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How San Francisco Hazed a Tech Bro (backchannel.com)
An anonymous reader writes: In December 2013 San Francisco's tension with its surging tech class reached a breaking point. Protesters swarmed Google buses. They stood in front of Twitter carrying a coffin labeled "Affordable Housing." Google glassholes were on the rise. In the midst of this, the CEO and founder of AngelHack posted a rant about the homeless. "In downtown SF the degenerates gather like hyenas, spit, urinate, taunt you, sell drugs, get rowdy, they act like they own the center of the city," Greg Gopman wrote. He thought he was becoming a thought leader. Instead, the entire city turned against him. Reviled and suddenly unemployable, Gopman spent a quixotic year spinning up businesses to solve homelessness. His journey is weirdly emblematic of today's startup-fueled San Francisco.
This is what's wrong with society - you can't point out the elephant in the room without the elephant feigning offense and everyone hating you until you buy it peanuts.
I say we shoot the elephant.
Stuff Those Matters!
I say we take off and nuke the room from orbit. It's the only way to be sure...
...
walking down Market from Embarcadero to Castro brings up a few areas which indeed do look like shit, not to mention the awkward times when a delirious hobo get in a trolley. SJW are probably gonna mod me down, but that would be one more fact they conveniently ignore...
It is a tough cause for most to get behind because of the exaggerated distance the good citizen finds between his fate and the street.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Don't worry, it's the same in Canada metro areas, and the same shit in Europe, though, there whole countries have been ran by liberals over the past 40 years...
Talk PC, act sociopathic.
"No good deed goes unpunished"
Hmmm so 'liberals' are responsible for urban decay.. has nothing to do with conservative 'job creators' creating all those jobs in China that used to be here..
Not to mention when I think of hellholes these days it's Kansas, Mississippi.. conservative led and falling apart because surprise surprise you can't cut taxes to nothing AND afford even minimal government. Let's not even talk about how they destroy their teachers.
The situation in SF really is, pretty bad.
I'm not even sure what the solution is anymore now that I lived here for a while and see it every day first hand.
I've lived in large Australian and New Zealand cities, but the homeless epidemic here is just on a level you couldn't believe or imagine without being here and seeing it for yourself.
Prices and rents won't ever go down again imo, and the homeless refuse to leave and only increase in number every ear... shit will get to a real breaking point before long.
Not sure I want to be here when that happens.
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
Your partisan rancor does nothing but make you sound stupid and petty. So your aunt and uncle moved in 2006. So what? Old people tend to get tired of city life. Big deal. The homelessness and dirt in this city is just like every other city in the world. When you concentrate money into a small area, you tend to attract some not so nice elements. San Francisco's problem is wealth, avarice, and extreme narcissism. But whatever. You sound like someone who is not interested in discourse or open minded dialog. You probably just like ranting. So I'll leave it at that. But I will say, if you haven't ever lived in any major city much less a so called liberal liberal one then you need to STFU about it because you don't know shit.
I used to live in San Francisco, and it used to be tolerant, interesting, welcoming, and a live-and-let-live kind of place. These days, it's a dirty dump, full of intolerant people and massive social problems. Of course, the homeless and drug addicts in the street aren't the cause, they are merely the symptom of a broken political culture and corrupt political class and machinery, a toxic mix of nouveau riche techies, public sector unions, retirees, and "social justice" activists. San Francisco demographics are against it: SF has largely destroyed its middle class, leaving the city to young party goers and retirees, neither of which are the kind of people who care about the long term health of their community. Having left SF, I just hope I don't have to bail these people out with my tax dollars, because SF will get a lot worse before it gets better. So, my recommendation: don't try to fix SF, just leave it. Unless you are a 20-something who likes to party, in which case put up with the stink and dirt for a few more years and have fun before leaving.
Stop voting the loons into office?
The homeless problem is really a mental health problem. We need to open a new generation of mental hospitals to give them the treatment they need.
"Degenerates" is over the line, but there is a problem here. Like any social problem the question of who contributes what share of the blame is in dispute.
But I'll just leave this here: Human waste shuts down BART escalators. Clearly something is horribly horribly wrong.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
So are you one of the San Franciscans who shits on the sidewalk, in broad daylight? Are you one of the San Franciscans who pisses on the side of buildings? Are you one of the San Franciscans who leaves used hypodermic needles all over the place? Are you one of the male San Franciscans who engages in unprotected anal intercourse with seven, eight, or more random men per day? Are those the kind of activities you partake in when you say that you're "dealing with real life"?
I think that the GP is talking about the complete lack of civilization that permeates so many parts of San Francisco. We're talking about behavior that isn't seen to such an extent anywhere else in the United States, even in the worst parts of the other major cities. We're talking about behavior that would be looked down upon in the slums of the third world. We're talking about behavior that even untrained dogs don't engage in!
That's what the GP is talking about, I think. He's pointing out that San Francisco sees abhorrent and disgusting behavior way, way, way more than anywhere else in the United States, if not the entire world. And yet here you are, basically defending people who defecate on sidewalks, who urinate on park benches, who spread numerous STDs, and who pose a serious health risk to others thanks to their completely uncivilized ways of life. There's nothing unreasonable with the GP's request that the people of San Francisco try to maintain even a minimal level of hygiene and civility.
Best thing could happen to that "sanctuary" city would be "the big one" that would drop it into the ocean.
I've been told two things over the last 30 years: the BIG ONE is coming and BART is coming to Silicon Valley. Of the two, BART is going to happen first. As for the BIG ONE, scientists are still predicting in the next 30 years.
When you concentrate money into a small area, you tend to attract some not so nice elements.
During the Gold Rush era people were complaining about Native Americans.
Peter Burnett, California's first governor, declared that California was a battleground between the races and that there were only two options towards California Indians, extinction or removal. The State of California directly paid out $25,000 in bounties for Indian scalps with varying prices for adult male, adult female, and child sizes. It also provided the basis for the enslavement and trafficking of Native American labor, particularly that of young women and children, which was carried on as a legal business enterprise. Miners, loggers, and settlers formed vigilante groups and local militias to hunt the Natives, regularly raiding villages to supply the demand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Gold_Rush
We need to open a new generation of mental hospitals to give them the treatment they need.
California voters will elect another Ronald Reagan for governor and close the mental hospitals again because it's socialism to provide for the less fortunate.
these high paid tech folks still want and need services. They want teachers for their kids, police and fire dept to keep them safe. Housemaids to tidy up for them after an 80 hour work week and restaurant staff to cook food for them.
What they do not want, it seems, is to pay for all that. See, it's not as easy as "Just move out of San Fransico". When your poor you live where you're born. You don't just move to where the work is, and if you try you're taking a huge risk. You have no savings because you're never paid enough for savings.
What we have is servant class asking members of the merchant class to pay for their services. I don't see a problem with that.
But hey, bashing people over the head with the "PC" moniker never gets old, right? So go ahead. I suppose it's a hell of a lot easier than facing the unpleasant consequences of a modern service economy.
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Yes. You may notice that cities are overwhelmingly run by liberals.
Except for a couple of small short term dips (in 1992, 2002, and 2009), the number of jobs in America has been steadily going up, from 90 million in 1980 to 145 million in 2015. So the idea that there "used to be jobs here" that are now in China is delusional.
Kansas is doing a lot better in terms of education than, say, California. And the high cost of living in places like California means that people tend be a lot better off elsewhere. For example, Alabama, Wyoming, Kansas, and Georgia come out ahead of California in terms of average salary once you adjust for cost of living.
It's people like you who simply don't want to face the facts about the failure of progressive and liberal economic policies and advocate more of doing something that keeps failing in practice.
but wouldn't the solution be to just give them homes to live in? I mean, we're the wealthiest country on plant earth. This shouldn't be a problem.
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The whole article reads like a package dropped from a PR firm with the sole purpose of rehabbing this guys rep.
Call me when it runs in the Sacramento Bee or any paper that actually verifies what they print.
Yes. You may notice that cities are overwhelmingly run by liberals.
I also notice that when the conservative led state governments cut all the budgets, those cities crumble.
Except for a couple of small short term dips (in 1992, 2002, and 2009), the number of jobs in America has been steadily going up, from 90 million in 1980 to 145 million in 2015. So the idea that there "used to be jobs here" that are now in China is delusional.
Yet our middle class is vanishing. Perhaps because the well paid manufacturing jobs that were shifted out to China were replaced with part time Wal-Mart jobs and public assistance.
Kansas is doing a lot better in terms of education than, say, California. And the high cost of living in places like California means that people tend be a lot better off elsewhere. For example, Alabama, Wyoming, Kansas, and Georgia come out ahead of California in terms of average salary once you adjust for cost of living.
Kansas is bleeding teachers. They've had so many teachers move out of the state they can only keep schools open by hiring unlicensed teachers to fill the gaps. The Kansas Supreme Court found the state's funding of schools to be unconstitutional. If that's your metric for "pretty good", don't bother replying, you have nothing worth saying.
Conservative economic voodoo policies have created the greatest wealth disparity this country has seen in it's entire history. Welcome to the Oligarchy you conservatives sold us into, but hey as long as we have cops doing genital checks outside public restrooms it was worth it for you I guess.
Send them to the middle of nowhere 100 miles east where they won't be bothering anyone.
Send them back to Las Vegas!
For years, the Las Vegas Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital, Nevada's primary state mental facility, gave discharged patients a bus ticket out of town. Poor and mentally ill, they ended up homeless in cities around the country—especially in California, where more than 500 psychiatric patients were sent over a five year period.
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2015/10/nevada-settles-busing-homeless-lawsuit-san-francisco/
"Instead, the entire city turned against him."
For what reason? He didn't say anything out of line. Degenerates who shit up the place shouldn't be tolerated.
No, you fucking liar.
The liberals felt that mental institutions were cruel, and set an entire generation of lunatics loose, who promptly became homeless.
You're an ignorant piece of shit rewriting history because the truth doesn't align with your agenda.
I just spent the last week in SF for work. I'm coming from Europe, the shittiest places in SF are FAR FAR worse than the worst in Europe. .. and what's up with the dress code???
Obviously, you don't have a clue. In just a week in SF, I had the opportunity to see:
1) guy barking on the streets and behaving like a dog
2) woman tazing a guy in the streets
3) guy pissing himself while standing
4) people yelling and screaming at each other
5) people spitting to the floor
6) naked guy running around
They block new housing development, so there is a shortage. Then they throw a fit because rent keeps going up. Even if there wasn't a tech boom, this is the expected result when you strangle the supply. Have they stopped teaching basic economics in our schools?
-- Will program for bandwidth
The U.S. Supreme Court closed all the hospitals.
I could only find one Supreme Court citation. That case restricted the states from locking up a non-dangerous person for no good reason. That's not the same as the Supreme Court ruling to close down the hospitals.
O'Connor v. Donaldson, 422 U.S. 563 (1975), was a landmark decision in mental health law. The United States Supreme Court ruled that a state cannot constitutionally confine a non-dangerous individual who is capable of surviving safely in freedom by themselves or with the help of willing and responsible family members or friends. Since the trial court jury found, upon ample evidence, that petitioner did so confine respondent, the Supreme Court upheld the trial court's conclusion that petitioner had violated respondent's right to liberty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O'Connor_v._Donaldson
God Bless your confused little conservative heart!
In case you're wondering, yes that was said in the voice reserved for 'omg this retard is eating his own shit again' but nice.
It's always about taxes TAXES!! with conservatives. If it was taxes, then why are Mississippi and Kansas going bankrupt? They've lowered their tax rates to the point they don't exist (if you're rich already). Why didn't all those jobs gravitate to them instead of all the way over to China?
If only Americans weren't so privileged, what with expecting living wages and being able to have shelter. If only we didn't have a work ethic that allowed our corporate overlords to work us 7 days a week, 15 hours a day like China (and Kansas!). If only we allowed slave labor like China!
Oh the irony that true conservatives had to turn to a communist nation to find labor that understands it's place in the scheme of things.
I read the article looking for some form of redemption but found none ...
I will summarize for you so you can save your self.
Guy who feels he knows better then everyone went on a rant since he didn't like the "others" dirtying his beloved place with their presence without ever interacting with them. Most people were outraged his name went through the mud and he was shunned for his views. He then decided it was time to show he knew better then everyone and failed totally and completely and befriends a token homeless guy. Now he is back at work someplace irrelevant, yet still has done nothing to show he learned to respect their plight and ends with how everyone else is wrong (ie the people he (*&^%$^ elected to run the place) he is right if only people would listen.... sounds like the same guy to me, I was looking for something he did that worked, something he did that made a difference and found just a fluff piece.
If that is true, it is because progressive state governments force rural communities to subsidize cities. It is a good thing to put a stop to that.
The middle income group has shifted from about 61% in 1970 to about 50% of US households in 2015. That isn't exactly "vanishing". But what it means is that the income distribution is getting longer tailed, mostly towards higher incomes. That is, the middle class is shrinking because more people are getting wealthier. That is a good thing.
No, my metric for "pretty good" is actual student performance, dropout rates, test scores, and graduation rates. That's the metric that matters.
The metric you advocate, namely teacher credentials and increases in spending has nothing to do with student performance, and everything with the financial interests of powerful political groups like teachers' unions. Thanks for demonstrating how fucked up progressive priorities actually are.
Good: it means more and more people are getting richer. And economics is not a zero-sum game; the fact that more people are getting richer and inequality is increasing doesn't hurt people at the bottom of the income scale.
That "Oligarchy" is precisely what people like you are advocating, with your Keynesian stimulus programs, intrusive social justice programs, and massive support for police and teacher unions. Fiscal conservatives like myself would love to see federal spending massively cut back and control be returned to local government and the people.
Having lived in both San Francisco and now back in my hometown of Wichita, KS, I always enjoy when I can talk about both places within the same topic.
As far as urban decay, guess where you'll find it? You'll find it in urban areas 100% of the time, per the very definition of "urban decay". To claim that local phenomenon are a direct result of local political leanings is to play very fast and loose with cause and effect. I can think of ten other hypotheses off the top of my head about the cause of urban decay, many of which don't factor politics in at all, and some of which actually involve inverting the cause-and-effect relationship of your own hypothesis that liberal politics cause it (maybe urban decay causes liberal politics?). To put it generously, it's utterly obtuse to say, "urban environments often include blighted environments, urban environments often have liberal-leaning voters, thus liberal politics cause urban decay, case closed."
I should also mention that these same urban areas do not consist completely of blighted, impoverished neighborhoods. Every city has it's good parts and its bad parts. But I'm sure the devoted partisan will find some way to assign a city's bad aspects to whichever wing of politics they don't like while simultaneously claiming that the good parts are actually somehow proof of the correctness of their preferred politics.
So on to Kansas. Right now in Kansas, yes the cost of living is very low, but the lower average income from what I see does not at all work out to the advantage of most people. The only people who can really take advantage of the low cost of living are the few people here such as myself who can work remotely and thus take advantage of the sorts of incomes offered by industries which don't even tend to locate here. Here in Wichita alone, in the midst of Governor Brownback's conservative libertarian "business friendly" policies in full swing, Boeing just up and packed its bags and left the state entirely, leaving huge swaths of longtime residents suddenly jobless. Where did those jobs go? Many places, including the supposedly anti-business liberal hellhole of Seattle. So it seems your simplistic reasoning falls apart at the slightest examination.
Kansas is a fairly deep red state, and right now Governor Brownback has a lower approval rating here than President Obama. That takes a lot of fucking up to achieve. Even my grandma and my great aunt are posting to Facebook with calls for his resignation at this point, and they both tend to espouse strong conservatism both socially and economically.
You do realize that the reason for closing them in the first place was because the ACLU went to bat and won a case for a patient of one of those hospitals. This is the same case that only allows people to be hospitalized against their will if they are a threat to themselves or others. Once people could check themselves out and the courts called it unlawful detainment, there was little left to do other than stop the spending.
People act like this hasn't already been hashed out. You cannot open a mental hospital and just put people in it. You cannot declare someone mentally ill and force them to get treatment. You cannot even force people getting treatment to take their medications. People act like this never happened because they have some boogeyman to blame and think all will be magically different if we spend money again.
This is a relatively common left-wing urban myth. The ACLU is still proud of ensuring the involuntarily committed were released out of the "institutions". That was in the 60s and 70s, before Reagan was President. You can't blame him for being governor of CA, either, as the number of patients in State mental hospitals went from 37,500 to 22,000 in the years before he took office.
So go complain to the left-wing ACLU and the academic psychiatrists who influenced the courts and the bureaucracy in the 60s and 70s to get them all out of mental hospitals, rather than simply assigning blame to people you don't like something they weren't responsible for.
Next you'll be telling us about how the right-wing is governing San Francisco into the group, despite Democrat-led City, County, State and Federal administrations....
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Bullshit... You've got places in France that the cops won't even go into, for one example. I need only one to nullify your statement but I can come up with more. Hell, there are whole countries that are, at least as average, worse that SF. Hungary, Romania, etc...
But nah, keep up with the silliness while it all crumbles and you argue over meaningless things rather than working towards improving things.
Shit, my home state has a lower rate of violent crime, homelessness, and quite possibly even gun-crime than just your home city does in Europe but that's a topic for another day. San Fransisco sucks but it's nowhere near as bad as La Courneuve, Amiens, etc... Hell, they're convinced that there's ethnic cleansing in Denmark (I've my doubts about that one - I've not been for a while) and head back down to Marseilles (I think I spelled that wrong) and parts of that are worse than Detroit.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Kansas is in a state of total collapse, including their education system. The entire state is in a freefall into the shitter, and it's been entirely run by conservative Republicans.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelli...
https://www.salon.com/2015/06/...
http://www.politicususa.com/20...
http://www.rollingstone.com/po...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Thanks.
I'm pretty damned left on the political spectrum but let's try to be honest here. The jobs moving overseas were touted as the whole "rising tide raising all ships" thing by the Left. I know - I was there when they started talking about it at length in the late 1980s and getting progressively more public about the benefits to the poor and impoverished people (of Indochina, for one) who were living on just a dollar a day.
To be fair, the jackasses on the Right, those who happened to be business owners (quite a few businesses are run by left-leaning people, I hope you didn't think we'd not know that), thought about it for a moment and said, "Wait, you want us to do what?" And the rest is pretty much history. That is what basing policy on feelings and not logic gets you. It's entirely revisionist to try to place the blame on the Right. You're one of those people who complaints about the Republicans using Free Speech Zones and ignores that it was the Democrats (1988 at the DNC in New York) who got that started, aren't you?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Those statements easily apply to both sides of the aisle. Zealots at either end of the spectrum are idiots. In fact, zealots on any subject are idiots. The Law of Diminishing Returns plays no favorites.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
My people were fighting the Cherokee for at least 3 centuries before white people came.
Just some additional information... Many of those Natives would have been what we'd call Hispanics today. There are a few really good documentaries on the subject.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Overlords provide control. Larvae provide production. Zergling rushes provide QQ.
"California voters will elect another Ronald Reagan for governor and close the mental hospitals again because it's socialism to provide for the less fortunate."
Alternatively, as indicated below, the villain was a guy names Milo Forman. They both hit California at the same time. Hence, the homeless problem.
They're kind of correct. What I can suggest is that you start here and work your way out:
https://www.aclu.org/aclu-hist...
Look for unbiased sources and actual documents. The Left wanted (and keep in mind the political spectrum was a bit messier at that point with lots of Southern Democrats and Compassionate Republicans at the time) to, you know, stop fucking abusing the mentally ill. It's a just idea.
Except, the States were pretty broke. They couldn't really afford to house all of them AND give them the treatment they deserved. So, they kinda, sorta, basically let anyone go who was able to say they wanted to be free and showed they understood the concept of freedom. It really wasn't much more precise than that unless they were an obvious danger to themselves and the community and they sometimes let them go too.
This kept going until a bunch of suits throughout the 80s and even into the very early 1990s.
And yeah, you need to keep in mind that the spectrum was a bit more muddled then. When I was younger we had Democrats, elected ones, on television saying that the niggers didn't need belong in school with the whites. (I'm part black.) And, to make it more salient, the citizenry was largely cheering them on. No, it really wasn't the majority who were wanting equal rights, that's another myth. It was a very vocal minority who were tearing shit up and making the white people look bad. It should be noted that some of that minority (that was tearing things up) was also white.
I was not born a full-class citizen of your country.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Being a douchebag is generally what to end up being when you dare look at this other dark side of the liberal distropia, and dare speak it loud. If you consider that calling a hobo a hobo is being asshole, then I'm fine with it.
As a non-republican conservative, I read these with interest. There are two sides to every story - and prior to reading these, I knew neither side. Now I know one, but am curious about the other. I hope you understand that with credentials like, "Paul Rosenberg is a California-based writer/activist, senior editor for Random Lengths News, and a columnist for Al Jazeera English. Follow him on Twitter at @PaulHRosenberg" - these articles paint a venomous picture of conservatives. If a governor has failed - and managed to do so on such a massive scale that he has single-handedly bankrupted a state, overthrown its' courts, and closed its schools (as explained in these articles) - then lambast and castrate him.
But I'd prefer to read something with less of a poignant agenda.
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest was the film that did it.
There was only one de facto media back then, not the heterogeneity we have today.
Screw millennials, they need a crash course into real life...
First act of Trudeau as a PM: sell Canada gold reserve. So much for blaming Harper...
Yeah... we call them "natives" .
There is a difference between a place where cops don't go because of crime, and mentally ill people shitting on the streets... A criminal is still more sane than the crazy hobo, and thus relatively predictable, whereas the hobo...
Yes. You may notice that cities are overwhelmingly run by liberals.
I also notice that when the conservative led state governments cut all the budgets, those cities crumble.
At least, they don't put children in debt at birth over the next few generations...
You're missing the point and thinking in false dichotomies. Democrats and progressives say that higher taxes, more spending, and more progressive policies improve the lives of people. Yet, they are in charge of large numbers of cities and states, and they are not doing well there, even when they have very large majorities and don't have to compromise with anybody, like in San Francisco and California. Pointing out that Democratic and progressive policies are a dismal failure isn't an endorsement of Republicans.
Daemonik gave Kansas as an example of a failing education system. I simply pointed out that in terms of student outcomes, Kansas is doing better than California and many other Democratic states. And I would respond to you that Kansas is also fiscally in much better condition than California.
Furthermore, pointing out that Democratic and progressive policies are utter failures doesn't translate into an endorsement of Republicans. In fact, partisan fools like you on both sides are responsible for the massive dysfunction of government.
It's people like you who simply don't want to face the facts about the failure of progressive and liberal economic policies and advocate more of doing something that keeps failing in practice.
Er... wait.. what?
The state of any democracy is a combination of both liberal and conservative policies, since they've all had both sides in power during recent decades. And even if they haven't(extremely rare), opposition rhetoric still has influence on public policy and perceptions.
As you say in general, across the board, jobs and wealth are going up over time. The place is actually getter better while the complainers seem to getting louder. Maybe it's the Internet, or maybe it a flaw with prosperity that people get bored and turn to moaning for entertainment. But blaming side A or B for all of your problems comes across as a little stupid.
You sure that wasn't my last staff party?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
when in reality liberal ideas are stupid, fail in every single case.
Every single time? Sound legit...
Well, I don't know why Brownback is liked or not liked, and fiscal conservatism isn't necessarily politically popular because it causes short term pain even if it helps long term growth. Statistically, Kansas does better in terms of educational outcomes and fiscal situation. In terms of happiness, economic growth, and per capita GDP, they also seem comparable. I suggest looking up the statistics.
Unlike Kansas, California really is at some risk of collapse, with its dire fiscal situation and failing education system.
Well Harper did leave the treasury empty after 8 or 9 years of mismanaging the countries finances. Wasn't one of his first acts to blow the surplus that he inherited from the Liberals and then borrow $65 Billion?
If the country was a car, the Conservatives attitude was to sell the snow tires, never do an oil change, little well flush the anti-freeze or do a tune-up and then when someone else had to borrow money to spend on the car, scream about wasting money. The Cons did buy some nice dingle balls for that car though.
Shit the Conservatives did the impossible, made the Liberals look good.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
The state of many cities and some states, however, is not a combination of both liberal and conservative policies, since they have been in the hands of Democrats and progressives for decades. So we can look at places like San Francisco and California to see what the long term effect of Democratic progressive government is. And what we find is that these governments simply fail to deliver on their promises.
This is just an illustration. Economic studies have shown again and again that more economic freedom and smaller government translate into increased growth and wealth.
I really do not care if you harm yourself. In fact, I think the world might be better off if you did. It was the courts in the 60s and 70s that decided it was enough to detain you against your will. Evidently they still do because you can be detained for 72 hours under that condition.
Yes they do. They always cut taxes faster then cutting spending, thus creating debt on the theory that if we're far enough in debt then the idea of spending money doing something about that hobo shitting on the street will be unthinkable. Of course they honestly seem to believe that hobo is there due to gods will or something and he deserves to be at a point where he doesn't understand why we don't shit on the streets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
nop... http://globalnews.ca/news/2508... Trudeau sold about 1T in January this year, or about 2/3 of what was left.
I have probably traveled more than you have, so please stop the condescending comment. I grew up in the vicinity of the places you're talking about, so you should just STFU...
Not anywhere close to King Obama rate, who increased debt about $1T each years of his mandate. Oh, and don't get me started about the GM / bank bailout, these were loan (which have been repaid since), not free money.
Whining about mental facilities closing down won't fix shit. On which ground would you detain these folks ?
The homeless problem is really a mental health problem. We need to open a new generation of mental hospitals
What's really needed is recognizing that "mental hospitals" are overkill. Mental hospitals are for those unfortunates who are a danger to themselves and others, but they are not the right solution for the mildly mentally ill.
There are people who simply can't cope with basic adult responsibilities like following a budget or reliably showing up to a job. Their lives are not happy and they deserve our compassion, but a more creative solution is needed. They don't need hospitalization but they do need some amount of help.
And they are not the same people as the few who are homeless as a lifestyle choice.
(Unless all that is what you meant by "new generation".)
Tell that garbage to the residents of Flint Michigan, you might get a dose of reality rather than you usual Fox news fantasy.
Wait... What? You've been here as long as I have. Did you just insinuate that you want honesty, objectivity, and factual sources and information? I'm not sure if you're crazy or trolling 'cause this here is a political thread. We ain't got time for no facts here. This here's mud slingin' and mud slingin' what we're gonna do. At least half of us a drunk or high on something.
It's Saturday night in the US and a political thread. You don't usually get those things in these sorts of threads and there's not much you can do about it. Oh, you can try to change it. I have tried. Not a chance. At some point, you realize that the objective is to sit and laugh your ass off at the insanity of it all and realize that humans are awesomely stupid. Then, you can throw in a witty barb and collect cheap karma - or burn it, it's up to you. Either way, if you're not having fun then this is not the right thread for you.
I find it best to take in small doses, most of the time. I meander off and do other things during the middle of the thread. Then I come back and read some more. It's like "SJW Friday." This thread could have gone either way. I'd say it's pretty good baiting on behalf of the editors. I'm impressed and amused. And, if you're not having fun, why do it?
It's perspective. Don't get me wrong, he's bound to have some facts. They've often got someone to quote and a few statistics that can be interpreted any way you want. Off all the things to blame, the political party affiliation is probably the last thing that would make me curious but, what do I know?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
So your argument is that someone who is barely economically left of Romney and whose biggest legacy is a massive gift to the medical insurance industry (based on Romney's similar gift) also increased debt as fast as any other right winger?
Though the Americans do have an advantage in that they can tax the whole world to support their debt and are willing to destroy any country that disagrees.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
To go a step further, I'll go so far as to say that I strongly support PSA (Physician Assisted Suicide). I think PSA should be legal and that we need to work on the social stigma of suicide. Yes, I have had close friends who have killed themselves. It would have been a lot better if they could have prepared, done it in a humane fashion, and retained their dignity throughout.
That said, not all people who were released were a danger to just themselves. I agree that strict oversight needs to be maintained on involuntary commission and that we need to treat our patients rather than incarcerate them. We need to do what we can to give them the aid to remain in safe from harm AND from harming others in the community. I have to say that, other than the lack of PSA, the system is not that bad at this current time. I'm sure many will disagree but, before doing so, I ask them to look at history - not even very distant history, and then judge again. I did not state that we're perfect - in any nation.
However, we're not actually doing that bad as compared to what we were doing. Things take time and there's many reasons to seek improvements and to continue to observe the process and practice to reduce the risks of additional harm coming to the patient. Yeah, I know... That's not a crazy, spittle-flecked, outlandish thing to say that demands adherence, affirmation, and attention. I'm sorry but it needs to be said. If you'd like, you can blame the continued problems on your least favorite political party, if that will make you feel any better.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I don't believe those charts. California is running a budget surplus, yet according to the author, is only "Moderate" on short term solvency.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Not even close and the funny thing is that inside of two weeks you'll be repeating the same thing I'm saying once you realize what you can imply with it. You're a daft child, aren't you? See, I read more of your commentary throughout the thread. I'll give you something fun and you can turn it around to help your side of the argument with the other people. The areas that are no-go are, more often then not, predominantly ethnically Muslim.
And if you think riots on the street are better than shit, you're an idiot. If you think someone shitting on the street is better than a place where sanitation services does not go, emergency services sometimes refuses to go, PLUS the shit on the street, is somehow better than the shit on the streets of SF then you're even less intelligent than you've so far displayed.
Do you really think these people, the ones on the streets rioting or the ones who keep even the police at bay are sane or something? Do you think they're less mentally ill than those in San Fransisco?
And no, you've not traveled for shit. I, on the other hand, have even gone so far as to post pics of me in varied places and to have posted pics I've taken in various places and - while traveling, even interacted with a few people from Slashdot in the real world. I'm not condescending, you're just sorely misinformed and horribly inexperienced. In fact, you're dismissed.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Stop voting the loons into office?
Good luck. Live in Ontario or California, the major cities are effectively voting blocks that say "fuck you" to everyone else as long as they get what they want. Corruption? Don't matter, a dozen police investigations into the political party that's the front runner? Doesn't matter. Involved in several billion dollars of broken contracts and graft? Doesn't matter.
Om, nomnomnom...
California is in deep trouble long term due to its high unfunded pension liabilities and other obligations. Several cities in the state are also in serious trouble. Even if California's small budget surplus were real, it wouldn't seriously address these issues. To the degree that the Californian budget situation has improved over the last few years, it's due to tax hikes and a windfall from the stock market; those aren't going to last.
California is really at a disadvantage compared to Kansas. Everyone wants to live in California due to its climate while people live in Kansas because they do. Someone in Kansas who is mentally ill and homeless is going to have a tendency to move to California, more Liberal and a better climate. Someone in California who is down and out will not move to Kansas. Kansas ends up with a more mentally stable population that is not so demanding on services.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
If you were understanding my actual stance, I clearly state that the situation in some part of SF is clearly worse than the situation in Paris' suburbs.
Oh, and by the way, while I'm a pretty selfish prick, I'm not so self-centered as to have picture of me in "places", and brag about it. And I don't really care about /. reader either, their demographic is not the one I'm interested in when I travel. If I want to discuss with such "nerds" (between quotes, as most are more script-kiddy millennials than hardcore nerds) from all over the world, I save the jet fuel and directly go to 4chan.
Maybe it's just an impossible situation. Progressive policies do help people but require higher taxes and with a couple of higher levels of government also competing for those taxes there is a limit. Then there is the problem of progressive policies attracting the down and outs. If your down and out in Kansas, moving to California seems like a win, win. I doubt that anyone who is down and out moves from California to Kansas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Where did you get the "increased debt as fast as any other right winger" ? He pretty much increased debt more than any other president combined... Assuming a steady growth, that's 8% per year...
Every city has it's good parts and its bad parts.
I agree with your comments, but wanted to point out that Finnish cities don't have bad parts. I guess it may have something to do with us being socialists over here.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Can we stop pretending that anyone who writes like this should be taken seriously?
Reviled and suddenly unemployable, Gopman spent a quixotic year spinning up businesses to solve homelessness. His journey is weirdly emblematic of today's startup-fueled San Francisco.
"quixotic", "solve Homlessness". No bias here.
Poor people and homelessness isn't a bug of capitalism. It is a feature.
This is just an illustration. Economic studies have shown again and again that more economic freedom and smaller government translate into increased growth and wealth.
Which studies are those then?
Just a quick grab at some examples tells me you at talking shit. Eg New York and California are wealthy and are blue, the middle of the US is poor and blue.
If you also go outside the US, we see countries like Qatar or Norway leading the GDP PPP but they are hardly 'liberal'.
No, the delusional ones are the nutjobs like yourself who look only at raw numbers - and miss that millions of good paying jobs (especially factory jobs) have vanished, to be replaced by minimum wage service jobs and McJobs.
I'd put down that sack of stones and start looking to move out of that glass house if I was you.
Eh? I just returned from a 1 week business trip in Romania. Except for stray dogs and garbage littered roadsides it was okay. Then again i skipped Bucharest, but I've been in Sibiu, Vatra Dornei, Craiova...
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
I don't know about SF, but in most cities there are plenty of charities and shelters, almost no one has to be homeless.
The problem with handing someone a free apartment is: the place will be trashed and then abandoned. They will pee in the corners, set fire to the kitchen, leave the windows open in the rain, and then wander off to the bridge they used to live under.
They aren't capable of living independently in a home. Some of them don't even want to.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
And is rightfully so.
See, you can actually run a mental health program without practically jailing people as it is evident in many places in the world.
Real life is overrated.
second blue should say red obviously...
I suggest you post links to the statistics.
The President does not control the budget, Congress does. The President is Constitutionally obligated to spend the money that Congress allocates.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
No, my metric for "pretty good" is actual student performance, dropout rates, test scores, and graduation rates. That's the metric that matters.
Hello from the UK. The last Labour government tried that. Actually they were obsessed with measurable metrics and installed them everywhere with severe penalties in terms of funding for failing. Sounds good, right? No it sucked, because the simplistic metrics that you and they proposed don't actually match the real world, and of course large-scale gaming went on.
So, no, those matrics you propose suck. And here's why:
1. Test scores ignore how hard the test is. An A-level in sociology is not the same as an A-level in further maths. An A-level from the "easy" exam board (this is what happens if you apply the free market to exams) is worth more to the school (better grades) but is worth less to the person that matters (the pupil). It is in the school's financial interest to direct the pupils to stuf that is bad for the pupils in order to optimize the school's metrics. That happened a lot.
2. Even if you can do proper scores, absolute scores are not the correct thing to optimize, because externalities dominate the results, not the schools themselves. The schools can make a difference but only so far. Definding all the "bad" inner city schools as punishment and giving the money to the successful suburban schools actually makes things worse even though you're diverting money from poorly performing places to better performing ones.
So, no, the world is vastly, vastly more complex than your excessively simplistic metrics. You think you have the solution, but trust me, you do not. It's been tried before and it failed. The only thing you want to improve is "quality of education". You cannot measure that easily. Any proxy measure is subject to gaming.
So now you need to change your metrics to "test scores on good subject with sufficiently informative tests". Suddenly you've gone from something simple, easy and wrong to something much much harder to measure. And you've still not corrected for external factors.
I also think your post is deeply foolish because you're trying to distill a complex and nuanced problem into one with simplistic solutions with an emphasis on "progressives" versus "conservatives". The world is so very much more complex than that.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
We don't have ethnic cleansing in Denmark (WTF?), but I wouldn't put it past our current nationalistic right-wing government to consider it. They've already put refugees from Syria in ill-maintained barely-functioning tent camps, even though there are plenty of available public buildings with modern sanitation etc. available for them.
Eat the rich.
Gopman's first post "my love affair with SF dies a little" seemed ok (although his having "no clue" about why the homeless were there does smack of techie-arrogance). It was the drunk one after that that that did for him.
In times gone by it would've just been shouting in a bar. Afterwards he could've apologised, laughed it off, and put it down to too many beers. Now - it's affected his whole life. For those living their lives online, every utterance is juggling dynamite. It seems to me that this encourages rather a strict, lockstep approach to discourse. No room to blow off a little steam, everything you ever say will be "googled" for evermore. It's a terrifying prospect, in my view.
This thread be all "Fuck your side because it's intolerant," without the slightest hint of irony.
It's great! :D
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
Man, you're all over this thread. We get it, you're a curmudgeon! Now, it's time for your nap...
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
Please quote the exact clause(s) that create that obligation. My understanding is that the legislature and the Supreme Court have limited the president's discretion, not eliminated it - otherwise the wall along the Mexican border (already funded) would have been built.
The President takes an oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." That would include preventing the spending of money for unConstitutional purposes.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
They had enough of what was once a nice city, that has turned into a bunch of hipster idiots, along with a TON of bums (I deter the term homeless), drug users, illegal aliens.
You pretty much described the original hippie movement there. It came and went, and like the hippies, so will this era be gone one day with most of its problems.
-SR
When Boeing tried to expand to "right to work" states, unions stuck and threatened to shut down Boeing permanently. Boeing caved. Without left-wing government support of union thuggery, this would not be possible.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
"image", "startups", "city tax break", "hackathon host and startup incubator", "photos on Facebook of cash", "Valleywag", "Huffington Post", "the flavor of disruption", "crowdfunding", "Burning Man"
I'm afraid that if you insist on living inside your own virtual reality you're eventually going to be confronted by the fact that the rest of the world neither cares about this parallel universe whose inflation is powered almost entirely by self-aggrandisement. Nor do they believe that warehousing your homeless in instagram-friendly workfare "decadomes" is a solution to the housing problem : it's simply a product of a mind that does not understand the lives of people in the real world and believes the answer is to sweep them under an attractive carpet.
I've no idea who this guy is, nor do I particulalry care about his fate, but the unquestioning belief in the article that the narcissism of the internet should naturally just carry over into real life is breathtakingly insane.
Does the word "oxymoron" mean anything to you?
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
And yes, there are parts of Europe that are pretty bad. Yes, they include people shitting on the street. Err... Quite a bit worse, depending on where are - they can get pretty bad. Try not going to a tourist trap and actually seeing what's behind the curtain. Humans are humans, all the world around. Some have better circumstances than others but, for the most part, we're largely the same.
This is very much true for the countries below the Baltic Sea. Nordic Countries (and Estonia) are the best of Europe and among the best, Sweden is the worst with its 100% immigrant housing estates (mistakes were made in the 70's and 80's by Palme...) France is probably the worst among Western European countries with its (literally) no-go zones run by immigrant gangs.
Eastern Europe has its problems, but they're quite different from the rest of Europe. There's human trafficking and organized crime, but a lot less "crazy people". If you stay out of their way, they mostly stay out of yours.
So yes, Europe has its problems too. However, the most notable difference between Europe and the US I've noticed is homelessness. While some countries in Europe have severe homelessness related problems, like France, in the US you see people living on the street across the country. And not just a few, but an insane amount of people. In the Nordic Countries and Germany, for example, you'd be generally surprised to spot a homeless person actually living on the streets (even the usual drunkards have a home provided for them by the state or city). In the US, you can't take a turn without seeing endless amounts of homeless people.
-SR
I'm not sure that has much to do with cities. Quite a few presidential candidates raise some eyebrows and I don't see Hillary being declared persona non grata.
I'm starting to think Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho would be a better alternative here.
Frankly, I'm more inclined to blame our collective bowing to our one god (the economy) far more than any political side anywhere. "Wesayso knows best" does not lead to a healthy population. Now there's a kids' show many an adult could learn from.
You shouldn't jail us for killing our parents! We're orphans!"
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
My impression after a couple of visits to the Bay Area and talking to people from there is that San Francisco seriously lacks diversity. Yea, you'll see a variety of skin colors, and LGBT lifestyles are acceptable, etc.; that's not diversity.
Diversity means people have differing backgrounds and opinions, and openly discuss their different views with tolerance for the other person's position. This article illustrates the lack of diverse thought in San Francisco; someone voiced a minority opinion and was bludgeoned into conforming.
Are you not paying attention?
http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...
By "statistically", do you mean over the course of modern history? That's ridiculous and you know it. California is an economic powerhouse. Do you mean over the course of the past five years? That's nonsense and the article cites why.
You are welcome on my lawn.
So wait, this guy flew his asshole flag high, suffered some serious consequences, yet it's other people who need a lesson in what you laughably call "real life".
So yeah fuck those liberal progrssive commienazi millenials, they should be *forced* to associate with people they don't like because real life.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
has nothing to do with conservative 'job creators' creating all those jobs in China that used to be here..
You know NAFTA was a bill Clinton thing, and "liberals" have in general been highly supporting of all these economically ruinous free-trade agreements. Sure there are notable exceptions, but there are on the conservative side as well.
Its also true that is widely been liberals who have favored pro-emmigration and visa policies that have allowed foreigners to come and compete with Americans for education opportunities and then go back home taking their knowledge with them. At least conservatives sensibly try to keep the boarder closed down a bit and don't make it so easy for people to over stay etc.
Face facts you have been sold out by folks on both sides of the political isle, and will certainly continue to be. Government isn't working for you and isn't going to start in the near future. Which is why the sensible long term self interesting thing to do is vote GOP. You might as well enjoy the tax cuts. As long as government is going to undermine you economically and otherwise abuse us, at least we can pay a little less for it.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Please quote the exact clause(s) that create that obligation.
The budget is a law passed by Congress. From Article II, Section 3, Clause 5: "he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed"
otherwise the wall along the Mexican border (already funded) would have been built.
I assume you're talking about the Secure Fence Act (2005), which authorized 700 miles of fence to be built. It was all but finished years ago. Subsequent plans to expand it have died in Congress.
The President takes an oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." That would include preventing the spending of money for unConstitutional purposes.
The President can't refuse to enact the budget simply because it runs a deficit.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
The number one rule to remember with social / business performance metrics of any kind is be really careful what and if you decide to measure because you will get it!
The GPP is correct though, metrics used by the American political left are deranged. I hear often there is a teacher shortage (meaning licensed teachers), or look how many of these charter schools are not accredited, blah blah. We don't have enough social workers...
Nobody has ever first demonstrated that "licensed professionals" get any better results over those of lay people in these fields. There is even evidence to the country. Many private schools for example don't require teachers to be licensed. Yet these schools consistently produce better outcomes. Is that scientific not at all, there is a lot selection bias in the attendees of private schools. Still it at least proves that being a "licensed teacher" isn't a necessary condition for being a successful educator in modern society.
Programs like teach for America work. The union cartels and their leftist elite voting block can't stand that!
The point about big US cities is also true. We have a lot of rural poverty in this country but major concentrations tend to be in the cities. So yes big cities are depending on state governments to redistribute wealth from the more productive country side (incidentally where the auto factories, distribution and shipping hubs, agriculture, other manufacturing operations, have mostly migrated) to support a bunch of 47%ers and hippies running pointless tech start ups.
Lets keep cutting.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
The manufacturing sector crashed, so there used to be a lot more of that sort of job instead of a few hours a week as a greeter at Walmart.
The President does not control the budget, Congress does.
Yes that is how its supposed to work but King Obama decided he did not like that, and if he could not get the debt ceiling raised so that Congress could fund his insane programs where to bad for the country then. Face it Congress and the President played a game of chicken and Obama won. That isn't virtuous behavior.
Before the Constitution was enacted there was real fear from the rural public that the stronger federal government was going to be able to use its taxing and money raising capabilities to abuse them. Its one of the things that lead to actions like Shay's rebellion.
One of the compromises to make the Constitution work was to put the power of the purse in the hands of the lower house, so that the nations rural population would in face have a greater representation when it came to appropriations and taxation than the population centers. People whine about the House not representing the majority by population, its not supposed to, the system is working as expected. The power of the purse was supposed to be a major component of the checks and balances system.
Its really supposed to be the case that the House can hold a gun to the Presidents head by not making money available The President does not control the budget, Congress does. for policy initiatives, inclusive of funding the military to put down a domestic rebellion or prosecute a foreign war! What Obama did is flip the script. His behavior (and that of many presidents on both sides of the isle before him) truly is tyrannical! If you think otherwise, than I highly suspect you are making excuses because "he is your guy" or you are willfully ignorant of our history and civic system.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
I'd rather have rich, intelligent, productive overlords than stupid, diseased, ignorant, lazy super predators getting my money.
Mod this one up!
The GPP is correct though, metrics used by the American political left are deranged.
No idea what metrics are proposed by the so-called "left". I was however claiming that this post's GGP's metrics were also deranged, or, if not deranged then demonstrably useless.
Lets keep cutting.
That's also deranged. What is it with people proposing simplistic, one dimensional solutions to incredibly complex problems?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I'll take the extra step and blame an entire level of government. Concentrations of funding in tiny little local governments seem to be driving a feedback loop where some areas have everything, others not enough, so people and businesses move to the areas with greater services. Faced with a loss of revenue from people and businesses moving out the poor areas are forced to tax the utter shit out of whoever is left and try get rich quick gimmicks like casinos and monorails.
When the road turns to dirt at the edge of the government boundary you know that things are fucked up to the point of uselessness.
This is bad because the government should be in the business of gold speculation?
Next up: outrage over the government selling the armed forces cavalry horses...
That's basically what we were taught. You grant courtesy to everyone automatically, but not your respect. That has to be earned. Otherwise you'd be respecting some people who don't deserve it.
Hmmm so 'liberals' are responsible for urban decay.. has nothing to do with conservative 'job creators' creating all those jobs in China that used to be here..
The hollowing out of cities preceded job creation in China by about a couple of decades (1960 versus 1980). I don't think modern liberalism created the situation, but it certainly did not make it better.
Not to mention when I think of hellholes these days it's Kansas, Mississippi.. conservative led and falling apart because surprise surprise you can't cut taxes to nothing AND afford even minimal government. Let's not even talk about how they destroy their teachers.
You have yet to explain why your perception of things matters here. It's worth noting that Utah has the lowest spending per pupil in the States, but an average to somewhat better than average educational outcome (IIRC, about the same spending per capita as Finland with a slightly weaker educational outcome). There are other factors than just the amount of money spent.
There are no BART lines in the western part of SF (Sunset, Richmond, etc.), so taking BART from the Sunset to Moscone is not possible.
Even more interesting is that Finland has very high gun ownership.
Bullshit. The size of the US manufacturing sector has grown steadily since 1947.
Again, bullshit. The people who have moved out of manufacturing have generally moved into better jobs, resulting in increased wealth and increased income inequality (that's the "vanishing middle class").
And it should hardly be surprising that this happened either. In 1947, college graduation rates were somewhere around 5%, today they are nearly 30%. That means that a huge number of people whose only job options were mind numbing, menial work on assembly lines now have university degrees and demand better jobs that "manufacturing jobs".
Apparently, in your imaginary ideal world, we all get free college degrees courtesy of the government and then, after graduation, get good manufacturing jobs assembling iPhones. Thanks, but no thanks.
Guns of course are magic wands you wave and the crime disappears. That's why widespread gun ownership in South Africa has made it such a paradise.
I'd imagine that the real reason Finnish cities are so safe is because they don't take a shit on people for being poor.
I'm not sure that has much to do with cities.
It has a lot to do with cities. Let's take Ontario for an example roughly 1/3 of the entire population of Canada lives there, roughly 13m people. Nearly 9m people out of that 13m live in an area called "the golden horseshoe" which is from Niagara through Hamilton up to Oshawa. That's an incredibly huge voting block, and it leads to policies that are for big urban areas only while leaving the rest of the province to suffer. That includes smaller urban areas and country areas.
It means that the golden horseshoe will get lots of infrastructure funding, lots of pet project money for hospitals and so on. While the rest of the province suffers at not having enough money and decaying infrastructure. Here's a good example, in Oxford County they had been trying to get a new hospital built since the 1970's. The new hospital was eventually built ~8 years ago, and was mainly built using private donations from people and businesses in the county. The old hospital had been built in the 1930's(on the site of the previous hospital from the 1800's) and had been renovated over and over again, and had problems ranging from serious roofing leaks and mold to asbestos everywhere in the building.
Roads, failing bridges, take your pick. The money to build new roads, bridge repairs and so on? Ear marked for that particular area. There are bridges in use along the 401 that have been there since the highway was built back in the 1960's and are in terrible shape.
Om, nomnomnom...
Did you read the article? The only thing that article says is that Brownback couldn't cut education; it says nothing about educational outcomes. In terms of K-12 educational performance, Kansas does better than California, which has dropped to near the bottom of all states.
As for the fiscal situation, that depends a lot more than on whether the current budget is balanced. The fiscal situation of all US states is negative, the question is whether and what they are doing about it.
As for tax cuts in Kansas, cutting taxes without being able to cut spending is problematic. And while Brownback may have declared his tax cuts as a "real live experiment", the reality is that for tax cuts to have a beneficial effect takes many years, because the way tax cuts increase revenue is by people and businesses relocating (and Kansas isn't very attractive to begin with).
Finally, although I actually looked at The Atlantic article, its articles can generally be safely ignored: they are uninformed and misleading political hit pieces. You need to upgrade your reading.
Indeed. But that mechanism doesn't just operate at the level of moving from/to states, it operates at the level of everyday life decisions. If you subsidize alternative energy, you get more alternative energy. If you tax sugar or gasoline, people tend to consume less of it. If you subsidize joblessness and tax wages and earnings, you get more joblessness and less industry. Encouraging negative behaviors and penalizing positive behaviors is one of the major problems with progressive policies.
Edit: That's "Milos Forman", with a hacek over the S. My keyboard can do it, but Slashdot's crappy Unicode implementation eats the character.
http://bfy.tw/5C3g
http://www.heritage.org/resear...
http://journalistsresource.org...
If you think you can prove economic relationships by cherry-picking some examples, you are an idiot, and the four examples you cited don't even support your point, such as it is.
The size of the manufacturing sector has steadily increased since 1947. The only thing that has significantly decreased is the share of manufacturing jobs. That's because we have added a lot of new jobs in other sectors. That shouldn't really be surprising either, since the percentage of college graduates has gone from about 5% in the 1950's to around 30% today. But in you and Bernie's world, apparently, we should all get free college degrees so that we can then work on assembly lines, right?
I already have, but here we go again:
http://mercatus.org/statefisca...
https://wallethub.com/edu/stat...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
(Note that many education rankings consider amount of funding or student/teacher ratios as part of the score; that really isn't valid, but even that doesn't rescue California's poor showing.)
Here is another example: the down and outs if Syria are moving to Europe. In the other direction? Not so much
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
Daemonik started comparisons between educational systems and then implicitly proposed measuring the quality of an educational system by how much money it spends. I consider that idiotic. If you are going to measure the quality of an educational system at all, you should do it by test scores, dropout rates, and graduation rates. Those are not useful metrics for managing public educational systems, but they can certainly tell us whether the California school system is generally delivering on its promises.
I fully agree: the world is "vastly, vastly more complex than [these] excessively simplistic metrics". What you are recognizing there is an economic calculation problem. That is, a public educational system (i.e., a centrally planned educational system) requires vast amounts of information about the details of every locality, student, family, and subject to function. You still suffer from the delusion that this problem is solvable. A couple of centuries of experience have shown that it is not. Thanks for making my point for me.
Yet, when the economic windfalls of the welfare state fail to rain down, people move back:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/so...
Without "union thuggery" you wouldn't have weekends, vacation or sick days, among other things.
My spoon is too big.
On the ground that they are a danger to themselves and others ?
That one I have my doubts about. I've not been to Denmark in a while. It was on NPR, a police chief was being the spokesman for some department - national level, I understand, that was going on and on about how the citizens were engaging in ethnic cleansing. His metric? A pattern of break-ins that indicated that it was specific people being targeted. That's why I mentioned that I had my doubts about that one. Just to be clear - it's not the Dane's doing the supposed cleansing.
I've been to Denmark and they're probably pretty capable of being horrendous people - just like anywhere else. They're probably capable of ethic cleansing, just like everybody else. But, I seriously don't know if I can believe that police officer. Let me see if I can find you a link. Wikipedia mentions it again.
According to Funen police, the burglaries committed in the Vollsmose disctrict follow patterns of ethnic cleansing against native Danes.[19] Danes from other parts of the country are stabbed just for walking into the ghetto zone.
I kind of have my doubts about that one and it really looks like they're exaggerating. Hell, they might even be making it up out of whole cloth. It looks like you might be able to read this and get more information. This is what Wikipedia cited:
http://www.b.dk/nationalt/poli...
I don't speak the language so I'm not going to speculate.
Point being, it's really stupid of people to make stupid statements like the ones that were being made. It's borderline retarded, at best. I am not home at the moment but I'll be back home in a few more weeks, at the latest. When I get home, I'll be in a State with almost no crime, no real violent crime, almost no homeless people, and even has some diversity. For the record, t's Maine, USA. I live up near the Canadian border, just up above Rangeley if you want to see it on a map. It's beautiful.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Really? Like where?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
AFAIK, the US has some of the strongest restrictions on involuntary commitment in the world.
It is, however, a sufficient condition or can be made so by tweaking the conditions of the license. Yes, Joe Random Stranger may well be a great teacher, or he may be a complete incompetent. Joe Licensed Teacher is, or should be, guaranteed to be at least mediocre.
Gamble with your own life.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Hey it's you guys that keep moving there to work.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
They're zero-dimensional monomaniacs, so one-dimensional solutions seem enlightened to them, and more-dimensional ones are incomprehensible.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
The problem is, joblessness is not a behaviour but a circumstance. Bad economy is not the fault of those with no economic power but those with lots. So who's bad habits should we be more concerned about, Joe Bum or Joe Businessman? And who, then, requires more encouragement and penalization - in other words, regulation - and also deserves to pay for mitigating its negative effects?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
If S Cal ever gave up on taking N Cal's water and the cities just got together things would be just as you describe in CA. But even SF knows it can't turn it's back on LA when it comes to water.
Even as it is, the 'west of the coast range' vs 'everyone else' fight almost always goes to 'west of the coast range'. Specifically San Diego, LA and SF for those who want to get pedantic about mountain range names.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
How long did they hold that gold? 'Speculation' has a definition...
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
There are plenty of jobs people could take and that are hard to fill, including skilled trades (electricians, carpenters, masons, plumbers), drivers, manual laborers, meat processing, nursing and others. People don't take those jobs because it's not rational for them to do so.
People get economic power primarily by producing and selling stuff other people want. So, any problems with the economy are clearly not due to people with economic power. They are due to people with political power.
"Joe Bum" chooses not to work not because he is lazy, but because government encourages him not to work and penalizes him if he does. That's not a moral failing of "Joe Bum", it's a moral failing of government and people like you who vote for that kind of government. And regulating "Joe Business" more is not going to improve things, because Joe Business isn't responsible for any of this.
Your poor freeze or move south every winter. Duh.
Climate prevents 'urban camping'. Barrow Alaska doesn't have a bum problem ether.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
California is in deep trouble BECAUSE of it's last budget surplus. Spending only goes up in good times, never ever down. That would be putting starving children on the street.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Egalitarianism and your so called "progress" are newspeak terms. You try to promote both of these by enhancing disparities and communitarianism.
Isn't that what the leftist "social contract" is all about ?
This is not a pre-crime society, or at least, isn't meant to be one. Moreover, my life is mine, if I want to be a danger to myself, screw you and your pro-life values.
women too...
Isn't that what the leftist "social contract" is all about ?
Er, huh? You're kind of ketting inchoerent. Is *what* is what the social contract is all about?
As far as I see, the guy acts like a colossal dick and people use their freedom of association to not associate with him. That kids of sucks for him how much they choose to exercise their consititutional freedoms, but, well, that's life.
Unless you want to repeal the constitution to nanny people like him, of course.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Conservative economic voodoo policies have created the greatest wealth disparity this country has seen in it's entire history.
Good: it means more and more people are getting richer. And economics is not a zero-sum game; the fact that more people are getting richer and inequality is increasing doesn't hurt people at the bottom of the income scale.
Increasing wealth disparity in itself (emphasis intentional (#)) doesn't necessarily indicate mean that "more and more people are getting richer".
Basic logic suggests that it's quite possible for a relatively small number of super rich people to have an increasing percentage of the same amount of money while everyone else gets poorer.
You say that economics is not a zero-sum game, which is quite true; this implies that everyone benefits, which seems to be the exact opposite of the fact that you think increasing wealth disparity is a good thing and synonymous with economic prosperity.
Finally, the assumption that people at the bottom of the income scale aren't hurt by this is dubious. When those at the top have an increasingly large advantage, this is invariably going to be used to magnify and skew society and how it's run towards those same people. And it's quite likely that price increases driven by those who *can* afford certain goods with no difficulty are going to affect those at the bottom.
That's before we get to the social implications of what it would be like to live in such a society. (Hint; I would *not* like to live in Brazil with its high levels of crime massively exacerbated by income inequality).
(#) I'm replying to this in the same context that you stated it- i.e. without any qualifying context- so if what you meant was more nuanced, that's not what you actually said.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Best time to be had in the city.
Stockton? They will just get on the bus or hitchhike back.
Send the to Salt Lake City. So they fear the cops and getting caught.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
There is a "qualifying context": we are talking about the US. You quoted it. In the US and similar economies, increasing wealth goes along with increasing inequality.
No, it doesn't mean that. It simply means that wins and losses don't balance out to zero overall, and that one man's gain isn't automatically another man's loss. Obviously, a lot of people get hurt by free markets; they just happen to be the people who ought to get hurt, like inefficient businesses, incompetent investors, and people who make their money through crony capitalism.
Nowhere did I say that "wealth disparity is synonymous with economic prosperity". Wealth disparity is simply an indicator that happens to grow along with economic prosperity in developed nations like the US. The causes and relationships are anything but simple.
Quite right. We call that skewing "rent seeking". Rent seeking isn't something that happens in a free market, it happens when you give government the power to intervene in the economy, for example, for the nominal purpose of "reducing inequality".
Well, yes: Brazil is a developing country run by socialists. They came to power on the promise of addressing inequality and injustice, utterly failed, and have instead been running the economy into the ground. Brazil is 122 on the index of economic freedom ("mostly unfree"). Of course, it has high inequality and poverty, what do you expect?
Look, all things being equal, more economic equality (of outcome) is a nice thing. But when you try to achieve economic equality through government intervention, the outcomes are rent seeking, crony capitalism, and economic stagnation.
But what it means is that the income distribution is getting longer tailed, mostly towards higher incomes. That is, the middle class is shrinking because more people are getting wealthier. That is a good thing.
No, it's not. Please, do check the BLS statistics - former "middle class" overwhelmingly moves only in the downward direction.
Meanwhile the income both for "middle class" and for pretty much everyone in 90% has stagnated.
So yep, oligarchy coming soon.
Unlike Kansas, California really is at some risk of collapse, with its dire fiscal situation and failing education system.
Unlike Kansas, California has been running a budget surplus for 4 years straight now. It now has a healthy "rainy day" fund and its financial situation is pretty much assured for the next 10 years or so.
Oh, and even California teachers are better than no teachers in Kansas.
Yeah, Vollsmose is a known ghetto. Similarly, Gellerupplanen in Aarhus, and Mjølnerparken and Tingbjerg are also problematic ghetto areas. There are more, but those are the most well-known.
There have been issues with attacks on fire engines and police, but it's no as bad as the right-wing media (such as the cited article from b.dk) would have you think. Certainly not bad enough to be classified as "ethnic cleansing". The right-wing media has been stepping up their hateful rhetoric enormously due to the current humanitarian crisis in Syria and surround countries. According to right-wing pundits, all of the refugees are basically only here to take our public benefits and turn the country into a sharia state in the great global caliphate. Yeah, it's exactly as insane as it sounds.
I worked in Vollsmose for 3 months ~10 years ago, and the only major difference I experienced compared to anywhere else was that we ate chicken at the company barbecue rather than pork chops and sausages. And I'm as whitey-white as can be.
Eat the rich.
That's nonsense. None of these trends are "overwhelming", and the BLS statistics only account for median gross weekly income, a lousy measure of where people are "moving".
It certainly has grown much less than it should, largely due to costly government mandates and taxes. Who do you think is going to pay, say, for ACA? Or new financial regulations? Or new corporate reporting requirements? Or new product safety standards? All of that comes out of everybody's salaries. And people in upper income brackets are much less affected by these because they are effectively regressive taxes.
Yes, thanks to people with your kind of politics.
Wishful thinking: http://www.ktvu.com/news/77148...
Not if you look at educational outcomes. In fact, no public school teachers may well be a much better state of affairs.
If you are going to measure the quality of an educational system at all, you should do it by test scores, dropout rates, and graduation rates.
No, we've tried that and it sucks really hard, because schools have an incentive to fuck over pupils to improve their statistics. With the former measure they don't have that incentive.
Those are not useful metrics for managing public educational systems, but they can certainly tell us whether the California school system is generally delivering on its promises.
No, we tried that, and IT DOES NOT WORK.
That is, a public educational system (i.e., a centrally planned educational system) requires vast amounts of information about the details of every locality, student, family, and subject to function.
In any system, the teachers need to know a lot about their pupils and subject in order to teach them effetively. That's kind of inherent in teaching. This has nothing to do with central planning.
You still suffer from the delusion that this problem is solvable.
I keep forgetting that Finland doesn't exist. Silly me.
A couple of centuries of experience have shown that it is not. Thanks for making my point for me.
Except for those countries which manage. Hell, pretty much every first world country does a better job at secondary level education than the US.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Yes, it's wishful thinking - on part of conservatives whose main goal is to see California failing.
The "unfunded liabilities" are future retirement payments, including for people who are NOT EVEN BORN yet. They can be addressed as they come in many ways. If the state invested in low-risk bonds to start a trust fund then the required expense would still be less than the surplus.
Oh, and if we're talking about retirements then we should definitely mention the libertarian fiscally responsible paradise of Kansas. That is now borrowing money just for regular expenses and has already eaten through its retirement savings fund.
That's nonsense. None of these trends are "overwhelming", and the BLS statistics only account for median gross weekly income, a lousy measure of where people are "moving".
Yes, they are. Otherwise the percentage of the "middle class" would have grown. And BLS has a lot more statistics than weekly income. Anyway, see here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/...
It certainly has grown much less than it should, largely due to costly government mandates and taxes.
No, and it actually can be proven. There is no correlation between US state GDP and income growth and the amount of regulations.
If your goal is to return good old 60-s when rivers were catching fire from deregulated dumping, then I suggest you move to China.
Who do you think is going to pay, say, for ACA? Or new financial regulations?
And who would bear the risks and costs of financial deregulation and ACA repeal? Read my lips: "not the top 1%".
No I mean the town where a republican governor replaced the elected council, and his appointed manager was resposible for the water disaster to save a few bucks.
Reality disagrees with your moronic roght wing famtasy.
Except it was the republican governor who overode the democrat council, and replaced it with the city manager who caused the disater!
As usual, rethuglicans fans ignore reality for their own fantasy.
Obviously, a lot of people get hurt by free markets; they just happen to be the people who ought to get hurt
This- it has to be said- comes across as dogma.
like inefficient businesses
When a company is large or influential enough to squash competition, it doesn't need to be efficient. When a company is large enough that it can leverage its financial might to use the legal system as a weapon of attrition against competitors or ordinary people, and use that same threat of attrition to defend itself against legal attacks then the market is no longer "free".
This is particularly the case in the US where even the winning side can be wiped out by costs in many cases- and large companies can exploit this to dissuade such action.
But when you try to achieve economic equality through government intervention, the outcomes are rent seeking, crony capitalism, and economic stagnation.
Are you seriously telling me you don't believe that rent seeking and crony capitalism *aren't* the likely outcome when income inequality grows to the extent that those few at the top can afford to skew things in their favour?
Regardless of what they claim, in practice businesses are not- and never have been- in favour of a level playing field if it's not in their advantage. Given enough power- in this case, financial- they *will* seek to skew things in their favour and this *will* result in influence on government and the democratic process to achieve that.
This inevitably increases the likelihood of the rent seeking and crony capitalism that you describe, blurring the edges between government and business to the point of meaninglessness. I suspect that you'll blame this on government being involved in the first place and that it wouldn't be a problem if businesses were competing in a purely "free" market, but I don't believe that for a second. The free market can- and does- tend towards monopoly on occasion, and when (as I mentioned) their influence grows beyond a certain point, it can be leveraged to ensure that the market effectively isn't "free".
Rent seeking isn't something that happens in a free market
Do you mean a market "free" from government interference or one in which supply and demand are "freely" met? I appreciate that some people would say that they're effectively the same and- again- I'd say that was dogma. It's quite possible- if not probable- for markets free from regulation (the former) to end up in a position where the dominant party is able to abusively engage in what is effectively rent-seeking behaviour (contrary to the latter).
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
A "free market" is, by definition, one in which all transactions are voluntary and according to terms that the participants in each transaction choose.
I have no idea what it means to "meet supply and demand freely". No economy ever "meets" demand, freely or not, because demand is always unlimited and supply is always finite.
No, it is neither "probable" nor even "possible" for that to happen.
Yes, they will. And there is only one remedy to that: to reduce the size and power of government; that is the only policy we, as voters, can possibly ever hope to achieve. You, instead, imply that the solution is more regulation and more government power, which is absurd; you are proposing throwing gasoline on the fire.
So? I didn't say "Democrats bad Republicans good". I said economic studies have shown again and again that more economic freedom and smaller government translate into increased growth and wealth. The people of Flint, Michigan, were failed both by their Democratic and Republican governments.
As usual, Democrats and progressives engage in blind partisanship to the exclusion of any reason or logic.
The way you think the debt ceiling works is completely backwards. Congress sets the amount of taxes, the amount of spending, and the debt ceiling. The President spends the money, collects the taxes, and borrows if the latter is less than the former. If the country is at the debt ceiling when it comes time to borrow, the government can either default or choose to raise it. Congress was playing chicken with arithmetic, but arithmetic doesn't flinch. Congress creates the crisis, the President just informs them when it's imminent.
You can't reduce the debt without making the deficit a surplus, and you can't make the deficit a surplus without raising taxes or cutting spending. That's just math. I get that Congress is supposed to control the budget, I'm not saying it shouldn't be that way. What I am saying is that since it is that way, blaming the President for the debt is asinine. To reduce the debt all Congress has to do is pass a surplus budget, if the President vetoes it, then we can talk about that.
You also seem to be confused about the Great Compromise... It's the Senate that protects small states from large ones, not the House. The House is proportional (as close as possible given the discrete nature of Representatives): California has ~12% of the population and ~12% (53/435) of the Representatives, Wyoming has ~0.18% of the population, and about ~0.22% (1/435) of the Representatives. In spite of California having over 6000% of the population of Wyoming, they both get 2 Senators. Who's willfully ignorant of what now?
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
You're just rattling off an endless stream of progressive talking points and apparently can't decide what point you are trying to argue. I can tell you this: as an immigrant, I have had much greater economic mobility in the US than in Europe. And the belly-aching from people like you just strikes me as laughable.
Actually, there is, and numerous studies have shown that, both at the country and at the state level. http://politicalcalculations.b...
Environmental disasters in the US and elsewhere have been due to government protecting big industries from liability in the past. That kind of environmental protectionism has been reduced over the last few decades, which is a good thing. Unfortunately, environmental regulations still provide cover for industry to harm people.
Obviously not, since it produces semi-literate nincompoops like you. However, it is still objectively possible to determine that you are a semi-literate nincompoop, even if that determination doesn't fix anything.
Coming from you, that is ironic.
A "free market" is, by definition, one in which all transactions are voluntary and according to terms that the participants in each transaction choose.
And if the market ends up in a position where one party dominates to an extent that it is able to dictate terms for an essential supply that the other party has no choice but to accept, does that still count as a "free market"?
Or will you claim that a truly "free" market can never end up in that position because...?
I have no idea what it means to "meet supply and demand freely".
Let me clarify that to "the *laws* of supply and demand are met freely" (i.e. without restriction by government, as a result of (e.g.) a monopoly or by any other means).
No, it is neither "probable" nor even "possible" for that to happen.
Why?
Yes, they will. And there is only one remedy to that: to reduce the size and power of government; that is the only policy we, as voters, can possibly ever hope to achieve. You, instead, imply that the solution is more regulation and more government power, which is absurd; you are proposing throwing gasoline on the fire.
No, the "gasoline on the fire" is the self-reinforcing corrupting influence of money on the democratic process. If government is permitted to become little more than a tool of big business, then of course that is a problem- the problem which we wish to prevent in the first place.
BTW, just to clarify, are you in favour of getting rid of government altogether? If not, why?
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Very true
The allure of the better weather and the free handout lure the lazy to the LA and NYC.
The local community newspaper here in queens (a place where european born people are rare) interviewed bums on the street all black, hispanic or white. 8 out of 10 were from the midwest or the south. Why did they come to NY. The news that the progressive mayor told police not to arrest bums and beggers .
In less than 2 years since Deblasio took office, the streets are filled with bums. Slashings are up 2000%. Subways smell with the "homeless" bums sleeping across seats. Video of thugs shooting wildly mid day in former safe neighborhoods. Liberal activists claimed cops were racist for stopping and questioning people who matched descriptions of those who committed a crime they were looking to solve. 90% of those stopped were former criminals.
Liberal judges letting violent gun defendents out on bail just to committ more crimes.
Lies lies lies to the community
Many people call themselves liberals. Liberals have made the word conservatives, republicans or any religious denomination a bad word. Tv tell you they are racist and not tollerant .
BUT MOST PEOPLE VIEW OF WHAT IT MEANS TO BE LIBERAL IS DIFFERENT. And the media rarely ponts out bad actors. Black life matters is a hate group. They hate anyone who is not black including the police and any white, asian or hispanic people. Go out to one of their rallys and listen to what they say .
I am all for gay marrage by LGBT activist want more than equality.
Funny how all of the "evidence" you cited comes from ultra-left-wing sources.
Would you consider foxnews.com to be a credible source? I highly doubt it. Yet you have no problem linking to salon.com, one of the left-most publications in existence.
You think a right-wing news source is going to report on the utter failure of right-wing policies?
How about the Topeka Sentinal-Journal? http://cjonline.com/news/state...
How about KSN.TV out of Wichita? http://ksn.com/2015/10/26/surv...
By the way, those are both conservative outlets. And that second story? It shows that Republican Governor Sam Brownback's approval ratings are lower than Barack Obama's...in Kansas. You have to be seriously hated to have lower approval ratings than Obama in Kansas.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You didn't even read your own article, did you?
Other than an unsubstantiated opinion Reagan didn't understand mental illness and stating some funding was given to the States to spend as block grants, 90% of the article was about all the unrelated-to-Reagan causes, predating his election in both California and the USA. So your own article doesn't even agree with your position.
Look, I cited the ACLU and the NY Times on purpose, so that even a lefty couldn't say it was all according to some right-wing source. Try and find some facts, rather than someone's editorial opinion in Salon decades after it happened.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
I don't know of any "essential supply" with which that could happen, can you give an example? Furthermore, if there were such an "essential supply", politics would immediately kill a free market and you would end up with some form of dictatorship, so the question ceases to be an economic one. Free markets are not realistically possible in societies where people are threatened by essential shortages. However, if politics wouldn't hijack economics and free markets would continue to operate, then there would be a cost with enforcing the property rights that are associated with that monopoly, and those costs become so large that the monopoly would collapse immediately.
The kind of majority-based representative "democracies" we live in are inherently corrupt. In fact, the ancient Greeks referred to our system of government as "oligarchy"; what they called "democracy" was something quite different. What you are advocating is more oligarchy, not more democracy.
At the federal level, I want government in the original American sense: a government that guarantees external defense, free trade, and free mobility between states and is financed by money transfers from state governments. At the local level, I want government that operates more like an HOA than state and local government do now. Furthermore, I think the unit of local government should be a few thousand people at most.
Speaking of bullshit, give us that one example: name an adress - with evidence of course - in France the cops won't go into.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
But what you actually have is rich, intelligent, productive super predators seeking to devour every tiny bit of economic power from you before casting your now-useless remains away.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
If you think you can prove economic relationships by cherry-picking some examples, you are an idiot, and the four examples you cited don't even support your point, such as it is.
From your own link: " our results do not imply that government must shrink for growth to increase." Did you even read it? It doesn't sound like it...
Now back to the original point, If liberal policies are so evil, how is Californian and New York among the richest economies in the US? How does you hypothesis explain this?
How is Qatar so wealthy despite an oppressive "unfree" political regime?
Do you think maybe there might be more to it than catch phrase slogans such as Freedom and Small Government for all!?
So people can't take offense at things, because that offends you? Sounds like you are the problem you complain about.
Learn to love Alaska
You are quoting out of context. What they are saying, in context, is effectively that there may be ways of achieving higher growth without shrinking government. They are basically hedging their bets, as people tend to do in scientific publications.
I'm not sure what you mean by "richest economies". Both states are big, but in terms of per capita GDP, they were 7th and 17th, and in terms of growth, they were 20th and 46th in 2013, pretty dismal performances.
Furthermore, the usual pattern is that countries and states first become rich and then adopt welfare state policies, which then start hurting economic growth. Eventually, they usually pare back the welfare state again.
I didn't say that political freedom was important for growth, but economic freedom. Qatar has a "mostly free" economy (just behind Norway) according to the Index of Economic Freedom. Qatar's government spending is 16% of GDP (US: 36%), government employment is 11% of the population (US: 16%) and government debt-to-GDP is 32% (US: 104%). So, Qatar is an example of a country with decent amounts of economic freedom and a much smaller government than the US relative to the size of its economy. Add to that the fact that it is massively oil rich and it is not surprising that they are doing so well economically.
I didn't use such a "catch phrase". I pointed out that economic freedom is important for sustained, long term economic growth and for political freedoms, not that it is sufficient.
I have had much greater economic mobility in the US than in Europe. And the belly-aching from people like you just strikes me as laughable.
And as an immigrant you quite likely have had far more opportunities for mobility than an average European. Likely free or very cheap college education, probably better schools and better child healthcare. So?
And don't "immigrant" me. I was born in Russia, lived for many years in Ukraine, moved to work in Germany then founded a startup in the US. I'm now learning Mandarin as I'm flying back and forth between China and the US periodically. I kinda know what over countries are like.
Actually, there is, and numerous studies have shown that, both at the country and at the state level. http://politicalcalculations.b... [blogspot.com]
They quite literally cherry-picked points to get a weak correlation.
Environmental disasters in the US and elsewhere have been due to government protecting big industries from liability in the past. That kind of environmental protectionism has been reduced over the last few decades, which is a good thing.
You are insane, really. Are you going to sue a coal power plant for damages to your health? How are you going to prove it?
Have you even SEEN what a serious "pollution" is?
You're guessing and you're wrong.
In fact, the correlation is quite strong and consistent between many different studies.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=coal+poll...
So you made a smooth transition from communism to wealthy globe trotting US progressivist. Congratulations.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=coal+poll... [lmgtfy.com]
No, no. Class action requires government intercession. And anyway, you have to sue each power plant INDIVIDUALLY. Then each company that dumps toxic waste. Individually.
Oh, you want a government to enforce results of one lawsuit against all other coal companies? That's Socialism!
I pointed out that economic freedom is important for sustained, long term economic growth and for political freedoms, not that it is sufficient.
No, your quote was "more economic freedom and smaller government", and in case you were wondering, the word 'and' actually means something.
To bring this back to your original point "So we can look at places like San Francisco and California to see what the long term effect of Democratic progressive government is." What exactly is that? I see blue states tend to be doing better than red states economically, so maybe you could clarify?
ie You are implying that all the red states should all being doing much better than all the states, since their economic policy is better. Since this is not the case, something must be wrong with your theory?
However, it is still objectively possible to determine
Yep, good plan. Try to "objectively" measure something by using metrics which objectively measure something you're not interested in and can easily game. Brilliant! That will certainly work. Ignore my naysaying, clearly you are the genius of our age.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I am not talking about the great compromise. I am talking about representation of population centers within the states. House districts are drawn so that large groups of people with related interests are usually within a district. That is a major city might have a few congressional districts. A large more rural area outside the city also gets to be a congressional district. So that group of people get a rep. Unlike state wide Senate offices which now in our direct election of Senate offices environment mean a few major cities within a state pick the Senator and the rural votes effectively have no representatives in the Senate.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
(1) People actually are interested in graduation rates, dropout rates, and test scores, that's why these metrics matter.
(2) To the degree that they are "gamed", they can be reasonably assumed to be gamed similarly in different states. That is, while these metrics make for lousy comparison over time, and hence a lousy instrument for managing educational systems, they tell us something about relative performance between states right now.
(3) Citing these metrics in this thread isn't an endorsement of the metrics, it is just to give simpletons like him and you easy to digest facts. If that doesn't satisfy you, you are welcome to read up on the detail.
Remember, the thread started with Daemonik's ludicrous claim that Kansas' educational system was failing relative to California because it wasn't spending too much money. Iffy as test scores may be, they still tell us a lot more about the performance of an educational system than how many dollars we spend per student.
Well, thanks for your excellent demonstration of the shortcomings of the UK educational system.
No, the only thing that is "wrong" is your persistence on thinking in false dichotomies. I'm simply pointing out that "Democratic and progressive policies don't work as promised" without saying anything about Republican policies. To see that Democratic and progressive policies don't work as promised, it is sufficient to look at the promises and the actual outcomes of where those policies have been implemented. San Francisco is an example where Democrats and progressives made big promises, on reducing homelessness, inequality, and poverty, and obviously have failed to deliver.
Oh, I haven't had my coffee yet, so sorry about the lack of editing.
I don't know of any "essential supply" with which that could happen, can you give an example?
You're saying that you can't see that happening with (e.g.) water, electricity, gas, various forms of staple food (depending upon where one lives) in an entirely unregulated free market?
Furthermore, if there were such an "essential supply", politics would immediately kill a free market and you would end up with some form of dictatorship
Does "some form of dictatorship" automatically include any regime that would impose controls or split up a monopoly in such a situation?
However, if politics wouldn't hijack economics and free markets would continue to operate, then there would be a cost with enforcing the property rights that are associated with that monopoly, and those costs become so large that the monopoly would collapse immediately.
I'm really *not* sure what you're trying to suggest here? That the company would be responsible for enforcing its own property rights?
Why do you think the costs would rise disproportionately if one company had a monopoly?
What you are advocating is more oligarchy, not more democracy.
I don't think I've strongly advocated any particular form of democracy here. You seem to be making assumptions.
At the local level, I want government that operates more like an HOA than state and local government do now.
I was under the impression that HOAs in the US were frequently petty enforcers of superficial rules. Of course, if people want to freely subject themselves to that, that's one thing, but I can't see the appeal in a local government behaving the same way for someone that appears to dislike anything more than minimal governance.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Obama has the distinction of being the only President to cut the deficit by $1T from where he started. He inherited a really major mess, and has pretty well straightened it out.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Left-wing? We are talking about the organization that stood up for the right of neo-Nazis to march through a Jewish neighborhood. Also, if it's left-wing to want to enforce and protect constitutional rights, exactly what is the right wing doing?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I'm starting to think Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho would be a better alternative here.
Really? I'm leaning more toward 'Not Sure' on that one.
Of course they don't. They're more 'huono' or 'paha' places.
Shooting the elephant is probably a bad idea -- when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom he destroys.
No, I don't. There are many fungible sources of water, electricity, gas, and staple foods. I mean, get real: how would anybody manage to get a monopoly on potatoes?
You seem to be misinterpreting what I'm saying. I'm not saying that splitting up a monopoly amounts to a dictatorship, I'm saying that if you were in a situation in which a single party actually is in a position to control an essential good (e.g., air on a lunar colony), you will end up with a bona fide dictatorship of the "lick my boots peasant or suffocate" kind.
I'm saying that even the theoretical possibility of monopolies (e.g. air on a lunar colony) is a result of having replaced parts of the free market with political control; that is, it is a result of assuming that the state will guarantee private property at any cost. In a society fully based on free markets, ownership itself is defined through a web of contractual relationships, with finite, well-defined penalties for breaking those contracts, and even the theoretical possibility vanishes, because if that situation ever arose, people would simply break their contracts and the monopolist would lose their property.
Of course, we have never had that kind of free market system. but even when the state guarantees private property, it can't do so at any cost. At some point, when private property ownership becomes too unbalanced, people "break contracts" and "pay the penalty" in the form of violent revolutions. A free market approach to private property is simply a less violent, less political, and more rational version of that.
When human beings live close together, there will always be disputes, conflicts, and "superficial rules". Zoning boards are no different in that regard from HOAs. Where zoning boards and HOAs differ is that zoning boards are subject to political lobbying from people who don't pay the cost of their decisions and don't have to live with them, and that zoning boards are exempt from many of the restrictions on private contracts. So, if an HOA decides that everybody's home must be painted pink, then the people paying for painting and having to live with the pink color every day are the ones voting for it. A zoning board, on the other hand, doesn't have to bear the cost of its decisions and doesn't have to live with the consequences; zoning boards are often hijacked by outside commercial and political interests.
So you moved the goalposts to pretend that there has not been a decline since 2000? Shame on you!
There is more to life than winning arguments by changing the topic.
You first said that "jobs have been moving to China"; wrong. Then you said "The manufacturing sector crashed"; wrong. Now you're clinging like mad to the fact that there has been a reduction in the number of manufacturing jobs in the US since 2000. It's you who keeps moving the goal posts.
What do these number actually mean? While the number of manufacturing jobs has decreased, US manufacturing output has increased since 2000. So, obviously, jobs didn't "move to China", but rather manufacturing has become more automated and more efficient. That's generally a good thing, but it has probably been speeded up by US policies during the same time that increase the cost of labor.
I'm not trying to "win" arguments. I'm trying to understand how misguided people like you think, since obviously there are a lot of you around.
Hmm, OK. Sorry I misunderstood...
Unlike most people, I (and it seems like you as well) have actually read the Constitution many times (it's therapeutic) and a lot of the FF's writings, but I can't remember this particular intent being mentioned. That's why I went to the Great Compromise, because that's what it sounded like you were talking about. Is it mentioned anywhere in the Federalist or Anti-Federalist papers (or any other FF writings)?
Also, if a city gets (in some hypothetical state) 5 representatives, and the area outside the city gets 1 or 2, wouldn't that just result in the same issue if Senators are appointed by the state legislature? The 5 in this case dominate the proceedings anyway right? I guess it depends on the State's constitution, and how their appointment processes differ. I'd be curious to look at the population distribution and see what percentages live within cities vs. outside of them, state by state.
I never found the 17th Amendment all that controversial, as far as Amendments go. It was ratified pretty quickly, which I know isn't a good reason, but it was by those same legislatures who were giving up their power of appointment after all... I'll tell you what, I'm not convinced, but you've got me thinking (and reading) about it.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
Use google you tool instead of arguing against reality:
http://www.epi.org/publication...
There are many fungible sources of water, electricity, gas, and staple foods.
The infrastructure required to support delivery of many of those things isn't, though. *That* is where the problem lies and where the barriers to entry into a market exist, and where barriers to entry exist they can be leveraged to shut out newcomers.
And even that's assuming that a free market would support (e.g.) many different water suppliers all able to bring their own, independent delivery infrastructure to my house to provide true competition. Of course that's not going to happen, I'm not going to have 100 different suppliers' pipes coming to my house to choose from!
I'm saying that if you were in a situation in which a single party actually is in a position to control an essential good (e.g., air on a lunar colony), you will end up with a bona fide dictatorship of the "lick my boots peasant or suffocate" kind.
It's only the (apparently) dogmatic assumption that a "true" free market can't end up in the same monopolistic position that would differentiate this from an abusive, non-democratic government.
:-)
Speaking of the air supply, don't you remember that it was a private company that cut it off in Total Recall?
if that situation ever arose, people would simply break their contracts and the monopolist would lose their property.
I thought you said there were "well-defined penalties" for breaking contracts? How do you know the monopolist will lose their property- doesn't that depend on the terms of the contract and what the company can do to recover it? Who's going to back up the terms of those contracts anyway? The government? If not, what's to stop the company from just doing what they want? Doesn't sound like a free market to me.
With respect, the model of "free market" you're describe is starting to sound like an idealist intellectual abstraction, not something that would- or could- make sense in the real world.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
I'm simply pointing out that "Democratic and progressive policies don't work as promised" without saying anything about Republican policies.
You're playing with words. Some policies fail (on both sides), but the general trend is upwards but over the long term.
You envisioned unrealistic Total Recall scenarios. I pointed out that the failures you postulate are not market failures but political failures, such as not accounting for the cost of policing and assuming unlimited enforceability of property rights. It's OK to ignore those factors when discussing existing, real-world markets; but you can't ignore them when you extrapolate to unrealistic Total Recall scenarios.
I have no idea what you mean by that. Of course, hypothetical free markets can produce monopolies; for example, on an isolated island with just two people on it, all goods are by definition monopolized. As I was saying before, realistically, free markets only operate well in large, educated societies with lots of products. But in those societies, they do operate better than any alternative. Furthermore, when free markets break down, it is through politics, not market mechanisms.
That isn't a "monopoly on an essential good", it's a local monopoly, and almost always an artificial one at that. That is, there are many people you can buy electricity from in the market as a whole, it's just that you may have to move to get it. And most of those local monopolies are artificial anyway. That is, in most places, you could actually have a choice of suppliers, or even supply yourself, if government hadn't granted an artificial local monopoly to some utility, usually due to political lobbying.
That is my point: your idea about monopolies is as unrealistic as Total Recall; in real societies, monopolies don't operate that way.
No, it doesn't actually prove anything, and wasn't meant to. It's a fictional movie featuring a three-breasted woman. Lighten up.
That said, I like the fact you accused me of "unrealistic Total Recall scenarios" when you were the one that came up with the "air in a moon colony" example in the first place!
I pointed out that the failures you postulate are not market failures but political failures
Yes, I'm aware that you keep claiming this. If one takes it as axiomatic (or as I see it, dogmatic) that the free market cannot fail on its own- which appears to be the basis of your argument- then *by definition* all such failures must be the fault of political interference.
But since that's essentially the point being argued, this is little more than circular reasoning.
Furthermore, when free markets break down, it is through politics, not market mechanisms.
Again. See above.
And most of those local monopolies are artificial anyway. That is, in most places, you could actually have a choice of suppliers, or even supply yourself, if government hadn't granted an artificial local monopoly to some utility, usually due to political lobbying.
Can't see numerous companies digging up- or being allowed to dig up (either by government or by private landowners) numerous independently-owned water supply routes and sets of pipes just so I can pick and choose one of them.
That is my point: your idea about monopolies is as unrealistic as Total Recall; in real societies, monopolies don't operate that way.
As I said, you were the one who came up with the "unrealistic" example, I just made a tongue-in-cheek comment about a fictional instance of it.
And if your idea of a free market is that it's free because (e.g.) you can move halfway across the country to change supplier, then we've certainly moved out of the bounds of real world usefulness and into intellectual masturbation.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
But I'm not taking it as "axiomatic". As I was saying, highly unusual markets can produce monopolies. Furthermore, free market transactions are well defined: they are transactions that are voluntary and according to conditions entirely set by all participants.
Well, look, that's just a testament to your inexperience. Many places have just one set of wires and pipes in the ground, yet give people the option to buy from dozens of suppliers, who share the cost for the delivery system. Many other places have tunnels in the ground where it is easy to put in new wires and pipes. And many people need no utilities at all, because they can get water, sewer, and electricity on their property, yet they are still forced to buy from government monopolies.
Well, luckily, that isn't my idea. What I am saying is that I do not like moving halfway across the country to change suppliers, which is the current situation we have with public utilities. I would like that situation to end, which is precisely why I oppose government-granted monopolies.
but i'm with Gopman.
$241,000,000 for 6,000 homeless.
do the freaking math.
You indeed wrong - I did not say that at all you lying and insulting creature. You have put words in my mouth and then presented graphs based on a "gut feel" metric as some sort of evidence, presumably so that you could laugh at how ignorant I am if I fell for it.
But I'm not taking it as "axiomatic". As I was saying, highly unusual markets can produce monopolies. Furthermore, free market transactions are well defined: they are transactions that are voluntary and according to conditions entirely set by all participants.
I'm not sure how that's relevant. The point under dispute was whether an entirely laissez-faire free market (that initially met your definition) could end up in a position where it didn't (e.g. a monopoly). You took it as given that "when free markets break down, it is through politics, not market mechanisms", meaning that by definition any such failure could only be ascribed to external interference in that otherwise free market- that is to say, the free market is perfect because the free market is perfect...!
Yes, monopolies can occur under other "highly unusual" conditions, but the question was whether or not they can also arise in an entirely unregulated free market.
Well, look, that's just a testament to your inexperience. Many places have just one set of wires and pipes in the ground, yet give people the option to buy from dozens of suppliers
I'm aware of that. My point was that they still use the same shared infrastructure which either requires external regulation to allow access, or (in an unregulated market) is a weak point with high risk of failure- i.e. falling into the hands of a small number of parties exerting monopolistic or near-monopolistic control and using it as a barrier to entry for competitors.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
No, I didn't "take it as given". I am saying that this is not possible for the kinds of diverse and large markets we have. It's like the Second Law of Thermodynamics: large systems have the possibility of behaving that way, but it is so unlikely that we consider it a "law" that they don't.
Ah, I see the source of the confusion. The expression "free markets break down" is ambiguous: it can mean "free markets yield bad outcomes due to the emergence of monopolies" or it can mean "people are coerced by force to engage in economic transactions against their wishes". I was using it in the latter sense. Sorry for not expressing that more clearly.
So, what I'm saying is that if a monopoly on some good were to arise in a large free market and the political system continues to allow the market to operate freely, then market mechanisms will eliminate the monopoly; monopolies just aren't stable in large free markets. The only way a monopoly can be stable is when the political system intervenes in the market and forces people to continue to buy from the monopoly.
And I'm saying that that belief is rooted in an analysis that mixes up existing government monopolies with free market mechanisms. That is, as a home owner living on a public street, I have no private property interest in the road that leads to my property. The fear of monopolistic control in that situation is well justified, but the monopolistic control over utilities arises out of monopolistic control over roads, which is something government established in the first place.
If the road leading to my property is instead owned and administered by a private association of the people living on that road (as they are in many places), the issue of monopolistic control over the road disappears, because now the property owners are in control, and they now have the power to decide how the wires running to their property are shared.
It seems like a broad brush to paint all people who are mentally ill as a threat to society. Most of the mentally ill are more likely to be the victim of a violent crime than the one committing a violent crime. If we had institutionalization today how do we define someone who is mentally ill? There are some people who are diagnosed with a mental illness who are contributing to society and able to live independently. There are a lot of people who have been successfully treated with medications and other techniques who actively contribute to society. I agree that something needs to be done about people who live on the streets who suffer from a mental illness who are unwilling to get help or unwilling to continue treatment including faithfully taking medications and other treatments. They are in a position where they are unable to take care of themselves but a lot of other mentally ill people are able to take care of themselves and function in society. This reminds me of a classmate I had in grade school in the early 80s. Her parents were repeatedly told by educators that their daughter had a mental illness and should be institutionalized. Her parents were opposed to having her institutionalized and had to fight the school district to allow her to attend school. This student had difficulties socializing but had a normal IQ and she was capable of learning and taking care of herself. Because she was diagnosed and considered to not be normal, educators wanted to remove her from their school. Her parents not only had to endure educators who felt their daughter should be in an institution but also harassment and even physical attacks their daughter had to endure while attending school. There are mentally ill people who are able to take care of themselves and even more can be productive members of society if they are treated and are willing to continue their treatment such as taking medications daily. I would hate to see people be institutionalized because they have been diagnosed with a mental illness without any determination if they are truly unable to function in society.
How do you define a threat to themselves or others. There are many mentally ill people who are not a threat to themselves or others. Do we institutionalize everyone diagnosed with a mental illness even though you can have two people diagnosed with an illness like schizophrenia where one person is potentially a threat to themselves or others while the other person isn't a threat at all. With treatment a lot of mentally ill people are able to function in society and are not a threat to anyone.
Most would rather sleep in the street than be herded into 'shelters' with the other homeless, is what you meant to say. Also, unless you're in an urban area, there are no actual shelters to speak of. I agree that in the US, homelessness is pandemic now. It seems worse in the cities, because they're more visible. The rural areas are hit just as bad, but there are more places to stay out of site.
http://www.treatmentadvocacyce...
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.