On the subject of buying American to save American jobs: This is a noble idea that unfortunately doesn't translate from idea to reality. Businesses desire efficiency as efficiency usually leads to increased profitability. If it's more efficient to ship a job to a country where labor is less expensive, such as China, then that's what will happen. On the surface this seems like a terrible thing, but that's because generally people only look at one side of it, oddly, which is the side of the "greedy" CEOs who are looking for nothing but profit. Well, I suppose they are, but are they the only ones who benefit from the outsourcing? In the show itself, the question was answered: the Xbox costs around $100 less being manufactured abroad than it would were it made here in the US. So consumers benefit by saving $100. Given there are many more Xbox consumers than people making Xboxes, the benefit to consumers is much larger than the hypothetical benefit to a hypothetical manufacturing sector based purely on the number of people who consume vs. the number who create. On the subject of deplorable work conditions in Chinese factories, there's really no excusing that. But in many third-world countries, what we consider "sweat shops" the locals consider "better than starving in a barren field." And shockingly most places that employ child labor look, to the children, much better than the alternatives, which are often begging or prostitution. It would be great if everyone in the world were subjected to the same conditions as we are used to, but in many cases when we approach these situations from the point of view of "American living in America," we don't see the alternatives to what we perceive as abhorrent are actually the lesser of two evils by an incredible margin.

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Regarding Kingdoms of Amalur...I just finished playing the demo, and now firmly believe this game will bomb.

Yeah!!! You are gonna be SUPER CheapyD now with all those steam sales and Amazon deals to take advantage of!!! Also with the wireless HDMI it seems it might have some kind of lag issue I'd watch out for.

Originally Posted by polly Regarding Kingdoms of Amalur...I just finished playing the demo, and now firmly believe this game will bomb.

Yeah, I tried the demo. From the archery to looting and character creation, game feels like a simplified Skyrim. And it's the comparisons to Skyrim that will cause it the most harm. The one area where it works better than Skyrim is the defensive combat. I dig the evasive roll, even if it launches you across the screen.

Cute game, tho. I definitely see its appeal. It's just not for me (especially when I still have interest in Skyrim).

.

I haven't really payed much attention to the forums until I started listening to CAGcast podcasts lately but- keep up the great banter, answers to the meaning of life, gaming nerd / random stoner ramble train of thoughts production style goodness that makes working the nightshift bearable. ****

I've been meaning to say this for a while but over the last 3 episodes Shipwreck is becoming strong with the force (and by "force" i mean "voice of the people") I think this year if we have a Cheapy Award for "Voice of the People" Shipwreck could bring some competition to Wombat. P.S. Good show chaps

Controversy Sells
===============
I think the nature of any religion is that they disagree* with other religions. That's why they're different religions and not the same religion.

While I can perfectly understand anyone's dislike of the group I think, like Shipwreck's initial response, that I don't think that particular verse should be received as offensive. That particular verse is more "advertising for Christians" than it is "condemnation of other religions"**. That would be like saying declaring as a Democrat is condemnation of Republicans.

That said if you want to take the verse and combine it with the group and come up with that interpretation as the intent of the commercial that's one thing (and I'd probably still disagree) but the verse itself is among (in my opinion) the more passive of verses.


* disagreement not equal to hate
** and there has got to be room in the spectrum of reasonable discussion for those two things to be different

Wombat, John 3:16 is not Mark 16:16.

Originally Posted by Big_Pick_Zel On the subject of buying American to save American jobs: This is a noble idea that unfortunately doesn't translate from idea to reality. Businesses desire efficiency as efficiency usually leads to increased profitability. If it's more efficient to ship a job to a country where labor is less expensive, such as China, then that's what will happen. On the surface this seems like a terrible thing, but that's because generally people only look at one side of it, oddly, which is the side of the "greedy" CEOs who are looking for nothing but profit. Well, I suppose they are, but are they the only ones who benefit from the outsourcing? In the show itself, the question was answered: the Xbox costs around $100 less being manufactured abroad than it would were it made here in the US. So consumers benefit by saving $100. Given there are many more Xbox consumers than people making Xboxes, the benefit to consumers is much larger than the hypothetical benefit to a hypothetical manufacturing sector based purely on the number of people who consume vs. the number who create. On the subject of deplorable work conditions in Chinese factories, there's really no excusing that. But in many third-world countries, what we consider "sweat shops" the locals consider "better than starving in a barren field." And shockingly most places that employ child labor look, to the children, much better than the alternatives, which are often begging or prostitution. It would be great if everyone in the world were subjected to the same conditions as we are used to, but in many cases when we approach these situations from the point of view of "American living in America," we don't see the alternatives to what we perceive as abhorrent are actually the lesser of two evils by an incredible margin.

Yeah, but the question is who cares? Are you really into world peace? Are you going to go to China and save children there?

I challenge you to read "The Upcoming China Wars" or "Death By China"
then try to re-make that same argument. Currency manipulation and death by Chinese products like dry-wall. I fear it is you who doesn't see all sides of the argument. Wait until you coat your house with lead-based paint or swallow boric acid thinking it's Ativan. You really need to ask yourself are you willing to die for a few dollars?

I know that may sound harsh, but what do you think freedom of trade really means? China is supplying about 98% of our goods. This is perfectly imbalanced. In order to export any goods the manufacturer must by stocks fulfilled by the Chinese govt and kept in American businesses. The government supplements these bonds so much that the govt itself would become bankrupt if so many new businesses weren't supplying money everyday for them to re-use. This means China owns most of our buisnesses and those nasty CEO's and also our governemnt itself is a slave to Chinese demands. What happens when China says we will pull our money out of American buisnesses and cause a depression? The president says oh PLZ! PLZ! keep invested here we cannot upset you! Obama even ran part of his campaign on standing up to China and he has universally failed. He is not the one who started it though so he shouldn't be a scapegoat.

Like I said, read the books that have been thoroughly researched and make that same argument again.

Originally Posted by ColossusVerbatum Also with the wireless HDMI it seems it might have some kind of lag issue I'd watch out for.

< 1ms lag, according to the spec sheet. (And I haven't noticed any.)

http://gizmodo.com/5878209/why-apple-doesnt-make-the-iphone-in-america

I could not stop laughing when Cheapy asked to put 3 things in order according to how much he hates them, the choices were awesome!

On a serious note Wombat is talking about censorship, like it or not everyone has a right to say what they want. Unfortunately for us P.C. is so pervasive that people can't say anything if it might offend anyone, we aren't free if as a people we try to censor messages we don't like.

yeah i hate that 3:16 self righteous crap. im totally w wombat here.
keep your easter bunny and santa shit to your own family and don't be clogging the air waves with bullshit. i hate xtians and i hate kids and i hate tv and football. that is just too much. and wow then cheapyd puts that at the end of the show after wombat says how insulting it is... way to go for free adtime and trying to piss your friend off? idk
peace all
oh and i love jesus, him and i toke bowls and trip the light fantastic every weekend. he's a chill dude

Originally Posted by Knoell To be fair the verse was not meant to highlight any of the views you are criticizing FotF for, it actually highlighted that God loves EVERYONE, and ANYONE. It said it twice. You can argue all you want about their true motives but the commercial certainly did not have evil homophobic spreading intent. As for the time and place BS, half of the commercials during football games are about stuff you don't care about. Just ignore the religion one just like you ignore the dodge caravan one.

God loves everyone, But not anyone. You're cool as long as you believe in Christ, if not, then it's into the pits for you. Like much of the bible, it's all about how you interpret it.

"Just ignore me telling you to burn in hell," is a helluva argument.

Wombat it is not hateful to tell someone that if our belief systems is true that if you do not believe in Jesus then you are going to hell, it also has nothing to do with being a good person, we believe that even if billy graham or mother Theresa did not actually believe in Jesus then they would go to hell, there are probably tons of nice, loving, moral people in hell, because that is not what it is about. We believe no one can go to heaven without believing in Jesus.

I wonder how many people think John 3:16 is hate speech I would have never guessed that would be something people would get riled up about.

I don't get Wombats hard on for manufacturing jobs, they only made up 13% of our economy before the recession and have been shrinking percentage of our GDP for a long time(this is true for most first world countries and even china).

Also the 23% higher manufacturing cost referred to by John Stewart was the cost to treat Chinese workers better not to bring the jobs over here where the worker salaries would have to be at-least 20 times higher, not to mention the cost of less efficient supply chains, safety and environmental regulations and dealing with things like unions and their demands to not have to work 35 hours straight, and get things like overtime pay and benefits..

If you want to the US to worry about something it should be protecting our and encouraging technology, you know the thing the Chinese our constantly hacking our companies to steal.

In 2009 the Ipod was responsible for 12,270 jobs in China with total wages of $23 million.(mostly manufacturing jobs and wages)

In the US it was responsible for 13,920 jobs with total wages of $745 million.(about 50% retail and 50% tech with the majority of the wages going to the tech side)

I know which end of that stick I want to be on.

http://pcic.merage.uci.edu/papers/20...obCreation.pdf

Originally Posted by serenitygod I challenge you to read "The Upcoming China Wars" or "Death By China" then try to re-make that same argument.

I've ready plenty of those types of books, if China want's world domination they are not going to achieve it through manufacturing jobs.

Originally Posted by serenitygod Currency manipulation and death by Chinese products like dry-wall. I fear it is you who doesn't see all sides of the argument. Wait until you coat your house with lead-based paint or swallow boric acid thinking it's Ativan. You really need to ask yourself are you willing to die for a few dollars?

1. That doesn't have anything to do with jobs
2. Most companies will endanger people to make money, remember Toyota,BP, tobacco, ect....

Originally Posted by serenitygod I know that may sound harsh, but what do you think freedom of trade really means? China is supplying about 98% of our goods.

China makes up 15-20% of our imports up from under 5% in 1992 While the rest of the pacificrim has drop from 30% of our imports to 20%.

Originally Posted by serenitygod Like I said, read the books that have been thoroughly researched and make that same argument again.

lot's of arguments our "thoroughly researched" that doesn't mean they don't leave out inconvenient data. And judgeing from some of your facts it sounds like they probably where not thoroughly researched.

why doesn't cheapy just play his PC games on a monitor like a normal ing human being?

Originally Posted by PigheadedBobobo why doesn't cheapy just play his PC games on a monitor like a normal ing human being?

Cause he's a techno-pimp.

Originally Posted by alphabrian Honestly though, Wombat is a part of this show, and has the right to express his thoughts. People getting mad for him doing so should follow the advice they give to Wombat and just go ahead and stop listening to the Cagcast.

Agreed.

I love this show. It's a different dynamic when one of the hosts can't show up (as happens from time to time). As a Catholic, I didn't take Wombat's comments personally. I've always thought it was weird to have those kinds of ads on TV. And to have religion in sports. Wombat didn't like the ad. That's his prerogative. All that said, CAGCast would be weaker if Wombat wasn't a part of it.

Great work to all three of you. The CAGCast is always a bright spot in my week.
/tk

Originally Posted by PigheadedBobobo why doesn't cheapy just play his PC games on a monitor like a normal ing human being?

Can't speak for Cheapy, but I find it uncomfortable and somewhat distracting to sit at a normal computer/at a desk when I'm at home. I do that all day at work, when I get home, I want to lounge about on my couch or in my Ikea chair.

Granted, I do have ambitions of getting a Dell gaming laptop at some point. Not just because I don't like normal desks but because I travel a lot and would probably be better served by a laptop...

/tk