Actually, a worker on a mechanical harvester is an example of the use of technology. An example of specialization for a farm laborer would be one who only picks tomatoes or strawberries.

As for luxury items, you are mistaken here. They are rarely ever affected by a downturn in the economy, as the rich are the only ones who have the means of purchasing more than subsistence. Those who serve the uber rich (the artists, the bankers, the jewelers, etc.) feel less of an impact than those providing mass market goods in a downturn. In fact, the goods that you cite (food and gas) are some of the first goods that are affected in a downturn.

You forgot ignorant and not open to learning.

You just used the argument to prove my point. 'nuff said. Higher productivity is worth more, and leads to higher wages. Thanks for proving me right.

great example of circular reasoning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pla...

So, you like this troll?

I don't know where you get your "information" but it is wrong.

"Consumer Spending By JLP | April 15, 2010 Consumer spending has always been an important part of our nation’s GDP. In fact, consumer spending currently makes up about 70% of the GDP. That’s a lot."

http://allfinancialmatters.com/2010/04/1...

I don't have time to continue to educate you, as you clearly don't seem to want to become knowledgeable about the economy. Read the link and some other articles on economics before you come here to display your ignorance again.

Nope. Look at what happens in your community during changes in the economic cycle. When things are good, you will see businesses that specialize to smaller and smaller slices of activity. When economic downturns occur you see businesses broaden their activity. This has nothing to do with how many people or businesses there are, rather it is a matter of survival. With plenty, everyone gets an adequate amount from a smaller slice. With little, it takes a much larger slice to get the same amount.

You can find huge farms and small farms each employing itinerant workers. Neither the large nor the small has specialized workers, they just pick whatever it is that needs to be picked.

What do you think is confusing?

There is never perfect production/consumption responses. There will always be instances of over-production (in which case prices will be reduced or the business falters), and other instances of over-consumption (also known as under-production) in which cases prices will rise and/or other producers will enter the market to make up for the increased demand.

Look at it this way - your kids decide to start up a lemon aid stand. You had previously procured the ingredients as just a normal expenditure (sunk costs). They make the pitcher and set up a card table. Still no increase in economic activity has occurred. Only when the first customer approaches the stand and asks for a lemon-aid and pays for it, is there any economic activity. After a few customers, they need to replenish their pitcher, but you are out of ingredients, so you all go to purchase more. This is new activity, not sunk costs, so counts in the economic cycle. As they get more productive (let's say they figure out how to get more flavoring from the lemons, somehow, so now they have lower costs per pitcher. Their innovation now provides them the ability to not only buy more ingredients, but to purchase some gum in addition. So, an increase in consumer spending has occurred - now the grocer has had increased economic activity, again fueled by consumption which was made possible by increased efficiency brought about by increased technology/innovation.

That's the only way the system works. If you tried to run it by first pushing production, it doesn't work. Let's say that you had no existing raw materials, so you have to go procure them. Now you've only moved the cycle of economic activity upstream to you being the consumer of the grocer, which then starts the cycle anew. Production is a response to consumption, not the other way around.

Take another example - a farmer. This farm is totally self-sustaining neither purchasing nor selling. The farmer can produce as much as possible over his own consumption needs but no economic activity ensues despite how much he produces. Only when a consumer comes and actually purchases something does economic activity occur. You might say that the farmer must produce more than he needs in the first place for him to be able to sell some. That is not accurate - nor is it logical. It takes resources to produce (time, energy, etc.). Unless there is an expectation of sales, there will not be additional production. In most cases, the first purchase occurs as a deficit to the producer.

Think of your own book. You might think that you produced it prior to any consumption, but you did so with an expectation of consumption. You might be wrong, but the activity started with the expectation of consumption.

You seem to be mixing up level of consumption with consumption as the driving force of an economy. People may have unlimited levels of desired consumption, but they do not have unlimited assets to satisfy that desire. As I've said innumerable times, with increased efficiency comes increased income which leads to increased consumption (or savings, which fuels other producers).

A same sex couple CAN marry in America; they just each have to marry a member of the opposite sex, or it's not marriage.

Because marriage, the life long mating of a man and a woman, is a vital institution in society. It predates civilization as we know it.

And you want to redefine it as, "A contract to fuck for awhile" (I'm sorry khalling but when these idiots get me disgusted like this I want to use language as ugly as their ideas).

First, I *can't* impose my beliefs on anyone, I can only argue in favor of them. if I *could* impose my beliefs on this matter on people, I'd make Hitler look like Mother Theresa. Oh, I wouldn't slaughter homosexuals; I'd slaughter any idiot who thinks equality is more important than civilization.

Let me throw it back at you, maybe you can find an answer for me...

What difference is it in your life if a human/animal couple marries in America? What difference is it in your life if a human/umbrella couple marries in America? What difference is it in *your* life if an adult/child couple marries in America?
The concept of gay marriage is just as absurd as these concepts... and your side of the argument are trying to force me to belief it isn't!

I don't want to be forced to accept absurdities in public or face persecution like Donald Sterling has. THAT is one difference it makes. I'm not the one forcing my beliefs on another... the mass of unthinking, ignorant idiots are forcing their "beliefs"... in reality, "feelings"... on me. And I'm fighting back. With reason.

It's not a false argument. *I* am not an animal or inanimate object, therefore *I* still have *MY* rights!

To refuse to allow *me* to marry creatures or objects of *my* choice denies *me* MY RIGHTS. As they are animals and objects, THEIR CONSENT IS NOT REQUIRED.

You keep coming to this conclusion because you keep insisting upon viewing marriage as a type of contract. It isn't. Marriage existed long before contract law, and the mating instinct behind marriage exists in all mammalian species. Wolves mate for life, and a contract has nothing to do with it.

I dunno why I'm typing in caps. It's not that you're blind, it's that you refuse to think.

Part of my disgust with your side of the argument is that I took Anthro 101. I saw chimpanzee society. I do NOT want to degenerate to that.

"Actually no, you didn't fix it for me, you just denied scientific evidence. Sexual orientation is controlled by biology, which means it must be subject to mutation and deviation, just like every other aspect of biology.
"

IT DOESN'T MATTER!

Your genitalia don't exist for you to have fun. That's where it always breaks down. The genitalia of mammalian species exists, was designed for or evolved for... has the function of, reproduction. Sexual attraction doesn't exist so you can get high on endorphins, it exists to MAKE BABIES. It's not that homosexuality is EXTREMELY uncommon, it's that it misapplies the purpose of sex. Again, Google "Pica".
People with Pica are uncommon. That's not the issue with Pica. The issue with Pica is that it is unnatural.

Ask Bucky to explain Article 2 section 1 clause 5 of the Constitution. He'll get that wrong, too, if that's his opinion of "natural".

check your premise.

God doesn't create "homosexuals" because "homosexual" isn't a race, sex or species, but a condition, an appetite.

No.

In the words of Jean Luc Picard: The line must be drawn HERE.

There is no such thing as "gay marriage"... or otherwise. It is an oxymoron.

I will not leave it up to the two people involved. Because the next step will be to involve 3 or 4 or 5 people, and after that animals or computers or ideas or anything else to destroy the institution of marriage and turn the nation into a Humpty Dumpty country where, like the Party in "1984", the cultural powers that be can redefine any aspect of society almost at will to suit whatever purpose they choose... or no purpose beyond the raw power to do so.

Marriage MEANS something. It saddens me that people whose philosophy is based on reason are so ready to equivocate with absurdity. But then, AR was guilty of the same type of errors.


"We had a form of social contract that we called 'marriage,' but it wasn't the same thing as marriage was in the old days. There was no love. There used to be a crime called 'adultery,' but even the word had gone out of use on the Earth I knew. Instead, it was considered antisocial for a woman to refuse to give herself to other men; to do so might indicate that she thought herself superior or thought her husband to be superior to other men. The same thing applied to men in their relationships with women other than their wives. Marriage was a social contract that could be made or broken at the whim of the individual. It served no purpose because it meant nothing, neither party gained anything by the contract that they couldn't have had without it. But a wedding was an excuse for a gala party at which the couple were the center of attention. So the contract was entered into lightly for the sake of a gay time for a while, then broken again so that the game could be played with someone else—the game of Musical Bedrooms." - from The Highest Treason by Eric Frank Russel... a narrative by the greatest and most self-sacrificing hero ever conceived in literature.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/24302/243...
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24302?ms...

If they would keep it behind closed door, no one would care.

If they didn't insist everyone has to agree that abnormal sexual attractions and activities were normal and healthy, nobody would care.

Here, let me share an Ayn Rand quote with you:
"There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil."

Ayn Rand

Saying "why do so many have a concern about who one lets touch their private parts?" is the equivalent of taking the middle. It's not saying that sexual deviancy is just as valid and good as sexual normalcy, and it's not saying that sexual deviancy is... deviancy. It's saying, "you shouldn't care about what you can't see".
Or, alternatively, "Everyone should live like a Bugblatter beast of Traal, or *they're* the ones with the problem."