A gang of 6 muggers walking through a neighborhood with million dollar houses is going to stick out like a sore thumb. A gang of 6 muggers walking through a neighborhood where everybody is dressed like them and sounds like them, they're fine. Fish in a school.
Yes, but that's a good thing. So-called "white flight" (stupid term) means successful people cluster together and make really nice neighborhoods. It's not just white people, it's all successful people. You won't find a surgeon from India (not white) living in a ghetto, he'll be in a nice affluent neighborhood. Why should everyone suffer?
Reality: there will always be bad people, and generally all you can do is avoid them by choosing to live around good people.
Seems like you're contradicting yourself. First you don't want to scare people away. But then you say people should *always* be cautious.
In a bad neighborhood, I wouldn't park and start window shopping. So you're saying I shouldn't do that in a good neighborhood. Fine. So what's the difference in terms of "how are those neighborhoods supposed to clean up if people are being constantly scared away"? Either way I'm not window shopping in bad neighborhoods, I'm just also not window shopping in good neighborhoods.
I wonder if any cities have been sued for not putting up warning signs for these areas. It's really no different than not putting up a "caution - wet floor" sign in a supermarket. The city knows certain areas are bad, and they have a duty to let people know.
You really care more about the business owner in a bad neighborhood who will lose out on some customers than the people who unknowingly go into that bad neighborhood and *not* have the good fortune you had?
One guy loses a few dollars. The other guy becomes the victim of a crime.
I'm very much pro-business but this is insane. You don't hide information and lead people into life threatening situations to make a buck!
Depends who you talk to. One common argument is that since the system and the police are racist, blacks are policed more heavily and convicted more frequently so the stats really do show that blacks commit more crimes than other races even accounting for differences in income or education level. Therefore the stats themselves are also racist..
1) Lag/delay in statistics. If the feature is abused as described in some of the posts above, an area considered safe can be unsafe for a while before the statistics catches up with reality.
I don't think that will make a difference. The point of this is that you don't want to be routed through the bad section of town, which has been bad for 40 years and will be bad for another 40. All the local residents know it, but the guy visiting for a weekend and relying on his phone to route from A to B has no clue. The city governments don't put up warning signs or anything.
I still remember one year my family took a road trip and we passed through Detroit. I'm sure there are nice parts of Detroit. We happened to go down a street looking for a gas station and got into what can only be described as gang central. Not very fun.
Your other points are all good, but hopefully their algorithms are smarter than you're supposing. What would be really useful is to use data mining algorithms on live feeds and newspapers, not just relying on annual reports that are summarized beyond usefulness.
Eh they already do that in some places. I forget the term for it but when new developments are being planned there's a requirement for a certain percentage of units being "affordable", and in any urban environment in the US that's got a decent enough correlation with race that IS a quota.
It wouldn't be a big deal except that there's not enough police presence to patrol so many different neighborhoods. You really need constant vigilance and harsh consequences to keep a small section of bad houses from ruining a whole neighborhood. I feel sorry for the kids in those neighborhoods who live in the good houses. They're not used to dealing with gangs and the like and it's really not fair for them.
Regardless, this whole argument only makes sense in a remote community with one doctor, so that the woman doesn't have the choice to simply go to another doctor for the abortion.
What made this woman incapable of getting to a new community that suits her beliefs and lifestyle? She chose to live in a community where the only doctor is against abortions.
It's just like if there's only one gas station within 150 miles, and the owner refuses to sell you gas because he doesn't like you. The law should force them to sell you gas (even though there's no "right" to gas), because you have no alternative.
No way. What's next, people being forced to harbor troops in their houses because it would be mean to make them sleep outside?
The government does not get to force you to do things like that.
And in case you hadn't noticed, there is constant talk about raising taxes on the rich.
But there's a difference between talk and reality. While poor people get more and more subsidization (Obama lamented the fact that more Americans receive food stamps than ever before... after expanding food stamp program eligibility), the middle class loses stuff with no subsidization to make up for it. Look at Social Security. The SS formulas long ago were changed to provide a higher return to the poor (your first SS dollar buys more payout than your 5000th). The rich are also shielded by a cap on income that applies to SS.
Now Congress is debating eliminating the mortgage deduction, which will affect middle class people more than the poor (who presumably don't have large mortgage balances) and the rich (who can decide to pay off their mortgage if the new rate makes their investments less lucrative in comparison).
I agree with your elitism but kind of in the opposite direction -- it's the people who think federal budgets are some kind of magic with no relation to their own personal experience (or who have no personal experience about budgeting) who are the problem. The national budget is like a household budget in many ways, and should be treated as such in broad strokes. The religious are less of a problem than the financially irresponsible.
The majority of the "half the people in the country" who don't pay net income tax don't pay net income tax because the people they work for don't pay them enough to both pay taxes and pay for food and shelter.
So over 25% of the country is too poor to afford cell phones, go on vacations, own cars, etc. That's a ridiculous exaggeration.
Hell poor people are disproportionately likely to have expensive habits like smoking. They do pay taxes, just invisible ones like "sin" taxes. It would be much nicer for everybody if they just paid income tax.
I don't think self-funded is the right term to use for social security and medicare. They are funded through dedicated taxes, not through program-related production.
Anyway why shouldn't they be part of the budget talks? If we can cut SS spending, we can save other programs. Let's not pretend these programs are not government programs paid by tax dollars just like any other.
Again.. let me clue you in to the general idealisms of our two party system:
Democrats like taxes, social services, big government, and regulation and oversight. Twas always thus in modern politics.
You forgot wealth redistribution, their most revered ideal. And that's exactly why they support overspending by the government -- because when big programs like Medicare run over their budgets, or Fannie needs a bailout, or GM's unions accidentally drove GM out of business and need help... the taxpayer is on the hook. And the net-positive income taxpayer overall is in the top 50% of the population by income. And of course a large chunk of the tax income comes from the top 5%. So any program that overspends disproportionately affects the top 5%. That's the rationale behind the entire democratic platform.
Republicans like a hands off government, or no government at all. They do not like regulation, or government EVER getting involved in business. Twas never any different in modern politics.
If you think Republicans supported crap like the Community Reinvestment Act (which forced banks to lend to unqualified people.. because expecting to be paid back is racist and predatory, you know?) you're just crazy.
Look at the costs of the CRA and you'll see what I mean about the Democrats' platform being based on wealth redistribution. You give loans to unqualified people who you *know* are going to make banks less profitable. But who cares, you make the banks do it... because you also know that the "rich" people will make up for the loss in higher fees, higher PMI rates, and higher taxes that support even more government programs supporting those garbage mortgages. Stealing from the "rich" (half the country) to give to the other half.
No matter how fast you buy and sell you're going to be fulfilling those functions. There are just more steps in between the start and the finish. The exception is when a group of algorithms start competing against each other and explore each other's unexpected corner cases. One bank will make a profit at the other bank's expense. There's no useful function to you, but also there's no harm.
Even when it devolves into a "flash crash" -- the long-term buyers and sellers will hardly be affected by volatility over the course of a few hours.
We used to believe in regulations, which is why the meat in your freezer is edible. See, it does work.
It probably has more to do with advances in technology like freezer cars for transportation. What evidence is there that without regulation meat businesses wouldn't still adopt advances in technology that make their customers happier and their products safer?
Brooksley Borne was just one [pbs.org] of many people who predicted the financial meltdown. She was shut down by people who really believed that regulations are bad.
There are thousands of people who predicted the financial meltdown. Many of them predict financial meltdowns every year. People who can predict ups and downs seem more worth listening to... it's just that there aren't any of them. Henry Paulson was famed for "predicting" the housing downturn and making a lot of money off it. Now he lost a lot of money with his next prediction. Doesn't that failure make you think maybe his first prediction was just luck?
Maybe Brooksley Borne is right and more regulation would have prevented things from going so sour. Maybe she's wrong, and unexpected factors like 9/11, the commoditization of technology, the increasing acceptance and dependence on debt by American consumers, massive price instability in food and gas, huge economic growth in developing countries, change in philosophy about debt obligations, increased life spans, emerging flaws in the social security and medicare programs, rising cost of education, or something else had a bigger effect than what regulation could have countered. Because I can tell you that all of those things have affected the financial industry.. I just don't know how much. And neither do you. And neither does Brooksley Borne.
Bombing implies you think they'll gain air superiority over the US air force?? Or did you mean they'll launch missiles?
Anyway, Pakistan could have done the same thing after the OBL raid, and they didn't. They are just as crazy or more so than Iran. So again, what makes you think doing something on a tiny scale like sending one missile after our drone would lead to a full blown war?
Hell Iran attacked a British "war" ship and took it over, and it didn't lead to full blown war. You're drastically underestimating the threshold for when countries start launching thousands of missiles at one another. You're almost fetishizing Iran's power and making it more extreme and more irrational than it really is.
That makes sense for you because you're an individual with limited time. Not so much sense for an entire country. I mean it's possible, but somehow I doubt the reason Iran has little refining capacity is that 100% of the potential workforce is so busy doing other stuff that they just don't have time to build more refineries.
I totally agree. Then people will get mad and be more supportive of missile attacks against Iran. We need to get this party started, one slap in the face at a time.
If you are defending yourself against attacks to your home, that is generally considered to be Good
That is absolutely true, but in reality modern wars are not about homes. Nobody wants to go invade Iran and live in their homes and destroy their families. Just doesn't happen.
When you talk about home more figuratively, as in your country, your homeland, it's not that clear that defending it at all costs is still okay. Supporting terrorism abroad because your nuclear program is threatened, for instance? That's really far from "home" now.
I'm curious why you specifically said "democracy" rather than "government". Do you think democracy is inherently positive, so specifying it makes the US look worse? Anybody watching the Arab Spring should realize the flaw there.
Oh well, the morality of nations is difficult. I think the shah was better than what came before or after, so what's wrong with that?
Why is that, you think Iran is going to stage a land invasion of America? If we blow something up and they get angry, why would that lead to a war, winnable or not?
As an example, imagine if we had assassinated Saddam Hussein.. and then not entered the country. Imagine if we had bombed the Taliban.. and not entered Afghanistan. What would the harm to us be, compared to what actually happened?
That doesn't make sense. The US wasn't allowed to pursue revenge killings, we had to do it by stealth and force. Nothing is stopping other countries from trying the same thing -- except our military, secret service, etc. The same tools they have.
Why is teaching math with the soroban better than memorizing a few tables? It seems like memorization is much more efficient. I don't think it takes years and years to master basic arithmetic. Anybody who claims they can't get the "meaning" of math if they memorize it is going to say the same thing about playing with beads. Is it actually fun enough that playing with the beads is more rewarding than quickly memorizing stuff?
I agree that more time needs to be spent on algebra. Though I think incorporating calculus into algebra a bit makes it more interesting.
It's bullshit rhetoric to claim they are happy to stay poor to avoid taxes or suck of the gov. teat. Being poor sucks!
I get that, and I'm not saying that, but it's also bullshit to hold up an ideal of the noble poor man who has wisely spent every last penny and now $50/month will mean he can't put his kid in an after school sport or take that last certification test that will finally give him that break. That's so rare it's not worth mentioning.
People with low income will still come out ahead in net taxes. If you earn $1000/month and have kids you have subsidized housing, subsidized child care, subsidized sports programs (e.g. YMCA does that all the time), subsidized food, etc. The extra $50/month in tax isn't suddenly going to cover all that. The point of the tax is to force everybody to see the connection between their lower paycheck and paying for things.
And it's not just welfare programs. I wonder if the 50% of workers who pay no or little income tax suddenly had that extra line item -- and it grew whenever we did something dumb like enter a pointless war -- if there would be as much support for those pointless wars. I think not.
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A gang of 6 muggers walking through a neighborhood with million dollar houses is going to stick out like a sore thumb. A gang of 6 muggers walking through a neighborhood where everybody is dressed like them and sounds like them, they're fine. Fish in a school.
So how is that irrational?
Yes, but that's a good thing. So-called "white flight" (stupid term) means successful people cluster together and make really nice neighborhoods. It's not just white people, it's all successful people. You won't find a surgeon from India (not white) living in a ghetto, he'll be in a nice affluent neighborhood. Why should everyone suffer?
Reality: there will always be bad people, and generally all you can do is avoid them by choosing to live around good people.
Seems like you're contradicting yourself. First you don't want to scare people away. But then you say people should *always* be cautious.
In a bad neighborhood, I wouldn't park and start window shopping. So you're saying I shouldn't do that in a good neighborhood. Fine. So what's the difference in terms of "how are those neighborhoods supposed to clean up if people are being constantly scared away"? Either way I'm not window shopping in bad neighborhoods, I'm just also not window shopping in good neighborhoods.
I wonder if any cities have been sued for not putting up warning signs for these areas. It's really no different than not putting up a "caution - wet floor" sign in a supermarket. The city knows certain areas are bad, and they have a duty to let people know.
You really care more about the business owner in a bad neighborhood who will lose out on some customers than the people who unknowingly go into that bad neighborhood and *not* have the good fortune you had?
One guy loses a few dollars. The other guy becomes the victim of a crime.
I'm very much pro-business but this is insane. You don't hide information and lead people into life threatening situations to make a buck!
Crime correlates with poverty, not flavor.
Depends who you talk to. One common argument is that since the system and the police are racist, blacks are policed more heavily and convicted more frequently so the stats really do show that blacks commit more crimes than other races even accounting for differences in income or education level. Therefore the stats themselves are also racist..
1) Lag/delay in statistics. If the feature is abused as described in some of the posts above, an area considered safe can be unsafe for a while before the statistics catches up with reality.
I don't think that will make a difference. The point of this is that you don't want to be routed through the bad section of town, which has been bad for 40 years and will be bad for another 40. All the local residents know it, but the guy visiting for a weekend and relying on his phone to route from A to B has no clue. The city governments don't put up warning signs or anything.
I still remember one year my family took a road trip and we passed through Detroit. I'm sure there are nice parts of Detroit. We happened to go down a street looking for a gas station and got into what can only be described as gang central. Not very fun.
Your other points are all good, but hopefully their algorithms are smarter than you're supposing. What would be really useful is to use data mining algorithms on live feeds and newspapers, not just relying on annual reports that are summarized beyond usefulness.
Eh they already do that in some places. I forget the term for it but when new developments are being planned there's a requirement for a certain percentage of units being "affordable", and in any urban environment in the US that's got a decent enough correlation with race that IS a quota.
It wouldn't be a big deal except that there's not enough police presence to patrol so many different neighborhoods. You really need constant vigilance and harsh consequences to keep a small section of bad houses from ruining a whole neighborhood. I feel sorry for the kids in those neighborhoods who live in the good houses. They're not used to dealing with gangs and the like and it's really not fair for them.
Regardless, this whole argument only makes sense in a remote community with one doctor, so that the woman doesn't have the choice to simply go to another doctor for the abortion.
What made this woman incapable of getting to a new community that suits her beliefs and lifestyle? She chose to live in a community where the only doctor is against abortions.
It's just like if there's only one gas station within 150 miles, and the owner refuses to sell you gas because he doesn't like you. The law should force them to sell you gas (even though there's no "right" to gas), because you have no alternative.
No way. What's next, people being forced to harbor troops in their houses because it would be mean to make them sleep outside?
The government does not get to force you to do things like that.
And in case you hadn't noticed, there is constant talk about raising taxes on the rich.
But there's a difference between talk and reality. While poor people get more and more subsidization (Obama lamented the fact that more Americans receive food stamps than ever before... after expanding food stamp program eligibility), the middle class loses stuff with no subsidization to make up for it. Look at Social Security. The SS formulas long ago were changed to provide a higher return to the poor (your first SS dollar buys more payout than your 5000th). The rich are also shielded by a cap on income that applies to SS.
Now Congress is debating eliminating the mortgage deduction, which will affect middle class people more than the poor (who presumably don't have large mortgage balances) and the rich (who can decide to pay off their mortgage if the new rate makes their investments less lucrative in comparison).
I agree with your elitism but kind of in the opposite direction -- it's the people who think federal budgets are some kind of magic with no relation to their own personal experience (or who have no personal experience about budgeting) who are the problem. The national budget is like a household budget in many ways, and should be treated as such in broad strokes. The religious are less of a problem than the financially irresponsible.
Totally agreed about the education system though.
The majority of the "half the people in the country" who don't pay net income tax don't pay net income tax because the people they work for don't pay them enough to both pay taxes and pay for food and shelter.
So over 25% of the country is too poor to afford cell phones, go on vacations, own cars, etc. That's a ridiculous exaggeration.
Hell poor people are disproportionately likely to have expensive habits like smoking. They do pay taxes, just invisible ones like "sin" taxes. It would be much nicer for everybody if they just paid income tax.
I don't think self-funded is the right term to use for social security and medicare. They are funded through dedicated taxes, not through program-related production.
Anyway why shouldn't they be part of the budget talks? If we can cut SS spending, we can save other programs. Let's not pretend these programs are not government programs paid by tax dollars just like any other.
Again.. let me clue you in to the general idealisms of our two party system:
Democrats like taxes, social services, big government, and regulation and oversight. Twas always thus in modern politics.
You forgot wealth redistribution, their most revered ideal. And that's exactly why they support overspending by the government -- because when big programs like Medicare run over their budgets, or Fannie needs a bailout, or GM's unions accidentally drove GM out of business and need help... the taxpayer is on the hook. And the net-positive income taxpayer overall is in the top 50% of the population by income. And of course a large chunk of the tax income comes from the top 5%. So any program that overspends disproportionately affects the top 5%. That's the rationale behind the entire democratic platform.
Republicans like a hands off government, or no government at all. They do not like regulation, or government EVER getting involved in business. Twas never any different in modern politics.
If you think Republicans supported crap like the Community Reinvestment Act (which forced banks to lend to unqualified people.. because expecting to be paid back is racist and predatory, you know?) you're just crazy.
Look at the costs of the CRA and you'll see what I mean about the Democrats' platform being based on wealth redistribution. You give loans to unqualified people who you *know* are going to make banks less profitable. But who cares, you make the banks do it... because you also know that the "rich" people will make up for the loss in higher fees, higher PMI rates, and higher taxes that support even more government programs supporting those garbage mortgages. Stealing from the "rich" (half the country) to give to the other half.
No matter how fast you buy and sell you're going to be fulfilling those functions. There are just more steps in between the start and the finish. The exception is when a group of algorithms start competing against each other and explore each other's unexpected corner cases. One bank will make a profit at the other bank's expense. There's no useful function to you, but also there's no harm.
Even when it devolves into a "flash crash" -- the long-term buyers and sellers will hardly be affected by volatility over the course of a few hours.
We used to believe in regulations, which is why the meat in your freezer is edible. See, it does work.
It probably has more to do with advances in technology like freezer cars for transportation. What evidence is there that without regulation meat businesses wouldn't still adopt advances in technology that make their customers happier and their products safer?
Brooksley Borne was just one [pbs.org] of many people who predicted the financial meltdown. She was shut down by people who really believed that regulations are bad.
There are thousands of people who predicted the financial meltdown. Many of them predict financial meltdowns every year. People who can predict ups and downs seem more worth listening to... it's just that there aren't any of them. Henry Paulson was famed for "predicting" the housing downturn and making a lot of money off it. Now he lost a lot of money with his next prediction. Doesn't that failure make you think maybe his first prediction was just luck?
Maybe Brooksley Borne is right and more regulation would have prevented things from going so sour. Maybe she's wrong, and unexpected factors like 9/11, the commoditization of technology, the increasing acceptance and dependence on debt by American consumers, massive price instability in food and gas, huge economic growth in developing countries, change in philosophy about debt obligations, increased life spans, emerging flaws in the social security and medicare programs, rising cost of education, or something else had a bigger effect than what regulation could have countered. Because I can tell you that all of those things have affected the financial industry.. I just don't know how much. And neither do you. And neither does Brooksley Borne.
Bombing implies you think they'll gain air superiority over the US air force?? Or did you mean they'll launch missiles?
Anyway, Pakistan could have done the same thing after the OBL raid, and they didn't. They are just as crazy or more so than Iran. So again, what makes you think doing something on a tiny scale like sending one missile after our drone would lead to a full blown war?
Hell Iran attacked a British "war" ship and took it over, and it didn't lead to full blown war. You're drastically underestimating the threshold for when countries start launching thousands of missiles at one another. You're almost fetishizing Iran's power and making it more extreme and more irrational than it really is.
That makes sense for you because you're an individual with limited time. Not so much sense for an entire country. I mean it's possible, but somehow I doubt the reason Iran has little refining capacity is that 100% of the potential workforce is so busy doing other stuff that they just don't have time to build more refineries.
I totally agree. Then people will get mad and be more supportive of missile attacks against Iran. We need to get this party started, one slap in the face at a time.
If you are defending yourself against attacks to your home, that is generally considered to be Good
That is absolutely true, but in reality modern wars are not about homes. Nobody wants to go invade Iran and live in their homes and destroy their families. Just doesn't happen.
When you talk about home more figuratively, as in your country, your homeland, it's not that clear that defending it at all costs is still okay. Supporting terrorism abroad because your nuclear program is threatened, for instance? That's really far from "home" now.
I'm curious why you specifically said "democracy" rather than "government". Do you think democracy is inherently positive, so specifying it makes the US look worse? Anybody watching the Arab Spring should realize the flaw there.
Oh well, the morality of nations is difficult. I think the shah was better than what came before or after, so what's wrong with that?
Why is that, you think Iran is going to stage a land invasion of America? If we blow something up and they get angry, why would that lead to a war, winnable or not?
As an example, imagine if we had assassinated Saddam Hussein.. and then not entered the country. Imagine if we had bombed the Taliban.. and not entered Afghanistan. What would the harm to us be, compared to what actually happened?
That doesn't make sense. The US wasn't allowed to pursue revenge killings, we had to do it by stealth and force. Nothing is stopping other countries from trying the same thing -- except our military, secret service, etc. The same tools they have.
Why is teaching math with the soroban better than memorizing a few tables? It seems like memorization is much more efficient. I don't think it takes years and years to master basic arithmetic. Anybody who claims they can't get the "meaning" of math if they memorize it is going to say the same thing about playing with beads. Is it actually fun enough that playing with the beads is more rewarding than quickly memorizing stuff?
I agree that more time needs to be spent on algebra. Though I think incorporating calculus into algebra a bit makes it more interesting.
It's bullshit rhetoric to claim they are happy to stay poor to avoid taxes or suck of the gov. teat. Being poor sucks!
I get that, and I'm not saying that, but it's also bullshit to hold up an ideal of the noble poor man who has wisely spent every last penny and now $50/month will mean he can't put his kid in an after school sport or take that last certification test that will finally give him that break. That's so rare it's not worth mentioning.
People with low income will still come out ahead in net taxes. If you earn $1000/month and have kids you have subsidized housing, subsidized child care, subsidized sports programs (e.g. YMCA does that all the time), subsidized food, etc. The extra $50/month in tax isn't suddenly going to cover all that. The point of the tax is to force everybody to see the connection between their lower paycheck and paying for things.
And it's not just welfare programs. I wonder if the 50% of workers who pay no or little income tax suddenly had that extra line item -- and it grew whenever we did something dumb like enter a pointless war -- if there would be as much support for those pointless wars. I think not.