Controversial Political Opinions

[JasonBlack]

I'm toying with the notion of "unemployment Keynesianism". Rather than adjusting fiscal policy or stimulus spending, we adjust the number of public works and infrastructure projects in relation to unemployment. Since these items would need to be attended to anyway, it makes sense to align them with times of low employment.

[David Horn]

(03-19-2022, 09:09 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(03-19-2022, 09:28 AM)David Horn Wrote: First, there is little of what can be called 'welfare' to even discuss.  Bill Clinton did it in, much to his shame.  Almost everyone receiving anything (and far too little imho) is either mentally or physically unable to work, or both.  All the Welfare Queen nonsense is just that. 

"The total amount spent on these 80-plus federal welfare programs amounts to roughly $1.03
trillion."

^we can argue about what is a reasonable amount, which items should be included or which items should be slashed/added to. what we cannot argue about is that it is a small amount.

"Welfare" as it is known here is not a basket of social benefits -- even benefits targeted at the poor. Prior to Bill Clinton, it was Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). There was no intent beyond supporting these families. The program was wasteful on many levels and needed to be amended not killed, but killed it was.

JasonBlack Wrote:

David Horn Wrote:There is a codicil: benefits scammers are prolific and tend to avoid being caught.  Isn't it better to extract them from the shadows, provide aid if it's needed and ignore the blame game?

100%, that was my intention from the get go.

Good.

JasonBlack Wrote:

David Horn Wrote:Really?  I know some people who actually tried something like that, and they ended their relationships as bitter enemies ... even before they began.  Matters of the heart don't do well in the legal realm.

I would need to see more case studies.

Again, affairs of the heart are poor subjects and inherently dangerous to the people being studied. But pre-nups are not uncommon. Most are dictated, not negotiated.

JasonBlack Wrote:

David Horn Wrote:Well, we agree on something.  I would expand the list, but you have the right idea.

supporting capitalism does not mean I support the majority of the tenants of American-style capitalism. frankly, depriving people of holidays in the name of not supporting "laziness" or "entitlement" is just contemptuous.

The worst part of capitalism, from the human perspective at least, is the insistence on maximum productivity. It lead to many factory deaths in the early 20th century and is now leading to major health issues in distribution centers -- Amazon being the worst offender. As usual, it is the unrestrained demand for ROI.

[JasonBlack]

1) No fault divorce was a mistake.
2) "War crimes" should only be prosecuted if the person broke the laws of his or her nation at the time and did not do so under duress. If tried by another country, there is a violation of national sovereignty ("international committees" have no legitimate sovereignty, only countries). If tried for something that was legal at the time, the prosecution is ex post facto and therefore also illegitimate.**
3) If you can't make a living out of high school, your education system has failed you. If you can't make a solidly middle class income out of university, your education system has also failed you.
4) If your ancestors committed human sacrifice, I give zero fucks about their civilization being destroyed, just like how I gave zero fucks that Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Soviet Russia and Maoist China all fell.
5) "Elite" should not be an insult. Being successful and having erudite tastes are something you should be proud of. Just don't be an oligarch or bureaucrat. Those are indeed legitimate insults.

ex: in 2015, they literally arrested a baggage guard, for "accessory to murder" because he (legally at the time) worked in one of the Nazi camps. You don't have to have any sympathy for the Nazis to realize how ridiculous that is.

[David Horn]

Set up a list again for clarity.

(03-21-2022, 11:16 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

1. No fault divorce was a mistake.
   
2. "War crimes" should only be prosecuted if the person broke the laws of his or her nation at the time and did not do so under duress. If tried by another country, there is a violation of national sovereignty ("international committees" have no legitimate sovereignty, only countries). If tried for something that was legal at the time, the prosecution is ex post facto and therefore also illegitimate.**
   
3. If you can't make a living out of high school, your education system has failed you. If you can't make a solidly middle class income out of university, your education system has also failed you.
   
4. If your ancestors committed human sacrifice, I give zero fucks about their civilization being destroyed, just like how I gave zero fucks that Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Soviet Russia and Maoist China all fell.
   
5. "Elite" should not be an insult. Being successful and having erudite tastes are something you should be proud of. Just don't be an oligarch or bureaucrat. Those are indeed legitimate insults.
   

A lot less agreement here:

1. The other alternative was vastly worse: people trapped in marriages they couldn't escape.  Some of those lead to suicide; others to homicide.
   
2. There are legitimate and unarguable standards that can't be swayed by any sovereign nation.  Genocide is the most obvious, but torture and confiscation are on the list too.
   
3. The purpose of education is not to train you for a job.  It's to make you a well-rounded individual and good citizen.  
   
4. OK, but that seems to disagree with you item #2.
   
5. "Elite" means different things to different people.  No, it's not a de facto insult, but many "elites" gained that status by being backstabbing scumballs.  I do agree that being erudite is not a negative unless you use it to lord it over others.
   

more from Jason Wrote:ex: in 2015, they literally arrested a baggage guard, for "accessory to murder" because he (legally at the time) worked in one of the Nazi camps. You don't have to have any sympathy for the Nazis to realize how ridiculous that is.

Nothing exceeds like excess.  Going after the Nazis was bound to ensnare the innocent few.  That doesn't make it right, just inevitable.

[pbrower2a]

(03-21-2022, 11:16 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: 1) No fault divorce was a mistake.

Most divorces have either an arch-villain ("he beat me with his fists" or "she drained me through credit cards")' or shared culpability. Some marriages are mistakes due to cultural clashes. One spouse might mature and the other one might not. Easy divorce should be available in cases of abuse and pervasive adultery because in such cases the marriage has already dissolved.

Quote:2) "War crimes" should only be prosecuted if the person broke the laws of his or her nation at the time and did not do so under duress. If tried by another country, there is a violation of national sovereignty ("international committees" have no legitimate sovereignty, only countries). If tried for something that was legal at the time, the prosecution is ex post facto and therefore also illegitimate.**

Even Nazi Germany had laws against murder and theft as statutory law. What was wrong with the Nazis was that they believed that they could excuse murder, enslavement, and robbery in service of the Party, the Nation, and the Leadership. What the Nazis were convicted of was all illegal in the German and Austro-Hungarian empires, the Weimar Republic, and interwar Austria before the Anschluss. The Allies prosecuted their own soldiers for ordinary murder, looting, and rape. Does anyone think that (had the Austrian Empire survived) that "Kaiser Otto" would have cut any slack on such crimes? I think not.

Quote:3) If you can't make a living out of high school, your education system has failed you. If you can't make a solidly middle class income out of university, your education system has also failed you.

Or the system has. High school used to churn out the large armies of factory workers, and it still churns out huge numbers of people suited to factory work. The factory jobs that used to be the most reliable means out of poverty are no more. College education has its fault in pushing early specialization (one learns the vocabulary and is narrowed into fitting certain roles in life at the exclusion of others).

If you want to teach anything practical to college students that is not a narrow trade, then it is salesmanship. A capitalist order recognizes little more practical than creating and maintaining an enticing display of merchandise or breaking down a customer's sales resistance. Selling is an essential part of capitalist commerce -- and of politics and education. Sure it is philistine, but it works. The system needs people to sell vacuum cleaners, and not so many people who have narrowed themselves into a box related to a college major.

Quote:4) If your ancestors committed human sacrifice, I give zero fucks about their civilization being destroyed, just like how I gave zero fucks that Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Soviet Russia and Maoist China all fell.

Reputedly there was nothing wrong with Aztec civilization that the most benign expression of Christian religion (Quakerism?) would not have solved. There was nothing wrong with German life that Reform Judaism (which originated in Germany) would not have solved.

I actually watched video of the execution of Satan Hussein and took great delight in watching a horrible man die. I shed no tears over Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu being ripped to pieces by a firing squad.

Quote:5) "Elite" should not be an insult. Being successful and having erudite tastes are something you should be proud of. Just don't be an oligarch or bureaucrat. Those are indeed legitimate insults.

One could be a great admirer of art like Hermann Goering or a great lover of music like most Nazi bigwigs and be a horrible person, but on the whole great literature, art, music, and architecture elevate most of us. So does the majesty of nature at its best. Ugliness debases life. Being an oligarch or a bureaucratic gamesman usually implies imposing poverty, itself ugly, upon helpless people.

Quote:ex: in 2015, they literally arrested a baggage guard, for "accessory to murder" because he (legally at the time) worked in one of the Nazi camps. You don't have to have any sympathy for the Nazis to realize how ridiculous that is.

Among the defendants at the Nuremberg trials was Walter Funk, head of the Reichsbank that basically fenced the loot from occupied countries and of course Holocaust victims. He was convicted of crimes against humanity for such and sentenced to life imprisonment. In a way he was a 'baggage handler" of the Third Reich.

[JasonBlack]

Quote:The other alternative was vastly worse: people trapped in marriages they couldn't escape.  Some of those lead to suicide; others to homicide.

at the very least, we need standards that do much more to favor the father. current divorce laws screw them over royally

Quote:The purpose of education is not to train you for a job.  It's to make you a well-rounded individual and good citizen.  

If they want to make you a well-rounded individual after they prepare you for a job, that's well and good if it can be done at low cost, but until then, this is a somewhat aristocratic take on what an education is supposed to be. Black children growing up in the ghetto, redneck children in Appalachia and poor children everywhere don't need to read The Iliad or listen to Verdi's Rigoletto. They need employable skills and skills that will help them survive and manage their lives and finances. In the case of millennials, where standards of living were dropping like a rock, this was pertinent for all of us except the most privileged (we can argue about what exactly to do about those dropping standards of living, but in either event, they were there, and education should have adapted).

Plenty of those children would probably be much more curious under better life circumstances, but it's just basic Maslow's Hierarchy of needs: "should I read Shakespeare or should I learn a skill that can help me get a job so I can eat?" Having some English major lecture them on the importance of Catcher in the Rye when they are worried if they are gonna get shot that night is incredibly condescending and, when combined with other factors like police brutality, contributes to higher crime rates and contempt for authority among black (specifically ghetto black) culture and various redneck cultures. When you are powerless and someone is forcing you to spend the equivalent of a full time job on activities that will do little to help you materially advance...you should feel contemptuous. No wonder so many of them wander around without direction. 

My other argument is that....it's much easier to acquire culture and erudition on your own time. It makes zero sense to take $1000 courses in history which can be had for $15 by purchasing a course from The Teaching Company on audible (they have entire curriculum lectures from renowned professors for pennies on the dollar). It's much more difficult to study by yourself to gain job skills without a teacher present. I've listened through well over a dozen of them.

Quote:OK, but that seems to disagree with you item #2.

Not really. I would still oppose if America wanted to go in and purge a bunch of human-sacrificing head-hunting tribes somewhere off in Asia (or, for that matter, white European tribes doing the same thing), but I would not be particularly upset by it. 

Quote:Nothing exceeds like excess.  Going after the Nazis was bound to ensnare the innocent few.  That doesn't make it right, just inevitable.

it's true. there is never an exactly 100% chance that someone is innocent, but in this instance, it was like 70-80 years after the fact. you don't revive an entire witch hunt in order to purge a...baggage carrier for the enemy army.

[pbrower2a]

(03-22-2022, 02:40 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

Quote:The other alternative was vastly worse: people trapped in marriages they couldn't escape.  Some of those lead to suicide; others to homicide.

at the very least, we need standards that do much more to favor the father. current divorce laws screw them over royally

If he is beating her or abusing the children, then divorce laws should $crew him royally! It is best that he be so broke that he lacks even the funds for dating a potential victim.

Quote:

Quote:The purpose of education is not to train you for a job.  It's to make you a well-rounded individual and good citizen.  

If they want to make you a well-rounded individual after they prepare you for a job, that's well and good if it can be done at low cost, but until then, this is a somewhat aristocratic take on what an education is supposed to be. Black children growing up in the ghetto, redneck children in Appalachia and poor children everywhere don't need to read The Iliad or listen to Verdi's Rigoletto. They need employable skills and skills that will help them survive and manage their lives and finances. In the case of millennials, where standards of living were dropping like a rock, this was pertinent for all of us except the most privileged (we can argue about what exactly to do about those dropping standards of living, but in either event, they were there, and education should have adapted).

I remember when a college education cost about as much as a hobby or tooling around in a car. Obviously one can't dedicate the time to a hobby not part of a college curriculum, let alone waste time tooling around with cars if one is to get a decent education. Back in the day I was able to listen to great music, watch foreign films, and read much that was not in my formal study. That made me much of what I am.

The purpose of the medieval university was to improve the student so that he (regrettably this was a very male world) would become a better priest, knight, tax collector, or even a physician or attorney. The educational content may have been as elementary as it was primitive... but the priests needed to know what the heresies were and how to refute them. Being able to explain that denial of the Trinity made one a non-Christian (unless of a Monophysite church) is far safer than having to burn confused people at the stake. The medieval university had to offer something better than wine, women and song.

Today the heresies are not so much religious (toying with Zen Buddhism is safe) as political. One heresy killed six million people for their religion or that of their ancestors, and that is intolerable. So is dispossessing everyone who has property and killing anyone who resists. If someone starts talking about white supremacy or spouts off overt Marxist claptrap without qualification I am wary. I have told a neo-Nazi that if I had to choose (I am a German-American with no known Jewish ancestry ) between being a Nazi or converting to Judaism I would be a Jew because such requires far fewer cultural or moral compromises.

As for kids in disadvantaged communities... they need more rigorous education just so that they can do what it takes to eventually make a living. Bare literacy is no longer enough.

Quote:Plenty of those children would probably be much more curious under better life circumstances, but it's just basic Maslow's Hierarchy of needs: "should I read Shakespeare or should I learn a skill that can help me get a job so I can eat?" Having some English major lecture them on the importance of Catcher in the Rye when they are worried if they are gonna get shot that night is incredibly condescending and, when combined with other factors like police brutality, contributes to higher crime rates and contempt for authority among black (specifically ghetto black) culture and various redneck cultures. When you are powerless and someone is forcing you to spend the equivalent of a full time job on activities that will do little to help you materially advance...you should feel contemptuous. No wonder so many of them wander around without direction. 

But without a certain level of literacy, Shakespeare, Verdi, and Degas are completely out of reach. Kissing up to an exploitative boss so that one can keep earning a pittance and stave off starvation may take precedence over striking for better pay and conditions. Of course we have an economic and political order far more decrepit than we can excuse.

Quote:My other argument is that....it's much easier to acquire culture and erudition on your own time. It makes zero sense to take $1000 courses in history which can be had for $15 by purchasing a course from The Teaching Company on audible (they have entire curriculum lectures from renowned professors for pennies on the dollar). It's much more difficult to study by yourself to gain job skills without a teacher present. I've listened through well over a dozen of them.

The problem is that those courses cost $1000 each. The educational system has been hijacked by people who want education to be fiendishly expensive so that people must be in thrall to loan-sharks so that they will fork over the equivalent of the cost of a new-car loan just to pay off a student loan until they are at least in their thirties. Maybe we will find ways in which to incorporate those inexpensive courses into formal schooling that leads to degrees. There would still be the need for some formal teacher to answer questions and administer quizzes.

Quote:Nothing exceeds like excess.  Going after the Nazis was bound to ensnare the innocent few.  That doesn't make it right, just inevitable.it's true.

Quote:there is never an exactly 100% chance that someone is innocent, but in this instance, it was like 70-80 years after the fact. you don't revive an entire witch hunt in order to purge a...baggage carrier for the enemy army.

If the baggage handler was stealing foodstuffs from Jews going into the camps then he was a criminal against humanity.

[JasonBlack]

Quote:If he is beating her or abusing the children, then divorce laws should $crew him royally! It is best that he be so broke that he lacks even the funds for dating a potential victim.

all this tells me is that, in such an instance, the husband is the party at fault, not that we shouldn't have no-fault divorce.

Quote:Back in the day I was able to listen to great music, watch foreign films, and read much that was not in my formal study. That made me much of what I am.

this is kinda what I'm getting at: educating yourself and becoming cultured are not things that require a university degree

Quote:But without a certain level of literacy, Shakespeare, Verdi, and Degas are completely out of reach. Kissing up to an exploitative boss so that one can keep earning a pittance and stave off starvation may take precedence over striking for better pay and conditions. Of course we have an economic and political order far more decrepit than we can excuse.
As for kids in disadvantaged communities... they need more rigorous education just so that they can do what it takes to eventually make a living. Bare literacy is no longer enough.

indeed, it hasn't been for awhile, and our schools were already out of date in preparing children for the real world when you were growing up. now we're hundreds of years behind. the entire thing needs to be rebuilt from top to bottom (maybe us "hero gen" peeps can get to work on that in the 1T. I would have a much higher opinion of my generation if that came to pass)

[JasonBlack]

One I think more of you will agree with: the reason why rich people should pay more in taxes is because safeguarding private property is a duty of government. When you consider that rich people have much more property than poor people, it stands to reason that they would be charged a higher "storage fee" to insure their holdings.

[David Horn]

(03-22-2022, 02:40 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

David Horn Wrote:The other alternative was vastly worse: people trapped in marriages they couldn't escape.  Some of those lead to suicide; others to homicide.

at the very least, we need standards that do much more to favor the father. current divorce laws screw them over royally

This is based on a conservative principle that mothers raise the children at home and the fathers, continue to work to pay the bills. To be totally frank, this is more in your wheelhouse than mine

JasonBlack Wrote:

David Horn Wrote:The purpose of education is not to train you for a job.  It's to make you a well-rounded individual and good citizen.  

If they want to make you a well-rounded individual after they prepare you for a job, that's well and good if it can be done at low cost, but until then, this is a somewhat aristocratic take on what an education is supposed to be. Black children growing up in the ghetto, redneck children in Appalachia and poor children everywhere don't need to read The Iliad or listen to Verdi's Rigoletto. They need employable skills and skills that will help them survive and manage their lives and finances. In the case of millennials, where standards of living were dropping like a rock, this was pertinent for all of us except the most privileged (we can argue about what exactly to do about those dropping standards of living, but in either event, they were there, and education should have adapted).

Plenty of those children would probably be much more curious under better life circumstances, but it's just basic Maslow's Hierarchy of needs: "should I read Shakespeare or should I learn a skill that can help me get a job so I can eat?" Having some English major lecture them on the importance of Catcher in the Rye when they are worried if they are gonna get shot that night is incredibly condescending and, when combined with other factors like police brutality, contributes to higher crime rates and contempt for authority among black (specifically ghetto black) culture and various redneck cultures. When you are powerless and someone is forcing you to spend the equivalent of a full time job on activities that will do little to help you materially advance...you should feel contemptuous. No wonder so many of them wander around without direction. 

My other argument is that....it's much easier to acquire culture and erudition on your own time. It makes zero sense to take $1000 courses in history which can be had for $15 by purchasing a course from The Teaching Company on audible (they have entire curriculum lectures from renowned professors for pennies on the dollar). It's much more difficult to study by yourself to gain job skills without a teacher present. I've listened through well over a dozen of them.

Lots of words to counter my one sentence, but I'll stand on that sentence. We aren't machines awaiting programming. We're breathing thinking (for the most part) human beings who first and foremost must function within society. The model you suggest has been more common in the last few decades than it was in the past, and the degraded social and cultural milieu is the direct result.

JasonBlack Wrote:

David Horn Wrote:OK, but that seems to disagree with you item #2.

Not really. I would still oppose if America wanted to go in and purge a bunch of human-sacrificing head-hunting tribes somewhere off in Asia (or, for that matter, white European tribes doing the same thing), but I would not be particularly upset by it. 

My point about civil society stands. Look at Ukraine: being decimated by a tyrant with that power to do it, and unrestrained by social stigma or counter force. In the end, we may end up being the counter force out of necessity.

JasonBlack Wrote:

David Horn Wrote:Nothing exceeds like excess.  Going after the Nazis was bound to ensnare the innocent few.  That doesn't make it right, just inevitable.[/color]

it's true. there is never an exactly 100% chance that someone is innocent, but in this instance, it was like 70-80 years after the fact. you don't revive an entire witch hunt in order to purge a...baggage carrier for the enemy army.

Are you arguing that stupidity is common or rare? I think it's actually relatively common but should be opposed when that is feasible.

[Eric the Green]

"Having some English major lecture them on the importance of Catcher in the Rye when they are worried if they are gonna get shot that night"

A society where people feel they belong, where they have opportunity for greater education and for social and economic mobility, where people understand civics and how to make government work for them at all levels, would result in less worry about getting shot at night, or anything else. Because we would have a culture of cooperation, participation, social awareness, ethical principle, political awareness, critical thinking, and civic understanding. We would have a society where people vote for policies that benefit everyone, not just the upper class. And education in the arts and literature enriches life, and people of all classes deserve to have some concept within them of richness of life, regardless of their economic class or income. Humanities education also increases peoples' ability to see beyond their noses and to think, plan and evaluate, and to be self-determining and inspired, which helps people get along and succeed in society and possibly assume posts that have more to do with human resources and abilities, and training, educating and managing people. "Work" and "jobs" is a broader category than mechanical or clerical work. It is often primarily about human relationships. We need more education and training in this.

People in ancient, medieval and renaissance societies, and people today in Mayan areas and in India and Indonesia and many other places, who have few or none of the conveniences that we have in the USA, understand that richness and wonder, are happier than those chasing bucks and status, and they make beautiful things. We in America, educated only in how to do paperwork, make a buck and make technology work, do not. Richness in life in the USA exists only among those who are well educated in the classics, and/or who have some sense of ancient world cultures, or of the new alternative cultures since the Awakening; who lived in a Haight-Ashbury community or went to love-ins to hear the Woodstock music, or who went to human potential seminars or new age conferences. Ordinary typical American life is not worth living. The unexamined life is not worth living.

[Eric the Green]

(03-21-2022, 11:16 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: 1) No fault divorce was a mistake.

I don't know, but it seems to me people are happier if it is easier to break out of an oppressive and unhappy relationship.

Quote:2) "War crimes" should only be prosecuted if the person broke the laws of his or her nation at the time and did not do so under duress. If tried by another country, there is a violation of national sovereignty ("international committees" have no legitimate sovereignty, only countries). If tried for something that was legal at the time, the prosecution is ex post facto and therefore also illegitimate.**

International law is a thing. Nation states are a concept only a century and a half old or so, and (without some federal approach and more local power) are already grossly out of date. We don't need competing nations. We need global understanding and universal standards of human rights, as declared and agreed to over 70 years ago, upheld and enforced.

Quote:3) If you can't make a living out of high school, your education system has failed you. If you can't make a solidly middle class income out of university, your education system has also failed you.

People should be able to do those things, and some people don't, but it is not so much education that has failed, or masculine virtue that has been taken away, but deliberate political and economic policies that create an unequal society and take away economic mobility that has failed. It is Reaganomics that has failed, big time.

https://philosopherswheel.com/freemarket.html

Quote:4) If your ancestors committed human sacrifice, I give zero fucks about their civilization being destroyed, just like how I gave zero fucks that Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Soviet Russia and Maoist China all fell.

Civilizations everywhere and at all times have virtues and vices, and good and bad traditions. I think ethical principles are universal, and need to be upheld; no excuses. But people in different times and places have different levels of understanding. Some are worse than others. Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Soviet Russia and Maoist China were horrible beyond words and deserved to fail. But right now, the USA has less awareness of ethics than any other developed country, by far.

Quote:5) "Elite" should not be an insult. Being successful and having erudite tastes are something you should be proud of. Just don't be an oligarch or bureaucrat. Those are indeed legitimate insults.

I don't disagree, but we deserve a more-equal society. The USA and to some extent English-speaking countries in general are overly-unequal. Unequal societies result in a feudal system without human rights or democracy. That's what the neoliberals, who only care about the ability to compete and become part of the economic elite, are creating.

Corrrection though: a "bureaucrat" is frequently an honorable profession, and the "deep state" as government workers who stay on beyond administrations are the backbone of a decently-working government and society. Bureaucrats, WHEN they function under an administration and congress that enacts workable policies, are helpful to society.

[Eric the Green]

(03-18-2022, 02:23 AM)JasonBlack Wrote: 1) The concept of "a minimum wage should be a living wage" is not inherently offensive, but a living wage for 1 person. Not "father works for 40 hours a week and supports a wife and kids", you shouldn't be having kids with a stay-at-home mother if you only make minimum wage. A lot of people move the goalpost on this issue like crazy.

Saying what people should do is fine, but how do you enforce this or legislate this? Should this be part of civics class? Maybe, but the point of the minimum wage is to set a decent floor. Other wages will rise also under this policy. Beyond raising taxes on the rich and providing some income redistribution or investment programs, the minimum wage is about the only law that can produce some results quickly. As Nick Hanauer says, there's no reason why any company can't pay any of their employees enough to live a decent middle class life. How does that translate to policy, is a question.

Quote:2) Welfare should come with some expectation of community service. At the very least, something like "you have to plant X number of trees this month to get your welfare payments".

And/or looking for a job, doing training, etc. I don't disagree, provided we understand that some people are disabled and can't work. And there should be no time limit or conditions other than need, since economic conditions or unfair bosses, rather than laziness, misbehavior or incompetence, is why most people lose their jobs. And if we as employees pay for SDI (disability insurance coverage), then we should not have to be destitute in order to get the benefits when we need them, as is the case now. And single men and everyone else should be eligible for welfare, not just mothers with dependent children.

Quote:3) Marriage should be a contract drawn up between two parties where they agree on terms, planning for instances of divorce, disability, cheating, etc in advance. The government's only role should be enforcing that contract, the same way they enforce other contracts.

Maybe so, but how do we create this kind of standard?

Quote:4) Employers should have to pay AT LEAST double wages for work done on Christmas, Thanksgiving or Black Friday.

Yes, and 50% more for ANY overtime work. We need to bring back the 8-hour day, or make it even shorter or fewer days.

[JasonBlack]

Liberals act like conservatives want all women to act like these delicate southern belles who faint every time someone breaks the etiquette of the tea ceremony. Nothing could be further from the truth. We demand for women to be strong more than liberals do, because where liberals rail on about "accepting women for who they are", conservatives don't do this with anyone. Man, woman, white, black, etc, you are expected to do your duty, and if you are too fragile to do so, one of two things will happen
1) more collectivistic conservatives will pressure you to be better
or
2) more libertarian conservatives will simply stop associating with you and let you stick to similarly defective people (this is the better option, do not cast pearls before swine)

Competent women should be respected, good mothers should be respected, women with good character should be respected, but if you're going to act like some spoiled dame and need smelling salts at the slightest ruffling of your sensibilities...get out of my sight.

[JasonBlack]

People being poor is not necessarily a tragedy. People being poor in spite of having good work ethic and high character is a tragedy. Likewise, people getting rich because of high character and good work ethic should be respected and celebrated. People getting rich via coercion, manipulation and corrupt back-room deal making should be arrested. Attempts of make sweeping generalizations about either rich or poor people are intellectually lazy. If anything, it's the middle class that tends to be more homogenous and conformist, while the people at either end vary to a far greater degree in terms of intelligence, character, personality and life circumstances.

This doesn't mean we can't effectively categorize people. In fact, I'd argue that by definition, you have to do that to propose any kind of policy suggestion, but it does mean that your categorization needs to be more comprehensive and involve a deeper understanding of several relevant subcultures.

[Eric the Green]

Sweeping generalizations are generally false, whether about class or gender. I'm not that interested in them.

[pbrower2a]

(03-24-2022, 01:25 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: People being poor is not necessarily a tragedy. People being poor in spite of having good work ethic and high character is a tragedy.

Lazy, wasteful, intemperate, incompetent, and (I need not load more adjectives) people deserve to be poor. People poor despite a good work ethic and high character are either just getting started in life or face a system that wastes its rewards.A good work ethic is a consequence of hope and not out of fear of the Exploiter.

Quote:Likewise, people getting rich because of high character and good work ethic should be respected and celebrated. People getting rich via coercion, manipulation and corrupt back-room deal making should be arrested.

A system that rewards rentiers at the expense of everyone else (which is how our economic system has trended in recent decades) will make a work ethic ineffective. I could make the case that speculative booms especially foster such a trend, and that the best possible end to a speculative boom is an economic meltdown that stops the flow of 'easy money'. Ideally people start shoestring businesses for the lack of any viable alternatives (that was much of the recovery from the 1929-1932 meltdown) or a government that resorts to public investment to take the place of crony capitalism. Corruption and monopolization create poverty and despair.

Quote:Attempts of make sweeping generalizations about either rich or poor people are intellectually lazy. If anything, it's the middle class that tends to be more homogeneous and conformist, while the people at either end vary to a far greater degree in terms of intelligence, character, personality and life circumstances.

I concur about middle-class conformity. It smoked until smoking became unacceptable.It was racist when racism was fashionable; it was anti-gay when the media called gays "perverts".

Quote:This doesn't mean we can't effectively categorize people. In fact, I'd argue that by definition, you have to do that to propose any kind of policy suggestion, but it does mean that your categorization needs to be more comprehensive and involve a deeper understanding of several relevant subcultures.

Most people fall into categories by ethnicity, education, religion, handicap (if any), criminal proclivity (if any), generation, sexuality, region, and class (largely as occupational grouping). Much personal identity derives from one or more of those categories.

[JasonBlack]

(03-23-2022, 01:33 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Saying what people should do is fine, but how do you enforce this or legislate this? Should this be part of civics class? Maybe, but the point of the minimum wage is to set a decent floor. Other wages will rise also under this policy. Beyond raising taxes on the rich and providing some income redistribution or investment programs, the minimum wage is about the only law that can produce some results quickly. As Nick Hanauer says, there's no reason why any company can't pay any of their employees enough to live a decent middle class life. How does that translate to policy, is a question.

In fact there is: it's never been done before. A society without a class of poor people has never existed, especially when you consider that payroll comprises the vast majority of company expenses already. It's not that simple.

Quote:And/or looking for a job, doing training, etc. I don't disagree, provided we understand that some people are disabled and can't work.

good so far

Quote:And there should be no time limit or conditions other than need, since economic conditions or unfair bosses, rather than laziness, misbehavior or incompetence, is why most people lose their jobs.

I think there should be time limits as a default, but that people who meet certain parameters (disability would certainly count) be exempt therefrom. We should also differentiate between benefits for the unemployed, part-time employed and fully employed. The last of which, at least, should not have a time limit.

Quote:And if we as employees pay for SDI (disability insurance coverage), then we should not have to be destitute in order to get the benefits when we need them, as is the case now. And single men and everyone else should be eligible for welfare, not just mothers with dependent children.

hard agree. the disability benefits system in the United States is an abomination.

Quote:Maybe so, but how do we create this kind of standard?

The same way individuals already draw up contracts. Default models drawn up by lawyers would pop up quickly on their own. It's not something policy makers need to design themselves

Quote:Yes, and 50% more for ANY overtime work. We need to bring back the 8-hour day, or make it even shorter or fewer days.

if we're talking hourly wage earners, yes.

[JasonBlack]

(03-24-2022, 11:19 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Lazy, wasteful, intemperate, incompetent, and (I need not load more adjectives) people deserve to be poor. People poor despite a good work ethic and high character are either just getting started in life or face a system that wastes its rewards.

yes. the goal of any social or legal policy is to make sure the people who act right get rewards, and the ones who don't get punishments.

Quote:A good work ethic is a consequence of hope and not out of fear of the Exploiter.

It can be either, but the former is certainly preferable. I'm seeing a reemergence of a spirit of don't-kick-people-when-they're-down decency on the right which is encouraging and doesn't actually cost anything in the first place (I credit a combination of the quiet, usually unnoticed compassion of Gen X and more community-minded millennials criticizing the questionable social implementation of a viewpoint they may otherwise agree with economically).

Quote:A system that rewards rentiers at the expense of everyone else (which is how our economic system has trended in recent decades) will make a work ethic ineffective. I could make the case that speculative booms especially foster such a trend, and that the best possible end to a speculative boom is an economic meltdown that stops the flow of 'easy money'. Ideally people start shoestring businesses for the lack of any viable alternatives (that was much of the recovery from the 1929-1932 meltdown) or a government that resorts to public investment to take the place of crony capitalism. Corruption and monopolization create poverty and despair.

my solution to this a system of bottom-up rather than top-down stimulus: give grant money to entrepreneurs so that they can create more jobs and competition, bring people closer to a sense of community and culture and foster greater individualism all at the same time.

Quote:Attempts of make sweeping generalizations about either rich or poor people are intellectually lazy. If anything, it's the middle class that tends to be more homogeneous and conformist, while the people at either end vary to a far greater degree in terms of intelligence, character, personality and life circumstances.

y'all boomers really had a point with this one during the last 2T. unfortunately, gutless sterility quickly reemerged as a mainstay of the middle class.

Quote:I concur about middle-class conformity. It smoked until smoking became unacceptable.It was racist when racism was fashionable; it was anti-gay when the media called gays "perverts".

Yuuuuuuuuuup. many of them now have the gall to call me "homophobic" over the most innocuous comments when they were legitimately homo phobic and bullied gay people just 15 years ago. Never underestimate capacity of the middle class for spineless values shifting and cognitive dissonance. It's a trend that predates any living generation.

Quote:Most people fall into categories by ethnicity, education, religion, handicap (if any), criminal proclivity (if any), generation, sexuality, region, and class (largely as occupational grouping). Much personal identity derives from one or more of those categories.

Exactly, but still many bemoan being "put in a box" when other people are, in fact, just being honest about the box that person has already put themselves into. I've found many of the people most vocal about "how dare you stereotype me!" are actually the most shallow, the most insecure and the most tied to 1 or 2 facets of their identity which they had no say in deciding (it's a little different if you tie your identity to, say, being an entrepreneur, since that is the result of a conscious choice and an indication of one's actual values).

[Eric the Green]

(03-25-2022, 02:40 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(03-23-2022, 01:33 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Saying what people should do is fine, but how do you enforce this or legislate this? Should this be part of civics class? Maybe, but the point of the minimum wage is to set a decent floor. Other wages will rise also under this policy. Beyond raising taxes on the rich and providing some income redistribution or investment programs, the minimum wage is about the only law that can produce some results quickly. As Nick Hanauer says, there's no reason why any company can't pay any of their employees enough to live a decent middle class life. How does that translate to policy, is a question.

In fact there is: it's never been done before. A society without a class of poor people has never existed, especially when you consider that payroll comprises the vast majority of company expenses already. It's not that simple.

Time to post that Nick Hanauer video again here Brilliant, and indispensable. If we continue down this road of excusing and allowing business leaders and entrepreneurs to pay unfair wages and keep people poor, then we will go back to feudalism. No-one should want to go backwards to societies where the mass of people were expected to be poor. A society without poor people has never existed, but we had a society for a while where the number was decreasing. We either have that or we go backward, in relatively fast stages--- now accelerated by another result of this neoliberal Reaganomics, climate change. Backwards to the undeveloped societies that still exist, usually ruled by tyrants today. Backwards first to the 1920s and the gilded age, then to the renaissance/baroque era of aristocratic excess, then to the middle ages and the dark ages, then QUICKLY all the way back to times when life was nasty, brutal and short. Why should we, just to keep the bosses happy? The unequal societies where people are not paid fairly for their work are either in revolution or in a police state, as Nick says. Under Trump, we were going rapidly that way. Any return of power to Republicans will bring back neoliberal trickle-down economics, and send us going backwards rapidly to absolute ruin.

Quote:

Quote:And there should be no time limit or conditions other than need, since economic conditions or unfair bosses, rather than laziness, misbehavior or incompetence, is why most people lose their jobs.

I think there should be time limits as a default, but that people who meet certain parameters (disability would certainly count) be exempt therefrom. We should also differentiate between benefits for the unemployed, part-time employed and fully employed. The last of which, at least, should not have a time limit.

Time limits forget that unemployment is usually determined by the economy, not the unemployed person. So how do we make sure that unemployed people do something in exchange for their coverage, and not just fake it? I don't know, but your solution needs some work.

Quote:

Quote:And if we as employees pay for SDI (disability insurance coverage), then we should not have to be destitute in order to get the benefits when we need them, as is the case now. And single men and everyone else should be eligible for welfare, not just mothers with dependent children.

hard agree. the disability benefits system in the United States is an abomination.

Good

Quote:

Quote:Maybe so, but how do we create this kind of standard?

The same way individuals already draw up contracts. Default models drawn up by lawyers would pop up quickly on their own. It's not something policy makers need to design themselves

Would such marriage contracts pop up quickly on their own, how? Why aren't they already popping up now, then?

Quote:

Quote:Yes, and 50% more for ANY overtime work. We need to bring back the 8-hour day, or make it even shorter or fewer days.

if we're talking hourly wage earners, yes.

And salaried people too. Giving someone a title should not entitle the employer to extract 12-hour days without overtime from the employee.