In Australia we have a single system, where the test for qualifying for welfare is almost entirely based on (1) total assets and (2) income. This disproves the theory that excessive complexity is inherent in welfare systems.
No, it's time for something proven: Australian style welfare. Maybe in 50 years time, it will be time for basic income.
The problem with giving people free money, is it reduces the incentive to work. Australia, and other countries, have introduced systems with minimal requirements for receiving welfare: making an effort to find a job, based on simple objective criteria.
"Australia, and other countries, have introduced systems with minimal requirements for receiving welfare: making an effort to find a job, based on simple objective criteria."
That's more or less the situation in the US at present, as I understand it. We all want people doing useful things, but this kind of system 1) means that the benefit of finding that job (for those at the bottom) is substantially less than it is under BI, and 2) we're requiring people focus not on their job search or on preparing themselves for work but on documenting their job search and jumping through bureaucratic hoops - hopefully there is substantial overlap but when do we ever measure exactly what we intend to?
Jealousy is a natural human emotion. It is notable how many stories bashing smart people (not for being smart per se, of course, but for lacking other important qualities) come up on HN. That, and how unfair the interview process is.
No matter what the control for, these studies are very limited.
If they say that intelligence is correlated with X, if we like X we will say that this proves X is a good thing, and if we don't like X we will say that this proves intelligent people are not so "intelligent" after all. Put another way, it's so hard to do proper Bayesian updating on such loaded statements, they probably make people worse informed on average.
I'll end with a quote from Mohammad Ali being interviewed by Michael Parkinson:
Ali: [Animals don't race-mix so human's shouldn't either]
Parkinson: But we have intelligence
Ali: They don't have intelligence, but yet they stay together [with their own species], we should have more intelligence than them, right?
This is a terrible idea. It doesn't sync live, you have to send the entire notebook back and they scan it for you. That makes it much less useful that, for example, those special pens that scan what you write. In almost all situations, from art, to taking notes at meetings, it is preferable to have the digital copy immediately, not once the notebook is finished.
It's not really that bad? I think you're missing the target audience a bit. It's maybe terrible for you, not for everyone. Your main complaint seems to be 'it doesn't sync live' (well of course not, it's actual paper) and 'you don't have the digital form immediately' (that's pretty much the same complaint). But such a thing is not that important for everyone. I mean, once you wrote down the note, you already have it. So if your main requirement is merely 'having it', well then your settled as you have all access to it. And then you can have it digitized whenever you feel like.
The only real value a share has is dividends, and dividend-like things (like share buybacks, the whole company being taken private, etc.).
In theory (and practice) the price of a stock is the expected value of the time-discounted sum of its future dividends.
So yes, people are precisely buying GOOG stock because they believe that at some point in the future, they will pay dividends. Google do, after all, have to do something with all their money one day.
Voting is also not very important. In some cases it might be needed to keep the board/executives in line, but for an individual shareholder, the right to vote is of no importance.
> The only real value a share has is dividends, and dividend-like things (like share buybacks, the whole company being taken private, etc.).
This omits the value of the share itself, as a commodity on the open market. If your claim were true, people would refuse to invest in shares that don't pay dividends.
The primary reason to invest in shares is that they they might grow along with the (a) market as a whole, and (b) the company that issued the shares. Dividends are frosting.
> So yes, people are precisely buying GOOG stock because they believe that at some point in the future, they will pay dividends.
With all respect, do you really want to be pontificating about something you know nothing about? There are plenty of companies that don't pay dividends at all, never have, and yet have many loyal investors, for the best of reasons -- the company is growing along with the value of its stock. Instead of paying dividends, many companies put corporate profits directly back into company expenses, with the expectation that this will grow the company and its stock. And the investors agree.
You are correct about the empirical facts (there exist some companies don't currently pay dividends), but theory is needed to understand that if those company's never paid dividends, they would be worthless.
The fundamental principal is that of the transversality condition, also called the "no ponzi" condition, which states that assets must eventually deliver. If a company pays no dividends forever then the value of its stock is only based on what people are willing to pay in the future, forming a self-reinforcing ponzi-like system. It is generally assumed (I can think of many good reasons for this, like the finiteness of the universe) that such violations of the transversality condition don't occur.
Therefore the value of a share is the expected value of all future dividends. I suspect you also didn't read my post carefully and missed my qualification of "dividend-like" things. E.g. a company might start small, grow, stagnate and be bought by a private equity firm and split into parts that are sold off. At that point, the company has effectively delivered dividends to the private equity firm.
>With all respect, do you really want to be pontificating about something you know nothing about?
Your smugness is unwarranted and reflects badly on your character. I suggest you read some books on economics and try to be a better person.
> You are correct about the empirical facts (there exist some companies don't currently pay dividends), but theory is needed to understand that if those company's never paid dividends, they would be worthless.
But since that is absolutely false, I only need to point out the many companies that don't pay dividends and yet are widely accepted as investments. Here is a list of companies that do not pay dividends:
Note the presence of Google, Amazon and Yahoo on the list -- companies that you have just claimed are worthless investments.
Companies that serve a stable market and that aren't growing any more, will in most cases pay dividends in order to hold onto investors. They take corporate profits and divide them among the shareholders -- that's what "dividend" means.
Companies that are growing, like most modern technology companies, often don't pay dividends. They don't because they need the corporate profits to grow the company.
Many modern high-tech companies do not pay dividends. The stockholders fully understand the reason why (the company is still growing), and those stocks are very attractive to investors because they are growing along with their companies.
> Therefore the value of a share is the expected value of all future dividends.
No, it is the expected value of future growth, regardless of the source (growth and dividends). For God's sake, stop arguing about something about which you know precisely nothing.
Quote: "a company that plans to grow much larger might reinvest its profits back into the company so that it's worth more in the near future. You often see this in technology stocks, where acquiring more customers or increasing the value of each customer will hopefully produce even more revenue in the future—and more profits.
A company might also acquire other companies. This is similar to investing in the company. You can see this happen in very large companies, where it's cheaper and easier to buy an established but smaller company than it is to start a new line of business.
Finally, a company might buy back shares of its stock and retire them, so that every remaining share owns a larger piece of the company and thus becomes more valuable. This strategy makes a lot of sense when the price of the company's stock is artificially low.
In one sense, these strategies have one thing in common: they're all intended to make the company itself intrinsically more valuable, whether by expanding the customer base and product offering, by providing opportunities to enter new markets or capture more of an existing market, or by increasing demand and thus raising the price of the stock itself.
A company which can do this is worth more than gold; a company with a solid business that grows and generates more cash every year is a great company to own. Instead of financing its growth (or operations) through debt, it's free to build up its own equity."
> Your smugness is unwarranted and reflects badly on your character. I suggest you read some books on economics and try to be a better person.
You need to go out and acquire an education. You cannot locate a defense for your beliefs, you have no idea to whom you are speaking, how I made my fortune, and you are certainly not in a position to lecture anyone about equities.
>I only need to point out the many companies that don't pay dividends and yet are widely accepted as investments.
Your logical error is in assuming that if a company that pays no dividends now is considered a good investment, then that must mean that investors don't care if that company never pays dividends. On the contrary, investors don't care if Google pays dividends now, because every dollar Google doesn't pay as a dividend gets reinvested in the company, or at least kept as cash, which enables them to pay more dividends in the future.
If Google simply kept that money forever, that would make it into some weird ponzi scheme that the world has never seen before (and we would have to wait until the end of time to find out). Back in the real world, companies typically do, as your yourself imply, eventually stop growing and start paying dividends.
>you have no idea to whom you are speaking, how I made my fortune, and you are certainly not in a position to lecture anyone about equities.
No one gives a shit about your fortune. I'm done with this, but next time try reading what you are replying to carefully, instead of just blasting out facts.
> Your logical error is in assuming that if a company that pays no dividends now is considered a good investment, then that must mean that investors don't care if that company never pays dividends.
That is not a logical error, it is an uncontroversial fact. In point of fact, investors DO NOT CARE whether a company pays dividends, as long as their capital grows. Do you really think people who invest in Berkshire Hathaway are stupid or misguided? And will you people PLEASE do some reading and stop arguing from a position of ignorance?
> ... investors don't care if Google pays dividends now ...
That's right, and investors also don't care whether Berkshire Hathaway never pays dividends, because it's a very attractive investment, and it has never paid a dividend. If Google's growth curve should flatten, they'll have to pay a dividend. But your claim was that a stock that didn't pay dividends was worthless. It's embarrassingly false.
Quote: "Having delivered an average of one-third of stock returns since, (it was more than 50% in the '70s and 14% for the '90s) the case for dividends is clear. But there is no free lunch here. In periods of economic and market growth, dividend payers typically trail the performance of non-payers. Like now. According to S&P Dow Jones Indices, for the 12 months through November dividend payers in the S&P 500 delivered a 39.6% total return. No need to apologize for that. But the non-dividend payers clocked in with a 46.4% total return.
Ranking the entire S&P 500 by 12-month price gains, seven of the top 10 are dividend holdouts, led by Netflix (NFLX) which has quadrupled in price this year. The others: Micron Technology (MU), E*TRADE (ETFC). Genworth Financial (GNW), Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO), Celgene (CELG) and Boston Scientific (BSX), all of which have at least doubled in price over the past 12 months."
If Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt announced tomorrow that they would do everything in their power to prevent GOOG from EVER paying dividends, buying back stock, or selling to another company, then that would be catastrophic for the share price, correct? This is a step beyond simply being disinterested in dividends and buybacks in the near term, but you seem to be confusing the two.
Anyone who purchased shares at that point would be doing so because of one of the following
1) They believe that Page, Brin and Schmidt will change their minds
2) They believe that control will be wrested away from Page, Brin and Schmidt by more buyback/dividend friendly management
3) They believe that other people will still buy for reasons 1,2, or 3. This is classic Keynes Beauty Contest investing.
GOOG could still grow its revenues, but if it is guaranteed to never pay a dividend or buy back stock (Berkshire Hathaway doesn't pay dividends but Buffett has said he would definitely pursue share buybacks under certain conditions) or sell its assets, then there is no way to get cash out of GOOG except by trading with other beauty contest investors. The only thing left to anchor GOOG stock value to Google the company is the possibility of bankruptcy.
So yetanotherphd is 100% correct. It's not impossible for people to trade as if there's no connection between a company's future dividends/buybacks/asset sales and its stock price. But that's how you end up buying tulip bulbs for their weight in gold.
The quote you give is irrelevant. One would expect cash-rich dividend holdouts to outperform dividend payers on the basis that dividend holdouts are often companies whose shareholders expect, often based on past performance, will deliver better than market returns with any cash they're allowed by shareholders to keep.
At the same time, dividend payers are valued on the basis that they have distributed part of the assets of the company. Looking at the share price on its own is fairly uninteresting, as that does not take into account the total value to shareholders. If you want to look at total value to shareholders, take the share price and assume that every dollar paid in dividends is immediately re-invested in more shares in the company. Once you do that, companies that pay dividends perform substantially better than if you look at the share price alone.
You didn't refute his point at all.. He said
> You are correct about the empirical facts (there exist some companies don't currently pay dividends), but theory is needed to understand that if those company's never paid dividends, they would be worthless.
Which means that EVENTUALLY, these companies will either pay dividends or their stocks are worthless. You pointed out companies that currently do not pay out dividends, but it in no way refutes his statement.
And I have to say he's right. Why? Because if companies never pay out dividends, you're buying stock where the sole method of making profit is by selling it for a higher price. Yes, it's how the market works, but if stocks inherently do nothing (no dividends/dividend-likes, no voting), then they are inherently worthless.
Simply because a market exists where people buy low and sell high does not mean that stocks can exist without inherent value. It may be true for now, but the person you were responding to said (keyword here) eventually. Otherwise, rocks have just as much value as stock.
EDIT: Two things. One is that I just remembered that Apple recently started paying out dividends in the last year or two. Here's an example of a company that did not pay dividends for a long time and EVENTUALLY started to.
The second thing is that I usually hate downvoting people, but you were incredibly aggressive rather than calmly attempting to understand (or be understood by the person) you were conversing with.
> Which means that EVENTUALLY, these companies will either pay dividends or their stocks are worthless.
Yes, And that is false. IT IS FALSE. There are companies that never pay dividends, but because of continuous growth, are regarded as attractive investments (Berkshire Hathaway is just one of many examples). To avoid any possible confusion, I posted a list of such companies. And I have just added another list below.
A company must either grow, or pay dividends. Investors don't much care which it is, because both grow the investor's capital.
> The second thing is that I usually hate downvoting people, but you were incredibly aggressive rather than calmly attempting to understand (or be understood by the person) you were conversing with.
Yes, which means you downvoted based on the fact that you disagreed with the views I expressed, not based on whether I contributed to the conversation, a violation of HN's voting guidelines.
There is something very simple you need to understand -- the OP was flat wrong, and I was flat right. I posted my views, then I posted my proof. The OP posted his annoyance at my way of expressing the truth, which is, among other things, off-topic.
Quote: "Having delivered an average of one-third of stock returns since, (it was more than 50% in the '70s and 14% for the '90s) the case for dividends is clear. But there is no free lunch here. In periods of economic and market growth, dividend payers typically trail the performance of non-payers. Like now. According to S&P Dow Jones Indices, for the 12 months through November dividend payers in the S&P 500 delivered a 39.6% total return. No need to apologize for that. But the non-dividend payers clocked in with a 46.4% total return.
Ranking the entire S&P 500 by 12-month price gains, seven of the top 10 are dividend holdouts, led by Netflix (NFLX) which has quadrupled in price this year. The others: Micron Technology (MU), E*TRADE (ETFC). Genworth Financial (GNW), Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO), Celgene (CELG) and Boston Scientific (BSX), all of which have at least doubled in price over the past 12 months."
Haha, let's you and I and everybody else start trading rocks. Whether or not the rocks have value don't matter, as long as the price of rocks continue to go up. Will you keep buying the rocks because of this upward growth?
> Yes, which means you downvoted based on the fact that you disagreed with the views I expressed, not based on whether I contributed to the conversation, a violation of HN's voting guidelines.
That.. is not at all what I said, which baffles me as you quoted me yourself. I said the way you presented it, not what you presented. "The OP was flat wrong, and I was flat right". Again, super aggressive. You're not even attempting to understand others anymore, as evidenced by what we said about downvoting.
Plus, if you actually did read the HN guidelines, you would see something like
> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Some of your comments, not just this one, clearly violate that.
If you want to have a serious discussion regarding the value of stocks in society, then message me. If not, I'll just stop replying because it's not worth my time otherwise.
EDIT: I forgot to say that you're looking at transactions at the micro level. You need to look at the grand scheme of things. Why buy stocks at all? What if we took these companies histories to a decade from now? Two decades? Half a century? To infinity? Look at the theory behind what drives the market, not simply what today's market price is.
You buying stocks to sell for higher doesn't refute the theory behind the entire system.
Are you kidding? If I can buy the rocks at $4 per rock and I'm pretty sure I'll be able to sell them to somebody later at $6 per rock, absolutely I'll keep buying the rocks.
I'd be interested in seeing a meta-version of this: give two papers with identical methodologies, one showing that employers tend to hire women less because they are biased, and one showing that employers tend to hire women less because the women are less capable.
Then present them to reviewers and see which ones they would accept for publication.
Python was invented by an extremely talented programmer who didn't happen to know one particular thing. It's not the minutiae of theory that make Python so popular, but it's overall design philosophy geared towards ease of use and readability.
Tail call elimination is more about allowing a particular style than anything else. Python encourages a different style, so why should Guido care about tail call elimination?
Unfortunately bullying by its nature is not a very popular political issue.
Conservatives (somewhat correctly) consider bullying to be part of how society maintains is social structure.
Progressives only consider bullying through the lens of oppressed groups, not individuals who are targeted for their perceived/actual difference or weakness. They don't identify with individual rights and self-defense as these are seen as libertarian issues.
Furthermore, to admit to being bullied as often interpreted as admitting to weakness. That is why it is easier to champion people who have some extrinsic reason for being bullied (e.g. being gay, or some other minority).
However, I suspect the severity of bullying is gradually lowering simply as a result of society becoming more prosperous and adopting middle class lifestyles and values.
I grew up in India. My schools had no bullying at all. And we still had a (much weaker) social structure, the popular ones, the slightly-dangerous ones (those I would avoid hanging out with) and the not-so-popular ones (like those who would spend time on a computer instead of meeting up for sports). Bullying is not universal. Neither is it necessary.
According to a Microsoft survey, India is the third worst country in the world for online bullying[1]. The same survey showed that 54% of Indian students report being bullied offline, and 50% report having bullied someone offline. I think you are quite mistaken in your assessment of your schools.
Studies have shown bullying to be universal among not only humans, but all primates and many social mammals[2] (such as rats and dolphins). Among human societies, bullying is present across the board, from hunter gatherer groups through post industrial societies.
That isn't to say that it can't or shouldn't be dealt with, but you are dead wrong when you say it isn't universal.
It may be universal, but as you yourself suggest, it is highly dependent on cultural constraints. To talk of bullying in India without understanding communal tensions is ignorant and takes away from the rest of your valid points.
I am not quite sure of your definition of 'somewhat' however giving a mild amount of justification for treating others wrongly simply bc they don't confirm to your standards of 'correctness' is not justifiable.
I meant they are somewhat correct in their belief that bullying is a part of our social fabric. But I don't endorse bullying, rather I think that there is something wrong with our society.
It is not an uncommon (again, I don't endorse this viewpoint) for people to say that bullying is a normal part of growing up, and that it helps strengthen people's character, etc. I don't think people who say this are being 100% honest. I think if they were honest they would say that bullying is a way to identify the weakest or least socially capable 10% of people, and that if you don't fall into this category, then it's a great part of the growing process to find out you belong to the 90%.
> I meant they are somewhat correct in their belief that bullying is a part of our social fabric. But I don't endorse bullying, rather I think that there is something wrong with our society.
Of course it's part of the social fabric of wherever it happens and goes unpunished. This seems like saying "this is a thing that happens", which feels like a truism.
Like you're saying, it isn't something that should be encouraged or that should go unpunished. If there is something beneficial about it, then that is probably just a symptom of something else that is wrong with society, which forces/enables the bullying.
Well it's not surprising it seems like a truism to you, since a big part of conservatism is maintaining the status quo.
But to be more precise about the benefit that conservatives see in bullying: bullying can be thought of as a social pressure not to be (1) weak and (2) different. I know some people will think that I am blaming the victim with (1), but I'm not. I was bullied in school, and I was physically weak and tended not to stand up for myself. Many of my friends were the same. Anyway, many people see discouraging (1) and (2) to be good things. (1) because society needs people (at least) men to be strong and vigorous in order to prosper and fight external enemies, and (2) because if there is no pressure to conform, people might do anything they liked and completely ignore societal norms.
> Well it's not surprising it seems like a truism to you, since a big part of conservatism is maintaining the status quo.
Even conservatives have to give convincing arguments as to why the status qou is good.
> I know some people will think that I am blaming the victim with (1), but I'm not. I was bullied in school, and I was physically weak and tended not to stand up for myself.
Having been a former victim does not preclude one from blaming current victims. In fact, it can be a badge of honour; that the fact that they are not a victim any more is because of their own volition.
> (1) because society needs people (at least) men to be strong and vigorous in order to prosper and fight external enemies
That's what conscription is for. Or, if society can't be sold on slavery, encouraging activities that foster strength.
The concept of bullying is the direct opposite of something like a military organization. Bullying is, at least in the school yard, more like a disorganized and "wild habitat"; people who are "strong", either by social status or physical strength, pray on the weaker. A military organization is highly hierarchical and rank is based (ideally) on merit within the organization. It is also based on submission to your superiors orders, not seizing every opportunity you can to take them down a peg by putting them in a headlock and assuming their former status (rank).
What kind of person is more likely to be sent to a disciplinary institution; a bullying rebel, or a meek and weak individual? Probably the former.
(And I could tell you some things about bullying in the military. But let's just say that it isn't terribly good for morale, nor for anyone's safety when there is a lot of ill emotions and everyone has weapons at their disposal.)
> , and (2) because if there is no pressure to conform, people might do anything they liked and completely ignore societal norms.
When people that violate social norms in a way that upsets others are taught a lesson or shamed into correcting their behaviour, that is called reprimanding, not bullying. It is, if successful, a one time affair. Bullying is more of a regular thing, sustained over a time period, in the same general location.
If people get reprimanded for silly things that does not hurt anyone, but is just part of who they are... then yes, that's bullying. But then we're back in the silly domain of conformity-for-conformities sake. An argument that you have presented, but supposedly does not agree with, because you're doing that whole devil's advocates thing I guess. Nonetheless, I don't agree with it, nor do I find anything much to be agreeable with it, even if I were to be a so-called conservative.
On my motivations, society does allow bullying to happen, and the discrepancy between what it allows to happen to children in the context of bullying, and what it allows in most other cases, requires an explanation.
This requires putting oneself in the shoes of the people responsible for this situation, including people who minimize the importance or harm of bullying, people who justify it outright, and people who silently ignore the issue.
In doing so I am going to argue that given certain assumptions (both positive and normative), bullying should be permitted or justified. That is the inevitable outcome of being intellectually honest.
You claim there is a difference between upholding social value through reprimand, and bullying. I couldn't tell if being "taught a lesson" referred to violence so I won't assume either way. If it didn't refer to violence, then in an individualistic society like ours, people could just ignore it. Maybe in Scandinavia a verbal reprimand is enough, but not in the rest of Europe or the English speaking world.
And yet a free for all of violence would not work either (which seems to be the straw man of bullying you are using in your argument). Bullying is not only violence and the establishment of a pecking order, and also not only punishing violators of the social code. Rather it is doing these things together in a complementary way. The social code is respected because it comes from the most dominant people, and the violence is justified because it also helps cement the social code.
This explains why schools and prisons punish people who defend themselves against bullies more than the bullies themselves. To defend yourself is anti-social violence. Furthermore, as students get older, this social order morphs into the actual social order of the adult world. It is not only a pecking order that teachers tolerate because it makes the school easier to manage. It also gains the gloss of society's actual moral code.
For example, students might be bullied because they exhibit middle class speech and behavior, and are unwilling or unable to adopt "cool" working class behavior. A teacher might be sympathetic, but also consider that without this kind of bullying, middle class student could be as snooty as they liked, and that forcing middle class students to respect working class students (even out of fear) would help societal cohesion in the bigger picture.
The values that bullies enforce are arbitrary, but not entirely arbitrary. If they only punished the truly snooty, or the truly degenerate, would progressives or conservatives respectively complain? I see many people encouraging bullying tech workers in SF because they claim those workers really don't respect the values of the communities they live in. And (this was a while ago) I read a Time magazine article about the bullying of the Columbine shooters, which claimed precisely that their bullying was justified because they violated social norms (as the article said quoting a footballer "they were a bunch of fxxxxts", and this was in the 1990's so the implication wasn't that the footballer was in the wrong!).
I am not saying that society will fall apart without bullying, but that people who want to maintain social norms that aren't enforced by law, logically have little choice but to accept that experiencing an environment with bullying is an imperfect but necessary precursor to knowing your place in society.
When I say "social structure" I mean the idea that people should feel compelled to follow societal norms. Even though school bullies don't enforce the same norms as society at large, they do enforce the norms of their peer group.
Conservatives (not all, but many) consider the principal that social convention be backed by actual violence, to be sufficiently important that establishing it at young age is worth some suffering or unfairness.
I think the idea here is that the system is self-reinforcing. An initially undifferentiated mix of children self-segregates as the children begin to perceive difference, and privileged/norm-conformant children persecute unprivileged/norm-nonconformant children. The persecution has the function of excluding the unlucky children from the social opportunities that come from access to privileged society (both because they are actively blocked by the other children, and because they block themselves by not realising they can seek opportunities or not considering themselves capable or worthwhile). This exclusion compounds as the cohort ages, rapidly becoming total. The result is that only a small selection of the cohort has access to privileged channels of society, maintaining a relatively low degree of competition at that level.
> I meant they are somewhat correct in their belief that bullying is a part of our social fabric.
I agree with this statement of yours from another comment, but I don't agree with the previous quote that I posted. My reasoning is that an old "friend" of mine, Adam Mohungoo - black, 5'9", born 26/09/1980, attended Sir Thomas Rich's School, Gloucester 1992 - 1999, is a FULLY FLEDGED SOCIOPATH. He would threaten to "kick your fucking head in" for such things as turning up at his house 3 minutes later than expected.
People like him do not facilitate the maintenance of the social structure, but unfortunately they are part of the social fabric.
> ... I'm not endorsing bullying, I'm explaining why many conservatives don't think it's a problem.
The recent tv campaign "This is ABUSE" highlights a shift in attitudes regarding very similar issues.
I see you mentioned that you were bullied, apologies if I sounded harsh.
