Rent control has serious problems, but minimum wage should be enough to live on without government assistance. Lowering the minimum wage would increase the number of jobs somewhat, but more people would lose money than would get money. Seattle raised the minimum wage to $15 without apparent ill effect.
Agriculture uses the means it does because it's cheaper. Farmers have had the use of illegal immigrants for years, and they can be abused and underpaid. If farming has become more automated because of that, it isn't going to change because of a decrease in minimum wage. If we had more humans in agriculture, we'd still have the monocultures and chemical use.
Social mobility has gone down, but you seem to assume that it's government's fault. It looks to me that increasing concentrations of wealth in the upper classes and failure to provide opportunities for the lower classes is the predominant effect. If you want me to believe otherwise, provide evidence.
Leftists don't want the government to do everything (well, most don't). Leftists want everyone to have certain basic services (which includes providing a safety net) and certain opportunities. Currently, getting a good college education generally costs a lot of money, so people who don't have parents with a lot of money face a choice between doing without or getting student loans. Lots of public schools are crap, generally the ones in poor neighborhoods, and better-off people living there can get their kids into better private schools. I did not regularly go hungry as a kid, and that probably has helped me throughout life. I'd like everyone to have the opportunity for decent nutrition and good education up to whatever level a person can handle. The government would have to be involved, but it would not have to provide everything.
Do we treat everyone equally? There's a lot of cultural influences that will discourage women from going into technical fields.
When my son was on a competitive math team in junior high, there were about as many boys interested in math as girls. That went away as they got older. I find it highly unlikely that girls are interested in math, but for biological reasons women aren't. It seems to me that women face social barriers that should not be there.
Diversity is worth something on a team, so hiring for diversity rather than strictly talent can be a winning move.
If you haven't noticed, there are programs to get men into nursing (I don't know about white men in particular). We tend to follow tech stuff, and notice what's going on there more than what's going on in nursing.
I don't think the Trump base was highly paid STEM workers. There's a lot of white men out there wondering what happened to their world, since they can't do the same as their fathers and grandfathers did and get the same result. It used to be that, if you were healthy and had a good work ethic, and were a white male, you could get a job that would let you own a house and raise a family. That's no longer the case, for a variety of reasons, and it's never going to be the case again short of a collapse of civilization.
Some of them saw the town factory close, and think that it could open again and things would be good. In fact, if it were to open again, it would be more heavily automated, and wouldn't provide nearly the number of jobs.
What they really need to do is acquire useful skills, but it's a lot easier to blame things on others, and apparently they're gullible enough to think that, since Trump said what they wanted to hear, Trump would actually do something about it.
What ever happened to judging people as individuals not by their genitals or skin color?
That's very much like saying "What ever happened to purple unicorns?" Throughout history, societies have judged people by their genitals, and frequently (but not always) by skin color. Many of us are hoping to progress to such a world, but it ain't here yet.
Therefore, there are clumsy efforts to try to even things out by offering special opportunities to people who are statistically disadvantaged. Obviously, this is going to be the wrong thing to do in quite a few cases.
White privilege is a bullshit idea.
Well, yes. It's also a fact. People have sent out resumes with white-sounding names and black-sounding names to numerous places, and the responses favor the white-sounding names. Not many people are pulled over for Driving While White. In the stop-and-frisk days in New York City, someone looking like me was a lot less likely to be stopped and searched than someone with considerably darker skin color. People tend not to suspect me of illegal intent. In short, people treat me better because I'm a white male. I don't see this as privilege specifically; I see it as other people being treated badly, and I wish it would stop. Everyone should get the amount of automatic respect I do.
I'm not saying I have any guilt for things people who look kinda like me did. I'm saying that I benefit from white privilege, and it isn't fair. It isn't my fault, but it is something I'm intimately involved in.
Nope. I didn't notice anyone in this thread saying that Nazi propaganda should be illegal. Hate speech is protected by the First Amendment, as long as it isn't direct incitement or slander or something like that.
Congress is making no law against Nazi propaganda, and (as the Fourteenth is interpreted) neither are any state legislatures or subordinate bodies. (Well, there's got to be a few, but they'll get tossed out at the first court challenge.) First Amendment supporters can be happy with the result.
That doesn't mean that any person or private organization has to help hate speech spread. There is no Constitutional right to stand in my living room and spew Nazi hate.
"Women are equal to men." "Blacks are equal to whites." "Jews and blacks should be killed." "Gays are equal to straights."
One of those sentences is not like the others, despite all of them having been unpopular at some time or another. Go ahead. Take your time, and then your best guess, since you obviously can't tell the difference easily.
If you are free of consequences, then your speech means nothing and hence it doesn't matter whether you have free speech or not. When people communicate by speech, they expect consequences. They hope that the salt will be passed, or that the Uber driver will take them to the airport, or that the person on the other end of the line will add HBO to their cable subscription. Maybe they hope to impress their boss or please their significant other. All of these things are consequences.
You're saying that you should be able to pick and choose your consequences. That's not how the world works.
Huh? For a summary of what a lot of us think, look at Bernie Sanders' platform. We believe that government should make sure everyone has realistic access to certain basic things. You are free to disagree with it, but it is a coherent philosophy that calls for certain actions.
The Republicans, on the other hand, seem to be floundering, as if they were not prepared to actually govern, and were defining themselves as not-Democrats. So many of them haven't realized that Trump is President, and that Clinton is no longer relevant, staying in the mudslinging process because they have nothing substantive to contribute.
Some people find a moral difference between politely asking for a business transaction on one hand, and driving a vehicle into a crowd with lethal consequences on the other.
magine for a thought experiment: All the grocery stores in town decide they don't like you because of something you posted on Facebook,
WTF DO you post on Facebook? I limit my postings to personal information and opinions, often political. I don't try to foment violence against large numbers of people. If you do, then maybe you should face consequences (not from the government, obviously).
Nazis are a terrible group to use slippery-slope arguments on.
Is a male supremacy site specializing in business decisions comparable to Nazi sites? Does it violate GoDaddy's terms of service? Or is it just possible that a slippery slope argument is conceivably faulty?
Well, hate speech isn't illegal in the US, as long as it doesn't cross over to incitement or libel. "All Nazis should be killed" is legal. "Kill that Nazi!", when that's feasible, isn't. Other than that, you're right.
Freedom of speech is a very good idea. That does not come with free choice of podium. GoDaddy has every right to have terms of service, and to enforce them. This doesn't shut up the Nazis, but it does mean GoDaddy will not be associated with them.
Or do you think someone is obliged to support speech he or she finds hateful?
I'm almost positive he violated at least one of the emoluments clauses in the Constitution. If any of his holdings accepted money from any government, that's a violation of the Constitution, and I would consider it impeachable. It would be perfectly OK to impeach him on that basis, and then the Senate would conduct a trial based on the accusation.
Or because of automation. The problem is that unskilled people can, in general, not make enough of an economic contribution to justify a decent wage. It's a real problem, but blaming offshoring or other countries or affirmative action is going to accomplish nothing. Any change in those would have only a temporary effect.
It used to be that a good work ethic was all you needed for moderate success. That is no longer the case.
Antifa, regardless of their name is using fascist tactics to accomplish their goals.
No, they're using authoritarian tactics, which I despise. They're playing the role of Communists in 1920s Germany, and (as a leftist) I really really wish they'd go away.
Fascism is capitalist, and doesn't support government control of the means of production. Communists want the state to control the means of production. They're philosophically far different, even if both lead to totalitarian government. ("Socialist" has been a somewhat slippery term. Originally, they wanted direct or indirect worker control over the means of production, but most people calling themselves socialist now accept capitalism as the better economic solution.)
You may think AntiFa's violence is no longer justified, I would argue that this weekend proved otherwise
I very strongly disagree. In the 1920s, the Communist-Nazi violent clashes gave National Socialism some respectability (much like Communist resistance in WWII gave Communism respectability). Currently, they feed the lie that the left is violent and the right is comparatively peaceful. I want Nazis to be seen as evil without getting the issue confused by other partisan violence.
Slashdot Mirror
Rent control has serious problems, but minimum wage should be enough to live on without government assistance. Lowering the minimum wage would increase the number of jobs somewhat, but more people would lose money than would get money. Seattle raised the minimum wage to $15 without apparent ill effect.
Agriculture uses the means it does because it's cheaper. Farmers have had the use of illegal immigrants for years, and they can be abused and underpaid. If farming has become more automated because of that, it isn't going to change because of a decrease in minimum wage. If we had more humans in agriculture, we'd still have the monocultures and chemical use.
Social mobility has gone down, but you seem to assume that it's government's fault. It looks to me that increasing concentrations of wealth in the upper classes and failure to provide opportunities for the lower classes is the predominant effect. If you want me to believe otherwise, provide evidence.
Leftists don't want the government to do everything (well, most don't). Leftists want everyone to have certain basic services (which includes providing a safety net) and certain opportunities. Currently, getting a good college education generally costs a lot of money, so people who don't have parents with a lot of money face a choice between doing without or getting student loans. Lots of public schools are crap, generally the ones in poor neighborhoods, and better-off people living there can get their kids into better private schools. I did not regularly go hungry as a kid, and that probably has helped me throughout life. I'd like everyone to have the opportunity for decent nutrition and good education up to whatever level a person can handle. The government would have to be involved, but it would not have to provide everything.
I wouldn't work at a place like that. Well, maybe for a year as a first job, but I'd get out after that. Life's too short.
Do we treat everyone equally? There's a lot of cultural influences that will discourage women from going into technical fields.
When my son was on a competitive math team in junior high, there were about as many boys interested in math as girls. That went away as they got older. I find it highly unlikely that girls are interested in math, but for biological reasons women aren't. It seems to me that women face social barriers that should not be there.
Diversity is worth something on a team, so hiring for diversity rather than strictly talent can be a winning move.
If you haven't noticed, there are programs to get men into nursing (I don't know about white men in particular). We tend to follow tech stuff, and notice what's going on there more than what's going on in nursing.
I don't think the Trump base was highly paid STEM workers. There's a lot of white men out there wondering what happened to their world, since they can't do the same as their fathers and grandfathers did and get the same result. It used to be that, if you were healthy and had a good work ethic, and were a white male, you could get a job that would let you own a house and raise a family. That's no longer the case, for a variety of reasons, and it's never going to be the case again short of a collapse of civilization.
Some of them saw the town factory close, and think that it could open again and things would be good. In fact, if it were to open again, it would be more heavily automated, and wouldn't provide nearly the number of jobs.
What they really need to do is acquire useful skills, but it's a lot easier to blame things on others, and apparently they're gullible enough to think that, since Trump said what they wanted to hear, Trump would actually do something about it.
It took a long time for my son, FWIW. The first job is always hard.
That's very much like saying "What ever happened to purple unicorns?" Throughout history, societies have judged people by their genitals, and frequently (but not always) by skin color. Many of us are hoping to progress to such a world, but it ain't here yet.
Therefore, there are clumsy efforts to try to even things out by offering special opportunities to people who are statistically disadvantaged. Obviously, this is going to be the wrong thing to do in quite a few cases.
Well, yes. It's also a fact. People have sent out resumes with white-sounding names and black-sounding names to numerous places, and the responses favor the white-sounding names. Not many people are pulled over for Driving While White. In the stop-and-frisk days in New York City, someone looking like me was a lot less likely to be stopped and searched than someone with considerably darker skin color. People tend not to suspect me of illegal intent. In short, people treat me better because I'm a white male. I don't see this as privilege specifically; I see it as other people being treated badly, and I wish it would stop. Everyone should get the amount of automatic respect I do.
I'm not saying I have any guilt for things people who look kinda like me did. I'm saying that I benefit from white privilege, and it isn't fair. It isn't my fault, but it is something I'm intimately involved in.
I thought that being a victim was a good reason to have a victim narrative.
Nope. I didn't notice anyone in this thread saying that Nazi propaganda should be illegal. Hate speech is protected by the First Amendment, as long as it isn't direct incitement or slander or something like that.
Congress is making no law against Nazi propaganda, and (as the Fourteenth is interpreted) neither are any state legislatures or subordinate bodies. (Well, there's got to be a few, but they'll get tossed out at the first court challenge.) First Amendment supporters can be happy with the result.
That doesn't mean that any person or private organization has to help hate speech spread. There is no Constitutional right to stand in my living room and spew Nazi hate.
"Women are equal to men." "Blacks are equal to whites." "Jews and blacks should be killed." "Gays are equal to straights."
One of those sentences is not like the others, despite all of them having been unpopular at some time or another. Go ahead. Take your time, and then your best guess, since you obviously can't tell the difference easily.
If you are free of consequences, then your speech means nothing and hence it doesn't matter whether you have free speech or not. When people communicate by speech, they expect consequences. They hope that the salt will be passed, or that the Uber driver will take them to the airport, or that the person on the other end of the line will add HBO to their cable subscription. Maybe they hope to impress their boss or please their significant other. All of these things are consequences.
You're saying that you should be able to pick and choose your consequences. That's not how the world works.
Huh? For a summary of what a lot of us think, look at Bernie Sanders' platform. We believe that government should make sure everyone has realistic access to certain basic things. You are free to disagree with it, but it is a coherent philosophy that calls for certain actions.
The Republicans, on the other hand, seem to be floundering, as if they were not prepared to actually govern, and were defining themselves as not-Democrats. So many of them haven't realized that Trump is President, and that Clinton is no longer relevant, staying in the mudslinging process because they have nothing substantive to contribute.
In other words, you have your own version of reality, tenuously connected to the real one, and you're living in it. Fine with me.
Some people find a moral difference between politely asking for a business transaction on one hand, and driving a vehicle into a crowd with lethal consequences on the other.
WTF DO you post on Facebook? I limit my postings to personal information and opinions, often political. I don't try to foment violence against large numbers of people. If you do, then maybe you should face consequences (not from the government, obviously).
Nazis are a terrible group to use slippery-slope arguments on.
Is a male supremacy site specializing in business decisions comparable to Nazi sites? Does it violate GoDaddy's terms of service? Or is it just possible that a slippery slope argument is conceivably faulty?
Gee...if there was only such a thing as Net Neutrality....
Well, hate speech isn't illegal in the US, as long as it doesn't cross over to incitement or libel. "All Nazis should be killed" is legal. "Kill that Nazi!", when that's feasible, isn't. Other than that, you're right.
Freedom of speech is a very good idea. That does not come with free choice of podium. GoDaddy has every right to have terms of service, and to enforce them. This doesn't shut up the Nazis, but it does mean GoDaddy will not be associated with them.
Or do you think someone is obliged to support speech he or she finds hateful?
I'm almost positive he violated at least one of the emoluments clauses in the Constitution. If any of his holdings accepted money from any government, that's a violation of the Constitution, and I would consider it impeachable. It would be perfectly OK to impeach him on that basis, and then the Senate would conduct a trial based on the accusation.
Or because of automation. The problem is that unskilled people can, in general, not make enough of an economic contribution to justify a decent wage. It's a real problem, but blaming offshoring or other countries or affirmative action is going to accomplish nothing. Any change in those would have only a temporary effect.
It used to be that a good work ethic was all you needed for moderate success. That is no longer the case.
No, they're using authoritarian tactics, which I despise. They're playing the role of Communists in 1920s Germany, and (as a leftist) I really really wish they'd go away.
That particular tactic is common among authoritarians of every sort. It isn't limited to fascism.
Fascism is capitalist, and doesn't support government control of the means of production. Communists want the state to control the means of production. They're philosophically far different, even if both lead to totalitarian government. ("Socialist" has been a somewhat slippery term. Originally, they wanted direct or indirect worker control over the means of production, but most people calling themselves socialist now accept capitalism as the better economic solution.)
I very strongly disagree. In the 1920s, the Communist-Nazi violent clashes gave National Socialism some respectability (much like Communist resistance in WWII gave Communism respectability). Currently, they feed the lie that the left is violent and the right is comparatively peaceful. I want Nazis to be seen as evil without getting the issue confused by other partisan violence.
Kasserine Pass was in 1943, after years of anti-Nazi fighting. Let's at least start with the brave but unsuccessful Poles.