVID infections when they do happen (almost all cases after vaccination are mild). Source: 2) https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201118005595/en/ It's not about you or me. It's never been about you or me. It's about the herd. While you guys love to quote death rates in a vacuum - and death rates are important- you have to know the assumptions. The current assumptions are that you get admitted to get care. This literally isn't true as of this week in highly populated parts of America. Without the ability to get in hospitals due to exponentially rising cases, folks that could have been cared for are going to die. Also, it's kind of funny to see that some of you literally last week pulled BS sources out that showed that we wouldn't have ICU capacity problems (you took overall US capacity in a vacuum or cherrypicked examples) and now they are manifesting in our most populated areas in America. Sources: 3) https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20201218/covid-has-southern-california-icu-capacity-at-zero 4) https://abc7.com/health/what-happens-when-ca-icu-capacity-reaches-0%/8879527/ Also, why don't you all ever talk about how the hospitalization rate for COVID is significantly less biased towards old people when compared to the death rate? Younger people actually have a much higher, real chance of being admitted to the hospital and/or icu than death rates lead you to believe. For example, let's compare 30-39 year olds to 65-74 year olds. The average COVID patient who is 30-39 years old is on the order of 22.5 times less likely to die than a 65-74 year old. But they are only 2.5 times less likely to be hospitalized. Sources: 5) https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/downloads/covid-data/hospitalization-death-by-age.pdf 6) https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/COVIDNet/COVID19_3.html So what? Normal average aged people have no real chance of hospitalization though, right? Wrong. A predictor was created using data from a cohort of studies to tell you the relative likelihood of hospitalization based on your age, bmi, race, gender, etc. Spoilers, it's greater than you think. For example, a 40 year old male with a healthy BMI who is white statistically has a 3.6% chance to be hospitalized from COVID-19. Sources: 7) https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0237419 😎https://riskcalc.org/COVID19Hospitalization/ Who cares about hospitalizations though? ICU admission is what matters, and that's probably not that bad, right? Wrong. Studies have shown that, when you take the population as a whole, generally ~24% of all COVID cases are admitted to the ICU. And that's not just old people, it's everyone. For example, out of the hospitalized young people aged 18-34, 21% ended up requiring ICU care. Look at the other age groups and you'll see the same trend. Source: 9) https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2770542 Put it all together, and the hospitalization and ICU admission rate for 30-39 year olds is on the order of 3% and 0.8% respectively. For 40-49 year olds it's on the order of 5% and 1.5%. Unfortunately, these aren't just trivial numbers, although we all wish they were. When you look at 65+, you get to terribly high requirements when it comes down to hospitalization and ICU admission rates. When a portion of society takes hospital capacity away because they go to strip clubs to protest "liberty," you end up making it literally impossible for numerous people to get life-saving care: My hot take: If cases don't start to go down immediately, we are going to max out America's medical system from coast to coast. With this lack of access to care, significant amounts of people will die of treatable diseases - not just COVID. I mean, we've already had literally as many excess deaths this year as we did combat losses in WWII, so I guess this probably will fall on deaf ears. But no one's asking for permanent lockdowns or microchips or any changes to life that are long-lasting. Society is asking for you to be on the team that bands together for probably on the order of one year to take precautions, limit the spread, get vaccinated, and get through this. No one chose to have a worldwide pandemic that would unduly stress the entirety of the global human medical system. Everyone wants to get back to normal, and the only way to do that is to trust science and work as a team. Get on the team.

I did some more research, and it turns out that you probably did get a ballot. A real one, so my bad. My original skepticism came from all the “ballots” that were thrown away or burned that turned out to be samples. https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN2622SZ Also turns out it’s planned and normal and would require a proactive step from you or anyone else to commit voter fraud, so I still don’t see the issue. EDIT: Also, you have to be a registered voter to get a ballot. What’s the problem here? Registered voters shouldn’t get a ballot unless they specifically request one? This isn’t like dems are sending ballots to illegal immigrants.

Yeah I mean, honestly, I don’t believe you. If you have pics or proof I’d like to see it.

Sample ballots in states have bubbles for candidates. https://www.vbgov.com/government/departments/voter-registrar/Documents/Sample Ballots pdf files only/2020/November/SAMPLEBALLOT.pdf In fact, sample ballots being burned accounted for a large portion of the fake voter fraud videos shared on social media.

🥃

The lawsuit reads very similar to many Jim Crow laws. They shouldn’t be able to vote my mail because I don’t like who they voted for!! It’s funny to see the disenfranchisers say that they are the disenfranchised. 3000 people died yesterday. Nothing, right? People voted by mail to try to stop that from happening. And, in the end, bipartisan councils in the vast majority of states agreed that 2020 was the most secure election in history. Maybe you think it’s cool that “I will die to stop the steal” is trending on Twitter. I think it’s sad.

I guess it’s just pointless to compare which president lied more. What’s probably more useful is actually calling out specific lies or patterns. I think the impact of some of the lies the last few years have been worse than usual when it comes to the future of America For example, Trump’s immediate “Fake News” response to any news that he didn’t like has done more to drive a wedge between this country than any other president in recent history. No one trusts anybody anymore. There’s some potential good in being skeptical of information, sure, but it’s not panning out that way. Now a higher than ever number of people enjoy calling themselves anti-vaxxers or conspiracy theorists. Dumbasses have a platform where they can get to an echo chamber (the Internet), which does much more harm than good. Also his recent inane rants on how he “won” the election are setting up a large portion of the country to not believe in democracy. Combining these with the Facebook propaganda machine are mobilizing a bunch of idiots, without any real evidence. Over the last month, I’ve seen multiple full militias (10-20 people) out eating with their guns to... intimidate the liberals? I’ve never seen that before. This is how home grown extremism/authoritarianism starts: with a healthy amount of disinformation and distrust of your fellow countrymen. You guys are gonna come back and say that the dems unfairly discredited the president the same way before his term, but that’s simply not true. I urge you to re-read (Or more than likely, read the first time, as I’m almost certain you got all your info from the news) the mueller report, specifically when it comes to “Individual-1.” I’m predicting Trump will pardon himself and his family before he’s gone, but this is another example of disinformation gone awry.

Retired majors make ~4200 a month or 50k a year under legacy. It’s closer to being the equivalent of 1.3-1.5M if you use a SWR of 3.5-4%, but close enough.

Valid points about low chances of death and life expectancy likely not changing significantly. But there are probably other costs than just deaths. What do you think about having our healthcare system maxed out for an indeterminate amount of time? Many states are projected to reach >100% bed capacity in the next 3 weeks, and that could just as easily affect your circle of people you care about.