NY Times Story on Pilot Population Decline

Steven P. McNicoll wrote:
"Roger (K8RI)" wrote in message
...
Here in MIchigan we have had term limits for some time. They are not
working out nearly as well as had been hoped, so we are looking at
lengthening them by at least one if not two more terms.

First term they ar ejust leaaarning the ropes. By the end of the
second term they are just becoming efficient and able to accomplish
something and they are out.


Sounds like one term should be the limit.



At which point only the senior government employees have any power at
all because they become the only people that have a clue as to how
anything works.

I do think there is on exception to this. President. One 6 year term.

So your choice is to expire rather than take the life saving
medication, because it's possibly addictive? That is what you are
saying. Is that what you mean?

No, my choice is to put up with nausia rather than become addicted to
some powerful narcotic. It's a matter of degree - is the cure worse
than the disease? In this case, I do think so. You seem to disagree.

I find the side effects of the dole to be large scale, long term, slow
to manifest, and extremely hard to get rid of. This is most true of
welfare, somewhat less true of social security, less true of insurance
(depending in part on whether it is mandatory or not), but even in the
case of (say) auto insurance, there are significant negative effects.

In the case of car insurance, the cure, or rather, treatment,
(insurance) is better than the disease (uninsured motorists killing
people). In the case of welfare, the cure is =far= worse than the
disease. In the case of Social Security, we are creeping across the
threshold. I don't know, maybe we passed it already. Maybe not.

Aren't you overlooking the fact that SSI recipients have paid into the
SSI fund, so it's not your dime?

Not really. The SSI benefits are only loosely tied to the money they
put in. They are more tightly tied to the total amount that has been
put in, which allows the big pot to pay a small set of recipients. Now
the pot is getting smaller, and the entitled people are getting larger
in number. Thus the accusation that it is a ponzi scheme is not
unwarranted.

Aside from those issues, what sort of person abandons his aged
parents, because he doesn't want to fund their existence? Eliminating
SSI would be roughly equal to that to me.

My relationship with my parents is considerably deeper than my
relationship with my neighbor's out-of-work cousin's boyfriend. I'm not
completely against the concept of SSI, but I don't see legislated
charity as being the same as caring for my own parents.

So the way you see it, government should not provide for the
inevitable portion of its population that is unemployable?

To do so will increase that number. This is a disservice to those on
the edge, as it encourages them to go the wrong way. I do see and agree
with your point about the truly unemployable, but even that is a tricky
problem; look how welfare has floundered.

Doling out money based on the recipient having made poor choices (not
saving for retirement, for example).
Is that being done?

It discourages people from saving for their own retirement, and thus
makeing a poor choice, from which SSI will rescue them.

Jose
--
Get high on gasoline: fly an airplane.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

On Sat, 28 Apr 2007 13:29:13 GMT, Jose
wrote:

OTOH The number of
discrete values in the set can easily skew the median.

Yes, and so which one is most appropriate would depend on whether a
=value= is likely to change much, or whether the =number= of values is

The problem with income is we don't know if they include every income
that is different than the others or if they put them into brackets.
"I think" it's the latter, but have not been able to find any
information on how they come up with those figures. Most of those
numbers don't have a lot of meaning if we don't know how they are
derived. I remember reading that some incomes are exempt, or not
included.

As the old saying goes, "Statistics don't lie, but statisticians do."

the important consideration. In the case of income distribution, the
former is probably more important. In the case of school test grades
from year to year, the latter might have more significance.

Jose

Maxwell wrote:
"Gig 601XL Builder" wrDOTgiaconaATsuddenlink.net wrote in message
...
Larry Dighera wrote:

I am not taxed for Social Security. I contribute into it.
If it is required by the government it is a tax. If anyone gets more out
of it than they put into it is a income redistribution welfare program.

When taken together about 15% of every dime I have earned in my 30 years
in the labor pool has been paid into SS & Medicare. If I had been allowed
to keep that money and invest it in even a conservative investment I could
retire right now, finish my airplane and never be in anyway a cost to
society. The Social Security Administration is a terrible investment
manager and Medicare is a mediocre health insurance policy at best.

And don't loose sight of the fact that your employer has to double it.
Everything deducted by your employer has to be matched by him. So when you
make your estimates of where you would be with a private investment, double
it.




Well I did take that into account when I quoted the 15% figure. 7.65% x2

On Sat, 28 Apr 2007 14:49:09 GMT, Larry Dighera
wrote:

On Fri, 27 Apr 2007 23:11:26 -0400, "Roger (K8RI)"
wrote in
:

[Detailed financial and hours-worked historical analysis refuting the
notion of the more recent increase in working hours and lower salaries
as a possible cause of the decline in aviation entrants snipped]

I think the most important item is missing from this analysis. The
article also noted that the current generation appears to have an
aversion to risk and the general population views general aviation
right in there with Bungee jumping or jumping the Grand Canyon with a
motorcycle. IOW the conclusion which he stated in the article was we
may be, in general, raising a generation of cowards who want to be
protected and shy away from pursuits associated with risk.

Just stop and think of how many people you know have made remarks
about either how risky flying is, or how they worry about you flying.
How many have had to give up flying due to girlfriend, wife, or
family?

There is no question that fear plays a role in flying whether it's
airline or personal, with the latter provoking a response several
orders of magnitude greater than the latter. However, I doubt that
there are studies that show an _increase_ in cowardice in GenX. I
sure hope it's not true. Did you find any supporting information for
that notion that you can cite?

The only place I've seen it stated in that fashion, or manner was the
article. OTOH today people do *seem* to want to be protected more
than in the past with government responding with "feel good"
legislation. There have been a number of articles about today's
society being much more sensitive to, and emotionally affected by
disasters, much of which has been attributed to instant news and
saturation about such events. We've had larger school disasters such
as the Bath School disaster (Bath Michigan 1921) and larger terrorist
actions (Black Wall Street 1927- death toll of over 3,000) than in
recent times. However that terrorist action was domestic rather than
foreign.

Each generation has believed they lived in a time of heightened danger
and fear. I grew up with "the bomb". Today we have international
terrorism which causes me very little worry. I'd gladly accept a bit
more risk for the return of the freedoms we had prior to 9/11.

"601XL Builder" wrDOTgiacona@suddenlinkDOTnet wrote in message
...

Well I did take that into account when I quoted the 15% figure. 7.65% x2

Correct, and I should have said so. As an employer, I just resent the fact
that people are being charged double for SS and Med, and most don't realize
it.

It keeps them from realizing that their contribution to SS and Medicare is
actually greater than their Federal payroll tax deduction in many, if not
most cases.

On Sat, 28 Apr 2007 12:20:16 -0400, Jose
wrote in :

Just for a moment try to imagine a nation where the poor old folks who
have given the toil of their youth to increasing the GNP (or whatever
its called these days) littering the pavement of your city so thick
that you can't walk down the sidewalk.

Imagine for a moment a nation where the young folk spend recklessly and
go into debt instead of saving for their retirment, knowing that when
they come of age, somebody else will take care of them. This is the end
result of a slow creep of large organizations (including but not limited
to government) making benevolent decisions for us.

What kind of nation will that lead to? Certainly not a strong one - not
a world leader.

Jose

So you think that failing to care for the nation's poor is appropriate
for a government, and it makes the nation stronger. Interesting.

Don't get me wrong. I don't want the government telling me when it is
mandatory for me to wear my sweater. But what do you think would be
the consequences of failing to care for the poor? Do you think it
would be cheaper to police the desperate souls who are driven to crime
because they are hungry?

I give up. I hope you get a chance to live in the world you desire.
It would be fitting for people who think the way you do to have to
live in a world overrun with hungry, desperate derelicts. Or heaven
forbid, disaster should strike and disable you, so that you were
unemployable.

Neglect of those who have toiled their life away to make our nation
great may be the sign of a strong nation (I doubt it), but it sure
lacks nobility.

Maxwell writes:

That's because more and more young poeple are much like yourself.

The young people have nothing to do with it, as they haven't fully entered the
economy. And young people are raised by their parents.

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Roger (K8RI) writes:

Now it depends on your location. In many areas you can make more
money by investing it rather than paying off a home. If I pay 5%
interest, and my home gains 3% per year I'm far better off letting
that money work at 12 to 14% return, or more

There is virtually no investment that will consistently return 12 or 14
percent, and making plans on the basis of finding one may be imprudent.

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Larry Dighera writes:

There is no question that fear plays a role in flying whether it's
airline or personal, with the latter provoking a response several
orders of magnitude greater than the latter. However, I doubt that
there are studies that show an _increase_ in cowardice in GenX. I
sure hope it's not true. Did you find any supporting information for
that notion that you can cite?

For decades, there has been a general increase in fear in the population,
driven principally by news media, and by government collusion with those
media. People are more fearful of everything nowadays than they have ever
been in the past (in U.S. history), and the trend is accelerating.

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