Quote:"My guess is you, explicitly, haven't been called that on this board.

I guess you and i have different definitions of "explicit". But equally as explicit as GoodOwl's statement is this one from JAAO:

"Unlike Trump and his supporters, I’m not going to change my tune on that because I didn’t like his conclusions. "

I guess he "explicitly" called ME two-faced, just as GO "explicitly" called YOU a cockroach.

Quote:Future-proofing is the term that has started to be floated around once climate change became a political third rail. It accounts for mitigating issues associated with climate change, sea level rise, changes in migration patterns, water scarcity, etc.

Hitting on sea level rise, since you brought it up, future-proofing isn't about halting sea level rise, it's about attempting to mitigate its affects. You can see an example of a potential solution in the Galveston sea wall, which was constructed to deal with elevated sea levels due to storm surge. New York is a high profile case that is planning to build a sea wall at its harbor to mitigate both storm surge and sea level rise.

I have always said we should spend our time and money on preparing to meet changes, not spending it on efforts to turn back the clock. Glad to see you are finally coming around to my position.

But most of your side, when I talk about how most of the change is natural and not man-caused, just call me a climate denier.

Quote:And I don't believe in starving the goose - that's a grosse mischaracterization of my stance. I believe that taxation and responsible appropriation allows us to tackle massive problems that are not going to be profitable for private industries to handle. Tell me how exactly you convince private industry to pay for a sea wall to protect lower Manhattan? Sometimes, you need a non-profit motivated entity to come in and provide services that rely on fees from all citizens.

Well, if the goose is capitalism, the goose feed is capital. Capitalists without capital do not invest. Capitalists without capital do not build. and eventually, capitalists who do not invest or build, don't pay more taxes. Wealth taxes and high tax rates take capital out of the hands of capitalists and put it in the hands of people who care a lot less about waste and uselessness, and more about votes and getting re-elected or re-appointed to cushy jobs..

But you are right, some things need to be done by government. And government needs some taxes to do those things. We just disagree on on what things, done by whom, and with what money.

And some things are better done by capitalists, seeking profit and growth. All the steel that AOC needs to build her railroads - which governmetnt agency is going to make that steel? Try giving a tax break to manufacturers, and that steel will be available PDQ. That's one way to feed the goose.

\Capitalists want to make money, and keep it. The net gain is what they look at. Give them that opportunity and they will go after like a dog to hamburger. You will stimulate growth and employment. Take it away, and you only stimulate bureaucracy.