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I'm using stats from the US Census Bureau https://www.census.gov/newsroo... You can also review https://www.pewsocialtrends.or... The latter source also shows that a majority of Americans live in areas defined as "suburban", and the population of "urban" areas is double that of "rural".

There are about 217 million people between the ages of 18 and 65 - UBI recipients.

We're not giving anything to illegal immigrants and visa holders. Maybe not even to permanent residents (though some might naturalize anyways to get the benefit, which is not a bad thing).

Actually, we do. In fact, immigrant households use nearly twice the benefits as citizens.

Cost of living is much higher in Finland than most of the US.

Actually, the costs are really quite similar.

Not to mention you completely excluded state welfare spending, which if converted to UBI as well would significantly reduce the need to spend it at the federal level.

So we're going to spend more at the State levels? Or is UBI to replace all existing welfare plans?

There are about 217 million people between the ages of 18 and 65 - UBI recipients.

We're not giving anything to illegal immigrants and visa holders. Maybe not even to permanent residents (though some might naturalize anyways to get the benefit, which is not a bad thing).

Give each of them $630 per month (the equivalent to 560 Euros - as in this experiment)

It's not necessary to spend that much. Cost of living is much higher in Finland than most of the US. Not to mention you completely excluded state welfare spending, which if converted to UBI as well would significantly reduce the need to spend it at the federal level.

Is making sure everyone feels good about themselves (with dubious benefits from that) worth blowing another $1 trillion annually in spending?

Please define "benefit". Keep in mind that all material wealth become useless when you die.

Costs. We spend about $600 billion a year on income security (welfare, unemployment insurance, etc) at the Federal level. There are about 217 million people between the ages of 18 and 65 - UBI recipients. Give each of them $630 per month (the equivalent to 560 Euros - as in this experiment), and we'd spend around $1.6 trillion - an increase of 173% in income security spending. We just added another $1 trillion to the national debt, every year.

Is making sure everyone feels good about themselves (with dubious benefits from that) worth blowing another $1 trillion annually in spending?

So you don't quite understand the meaning of "median."

I love it when others point out my ignorance. It helps me to learn, although I would prefer an explanation of my ignorance rather than an unsupported assertion. So, the median commute time (albeit not median commute distance) I was referring to was data compiled from the US Census Bureau. I haven't personally verified the Census Bureaus's understanding of the term median, but I assume that they understand it.

There are large databases maintained by many federal agencies/organizations. These include NOAA, Census Bureau and NASA. Some provide FTP access, some provide an API, and some require going through a web interface -- and some provide all three. Some of these can easily result in downloads of many gigabytes, sometimes zipped up into one custom file for your request. Yet, not one that I've run across even requires registration, let alone paying anything.

So, why would the courts charge for access to public data that is much more central to the proper functioning of a society?

It's like the courts really haven't gotten beyond the notion of paper archives with costly human workers digging through dusty file cabinets to retrieve the data and copy it onto dead trees. That's a little scary since these are the same organizations that are our last resort for civil and criminal justice.

It think the shorter list will be who's info was not compromised. Looking at the https://www.census.gov/popcloc..., the current US population is approx 328 million, with 7.5 billion in the world. The number of unique entries in this dump is north of 2.3 billion. It is possible that 1 in 3 people in the world have had there info compromised. I know this is a very simplistic way of looking at it, but nonetheless a very sobering reminder of the current state of security with-in the companies that hold our personal data.

https://factfinder.census.gov/...

The trend is visible. After peaking in 2014 it steadily goes down.

every clueless fuck that voted for trump should be forced to at least re-take (and pass) junior high (lets get real here, most never did pass and graduate high school, so we have to go back a few grades) civics and american history.

Hillary Clinton won CA by 61% to 31% over Donald Trump - 2nd only to Hawaii. Yet, if you dig into the statistics, you'll find that California is number 1 in percentage of residents 25 and older who never finished 9th grade, and ranks 50th in terms of high school graduation rates.

Seems to me that you should change your perspective about who actually passed...

Here's some more data on earnings by degree for US universities in Texas and Colorado.

Viewer for BA only
Full data including BA, MA, PhD, Cert

Here's some more data on earnings by degree for US universities in Texas and Colorado.

Viewer for BA only
Full data including BA, MA, PhD, Cert

I like the Mexico 15$ minimum wage but for the rest I'm not sure.

1) The US trade deficit with China is still on a solid increase.
https://www.census.gov/foreign...

2) On Nafta, all I remember is GM closing shop when it might have been put off and US manufactures paying more for steel.

And Trump may talk like China's policies are unjust to the US, but in his personal life he calls that kind of behavior a good business sense.

About 11% of Americans move each year. That's about 35.5 million people.

About 264,000 people moved to NYC last year. So about 0.74% of all movers relocated to NYC.

Amazon has about 600,000 employees. I can't find a breakdown of U.S. vs overseas employees, but about 70% of their sales are in the U.S.. So figure 420,000 U.S. employees. If 11% of them move, that'd be 46,000 Amazon employees moving each year.. 0.74% of that is 340 Amazon employees moving to NYC each year.

Of that amount, most would rent. But it seems highly likely that more than two would end up buying.

First we need to stop thinking of these businesses as job creators. The pizza joint is NOT the job creator.

You have it ass backwards, today companies manufacture wants via advertising for shit people largely don't need. They have an army of psychologists and scientists trying to get you addicted to their product. The average consumer is NOT savvy, one only needs to take a look at the numbers. There are 43 million people in poverty.

https://www.census.gov/library...

If the US thinks it can make everything it needs, or currently gets from China and other such countries, I think it's sadly mistaken.

Cisco manufactures in China and Russia. Apple does. Ford just took a huge hit because most of their stuff is outside the US.

You've basically just added a "US jobs tax" on everything you buy, from critical network infrastructure to consumer goods to automobiles. And it'll work. Once. What will happen is that it won't CONTINUE to work, even if you could survive that and bring everything "in-house".

Similarly, China's will just reverse that situation and do the same back to you, like they do with trade deals. So everything you make in the US, other countries aren't as interested in buying any more.

It's fine so long as you can make everything you need for yourself and don't need to sell outside the US. There isn't a country in the world that's that closed on trade and comes out smiling about it.

Go look at how much stuff you BUY from China, and how much you sell back to them.

https://www.census.gov/foreign...

You buy four times more from them than you ever sell back to them. Decreasing that is cutting off your nose to spite your face. People buy from China because the US stuff is too expensive, your plan is to make everything yourself under US law, US wages, US supply chains. Literally at the moment, you're "abusing" foreign labour... when you stop doing that, everything's going to rocket in cost:

https://www.huffingtonpost.co....

It costs as much as 25 times more to pay a US worker than a Chinese one.

What you're saying is "Let's make all our own mops in-house, that'll be cheaper than buying them from the home-store." It isn't going to be cheaper than saying some kid in China to sit and make them for you. It's gonna be 25 times more expensive.

You just cut trade with the world's largest economy. And pissed off the largest lender to the US.

And when those Chinese companies just move all their manufacturing out of China to avoid your silly tariffs (like they are already doing to Vietnam, etc. that aren't affected)... you'll still be in the same position.

Accumulated cyclone energy has been trending down since 1992. So the "energy" of storms has been decreasing, even though costs from storm damage have been increasing. Construction costs have roughly doubled in the last 25 years, meaning you can do half the damage and end up with the same total cost.

Sorry for late reply because I was very busy. Anyway, yes it is the mode you are talking about and it is not irrelevant. In this case, the "point" is a "range" of incomes. The interval could start from small (e.g. $2k or lower). If the range still produce too many number of data, then increase the interval to be a bit bigger until you get useful info from it.

I believe that your PDF data came from this one. Anyway, it is similar data, so I just wanted to point out.

Now speaking of the meaning of mean and median are closely aligned would meant the data has a good distribution in the middle, which I agree. However, the data you presented doesn't seem to show that mean and median are align.

Let's talk about the year 2015 data (other years seem to show the similar trend). The PDF (going to use yours on page 2) shows that, the total number of returns is 141,204,625. The total AGI is $10,142,620,000,000. Thus, we can calculate the mean which is around $71,829 per return. The median (income split point) is $39,275. That's way off for aligning. However, the AGI average should be lower because of joint filing. Unfortunately, there is no data of how many are filed joint in the PDF, so I will make an education guess using some raw data.

The U.S. population in the 2015 is 321,418,820. Total population age 18 and above is 247,773,709. Assuming that all of those who are above 18 file tax returns (I'm generous). Thus, the new mean should be around $40,935.

Even though the new mean compared to the median isn't that bad, it still shows the trend that income per person is lower than the mean. Thus, to me, mode is a better indicator. It is only how you use mode to analyze the data. It is acceptable to use range for mode in analysis. That's what I wanted to say.

This is the graph you are looking for:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/...
https://www.census.gov/library...

I recall back in 1988, I was working for the US Census Bureau doing something they called a "Pre-Census Survey". They had maps with all their blocks configured. These were compiled from a large number of sources. City maps, State Dept of Highway maps, Planning maps, etc, etc. Was about 85% accurate. I was in rural WV and some of the things they listed as roads had not been roads for 100 years. Other areas were where the Dept of Highways had originally planned to re-route roads to, but never actually did it. We spent a lot of time correcting that.

A couple years later, I am in Colorado at CU working with GPS and GIS data. I recalled that the Census Bureau had done a lot of mapping and maybe it was online. And.. yes. It was. Has been online now for over 20 years.

https://www.census.gov/geo/map...

That is, as near as I can determine it's free as I just downloaded my county map with no issues. Pulling it apart, I see the edge info as well as the .shp shapefile.

This usually is the starting point for mapping efforts in the US as near as I can tell. Start with the TIGER data, then add or correct as needed.

I find these claims spurious. One need only look at population statistics to see that in 2010 the percentage of the population that was under age 45 was about 66%. https://www.census.gov/prod/ce... Since the boomers have been dying off, that has more than likely approached the 69% figure in the paper over the past 8 years. Nowhere in the article do they reference the current population distribution. So 69% of the population is under 45 and 69% of scam victims are under 45. To me that says you can't use age as a predictor for who is likely to fall for scams.

1) 540,873/92,728 ~ 5.8x white vs black on cross race violence.
2) 197m/40m ~ 5x white vs black people population.

But on #2, I went with the US Census website which said 76.6% and 13.4% 2017 populations for white and black. That is ~5.7x. In 2010, it was just a little closer to 6. So I rounded both to 6. Conclusion: relative to population, both sides are equally violent to each other.

NOW, I totally disagree with your comparison of numbers. You are comparing cross race violence as a indicator of threat against the entire population. However, this throws out the primary threat in both races, which is inTERracial violence. White people are ~4x more likely to attack a white person than a black person. A black person is ~6x more likely to attack a black person than a white person. Your math is like comparing the race times of 2nd places that came in well after 1st.

As for whites being safer, there were 3.6m acts of violence against them and blacks had 0.8m acts. So 197m/3.6m is safer than 40m/0.8m. Per your numbers, they are pretty close. If you took the 2017 (249m & 43m) or 2010 census numbers, you will see whites are safer than blacks as an overall risk of violence... even though they are, in general, richer and better off in society. Conclusion: in general, its safer to be White or Hispanic than Black in the US.

BUT BACK TO YOUR POINT. That report also has a nice little chart (Pg4-Fig2) that compares black/white-on-black/white violence in relation to population. You will see that over a 22 YEAR PERIOD, same race violence is FAR more of a threat than cross race violence! In fact, the cross race violence between these two races over the last 19 YEARS is pretty much the same, with the lines even crossing.

MY POINT IS: Rather than waste time & resources discussing how blacks are more/less/same a threat to whites & vice verse, why don't we focus on the elephant in the room. Which is same race violence is too high! Lets hit that so we get the biggest bang for our buck, then we can waste the pennies on second place.

US Census: https://www.census.gov/quickfa...

And if I eliminate everyone who isn't a blind vietnam veteran with no left hand named Merv, I get to 0% penetration, and 0% usefulness of my numbers.

More than half the country lives in urban areas (actually the rural base of america is only 19.3 percent of the country- source: https://www.census.gov/newsroo...). Basing numbers on just people outside of cities is cooking the data. Nobody, from advertisers to companies to users actually give a fuck about number of counties for anything.

> one of the largest economies

Right up there with Mexico and India. A very large pile of shit actually isn't something to brag about. That's what the silliest of the liberals always say when people point put the economic problems in California, as of having 8 million people living in poverty is the goal.

What matters are the *rates*. For example, what *percentage* of residents are living in poverty. California has the #1 highest poverty rate in the country, according to the US Census Bureau.

https://www.census.gov/content...

    That's mostly because all of Californias government programs and edicts cost a lot of money. For example, groceries cost 26% more in Los Angeles than they do in Dallas, because all the extra government red tape and PC bullshit costs the stores a lot more money. Nominal incomes in California aren't bad, but when the government takes $266 billion out of the economy every year (twice as much as Texas) in order to spend $100 billion and ten years failing to build a railroad track, while also burdening everyone with the most expensive pile of ridiculous regulations in the country, including the law regulating cow farts (SB 1383).

Big isn't good when it's a big pile of shit. With the highest supplemental poverty rate in the nation, California's economy is a very large pile of cow manure.

It’s the same in every city in America.
You should try getting out more.
Then you wouldn’t be such a retard.
And the census data proves it.

It’s the same in every city in America.
You should try getting out more.
Then you wouldn’t be such a retard.
And the census data proves it.

It’s the same in every city in America.
You should try getting out more.
Then you wouldn’t be such a retard.
And the census data proves it.

It’s the same in every city in America.
You should try getting out more.
Then you wouldn’t be such a retard.
And the census data proves it.

They update the census data every two years with estrimated data.

Read it can weep retard

http://www.shopliftingpreventi...
"There are approximately 27 million shoplifters (or 1 in 11 people) in our nation today. More than 10 million people have been caught shoplifting in the last five years."

https://www.iii.org/fact-stati...
"in 2017, there were 16.7 million victims of identity fraud, a record high that followed a previous record the year before. Criminals are engaging in complex identity fraud schemes that are leaving record numbers of victims in their wake. The amount stolen hit $16.8 billion last year as 30 percent of U.S. consumers were notified of a data breach last year, an increase of 12 percent from 2016."

https://www.statista.com/stati...

https://www.census.gov/popcloc...
USA population is 328 million

Say that crimes caused by poverty cost $50B/year in the US. That's $152/year per person. Not enough for UBI, but it could eventually offset part of the cost of UBI.

24%. 13% say they live in a household where someone else owns a gun. But if one of those 2.58 people is a spouse, then they (in most cases) own it as well. Community property.

Fewer than 20% of all households were married couples with children, and that number's just been going down.

https://www.census.gov/prod/20...

Disposable income, also known as disposable personal income (DPI), is the amount of money that households have available for spending and saving after income taxes have been accounted for.

From the US Census (p 422):

Disposable personal income is personal income less personal current taxes.

Given there are approximately 1.26 million households and 43,000 businessesin Puerto Rico, this is actually pretty much a non-issue. We're talking about 0.07% of the homes and businesses in PR that are left without power. My guess is you get close to that in any given US city just from daily work/repairs and accidents (drunks hitting power poles, etc).

Per the Census, income per capita (adjusted for constant dollars) has increased since 1970s. Minimum wage may be stagnant, but actual wages aren't.

Bzzt. That's not what that means. Thanks for playing. Repeat after me: Averages are useless without standard deviations.

I'll let that sink in for a moment. What you're saying is that the average wage has gone up. What the folks on the other side are saying is that the poorest and most vulnerable people — the ones who are actually making minimum wage are getting seriously screwed. You are both correct. But the purpose of a minimum wage is to protect the poorest and most vulnerable, not to raise the average wage. The latter is merely an unavoidable side effect of the former. So that means the minimum wage is too low.

As far as minimum wage laws go, there shouldn't be one at a Federal, and most likely even at State levels. What minimum wage would you set that would apply in San Francisco or Manhattan that would also be applicable to McAllen, TX? It makes no sense on a Federal level. And in some States (such as CA), it makes no sense state-wide. The cost of living in Oxnard is about 46% of that in Santa Monica, just 45 minutes away. How do you set a minimum wage that is "livable" for someone in a high-income area and doesn't kill small businesses in low-cost areas?

What makes you think that the minimum wage in San Francisco ($14.00) is the same as the minimum wage in McAllen, TX ($7.25)? The federal minimum wage is just that — a minimum. States like California ($11.00) are allowed to set higher minimums. And municipalities are allowed to set even higher minimums than at the state level. What they are not allowed to do is set a lower minimum than is prescribed by a less granular law.

Thus, the federal minimum wage should be based on the average baseline cost of living, ignoring cities with significantly elevated cost of living. It need not be high enough to allow mobility from the poorest area to the richest area, but it does need to be high enough to allow some mobility, within reason.

Similarly, the state's minimum wage should be based on the average cost of living, possibly ignoring outlier cities like San Francisco, and each city's minimum wage should be based on the average cost of living in the city, again possibly ignoring outlier neighborhoods like Pacific Heights.

Ostensibly, a city could even provide minimum wage zones in which the minimum wage was higher or lower than the normal city minimum wage, though that would tend to result in not having employees in the lower-wage zones, so this is probably a bad idea in practice, but nothing legally prevents it.

The solution is to eliminate a minimum wage law at the Federal and State level, and let counties or municipalities set it if they so choose.

Congratulations. You've just solved a problem that doesn't actually exist. States, counties, and municipalities already can set the wage higher if they so choose. And there is no valid reason to allow them to set the minimum wage lower than some reasonable median poverty line for the state, because doing would eliminate any possibility of mobility for people in the poorest areas.

Per the Census, income per capita (adjusted for constant dollars) has increased since 1970s. Minimum wage may be stagnant, but actual wages aren't.

As far as minimum wage laws go, there shouldn't be one at a Federal, and most likely even at State levels. What minimum wage would you set that would apply in San Francisco or Manhattan that would also be applicable to McAllen, TX? It makes no sense on a Federal level. And in some States (such as CA), it makes no sense state-wide. The cost of living in Oxnard is about 46% of that in Santa Monica, just 45 minutes away. How do you set a minimum wage that is "livable" for someone in a high-income area and doesn't kill small businesses in low-cost areas?

The solution is to eliminate a minimum wage law at the Federal and State level, and let counties or municipalities set it if they so choose.

You DO know that was an editorial, yes?

The actual document from the Census bureau says otherwise.

Time to put the cool aid down.

Your population density overall is lower because there's a lot of unpopulated land, but 75% of your population lives in areas with more than 1000 people per square kilometer :P.

The US has telecom problems beyond the population density one, but the bad thing is intermediate population densities. Sparsely populated areas don't matter because no one lives there. Densely populated areas are easier to service. Sprawling, intermediate areas, where lots of people live but the economics of providing service suck, are a big problem. https://www.census.gov/history...

If they have telephones and electricity, and they do, then broadband can be deployed there as well, and it will be easier than the original installation of either of those earlier services since service corridors, conduits, etc. already exist. In 2000 95.3% of all housing units in West Virginia had landline telephones.

It may take something like the Rural Electrification Act of 1936 to make it happen, but that is the point. Representatives of rural areas should be pushing for this hard.

There you go again Pastor Peen, making up shit to justify your ignorance of reality instead of going with facts.

Better housing? Not really. Better insulation and climate control, sure. But the quality of building in the past 40 years is shittastic compared to pre-WWII building quality.

Only for the rich. The poor lived in shacks without indoor plumbing. In 1950 25% of households did not have a flush toilet. Today its just 1.1%

Remember that the (fiendishly expensive) "cheap" plans under Obamacare do NOT actually provide access to non-emergency medical services.

That's just completely incorrect. In fact, its the opposite of reality. If you are poor, Obamacare pays the monthly premium for you and it pays the deductible too. In fact, the one thing that the banana republicans and President Trea45on have succeed in doing is making Obamacare better for the truly poor. The insurers have reacted to all that sabotage with "silver loading" where they make the silver plans really, really expensive but also really, really nice. And then subsidies cover the extra expense for the poor. So the truly poor end up getting even better treatment for basically nothing, while the middle-class who do not qualify for subsidies get well and truly fucked. Hows that for rewarding success? Thanks John Barron!!

I think its highly counter-productive.

I don't think it is and that might be something we just disagree on. Let us first agree, perhaps, on this: I don't think it wise for a government to punish a successfully company. I will say that I wish to reserve that there is an upper limit to that previous statement, though. Amazon isn't a successful company, they are about as damn near to a monopoly without completely shutting out the entire competition. They're exactly the thing that would set off warning bells and have the FTC keeping a sharp eye on their activities and acquisitions.

I don't have a fine line and I'm not going to pretend that there is one, that once you cross, you're in this danger zone that I speak of. And yes, Amazon isn't the only one, in fact a multitude of companies are these giant things that destroy everything in their path. In fact, a lot of American companies are these massive giants which is always why my "eye roll" triggers when I hear the DC critters talk about small job creators. But that's an entirely different, but somewhat related, topic. We have way too many of these monoliths in the US for it to be considered healthy. If the environment needs biodiversity, I would say an economy needs market diversity and the bank collapse in '07 was a good example of why a diverse number of corporations in an industry are a good thing. At least to me that makes sense, because look at how well Credit Unions weathered the storm.

But I digress, something being a good thing or a bad thing is mostly subjective and I won't linger on it. What I will posit, and I think it is the thing I'd like to debate but I ramble a lot so apologies ahead of time, is that even if we exclude good, bad, indifferent being a monolith is vastly different than being a business. I would say, that even if this is a thing we want to encourage, which again I don't think we should, but if it is something we want to encourage. There should be a premium for being it. I don't see a special tax on Amazon for being as "large" as it is, as being a bad thing. Want to be that massive? Okay, that's cool, here's a fee you have to pay for getting that large.

Now I hear you," well that would just encourage them to keep under whatever imaginary line your delusional brain conjures up." And I would say, "That's exactly the point." "Oh there would be so many missed things that a company would never get to do if we held them back," you might be so inclined to say (but I don't know what you would say, so I'll just stop that). But that is the point here. To keep small niches open for medium sized (not small, I'm not that crazy now) businesses to grow into, allow them to expand that niche and so on. But more importantly, to keep a diverse group of folks driving the boards of these companies. As opposed to a single board of directors governing over around 60% of US GAFO (link for the term GAFO and of course the figures.)

I just fail to see the logic that a single board of directors should command that much of the US market in that industry. It seems a lot like the eggs in one basket kind of deal, and those deals don't usually play out well when there is a misstep. And yes, the market is elastic and should Amazon fail we will bounce back, but it won't be without its hardships and for those "might be" hardships that "may" come I think it is best to have an insurance policy, "of sorts" and I won't pretend that I have a definition of that which is why I highlighted that there's a lot of "ifs" and "unknowns" there.

And I will admit, I'm not outright correct. There's tons of holes in my argument and I'll admit that. But I think it is worthwhile to discuss that, to say, "Should we let companies get this big?" and "Are we sure that this is healthy for the economy?". And if you are saying "yes" to those, then "Shouldn't we hedge our be

Lots of things are correlated, and correlation is not causation. I agree with you 100%: poverty, criminality and IQ are all correlated. I see poverty as the more likely causal factor among the three. For example, we know so much more about nutrition than we have in the past. Particularly, the importance of fats and the importance to limit simple carbs. That's a relatively recent phenomenon for that knowledge to be widespread (and it conforms to my personal observations, lest one complain that we're being played by the scientists like in the past when they pushed for high-carb, low-fat diets). In addition, I think there is a compelling argument to be made that economic conditions would predict crime from poverty, as much, if not more than vice versa.

Certainly crime predicts poverty. To some extent our way of life in the USA guarantees that. Having a criminal record hurts your job prospects, and even being arrested for the wrong thing will lose you many jobs. It sort of begs the question, though, doesn't it?

Poverty means living somewhere with a high unemployment, a lack of commerce, and, in cities, high property taxes, high cost of food, no ability to get food naturally. Poverty in rural areas is only 3.3% higher (as of 2016, per capita), and rural areas are significantly cheaper places to meet bare necessities than urban areas (that, I hope, needs source). I would think it's at least twice the price to meet basic needs in a city as in the country. Think rural West Virginia vs Chicago. In reality, it might be like 4x or worse, even in the ghetto. But, for even a 2x cost of living increase with no increase in the poverty line, rural poor only make up 3% more of their population as compared to urban poor (using the federal poverty line as a marker) is a pretty small amount. I'm suggesting that if you used a poverty measure that measured things like good schooling, good nutrition and other, more difficult, but not impossible to measure, we would find urban environments would, easily, have a higher poverty rate. I think that'd be useful research. Finally, if you're underwater in a mortgage and have no cash, you're not moving. This is more likely to be true if you are poor. Recent census data is consistent with that point and the broader point that using a fixed poverty line seems to hide the fact that being urban poor is often a much worse environment than being rural poor as officially identified. Which brings me to my next point.

I believe race is the root factor, but not in the way you're thinking. I don't know why I didn't make this point first, as I had trouble dancing around it in the last paragraph. Skipping the problem of institutionalized racism and going straight to historical racism only. Certainly, you won't argue against historical racism. Blacks have been historically discriminated against in this country from slavery until only a generation ago in some parts of the country (and, not even that in pockets). By the time society was open to giving blacks anything but a decent shake in life, they were already living in poverty in the crumbling cities. And, unlike in rural areas, nothing grows in the harsh concrete of an urban environment. After collapse of commerce leaving cities underfunded and without enough jobs, especially given that whites owned more than a proportional share of the businesses, it wasn't possible to just spin up commerce from there. People didn't have enough things of value to trade as there is far less natural resources per person. Even as the cities collapsed as the white majority left and took their businesses with them, it would have been hard to start a business in the collapsing city with a high competition for the limited resources and an unlikely shot at getting connections to somehow bring in outside resources (for example, getting a loan to start a grocery store) as the people w

Most people lurk as ACs for quite a while before joining, I know I was here for a good 3-4 years before making this account.

Well, it's not as if one could ever lie about that. You've persuaded me!

I don't know who decided that racism was a great rebuttal, but your comment history is completely full of racist remarks, like calling people "Ivan", the racist implication being that even if you somehow got that sloppy accusation right after making it so many times, everything they said would be unworthy of being responded to merely because of their being Russian.

Russian is a race? Why have I never seen that in a census form? I am shocked to learn that I am a racial self-hater, considering all the Eastern European ancestry. Must be the Western European ancestry rearing its ugly head. And they call it all "Caucasian." Such irony.

Or maybe, since you can't plausibly that claim comments denigrating a documented practice by a nation that considers the U.S. to be its biggest enemy is more than a "sloppy accusation," you thought that you needed to add a charge of racism to spice things up.

Wait, I thought Russia wanted to "destabilize" us? Isn't that what you're contributing to? So tell me, why are you trying to divide us again? Would you like to tell us why, even knowing the Russian plans, you decided to go and help them?

You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet. If he is a Russian troll, why not make the charge? If he is not a Russian troll, why should I refrain from suggesting that he is behaving like one? I mean, you've persuaded me, so it's obviously the latter. But for the good of the country, or just to not be "racist," I should simply ignore anyone with a contrary opinion is a "DNC shill" or a member of an "advocacy group" posting anti-Trump propaganda rather than repeating the Truth (as declared by Fox & Friends).

Since you don't appear to have a problem with the political implication that everything someone says is unworthy of being responded to merely because of their being alleged "DNC shills" or members of "advocacy groups," and thus merely spouting anti-Trump propaganda, you'll excuse me for engaging in any sort of political commentary that I wish. Or not. It's not as if I'll stop because one person has an almost unique conception of race, or my posts don't rise to his personal standards.

Does Texas count? https://www.census.gov/library...

https://www.usnews.com/news/be...
and 50th in student spending (50th, last place).
https://www.census.gov/newsroo...

That's an actual lie. Per the census bureau, about 60% of registered voters voted in 2016.

https://www.census.gov/data/ta...

There are 323 million people in the US, and about 60% of them are between 18 and 65. That is around 194 million people. Yang's idea is to give each of them $1,000 per month. That is a $194 billion monthly expense. For 12 months, that would be $2.3 trillion. The current US Federal budget is $4.15 trillion and has a budget deficit of $503 billion. This would not only increase the Federal budget by more than 50%, it would more than quintuple the budget deficit. And this is a good idea - how?

The vast majority of the US population now lives in urban centers and suburbs. There's plenty of demand for mass transit. There's not even any reliable mass transit up and down the coasts.

You appear to be referring to 2010 census figures.

Population estimates, July 1, 2016, (V2016)

https://www.census.gov/quickfa...

Share of population
White*: 61.3%
Hispanic: 17.8%
African Americans: 12.7% .
Asian: 5.7%
Multi-Racial: 2.6%
American and Alaskan Native Indian: 1.3%
Hawaiian and Pacific Islander: .2%

*(non-Hispanic or Latino population)

As a side note, whites will become a minority between 2044 and 2054 depending on whose estimate you use.

No doubt the set of white people willing to live and work in an urban environment where there are brown people is self-selected to skew blue.

That's not what I said. In fact, it is almost the opposite of what I said.
The point is that when whites are regularly exposed to non-whites, that fear of non-whites which is at the core of the GOP, is vastly reduced. It isn't people self-selecting into the city, its that city life changes people because the experience of living in a city is different from the experience of living elsewhere. When there is a taco truck on every corner, most people stop being afraid of taco eaters.

The problem with the map you cited is that it is binary. It doesn't show you what percentage of whites voted for the other side. For example, Dallas county is 67% white and went for Clinton 61/35 - obviously the 33% of the population that is non-white was not enough to get 67% of the vote.

And yet, the US Census Bureau puts California as the State with the most poverty, at ~20.4%. Go figure...

So have you ever left New York City in your life?

60,000,000 people live in rural areas or towns with under 2,500 people, and a further 30,000,000 in cities between 2,500 and 50,000 people. Trying to replace personal vehicle ownership with taxis makes absolutely no fucking sense in that setting and never will.

Things that might arguably work for ultradense urban hellholes often just don't work for the 90% of the country that isn't New York or southern California (and trying to force it on us against our will is how you get things like the Trump presidency). I live in Nebraska near a Tesla charging station, and to my knowledge in the ~5 years it's been there it has never been used by anyone.