Let's talk a little bit about oppressive legacy.

Started by Steampunkette, October 13, 2014, 02:53:32 AM

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Steampunkette

So way back in time just over 200 years ago (or comfortably within 3 full human lifespans) America had Slavery. To say it was a terrible time is to say that a bullet to the gut itches.

But we're past that. It's gone. There's no more slavery. It doesn't matter, anymore.

Hold on. Scratch that last part and let me explain why.

Who bought you your first car? For most of the Middle Class and above people, the answer was a Parent or a Grandparent. The same answer will be found for paying for College. Or the first month's rent on an apartment. Plenty of middle class and above people will say that's also how they got the Downpayment for their house.

And even those in the Middle Class and above bracket who paid for their own house/apartment/car probably had a parent or other relative help by cosigning for them.

And, if you go back through history, you'll see that's true of just about everyone in their family. Oh, sure. Someone here or there pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and achieved some goal or another. Or turned a little seed money they squirreled away into a lucrative career with a lucky break or by founding a business. But you'll see that pattern repeated over and over and over again...

Until you get to African Americans. 3-4 generations ago their grandparents and great grandparents had no money. They weren't allowed to, for the most part, as they were considered Chattel. They didn't have houses they could take a mortgage out on to get their kids through college. And even if they did it would be the 1980s before people were really willing to deal with them in Banks and the like. All the way through 'til then it was still acceptable to turn people away on the basis of their race. And even if someone called you on it there was plenty of racial resentment to get a civil case thrown out. Still is, to some degree.

Add to that zoning laws and homeowners associations making sure only the (white) right people could live in a given area and you wound up with Black dominated areas being turned into ghettos. Add to that workplace and economic discrimination and those areas wind up depressed with little financial power.

So where a white middle class family often has the buying power established by 12 or more generations of their ancestors, black middle class families are right there at the forefront. They're either freshly bootstrapped up or their parents were.

That is the kind of economic situation most people don't want to talk about. It's systemic and was designed over the course of 200 years to put black Americans at an economic disadvantage. To keep them out of white neighborhoods.

Now combine that with school system design that left poor black communities poorly educated. Now combine that with poor media representation. And add to that a system of laws that were designed to criminalize Black people (Jim Crow "ended" in 1965) being used as the basis to say that Black people are more prone to crime and being the impetus for a hell of a lot of racist actions and assumptions by cops and civilians alike.

This isn't about whether a given person is "Nice" or not. And the egalitarian mindset that people just need to be nice to each other won't undo what's been done. We have to work to break down a lot of ingrained concepts, ideas, and pervasive ways of thinking based on generations of socio-economic abuse. More than that we've got to deal with the economic violence that has been done and continues to be perpetrated, today.

And the worst part about it? We live in a society where the very idea of trying to fix the damage we've done over the past two hundred years and more is considered subversive, antithetical, and is stigmatized to the point that even a lot of the people who would be most helped by the restructuring consider it a very bad thing.

Now look at everything I've said and think about how Native Americans have been treated in America. And Women. And Jews. And Chinese people. Transgender individuals. Homosexuals. Bisexuals.

Every one of these groups has their very own oppressive legacy. Combine them in any manner you choose (Black Bisexual Disabled Transgender Woman) and you're just adding those legacies one on top of the other. No. I'm not trying to create the Oppression Pyramid or Oppression Olympics, I'm demonstrating the idea of Intersectionality.

Interpersonal attitudes are bad enough. But the history of oppression is where the greater bulk of the problem lies.

We need to fix that.
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I'm not interested in RP unless I post in a thread about it.

Lady Laura

Every race has been enslaved and/or practiced slavery at some point in history. Europeans were commonly enslaved by invading Arabs and Turks throughout the centuries for example as well as White races enslaving other white races etc. African slaves were sold to slavers by other African tribes as well as every other race practicing some kind of slavery. Slavery still exists today in some countries as well.

So Whites have had their own oppressive legacies as you put it and if you look at the world with open eyes you will see there are many races which can be incredibly racist and xenophobic.

I am totally over the whole "White Guilt" angle, every race and nation has tried to take over another one, including Asian and African ones taking over other Asian and African ones, the American Indians would fight among themselves as well and so on.

In Australia we have our own Aboriginals some of whom will tell you that by trying to provide special treatment and Government grants and what not you are creating a culture of entitlement and victim hood, I agree, if you want Equality, true equality than forget about race, forget about history, forget about gender, religion/non religion and sexuality, create a society where people are rewarded on their merits and not because of some score card that says today we need to select a "Black Bisexual Disabled Transgender Woman" because we have quotas to meet.

Anything else just creates more and more division in society and new sets of problems, it has become a mess, and furthermore you end up creating new types of underclass and oppressed.

I also totally disagree with this statement "And the worst part about it? We live in a society where the very idea of trying to fix the damage we've done over the past two hundred years and more is considered subversive, antithetical, and is stigmatized to the point that even a lot of the people who would be most helped by the restructuring consider it a very bad thing".

Society is so hung up on seeing racism where there is none and giving in to minority groups that it is the trend.

Please aquaint yourself with the recent Rotterham case in England, a group of Pakistani's were trafficking mostly White girls for quite some time, there is known to be 1400 girls so far that were raped, sexually groomed, tortured, prostituted and abused by these Pakistani's the authorities knew all about it and yet did not act as they were scared to be called racist! Seriously that was their excuse.

So, no White guilt here, proud of my culture and history.




Steampunkette

That took less time than expected.

Every race suffered slavery: Your point being?
Slavery was a touchstone of my post meant to highlight the economic disparity of wealth accrued over time in the hands of the majority and kept out of the hands of the minority. I also talked about Jim Crow laws, the Civil Rights Movement, Discriminatory hiring practices, discriminatory business practices, and underfunded education.

"Every race was slaves. There are slavers in the world, now!" Is a complete derail of the topic at hand and the thrust of my argument. You've missed the point utterly.

White Guilt. Seriously? You think my intent was to make White people feel Guilty? I'm white. I talk about this stuff routinely. I don't feel guilt about what other people did beyond my sphere of influence. Guilt is useless. It is pointless. Understanding is what I'm looking for. Trying to recenter things on the basis of White Perspective is just kind of pointless when it's a white person doing the talking.

And to create a society where history, gender, race, etc etc etc don't come into play the first thing we need to do is get rid of economic disparity. Which, y'know, requires an understanding of WHY there is economic disparity and thus you need to understand the history.

Those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it, after all.

The rest of your presented argument is just kind of ignorant and I'm not gonna get into it.

Go back. Reread my post. Try to understand the points encapsulated into it. Then read the part where I say that we need to get rid of the systemic and economic problems to really fix things. Then maybe approach the topic from the understanding I hope to foster in you.
Yes, I am a professional game dev. No I cannot discuss projects I am currently working on. Yes, I would like to discuss games, politics, and general geek culture. Feel free to PM me.

I'm not interested in RP unless I post in a thread about it.

kylie

#3
         Things are unequal, and the merit system itself presumes race blindness and for that matter, class blindness where in fact there is often bias (some conscious, some less so).  Different tracks, often from young ages, for those whose families can reinvest wealth that generally does not leave their pot.  Race just happens to be one big way that is often divided.

          It doesn't mean people shouldn't be proud of good things groups have accomplished through history.  Just aware of what's left over from the exploitative side.  And there are other, newer versions of exploitation coming along too.  Some more of the familiar racial politics, and some more squeezing out the middle and working classes as a whole.  This is not being critiqued as a New Gilded Age for no reason. 

           As far as 'well what about other groups that have oppressed other groups throughout history,' I don't believe there is currently a viable complaint of people in powerful Turkish or Native American communities denying very many White people loans and even jobs on the basis of their addresses, names, and more importantly lack of family wealth.  Whereas Black Americans often do face these situations.  If you're trying to suggest that there must (or should?)  always be an exploitative dominant ethnic group and it's simply inevitable that they will use the sort of methods we've seen over the past century or so in the US, then you could forget meritocracy and just say you think economic apartheid is completely natural.

            There simply is very little level playing field, meritocracy etc. when this much accumulation of ill-gotten spoils from the past and rigged entry in the present, is accepted as a natural functioning of the market.  That is not calling it what it is.  If you think life is always dog eat dog and everyone should be able to keep whatever they can steal whenever and no one should ever care about that, that is one thing.  Call it that then and be done.  But it is not a meritocracy for everyone in any historical sense.  As it has played out in the US, it's pretty much a racially segregrated economy.  You can't say let's just reset the clock and forget about race, it will somehow go away by itself, and not redistribute wealth and opportunity too.  It won't go away by pretending that people whose families were robbed historically should simply suck it up and work harder.

            And admitting that people have been and too often still are systemically shut out, is hardly the same thing as giving them a pass to rape and human trafficking.  Which is not the same thing again as dealing with a situation where police tend to stop and harass Blacks disproportionately even in contexts where no crimes are generally found.

            But lately the American lower middle class (or what's left of it, historically speaking) and working class are getting abused so hard, it's not very surprising maybe that some people can't see past a zero-sum view where any sort of leveling suggestion gets cast as merely stealing from Peter to pay Paul.  It's still a paranoid time, whether that more often means only getting to have one car or (for fewer people) just one house, --- or rather, having fewer school districts to choose from at all.  Yet, those divides in experience (to be able even to worry about saving houses versus only to constantly worry about basic services) still very often also fall along racial lines.

     

Steampunkette

Well. Okay. I'll make one note on another part of your post!

The division in society already exists. You just don't see it from your perspective.  You've got to shift your viewpoint to get the full picture and understand what is really going on. And to do that you need to talk to the people undergoing the problem.

For example, prior to my various surgeries and hormone therapy, people treated me as a white straight cisgender ablebodied man in America. Then, after I came out of the closet as a bisexual woman, friends dropped me like a hot potato. I got death threats from dudes I went to high school with and hadn't seen in almost 8 years.

And jobs? Pssssshhhh! I was a store Manager for half a decade. They found out I wasn't cisgender and suddenly all my performance reviews came up TERRIBLE. Nevermind that the store was running at a consistent profit year over year and the people I worked with treated me with all the dignity and respect in the world.

Now I can hardly -get- a job. And basically never keep them because someone gets uncomfortable working with a "Tranny" or "Shemale". Meanwhile the home office never hears a word and the sexual harassment lawsuit I filed (Transgender isn't a protected class and I have no right to work on that basis, legally speaking) got held up for 6 months and then summarily dismissed because wearing a dress to work was -inviting- the harassment.

The divisions and rifts exist. Few people understand it so completely as transgender women who transition after they turn 18. Bringing attention to them through discussions of social justice and equality just brings attention to them. It doesn't create them.

And Kylie? I love you.
Yes, I am a professional game dev. No I cannot discuss projects I am currently working on. Yes, I would like to discuss games, politics, and general geek culture. Feel free to PM me.

I'm not interested in RP unless I post in a thread about it.

elone

Quote from: Steampunkette on October 13, 2014, 02:53:32 AM

We live in a society where the very idea of trying to fix the damage we've done over the past two hundred years and more is considered subversive, antithetical, and is stigmatized to the point that even a lot of the people who would be most helped by the restructuring consider it a very bad thing.

We need to fix that.

I agree with most of what you have said in the opening post, and that coming from one who basically is one of those who did it without a lot of parental financial assistance. GI bill, and working through college, bought my own first car, etc. I recognize that perhaps everyone may not be able to do that sort of thing, regardless of race or gender issues. Of course discrimination still exists because a lot of people identify with their own group, fear the unknown, and need to feel like they are better than someone else. I don't see us entering into some sort of utopian society any time soon, so I am curious as to what your suggestions are for fixing the situation.

How do we fix it? How do we change people's ingrained ideas on race and sexuality? Whose responsibility is it to institute the change?
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consortium11

Quote from: Steampunkette on October 13, 2014, 02:53:32 AMNow look at everything I've said and think about how Native Americans have been treated in America. And Women. And Jews. And Chinese people. Transgender individuals. Homosexuals. Bisexuals.

I'm not sure the Jewish example supports your overall point.

Jews (both as a religion and a race) have had a pretty difficult time in the US. As a small anecdote, if I recall correctly the first Jew to actually reach the colonies was paid to go back by the Europe by the existing settlers and that rather set the tone for what was to come. The Jewish population of the US grew in spurts, each spurt largely coinciding with a crackdown on the Jews in their previous lands. As such the Jewish community had little links or unifying ideas and, understandably for those fleeing persecution, generally came to the US with very little material wealth. Despite the success of some Jews in the banking industry (for example both Goldman Sachs and Lehmen Brothers were founded in the mid-to-late 19th century by first or second generation Jewish immigrants) during the early 20th century the Jews were largely an underclass with around 80% of Jews working in manual labour (primarily in textile families) and with income and education levels well below the non-Jewish white average. In addition there were several laws formally and informally restricting Jews from certain careers and educational establishments.

Yet today, despite anti-semitism being a pretty common and open event (especially whenever Israel hits the news), a Jew is almost twice as likely to have a college degree and four times as likely to have a graduate degree as a non-Jew, over 60% of employed Jews works in one of the stereotypically "high prestige" fields (professional/technical, management/executive and business/finance) compared to 46% of employed non-Jews, their median income is 29% higher than the US median and, according to Gallup survey, have the most wellbeing of any group in the US. In pretty much every measurable way outside of employment rates (where the Jewish rate is slightly lower than the US average, although that is largely considered to be due to an aging population) US Jews are in a better position than non-Jews. And this came about not by specific or deliberate actions but simply by repealing the discriminatory laws that had once impacted on the Jewish community.

Likewise one can look at the history of Chinese-Americans. Largely brought to the US for cheap, manual labour they suffered some horrible discrimination from a complete ban on Chinese immigrants and a refusal to allow them to become citizens that lasted 50 years, laws forcing them to pay additional taxes and preventing them from owning land, the "yellow peril", trade unions opposing Chinese Americans as "taking our jobs", a number of massacres and murders, similar "separate but equal" policies as impacted on African-Americans and being victims of the Red Scare during the Cold War. Yet much like the Jews, today Chinese Americans have an average household income significantly higher than the national average, a higher rate of home ownership and are more likely to have a bachelors degree.

In both cases we are talking about groups that suffered terribly from oppression and in that regard are little different to some of the other groups you mention. They have no had special laws issued or treatment given yet have seemingly managed to overcome that oppression within about a 50-60 year period. One could also consider the status of relatively recent African immigrants to the US who demographically attain a higher education level, have a higher employment rate and earn a higher (around $2,000 if I recall correctly) than the average person in the US. 

Valthazar

Quote from: Steampunkette on October 13, 2014, 02:53:32 AMNow combine that with school system design that left poor black communities poorly educated.

In the US, public school funding has traditionally been the responsibility of local districts, which use property tax for their revenue.  States provide some funding to local districts, and districts receive some federal funding (Title 1, special education etc), but the value of local property sets the parameters for how much funding is available for public schools.

Several court cases have been filed attempting to demonstrate that using property tax as the basis for school funding disadvantaged poor children because poor districts didn't have the tax base that wealthier districts had.  In San Antonio Independent School District vs. Rodriguez, the district tried to claim that the 14th amendment (which guaranteed equal protection under the law) had been violated.  The Supreme Court disagreed, stating that since there is no federal constitutional right to education, and since there was no systematic discrimination against poor people, the 14th Amendment was not violated.

The only practical solution for this funding disparity is to do what California did in 1971.  The California Supreme Court declared that the state's dependence on property taxes to support schools was a violation of equal protection principles in the state constitution.  In response, the state legislature put a cap on max revenues in wealthy districts, collected the extra revenue, and increased state aid to poorer districts.

I'm not sure of your perspective on this, but it seems quite authoritarian for the state to intervene in a district matter and "set limits" on how much investment middle-to-upper-middle-class citizens can make in their schools.  This situation led to a tax revolt in California, leading to a reduction in property taxes, which only significantly hurt public education in poor areas even more.




For years, the belief was that educating and empowering urban minority youth would encourage them to reinvest in their communities as adults, and thus reduce crime rates and poverty.  To the contrary, what often happens is that after achieving their college educations, they naturally choose to live in safer, more well-to-do, and usually predominantly white communities (and who can blame them for wanting to escape the violence of their youth).  If anything, this shows that these issues are socioeconomic ones in this day and age, and not racial ones.  In other words, the idea that an ethnic group sticks together, as a result of deep cultural ties is increasingly fading in a world where money dictates one's decisions.  Sadly, this only deteriorates urban communities even more, since their best and brightest are choosing to leave their communities.  Perhaps decades ago, there existed a kinship bond amongst urban blacks, or even blacks in general.  But in this day and age, it's largely an issue of poverty rather than race.

As a result, as we move to a more color-blind society, the biggest threat we face are those still continuing to cling to their "race" or "culture" with an iron fist.  As an example, many of us tend to think of the rise of interracial marriages as a sign of greater tolerance and unity.  However, there are minorities who criticize this as somehow taking a toll on their "ethnic identity."  This seems like an unhealthy perspective to perpetuate, especially when we are trying to move towards a society that decreases the need for racial group membership.

Ephiral

Quote from: Lady Laura on October 13, 2014, 03:56:22 AMIn Australia we have our own Aboriginals some of whom will tell you that by trying to provide special treatment and Government grants and what not you are creating a culture of entitlement and victim hood, I agree, if you want Equality, true equality than forget about race, forget about history, forget about gender, religion/non religion and sexuality, create a society where people are rewarded on their merits and not because of some score card that says today we need to select a "Black Bisexual Disabled Transgender Woman" because we have quotas to meet.

You have the luxury of being blind to colour, gender, religion, sexuality, etc. People who have to deal with discrimination every day just because of what they look like do not.

Officially sanctioned oppression might be over, but systemic oppression is not. People of colour still tend to fare worse at the hands of the justice system. Transgender people are still primarily portrayed as punchlines or acceptable targets for violence. In America, atheists are still less trusted than rapists. It is not possible for these people to "just forget about it" and hope that society will give them a fair shake - you're asking them to walk through a minefield blindfolded.

Nobody here is saying white/cis/hetero/Christian people need to feel guilty for things that they had no control over. The point is that everyone needs to be aware of the context of our society and the existence of this shit, and push back against it where we see it.


Quote from: consortium11 on October 13, 2014, 08:57:01 AMIn pretty much every measurable way outside of employment rates (where the Jewish rate is slightly lower than the US average, although that is largely considered to be due to an aging population) US Jews are in a better position than non-Jews. And this came about not by specific or deliberate actions but simply by repealing the discriminatory laws that had once impacted on the Jewish community.
The evidence does not support this - there are plenty of groups of people still experiencing oppression today, despite the fact that no discriminatory laws exist (and in some cases, I'm not sure they ever existed). I would say it has more to do with shifting cultural definitions. The definition of "White" has changed over time - at one time, it didn't include the Polish or Irish, either. It now includes these groups, and I'd argue that Asians are close to that point as well.




Quote from: Valthazar on October 13, 2014, 10:56:12 AMSeveral court cases have been filed attempting to demonstrate that using property tax as the basis for school funding disadvantaged poor children because poor districts didn't have the tax base that wealthier districts had.  In San Antonio Independent School District vs. Rodriguez, the district tried to claim that the 14th amendment (which guaranteed equal protection under the law) had been violated.  The Supreme Court disagreed, stating that since there is no federal constitutional right to education, and since there was no systematic discrimination against poor people, the 14th Amendment was not violated.

Interesting note: Redlining is something that was still being fought in the courts when this decision was handed down, and something that we know for a fact was happening as recently as the subprime lending crisis. There might not have been institutional discrimination, but the idea that there was no systematic discrimination against poor people of colour is just straight-up bullshit.

Valthazar

Quote from: Ephiral on October 13, 2014, 11:12:17 AMInteresting note: Redlining is something that was still being fought in the courts when this decision was handed down, and something that we know for a fact was happening as recently as the subprime lending crisis. There might not have been institutional discrimination, but the idea that there was no systematic discrimination against poor people of colour is just straight-up bullshit.

I was summarizing a court decision relating to education.  The Supreme Court stated that the defendant did not (could not) argue that "there is some quantum of education that is fundamental and which the class is not receiving."  The defendant also could not argue on legal grounds that the class was entitled to the best education provided by public schools in Texas.  Whether or not we think such bias exists, it's impossible to prove legal systemic discrimination here since there is no baseline optimal standard of educational funding.  As a result, there is no legal grounds to suggest that poor people (relating to race or not) are being discriminated against funding-wise in education.

Ephiral

I would say that the systemic discrimination did not meet a legal requirement for redress - it clearly existed. This is an important distinction.

Further, your argument does not address what you were responding to. The fact that the courts did not find this to fit the legal definition of discrimination has literally nothing to do with whether or not poor black communities have a lower standard of education - the court's decision actually implicitly agreed that they do. The deciding factor was that a lower standard of education is apparently perfectly fine under the law - which should be pretty disturbing.

Also, I'd strongly dispute your claim that the only practical solution is to cap contributions from the wealthy. How about subsidizing the poorer neighbourhoods, so they get lifed up isntead of pushing down on the better standard? How about, oh, I don't know, uncoupling education from property ownership so that quality of education is not inherently tied to wealth? Believe it or not, funding education directly with property tax is not the only system, nor the one that produces the best results.

kylie

#11
          Val,  you're citing case decisions from 1971 and 1973.  As I recall, that's roughly or barely the start of the period when interracial marriage gained legal protection at all.  And as we can see in the continued scuffle over things like voter ID laws -- often particularly in the South where the history of slavery and then Jim Crow looms especially large -- a little progress in one area is often followed by periodic waves of denial and backlash in other contexts. 

          If you are going to sit on that, then maybe it's time someone went back to court and took up the question of systemic discrimination or right to education again.  We are currently watching some of the same sitting Supremes who once slammed the door on gay rights, beat a retreat or lose on same-sex marriage today.  And it's hardly arguable that educational credentials for white collar jobs have not increased.  I imagine a case could easily be made that the government has an extraordinary interest in setting standards for education.  It has to be better than the case made so far for any extraordinary interest in defining marriage along med-sex lines.

         There is still no law guaranteeing women equal pay for the same jobs, either.  Would you also argue that lack of a positive law means that is something we couldn't establish a standard for or administer, either?  In both contexts, we now have continuing statistical proof of gaps over the generations and other cases and inquiries more recently dealing with specific ways these things have so long been maintained, as Ephiral mentioned.  Though I'm sometimes also left wondering how blind and selective judges can be when they decide what to notice when.

     

Valthazar

#12
Quote from: Ephiral on October 13, 2014, 11:41:00 AMAlso, I'd strongly dispute your claim that the only practical solution is to cap contributions from the wealthy. How about subsidizing the poorer neighbourhoods, so they get lifed up isntead of pushing down on the better standard? How about, oh, I don't know, uncoupling education from property ownership so that quality of education is not inherently tied to wealth? Believe it or not, funding education directly with property tax is not the only system, nor the one that produces the best results.

That's what they were essentially doing in California back then.  The state was intervening in district taxation to set caps, then increased state aid to subsidize education of poor school districts.

The problem is that this alone does very little to address educational issues in inner cities.  Right now, it's near impossible for an inner city school district to recruit high quality teachers, regardless of salary.  No matter how much money you throw at the system, if talented teachers tend to prefer working in safer schools, with lower rates of violence, it's a tough sell.  Money alone, without an actual plan for improving the community, does little to improve educational performance. 

I am assuming you are suggesting a system where school districts are funded equally - mainly from the state, rather than at the local level.  There are some serious long-term ramifications of this idea.  One of the consequences of this is that funding for school districts in middle class areas will decline from what they are now, since tax dollars are being pooled by the state now, and distributed equally to all school districts.  The vast majority of middle class families will experience declines in their school funding - while at the same time, not receiving any reductions in the taxes they are paying.  Over time, this would lead to an exodus of middle-class families from states with more poverty stricken districts (Mississippi, New Mexico, Alabama, etc) to states with less poverty stricken districts (Washington DC, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, etc).  The reason for this is that while taxation may not change significantly, they would be receiving a better quality school district for their children for the amount of taxes they are paying.  In other words, since wealthier states have more taxpayers, and correspondingly more revenue coming into the state, the distribution of school funds would be more advantageous for middle-class school districts.

Over the years, this leads to a worsening scenario for the poor.  Now you'll have entire states which are poorer than they originally were, and other states which are wealthier than they now are.  Rather than creating equality, well-intentioned programs such as this often lead to more polarization of wealth.

Lady Laura

Quote from: Steampunkette on October 13, 2014, 06:03:02 AM
That took less time than expected.

Every race suffered slavery: Your point being?
Slavery was a touchstone of my post meant to highlight the economic disparity of wealth accrued over time in the hands of the majority and kept out of the hands of the minority. I also talked about Jim Crow laws, the Civil Rights Movement, Discriminatory hiring practices, discriminatory business practices, and underfunded education.

"Every race was slaves. There are slavers in the world, now!" Is a complete derail of the topic at hand and the thrust of my argument. You've missed the point utterly.

White Guilt. Seriously? You think my intent was to make White people feel Guilty? I'm white. I talk about this stuff routinely. I don't feel guilt about what other people did beyond my sphere of influence. Guilt is useless. It is pointless. Understanding is what I'm looking for. Trying to recenter things on the basis of White Perspective is just kind of pointless when it's a white person doing the talking.

And to create a society where history, gender, race, etc etc etc don't come into play the first thing we need to do is get rid of economic disparity. Which, y'know, requires an understanding of WHY there is economic disparity and thus you need to understand the history.

Those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it, after all.

The rest of your presented argument is just kind of ignorant and I'm not gonna get into it.

Go back. Reread my post. Try to understand the points encapsulated into it. Then read the part where I say that we need to get rid of the systemic and economic problems to really fix things. Then maybe approach the topic from the understanding I hope to foster in you.

Every one has a legacy of oppression. Like I stated every race has been conquered by another at some point, then you have individuals who also have suffered bullying for numerous reasons.

The strong survive and get on with it.

I mentioned the Rotterham case as it supports what I say about creating a new underclass, in the Rotterham case Authorities ignored the abuse because they saw the abusers as untouchable and the abused being mostly White Indigenous English girls as being less important.

Anyway, your insults and condescending tone are unwarranted, it seems to be the way of the Politically Correct to go on the attack when someone disagrees with them, I found your entire post to be naive and ignorant, I tried discussing it with you and am not surprised at your response to be honest.

I wrote nothing that disrespected you, yet you disrespect me. Not cool, not mature.


Ephiral

#14
So your argument is that state-funded education will lead to more inequality of wealth, mass exodus from poorer regions, and lowered quality of education? Can you point to a single example of this ever happening in the real world? Looking at my own nation: We've got an educational structure that is grossly similar to the US, except that there is a disconnection at the provincial level between a given area's property taxes and the funding it receives, and there are several federal mechanisms for subsidizing poorer regions. We have similar rates of high-school graduation (though ours are rising while the US is flat), our literacy, math, and science performance levels are higher, and - key to this discussion - our education inequality is hugely lower. I live in one of the poorest provinces, and our population is rising.

Source: OECD Better Life Index, Education breakdown.

So... which nations, exactly, are performing worse than the US, or experienced a significnat downturn, after uncoupling education funding from district-level property taxes?

EDIT: Your final point, about creating greater regional income disparity, is just straight-up wrong on its face. If people will flee poor regions for rich ones under systems which reduce the difference between poor and rich regions, then they will do so in greater numbers under the current US system - because those gaps are going to be wider without any means of addressing them.

Ephiral

Quote from: Lady Laura on October 13, 2014, 01:29:15 PM
Every one has a legacy of oppression. Like I stated every race has been conquered by another at some point, then you have individuals who also have suffered bullying for numerous reasons.

The strong survive and get on with it.

There are some nuances you seem to be missing here. First: The legacy of oppression Steampunkette talks about? It's still happening in some regards, and even where parts of it have ended, their repercussions are still being felt by the oppressed. I don't think you'll find that this is the case for certain segments of the population. So saying "We've all been oppressed at some point, get over it" is trivializing a lot of real people's real, lived experiences, and sweeping a lot of ongoing, ugly shit under the rug. The "strong" in your statement are not just those who have enough willpower and ambition - they're the ones with willpower, ambition, and a whole long list of socioeconomic advantages. There are segments of the population in rich, ostensibly free and democratic nations today where strong and motivated people are still dying because of oppressive bullshit.

And yes, you were extremely disrespectful. Steampunkette is actually suffering in real, measurable ways from a legacy of oppression right now. The "Why should I care? Get over it!" attitude dismisses this, and lays the blame for actions others have taken against her at her feet. Obviously, she just wasn't strong enough to not get fired on the basis of her gender, right?

Dismissiveness is disrespect.

consortium11

Quote from: Ephiral on October 13, 2014, 11:12:17 AMThe evidence does not support this - there are plenty of groups of people still experiencing oppression today, despite the fact that no discriminatory laws exist (and in some cases, I'm not sure they ever existed). I would say it has more to do with shifting cultural definitions. The definition of "White" has changed over time - at one time, it didn't include the Polish or Irish, either. It now includes these groups, and I'd argue that Asians are close to that point as well.

I'm not sure if you're misunderstanding my point here... I'm not saying that removing discriminatory laws removes discrimination. What I'm saying is that despite isolated outliers (the much maligned "Jewish bankers" for example) both Jews and Chinese Americans entered the 20th century as a distinct underclass who, in demographic terms, earned less and were less well educated than the national average and especially in comparison to the WASP's. Both faced both openly discriminatory laws and practices for most of the 20th century and to this day face discrimination and condemnation.

Yet despite that legacy of oppression today, in demographic terms, Jews and Chinese Americans are higher paid and higher educated then both the national average and WASP's, with higher rates of home ownership, longer life expectancies and tend to top "wellbeing" or "quality of life" studies. In demographic terms it's basically a battle between Jews and the various Asian-American ethnicities (with Chinese Americans outperforming most of the other Asian-Americans) to see who has it "best"; on pretty much every scale they come out near the top. Yet there has been no special treatment or laws put forward to counteract this "legacy of oppression" here; all that changed was discriminatory laws were abolished and in at most a century and more likely 50/60 years we've seen both groups go from an abused minority to being what is referred to as a "model minority".

Thus if we want to talk about how a legacy of oppression holds people back even when oppressive legislation has been removed, bringing up Jews or Chinese Americans seems a strange example to use; both faced vast amounts of oppression, both are subjected to acts of racism to this day but both outperform both the national average and WASP's in pretty much all the key demographics. If anything bringing up the example of the Jews or Chinese Americans is an example that this "legacy of oppression" actually isn't really a powerful thing in and of itself.

Ephiral

Quote from: consortium11 on October 13, 2014, 02:23:15 PM
I'm not sure if you're misunderstanding my point here... I'm not saying that removing discriminatory laws removes discrimination. What I'm saying is that despite isolated outliers (the much maligned "Jewish bankers" for example) both Jews and Chinese Americans entered the 20th century as a distinct underclass who, in demographic terms, earned less and were less well educated than the national average and especially in comparison to the WASP's. Both faced both openly discriminatory laws and practices for most of the 20th century and to this day face discrimination and condemnation.

Yet despite that legacy of oppression today, in demographic terms, Jews and Chinese Americans are higher paid and higher educated then both the national average and WASP's, with higher rates of home ownership, longer life expectancies and tend to top "wellbeing" or "quality of life" studies. In demographic terms it's basically a battle between Jews and the various Asian-American ethnicities (with Chinese Americans outperforming most of the other Asian-Americans) to see who has it "best"; on pretty much every scale they come out near the top. Yet there has been no special treatment or laws put forward to counteract this "legacy of oppression" here; all that changed was discriminatory laws were abolished and in at most a century and more likely 50/60 years we've seen both groups go from an abused minority to being what is referred to as a "model minority".
My point wasn't that discrimination doesn't exist against these groups; it does, though it's shifting toward the margins. My point was that your assertion, repeated here, that the removal of discriminatory laws was the only change, is false. There was a shift in societal perception of these groups, granting them access to some or all of the benefits of white privilege. As a general rule of thumb, Jewish people today don't have to worry about undue scrutiny from police. They don't have to worry about being herded into ghettoes by homeowner's covenants and lending policies. They don't have to worry about every misdeed by a Jewish person being held up as representative of all Jews by the wider society. They don't need to worry constantly about representing all Jews to society. In general, as a rule, they don't have to worry about how their ethnicity might deny them access to things that white people take for granted. Ignoring this is going to seriously distort your view of reality as it applies to these issues.

Steampunkette

Laura I respect you as a person, your argument less so. And the dog whistle disrespect -in- that post even less.

Your initial post was a series of derailments which were tailored to try and bring the topic to white perspectives. Your Rotterham case. Your "White Guilt" your "White Pride" at the end of the post. Rather than understand what I was trying to say, you took an individual point and made it into a strawman argument about white people and how I was trying to disrespect them.

And then for someone touting White Pride and freedom from White Guilt to talk about how "Some Aboriginals" believe X, Y, or Z about how helping them is bad? That's a big thing that happened in the early 1900s in America, too. But it wasn't Aboriginals and Social Welfare Reform.



It was women who felt like they shouldn't be allowed to vote. There were 90 of them in the Anti-suffrage society and their influence and social relevance made it seem like there were 9 million. Why? Because the men in power who opposed Suffrage touted those 90 whenever possible. They spread word about them over the radio, in movie houses, theatres, political rallies, advertisements... Do I believe you that there are "Some" Aboriginals who think any help is bad help? Sure. Some will believe that. It's a piss poor reason to let all the rest of them suffer systemic oppression, though.

You may not have INTENDED to come across disrespectful, but holy shit you did. Mainly by your dissection and belaboring of a single foundational statement about my argument rather than trying, at all, to address my argument's main point. Has everyone got it rough? Sure. Not nearly so much in the US of A and we made it rough on others, instead.

Ephiral: I love you. Sooooo much.

Elone: We fix it with economic restructuring.

America is supposed to be a laissez faire Capitalist society. It isn't. And it hasn't been since Jefferson rolled over and died. Hell, he lamented the very idea of banking institutions because of the massive economic damage they're capable of. But while I'd love to talk about the Founding Fathers and their beliefs that's not the point, here.

We aren't Laissez Faire. We probably never were. The fact that we had an entire class of people who weren't allowed to own property kind of shoots that idea in the foot. We have a romanticized idea of Capitalism, but what we're living is the restrained version of the monster. It took centuries for the 1% to get control of 40% of the wealth, here. Through trust busting and the like we'd been staving it off, but with Reaganomics and then the consecutive Bushes in the office any attempt at economic control became a political farce that brought out Hand-Wringy the Fox News Clown.

To get to a point where deep seated problematic opinions of people are eliminated the first thing we need to do is remove the economic blocks that allow those people to be exploited and turned into stereotypes. We need to economically elevate everyone above the poverty line.

Now I know that America thinks Socialism and Communism are terrible ideas and anything that smacks of Wealth Redistribution is anathema, but hear me out.

The idea that everyone needs to work to survive is a holdover from the Middle Ages. From a time when we didn't have enough food and water and shelter to go around. Today there are more empty houses than homeless. More change and bills are destroyed in a year than a third of the country makes. We throw away enough food to feed several nations. Okay the middle one was hyperbolic, but the point remains.

There is no need in our society for people to starve because they don't work. We have enough surplus wealth and luxury and safety and so forth that we could provide for our people. We don't do it because we are used to the idea that anyone considered "Lazy" is bad. But the Lazy appellation is put onto anyone who doesn't work, there aren't enough jobs, and a hell of a lot of people can't get hired because of disability or prejudices against them (or both) for the jobs that do exist.

Under Nixon the top tax rate was 70%. Reagan dropped that down to 28%. Clinton got it up to almost 40% before Bush cut it down to 33% and Obama is trying to put it back up to 40%. That Tax Revenue is a big part of -why- America has been spending at a major deficit. Because we cut the biggest supply of currency. Never mind the destruction of the Capital Gains and Estate Taxes that once created massive boosts to the economic power of the US.

We need to reinstate those taxes. If we do that we can then turn around and give every adult $30,000 a year, free and clear, just so they can have money.

That's not a social program for the poor. That's all 320 million Americans getting 30k a year.

It would pull everyone in our nation out of poverty. It would create a massive amount of spending on goods, services, and real estate. People would be able to afford their basic needs -before- going to work, which would allow them to purchase improvements above their own basic support. Wanna buy a new car? Get a part time job for a few months to put together the downpayment and then keep that part time job to keep making the payments on it. Want to go to college? Get a job to pay tuition fees, your housing and food and basic needs are already covered and you won't have to spend the bulk of the money you earn just supporting yourself.

Think of what the Middle Class would do with another $30,000 per year of disposable income. Vacations, new computers, putting money away for college or kids. But most of all people would spend money. They would buy things, which means things need to be made. Which means people need to make them and stock them and sell them.

People living in Ghettos would be able to get OUT. They'd have the financial stability to move to safer areas. Hell, they'd have the financial stability to move to different cities or states if they so chose. The idea of poor urban youth (read broke black people) would fade pretty quickly when the poor urban youth can afford college, good food, new housing, and more. Same thing with the Native American stereotypes of being poor and ignorant.

And, of course, with $30,000 more spending for most every adult within a given city, sales tax would give cities massive continuous flow to improve schools, roads, and infrastructure. Money changing hands and changing hands and changing hands would improve the area. People only needing to work one job rather than trying to hold down 2-3 while supporting a family and getting an education wouldn't need the "extra" jobs and free them up for people who need them. Or they'd be making REAL money and REAL progress towards wealth beyond their basic needs, which is just mind bogglingly wonderful.

And with all that money? Cameras on Cops. Monitoring interactions. After all, once you don't need to sell drugs or sex on the corner just to make enough money to survive crime is going to go down significantly. But complaints are still going to be high unless the interactions are monitored. One city, Rialto California, put cameras on it's cops and civilian complaints dropped 88% overnight. Whether that's from cops approaching situations with the knowledge that they're being monitored, civilians no longer lying to get out of trouble, or some combination of the two is kind of irrelevant: The result is important.

So yeah. Maintain our social security nets. Raise the minimum bar on them above minimum wage. Then dole out a $30,000 a year "Citizen Salary" to every American Adult. Raise the taxes on the top tier to pre-Reagan levels. And boom. The nation becomes fiscally solvent super fast, the economy explodes in growth, and most of the preconceptions and ideas about a given group of people are nullified, negated, or forced to be rewritten.

Now that won't help MOGAI individuals on the basis of their MOGAI status. But since a large portion of MOGAI identifying individuals are minorities that gives them a sudden boost in economic, and thus lobbying, power.

Sure. We'd have to control inflation. Specifically of prices as they currently stand. But this idea is not printing new money, as some nations have tried in the past. It's taking the money already out there and putting it into circulation.
Yes, I am a professional game dev. No I cannot discuss projects I am currently working on. Yes, I would like to discuss games, politics, and general geek culture. Feel free to PM me.

I'm not interested in RP unless I post in a thread about it.

Lady Laura

I didn't read your rant steampunkette like I said you are disrespectful and put forward a very poor argument. If you didn't want slavery to be mentioned than you shouldn't have mentioned it in your post.

You even responded with more disrespect, I have a personal rule in real life and on forums when someone resorts to insults and disrespect as you have than that means they have nothing else to offer, it also means they lack maturity and basic manners.

Have fun insulting people who disagree with you, I refuse to lower myself by trying to engage in discussion with you.

Blythe

Let's remember the civility rule here in the thread, everyone. Thank you.

Ephiral

Quote from: Lady Laura on October 13, 2014, 03:01:20 PM
I didn't read your rant steampunkette like I said you are disrespectful and put forward a very poor argument. If you didn't want slavery to be mentioned than you shouldn't have mentioned it in your post.

You even responded with more disrespect, I have a personal rule in real life and on forums when someone resorts to insults and disrespect as you have than that means they have nothing else to offer, it also means they lack maturity and basic manners.

Have fun insulting people who disagree with you, I refuse to lower myself by trying to engage in discussion with you.
For someone who values respect, maturity, and basic manners so highly, this post is extremely condescending and rude. Please look into this.

Slywyn

Quote from: Lady Laura on October 13, 2014, 03:01:20 PM
I didn't read your rant steampunkette like I said you are disrespectful and put forward a very poor argument. If you didn't want slavery to be mentioned than you shouldn't have mentioned it in your post.

You even responded with more disrespect, I have a personal rule in real life and on forums when someone resorts to insults and disrespect as you have than that means they have nothing else to offer, it also means they lack maturity and basic manners.

Have fun insulting people who disagree with you, I refuse to lower myself by trying to engage in discussion with you.

None of what she said was in any way a rant.
What Makes A Shark Tick ( o/o's )

"True friendship is when you walk into their house and your WiFi automatically connects." - The Internet, Probably

I'm just the silliest, friendliest little shark that ever did. Sure, I have all these teeth but I don't bite... much.

Steampunkette

Okay. Bye.

Seriously, though. Let's get back onto the actual topic now that the derailment has ended. Don't antagonize her, it only invites her to return to defend herself. She's made her opinions and perspectives quite clear.

What do you all think of my proposal, there? Would it work? Would it cause problems I'm not seeing? What are your opinions and ideas that could redefine mine to create a different, more positive, outcome?
Yes, I am a professional game dev. No I cannot discuss projects I am currently working on. Yes, I would like to discuss games, politics, and general geek culture. Feel free to PM me.

I'm not interested in RP unless I post in a thread about it.

Ephiral

Insufficient data. I think it's a good theory, but first and foremost I'd need to see data supporting the idea that 7.2 trillion dollars could come from simply shoring up income tax (to what level), and reinstating capital gains and estate taxes (at what level?).

consortium11

Quote from: Ephiral on October 13, 2014, 02:33:06 PM
My point wasn't that discrimination doesn't exist against these groups; it does, though it's shifting toward the margins. My point was that your assertion, repeated here, that the removal of discriminatory laws was the only change, is false. There was a shift in societal perception of these groups, granting them access to some or all of the benefits of white privilege. As a general rule of thumb, Jewish people today don't have to worry about undue scrutiny from police. They don't have to worry about being herded into ghettoes by homeowner's covenants and lending policies. They don't have to worry about every misdeed by a Jewish person being held up as representative of all Jews by the wider society. They don't need to worry constantly about representing all Jews to society. In general, as a rule, they don't have to worry about how their ethnicity might deny them access to things that white people take for granted. Ignoring this is going to seriously distort your view of reality as it applies to these issues.

And the evidence that this preceded their rise up the demographics rather than followed it is? Because all of those things applied to both Jews and Chinese-Americans for much of the 20th century.

Moreover, let's look at some specific evidence. 80% of the US Jewish population live in a mere 10 states with 20% in New York and the surrounding suburban areas alone. Within those states they are highly concentrated in the metropolitan areas and even then tend to concentrate in a few specific metropolitan areas. Likewise over 40% of Chinese Americans live in California alone with another 40% living in a four other states and over 80% living in a mere 32 counties. "Ghetto" would be a very pejorative word to describe that but both the Jewish and Chinese-American populations tend to live in a few concentrated municipal areas.

QuoteThey don't have to worry about every misdeed by a Jewish person being held up as representative of all Jews by the wider society. They don't need to worry constantly about representing all Jews to society.

I suggest you look at opinion pieces of twitter whenever the Israeli/Palastinian conflict bubbles up for the way that "Jew" and "Israeli" (let alone "Israeli Government") are used interchangeably. Here's a quick example of a pretty influential journalist saying that the actions of the Israeli Army represent the actions of an individual British Jew. I'd also check twitter for the way the internet reacts when Israel hits the news... the #Hitlerwasright and #Hitlerdidnothingwrong tags don't trend because no-one uses them. I'd also pay attention to how often references to "typical Jew" appear in the wake of any financial impropriety by a Jewish banker or the like.

On the Chinese-American front in 2010 we had politicians supporting ad campaigns that conflated Chinese Americans and Chinese while arguing that Chinese Americans would celebrate and thank American politicians for taking jobs out of America and giving them to China.

consortium11

Quote from: Steampunkette on October 13, 2014, 03:17:19 PMWhat do you all think of my proposal, there? Would it work? Would it cause problems I'm not seeing? What are your opinions and ideas that could redefine mine to create a different, more positive, outcome?

The "give everyone a flat $30,000 a year"?

Inflation.

If you give everyone an extra $30,000 a year then prices would quickly rise to match as the market adjusted to the rise in disposable income. Within a short period you'd see the effect of the "free money" become negligible as everything simply became more expensive.

It seems to me there would be three better ways to use that money to achieve a somewhat similar effect:

1) Pay down the deficit. This means less government spending has to go on debt repayments which can then in turn be used for either direct government spending or tax cuts and in turn makes the US a more attractive country to lend to and thus can borrow at lower rates when it does borrow money.

2) Tax cuts for the poor; for example remove the 10% federal income tax rate for the lowest earners while also raising the thresholds at each level that people have to pay tax. The vast majority of income tax is paid by those in the highest bracket anyway; to quote from here

QuoteTaxpayers who rank in the top 50 percent of taxpayers by income pay virtually all individual income taxes. In all years since 1990, taxpayers in this group have paid over 94 percent of all individual income taxes. In 2000, 2001, and 2002, this group paid over 96 percent of the total.

So even today the bottom half of tax payers pay a tiny amount of the individual taxes; removing them from taxation entirely makes a relatively small dent in figures even without increasing the taxes for higher earners. By allowing people to keep more of their money they can then spend it on what they like; it provides a similar effect to simply handing out $30,000 but encourages people to work and, while still suffering some of the inflation effects, helps to moderate the increased inflation.

3) Government spending, either directly through infrastructure projects (which would also provide employment opportunities) or through subsidized or free services; making medical care free at the point of service and massively reducing further education costs while also providing a bursary would both seemingly make a big difference to improving social mobility. 

kylie

#27
Quote from: Valthazar
That's what they were essentially doing in California back then.  The state was intervening in district taxation to set caps, then increased state aid to subsidize education of poor school districts.

The problem is that this alone does very little to address educational issues in inner cities.  Right now, it's near impossible for an inner city school district to recruit high quality teachers, regardless of salary.  No matter how much money you throw at the system, if talented teachers tend to prefer working in safer schools, with lower rates of violence, it's a tough sell.  Money alone, without an actual plan for improving the community, does little to improve educational performance.
Granted there are other concerns.  The communities that do not have large tax bases also do not have strong police presence, or at least not the kind that integrates well with the community.  There may be vastly expensive drug raids and lots of pointless stopping and searching people, but it is not the same quality of patrolling and interest that wealthier areas usually get.  Majority Black, urban communities have also seen dramatic cuts in fire departments, infrastructure, and other basic services.  Many of the services that remain have been increasingly farmed out to private companies.  So when speaking about a community plan, there might need to be some reinvestment in these things if anyone is really serious about staffing a decent education too.  We might also use a bit more of a culture concerned with egalitarianism on the whole, and less with deploying the police more in the interest of the extremely wealthy and business sites.  Black neighborhoods have also been pushed increasingly far from some of those business sites anyway.

     Btw, even when we speak about relatively well-off Blacks moving on: Many of them first move to Black or mixed communities just one or two rings further from the center of a large city.  And many of those still are not in the same situation really as Whiter communities which (in large cities at least) tend to be more suburban, even if we are not talking about anything like more secure and isolated gated communities of the 10% or 1% yet.  It is true that some middle class Blacks, part of that overall dwindling middle class at some level -- filling the only roles allocated to make them "palatable" as community representatives for Washington politics, not to mention some reddish state politics -- have more or less accepted that central policy will not provide much more than a few public sector jobs for Blacks to scramble over in many cities, and gotten on with the business of pushing their people to calm down and act more like a "good [read:subdued] minority" regardless.  That does not change the fact that many, many Blacks are still finding themselves more or less stuck in the same rings of the city. 

      Often, now there just happens to be a slightly less strained commuter community buffer toward the outside of those Blacks who have it one step better but are still barely a paycheck away from homelessness, sometimes blending further out into a more Latino or mixed community that is rather similar or perhaps slightly better off.  In quite a few places, it appears geographically clear that the Latino/mixed area is located rather as a kind of "buffer zone" before more predominantly White (even if still rather squeezed) rings of commuter residences really begin.   

Quote
I am assuming you are suggesting a system where school districts are funded equally - mainly from the state, rather than at the local level.  There are some serious long-term ramifications of this idea.  One of the consequences of this is that funding for school districts in middle class areas will decline from what they are now, since tax dollars are being pooled by the state now, and distributed equally to all school districts.
I'm not sure I understand the double use of "now" here - do these two now's refer to the same time, or before and after?  To fully visualize what you're saying or whether it is that simple at all (and I'm skeptical), I'd probably need some case studies and graphs.  And I'd like something much more contemporary than the 1970's, when the society took still other kinds of racial programming for granted. 

        But on the face of it, it feels odd to say that redistributing from a glut of investment must mean a lower average for the majority of people.  Unless the majority of people are already allowed to attend school where resources are better, which I don't believe is generally the case.  Even if it were, I don't think that would be a good excuse for denying a considerable absolute number of minority people access to some standard level of education. 

       Otherwise, what you might have, is an argument that it's just too expensive to create quality education even in K-12 at some given level that is useful for access to some jobs...  And therefore, one might go on to say, some people simply cannot be granted that because hey, we need someone to have those jobs and it'll just have to be foremost the children of those families that have won out historically. If so that is not an argument for meritocracy there.  That's just an argument for triage and the status quo. 

Quote
The vast majority of middle class families will experience declines in their school funding - while at the same time, not receiving any reductions in the taxes they are paying.  Over time, this would lead to an exodus of middle-class families from states with more poverty stricken districts (Mississippi, New Mexico, Alabama, etc) to states with less poverty stricken districts (Washington DC, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, etc). 
That is assuming the state governments get to go on each setting a different priority on education in absolute terms as well.  Or if you like, that some states are just richer overall and they "must" have different education budgets.  Maybe it's assuming they have more high-priced industries or somehow have an easier time with the budget.  Maybe so, but I think that is somehow external to the question.  If there was truly a comparable base range of standards most anywhere -- that is, a substantive federal policy to allocate some spending and minimize discrimination in educational opportunity -- then it shouldn't make that much difference where one went.  We already know that with so much variation between the states, some are much further behind on education allocations and standards generally than others.   Some states having larger numbers of embattled and deprived communities is one part of that, but as things are each state can go on and just do that so of course some places become relative havens for white flight. 
     

Steampunkette

Well, Ephiral. In the hands of private nonprofits and American households in America there is approximately $65,000,000,000,000. The top 10% of the nation control a whopping 75% of it's money. That's $48.75 trillion dollars. Shouldn't be too hard to get 7 trillion out of that.

The money the 10% make over $400,000 per year (single filing, jointly it's pushed to $450k) is taxed at 39%. There are just about 40 million Americans in this bracket. Average earnings hit right around $1.3 million each. So that's $900,000 taxed for an additional 31% for $279,000 additional income for each of those 40 million Americans (Average). That's enough to hand out $30,000 to 372,000,000 people. (279000x40,000,000=11,160,000,000,000/30,000)

America only has 320 million people in it. Most of them aren't adults, yet.

And that's before looking at fixing the Capital Gains tax or Estate Taxes, both of which would easily handle population increases over time, if that's even required with the massive increase in taxable revenue from ALL sources.

Consortium: You're kind of right. Though I did mention that we need to maintain price controls to keep profit on individual item where it is, but increase the total number of items sold. Kind of something I only mentioned briefly but it could definitely use further discussion.
Yes, I am a professional game dev. No I cannot discuss projects I am currently working on. Yes, I would like to discuss games, politics, and general geek culture. Feel free to PM me.

I'm not interested in RP unless I post in a thread about it.

Valthazar

I think what Steampunkette is trying to get at is something similar to Guaranteed minimum income like in some European economies.  While there are many benefits to this type of system, and I think it's actually a great idea, I don't see this coming to the US anytime soon.

Steampunkette

Almost Exactly!

Canada did something similar, as well. But the Conservatives pulled it back pretty hard and it was only ever geared at being support for the poor rather than being an economic boost across the income spectrum.
Yes, I am a professional game dev. No I cannot discuss projects I am currently working on. Yes, I would like to discuss games, politics, and general geek culture. Feel free to PM me.

I'm not interested in RP unless I post in a thread about it.

Ephiral

Quote from: consortium11 on October 13, 2014, 03:36:19 PM
And the evidence that this preceded their rise up the demographics rather than followed it is? Because all of those things applied to both Jews and Chinese-Americans for much of the 20th century.

Moreover, let's look at some specific evidence. 80% of the US Jewish population live in a mere 10 states with 20% in New York and the surrounding suburban areas alone. Within those states they are highly concentrated in the metropolitan areas and even then tend to concentrate in a few specific metropolitan areas. Likewise over 40% of Chinese Americans live in California alone with another 40% living in a four other states and over 80% living in a mere 32 counties. "Ghetto" would be a very pejorative word to describe that but both the Jewish and Chinese-American populations tend to live in a few concentrated municipal areas.
I strongly suggest you look at the rest of that sentence before you object to what appears to be a single word in it. As to your request for evidence... can I see some evidence that the repeal of these laws preceded early shifts in cultural attitudes toward these groups? I'm actually rather curious about the specific timing here, but this is the sort of detailed-but-vaguely-defined question I have trouble researching.

Quote from: consortium11 on October 13, 2014, 03:36:19 PMI suggest you look at opinion pieces of twitter whenever the Israeli/Palastinian conflict bubbles up for the way that "Jew" and "Israeli" (let alone "Israeli Government") are used interchangeably. Here's a quick example of a pretty influential journalist saying that the actions of the Israeli Army represent the actions of an individual British Jew. I'd also check twitter for the way the internet reacts when Israel hits the news... the #Hitlerwasright and #Hitlerdidnothingwrong tags don't trend because no-one uses them. I'd also pay attention to how often references to "typical Jew" appear in the wake of any financial impropriety by a Jewish banker or the like.
And Stormfront doesn't exist because nobody goes there - but that doesn't mean it's representative of the broader culture, does it? I explicitly stated that I'm not saying that discrimination doesn't exist, just that it is not part of the systemic structure and broadly-held values of modern society.

Quote from: consortium11 on October 13, 2014, 03:36:19 PMOn the Chinese-American front in 2010 we had politicians supporting ad campaigns that conflated Chinese Americans and Chinese while arguing that Chinese Americans would celebrate and thank American politicians for taking jobs out of America and giving them to China.
Um. That ad doesn't mention Chinese Americans. Like, at all. It also didn't exactly pass without comment - it was widely criticized for being, y'know, super racist. The Hoekstra ad drew even more criticism, probably due to its much wider audience. In fact, literally every example I can find of a politician who ran anti-Chinese racist ads in 2010 lost. What does that tell us about how society in general receives these messages?




Quote from: Steampunkette on October 13, 2014, 03:56:28 PM
Well, Ephiral. In the hands of private nonprofits and American households in America there is approximately $65,000,000,000,000. The top 10% of the nation control a whopping 75% of it's money. That's $48.75 trillion dollars. Shouldn't be too hard to get 7 trillion out of that.

The money the 10% make over $400,000 per year (single filing, jointly it's pushed to $450k) is taxed at 39%. There are just about 40 million Americans in this bracket. Average earnings hit right around $1.3 million each. So that's $900,000 taxed for an additional 31% for $279,000 additional income for each of those 40 million Americans (Average). That's enough to hand out $30,000 to 372,000,000 people. (279000x40,000,000=11,160,000,000,000/30,000)

America only has 320 million people in it. Most of them aren't adults, yet.
With that data in hand, I'd say it's a great idea, once there are some anti-inflation measures in play as part of the plan. The adult population as it stands, BTW, is approx. 242 470 820 - this is where I got the 7.2 trillion figure from.

Quote from: Steampunkette on October 13, 2014, 04:05:27 PM
Almost Exactly!

Canada did something similar, as well. But the Conservatives pulled it back pretty hard and it was only ever geared at being support for the poor rather than being an economic boost across the income spectrum.
This is something I'd be interested in hearing more about, as I've only ever seen welfare/income assistance positioned and deployed as a minimal social safety-net measure - and I can tell you right now that the barriers to getting it can be considerable.

Steampunkette

Ack! "Most of whom aren't adults" should have been "Many of whom" Complete mistake on my part and I apologize to anyone confused by it.

And yeah, the money's there if we're willing to access it. We could even get rid of some of our social support systems to free up cash in the government's coffers and then add more cash with the increased tax revenues.

Cyprus, France, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxemborg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK all have GMI (guaranteed minimum income) under one name or another.

But most of those presume the person is unemployed and looking for work, rather than boosting the middle class, as well. I don't know all of the details involved, but I do know that most of the nations on that list also use Socialized Healthcare.

Oh wow. That's another thing to consider! Health Care costs in the US are constantly increasing because of the medical debt of people who cannot pay for their treatment. We pay billions every year on that problem. With GMI in place those people could get some decent health insurance, especially with the Affordable Care Act, to offset the cost. While it probably wouldn't lower any of the costs, now (because capitalist greed is a powerful thing), it would make increasing rates less powerful.
Yes, I am a professional game dev. No I cannot discuss projects I am currently working on. Yes, I would like to discuss games, politics, and general geek culture. Feel free to PM me.

I'm not interested in RP unless I post in a thread about it.

consortium11

Quote from: Valthazar on October 13, 2014, 03:57:45 PM
I think what Steampunkette is trying to get at is something similar to Guaranteed minimum income like in some European economies.  While there are many benefits to this type of system, and I think it's actually a great idea, I don't see this coming to the US anytime soon.

It sounds much closer to Basic Income; Guaranteed Minimum Income basically just "tops up" the income someone would get to what the state sees as an acceptable level (frequently around what would be earned doing a full-time minimum wage job) and is subject to certain conditions while Basic Income simply gives people the money.

QuoteConsortium: You're kind of right. Though I did mention that we need to maintain price controls to keep profit on individual item where it is, but increase the total number of items sold. Kind of something I only mentioned briefly but it could definitely use further discussion.

That strikes me as pretty impracticable.

First, demand (let alone need) isn't infinite. Once you buy one high end stereo, why do you need a second? How many cars do a family need (and also note that you'd be driving many low end car manufacturers and second hand dealers out of business because with an extra $30 grand a year in your pocket why go or a low end car when you can have a Mercedes... especially as Mercedes prices would have to stay the same)? How much food does each family need to buy? Etc etc.

I'm also not sure it would work out quite like you envisage. To use a simple example there's a factory that produces widgets. It's a very egalitarian factory and pays each and every worker $25,000 a year. It makes a 10% margin on each widget it produces; i.e. if a widget is sold for $1 it cost $0.90 to make (including all costs). Widgets are sold wholesale to shops who make a 5% margin (so if they sell for $2 then $1.90 goes into the various costs)

Now, if we take that example and apply it to the most basic level of price control (the price has to remain the same) and add in each person getting $30,000 a year then it starts to fall apart. If you're being given $30,000 a year regardless of whether you work or not and if prices are remaining the same then what's the incentive to work at a widget factory for eight hours a day to not even double your income and have relatively little impact on your quality of life? Why not just sit around or do something you find more worthwhile, be it charity work, writing, painting, making music etc etc? So the widget factory would have to offer more money in wages to get people to come to work... and let's remember a 10% wage rise still means they earn less for working a 9-5 then they do for simply being born. You'll very quickly see that 10% margin be massively reduced if not disappear entirely. And if the margin disappears then why bother to make widgets in the first place... you're just losing money. The same goes to the shop that buys the widgets wholesale... it has even less of a margin to work with and so is even more likely to survive an increase in costs. Thus no-one makes widgets and no-one sells widgets... so what happens if you need a widget?

There's a reason that historically price controls have been followed by shortages.

If we take the second option and say that the price can change but the profit has to remain the same then I don't see you how prevent inflation; as costs increase the 10% margin at the factory and 5% margin at the shop both increase, prices creep up and eventually inflation renders the $30,000 increase negligible. If we say that we view profit as an absolute figure rather than a percentage then you get a combination of both effects coming in; the price will still increase which creates inflation but with the profit margin becoming dramatically reduced it makes less and less economic sense to bother to make widgets or sell them.

This is probably worth a different thread; it's a rather separate topic to the legacy of oppression one that opened this discussion.

Valthazar

Quote from: consortium11 on October 13, 2014, 04:39:15 PM
It sounds much closer to Basic Income

Yes, that's the term I was looking for.  Despite its implausibility in the US at the moment, it is something that may garner support from people on several points of the political spectrum.  Social welfare programs can effectively be removed, simplifying much of the red tape and expenses of government bureaucracy. 

consortium11

Quote from: Ephiral on October 13, 2014, 04:14:38 PM
As to your request for evidence... can I see some evidence that the repeal of these laws preceded early shifts in cultural attitudes toward these groups? I'm actually rather curious about the specific timing here, but this is the sort of detailed-but-vaguely-defined question I have trouble researching.

You made the assertion... it's up to you to support it.

My argument is that both Jews and Chinese-Americans went from an underclass to battling for the top of the demographic rankings without anything external but the removal of discriminatory laws. I can support that by pointing to the improving demographic rankings and the repeal of laws. You allege that the cause of them improving to such a degree was a changing attitude from the white majority; what do you have to support that?

Quote from: Ephiral on October 13, 2014, 04:14:38 PMUm. That ad doesn't mention Chinese Americans. Like, at all.

So what, all of the Chinese looking people celebrating Chinese New Year in San Francisco were actually Chinese and not Chinese-American? It uses a video of Chinese New Year in San Francisco as the backdrop to "as they say in China... thank you". That's not even subtle enough to be considered a dog whistle, it's flat out blatant

Ephiral

Quote from: consortium11 on October 13, 2014, 04:52:05 PM
You made the assertion... it's up to you to support it.

My argument is that both Jews and Chinese-Americans went from an underclass to battling for the top of the demographic rankings without anything external but the removal of discriminatory laws. I can support that by pointing to the improving demographic rankings and the repeal of laws. You allege that the cause of them improving to such a degree was a changing attitude from the white majority; what do you have to support that?
Um, no. In order to prove your assertion, you would also need to demonstrate that there were no other factors, and you're the one who opened with that assertion. Given the difficulty in proving a negative, maybe you want to walk back that part? I stated that the improving attitudes and increasing percieved whiteness of these groups was a factor in their improving status, not the sole cause.

Quote from: consortium11 on October 13, 2014, 04:52:05 PMSo what, all of the Chinese looking people celebrating Chinese New Year in San Francisco were actually Chinese and not Chinese-American? It uses a video of Chinese New Year in San Francisco as the backdrop to "as they say in China... thank you". That's not even subtle enough to be considered a dog whistle, it's flat out blatant
I'm sorry, I didn't recognize San Francisco from a three-second clip of a random street. I wouldn't exactly say that's blatant - what part of the target audience do you think would recognize it? - but I'll give you dog-whistle.

You ignore the point that this ad lost - society got a chance to weigh in and said "no thanks". Are you conceding that?

Kythia

#37
I'm not an economist, so it's entirely possible that I'm mistaken here, but would your proposed system not just lead to colossal inflation until that "free money" was eaten up by inefficiencies in the system and the net result was no change? 

EDIT:  Ignore me, I suck.  Missed the discussion on this above.
242037

Steampunkette

Gonna have to break this one down into sections.

Quote from: consortium11 on October 13, 2014, 04:39:15 PM
It sounds much closer to Basic Income; Guaranteed Minimum Income basically just "tops up" the income someone would get to what the state sees as an acceptable level (frequently around what would be earned doing a full-time minimum wage job) and is subject to certain conditions while Basic Income simply gives people the money.

Right! That is what I'm looking for. Basic Income.

Quote from: consortium11 on October 13, 2014, 04:39:15 PMThat strikes me as pretty impracticable.

It definitely could be, but we've shown the math to -get- that Basic Income is sound and would just require reverting top-tier taxes to their Pre-Reagan state.

Quote from: consortium11 on October 13, 2014, 04:39:15 PMFirst, demand (let alone need) isn't infinite. Once you buy one high end stereo, why do you need a second? How many cars do a family need (and also note that you'd be driving many low end car manufacturers and second hand dealers out of business because with an extra $30 grand a year in your pocket why go or a low end car when you can have a Mercedes... especially as Mercedes prices would have to stay the same)? How much food does each family need to buy? Etc etc.

Yes... and no. How many people would buy the high end stereo is an important factor, there. If we're talking about the majority of the population living under the poverty line under crushing debt then most of that $30k is going to go to securing one's stability. Housing, food, utilities... And that's pretty much it. Minimum Wage living puts you right above the poverty line but it's not like you have cash to throw around after that point. Sure someone could live, with modest comfort, at the poverty line indefinitely, but if they ever hope to improve their lot in life or supply a better life to their family or friends then they're SoL.

A lot of people in this nation skip meals or don't eat for multiple days in a row because they can't afford to put food on the table. Basic Income would give them that ability. High end or luxury items would still be exactly that. They'd just be slightly more attainable by people working to improve their lot in life.

A Person who makes $25,000 a year will not be able to afford a Mercedes Benz with Basic Income added to it. At least, not if they want to pay off all their bills, cover debts, put food on the table, and enjoy some nights or weekends out partying or enjoying themselves. And those who forgo simple pleasures in favor of getting a Benz are still working 40 hours a week, 50 weeks out of the year to afford a new car (assuming they get any vacation pay).

Though, really, it's kind of silly to talk about people working over 28 hours a week on minimum wage, since most every company that employs minimum wage employees keeps them part time to avoid having to pay for any benefits. There's a lot of different angles to consider beyond supply and demand.

Quote from: consortium11 on October 13, 2014, 04:39:15 PMI'm also not sure it would work out quite like you envisage. To use a simple example there's a factory that produces widgets. It's a very egalitarian factory and pays each and every worker $25,000 a year. It makes a 10% margin on each widget it produces; i.e. if a widget is sold for $1 it cost $0.90 to make (including all costs). Widgets are sold wholesale to shops who make a 5% margin (so if they sell for $2 then $1.90 goes into the various costs)

Now, if we take that example and apply it to the most basic level of price control (the price has to remain the same) and add in each person getting $30,000 a year then it starts to fall apart. If you're being given $30,000 a year regardless of whether you work or not and if prices are remaining the same then what's the incentive to work at a widget factory for eight hours a day to not even double your income and have relatively little impact on your quality of life? Why not just sit around or do something you find more worthwhile, be it charity work, writing, painting, making music etc etc? So the widget factory would have to offer more money in wages to get people to come to work... and let's remember a 10% wage rise still means they earn less for working a 9-5 then they do for simply being born. You'll very quickly see that 10% margin be massively reduced if not disappear entirely. And if the margin disappears then why bother to make widgets in the first place... you're just losing money. The same goes to the shop that buys the widgets wholesale... it has even less of a margin to work with and so is even more likely to survive an increase in costs. Thus no-one makes widgets and no-one sells widgets... so what happens if you need a widget?

Really simplistic examples fall apart super fast. that's not a surprise. But let's get into it, anyway. You can work at a Widget Factory and pull down $55,000 a year or you can not work at a widget factory and make $30,000 per year. You'll have to make the choice to stop hanging out with work friends and disconnect yourselves from their lives, ignore the time and energy and emotional investment you've put into the company, and all other considerations to do it, but you could give up that $30,000 a year "Raise" and instead get a $5,00 a year "Raise". Sure.

And, again, I point to the ability to get the money you need to improve your life, pay off your debts, and work towards a brighter future for yourself, your family, and your friends.

The key component to your example is, as it has ever been, that the factors presented are the only factors that are important to the worker's decision. Well... that and the terribly wrong conceit that $25k a year isn't worthwhile to someone making just above poverty level wages. "We're asking you to work the same amount as before for the same amount as before and you'll have even more money, too" does not equate.

And even when you do find these "Lazy" people that your premise pushes for, our unemployment rate is high enough that people from all over the nation would scramble to make widgets because they WANT $55,000 a year instead of $30,000 a year. And that's not even touching on the Migrant Workers who would be ecstatic beyond reason to get into a factory rather than traveling from location to location picking plants in the hot summer months.

The premise itself is flawed because it doesn't consider all of the variables involved. It assumes that no one wants more than to live on the absolute minimum level of money.

Quote from: consortium11 on October 13, 2014, 04:39:15 PMThere's a reason that historically price controls have been followed by shortages.

If we take the second option and say that the price can change but the profit has to remain the same then I don't see you how prevent inflation; as costs increase the 10% margin at the factory and 5% margin at the shop both increase, prices creep up and eventually inflation renders the $30,000 increase negligible. If we say that we view profit as an absolute figure rather than a percentage then you get a combination of both effects coming in; the price will still increase which creates inflation but with the profit margin becoming dramatically reduced it makes less and less economic sense to bother to make widgets or sell them.

You're still hanging on to that flawed line of reasoning. Yeah, situations with price controls have historically been met with inflation and shortages. But you're looking at nations with 1/10th the economic power of the US. Often with about 1/3rd it's population or less. Would there be shortages in the short run? Probably. Really it's almost definite. Wal-Mart doesn't stock each of it's stores with shitloads more product than it currently sells, though it has the ability to increase the throughput at a moment's notice through a massive fleet of trucks. Wal-Mart could afford, however, to constantly restock it's stores with absolutely ridiculous quantities of product, day after day after day. And would be able to access even more product to put on it's shelves with the increased spending.

America has massive surpluses of basically everything. Especially food and other basic necessities. We ship overseas and throw away massive amounts of food because we can't sell it all. And it should be noted that this paycheck wouldn't be a $30,000 check with your tax returns, but a $570 check mailed out weekly (or $1,140 mailed out once every two weeks). How much of that would be immediately turned over for rent, McDonald's, electric bills, medical bills, student loan debt, and more?

Quote from: consortium11 on October 13, 2014, 04:39:15 PMThis is probably worth a different thread; it's a rather separate topic to the legacy of oppression one that opened this discussion.

Maybe. Feel free to open one and we'll discuss the implications. <3

Kylie: Price controls. One of the concessions made in my previous post was to institute in initial price controls, something Lassez Faire capitalism couldn't abide. Then Consortium brought up the above points.
Yes, I am a professional game dev. No I cannot discuss projects I am currently working on. Yes, I would like to discuss games, politics, and general geek culture. Feel free to PM me.

I'm not interested in RP unless I post in a thread about it.

consortium11

Quote from: Ephiral on October 13, 2014, 05:02:36 PM
Um, no. In order to prove your assertion, you would also need to demonstrate that there were no other factors, and you're the one who opened with that assertion. Given the difficulty in proving a negative, maybe you want to walk back that part? I stated that the improving attitudes and increasing percieved whiteness of these groups was a factor in their improving status, not the sole cause.

Well, no.

What I actually said... and you quoted this so you should remember... was:

QuoteIn pretty much every measurable way outside of employment rates (where the Jewish rate is slightly lower than the US average, although that is largely considered to be due to an aging population) US Jews are in a better position than non-Jews. And this came about not by specific or deliberate actions but simply by repealing the discriminatory laws that had once impacted on the Jewish community.

There were no specific or deliberate actions taken to overcome the "legacy of oppression" that Jews or Chinese Americans faced and the only formal measure that occurred was the repeal of discriminatory legislation. You said:

QuoteI would say it has more to do with shifting cultural definitions.

and

QuoteThere was a shift in societal perception of these groups, granting them access to some or all of the benefits of white privilege.

(And considering the fact that these groups outperform non-Jewish whites across the spectrum shouldn't that rather change the concept of "white" privilege; if we're using the video game "easy mode" analogy then being born Jewish or Chinese American in the US turns it to "very easy").

This claim is presented utterly unsupported by evidence and when I asked for some you asked me to disprove you rather than provide some yourself. If you want to assert that the reason... or even one of the reasons... behind this improvement was that there was a change of attitude by the majority which pre-empted the improvement then you need evidence to support it not simply go "prove me wrong!".

Quote from: Ephiral on October 13, 2014, 05:02:36 PMI'm sorry, I didn't recognize San Francisco from a three-second clip of a random street. I wouldn't exactly say that's blatant - what part of the target audience do you think would recognize it? - but I'll give you dog-whistle.

The shop signs being in English wasn't a clue? Or the fact that one of the central foreground figures is black (not exactly a large population in China even in Guangzhou)?

Quote from: Ephiral on October 13, 2014, 05:02:36 PMYou ignore the point that this ad lost - society got a chance to weigh in and said "no thanks". Are you conceding that?

40% of voters supported him in that election... that's hardly a ringing endorsement by society. Todd Akin, he of "if it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down" fame, got a lesser share of the vote during his election... does that mean that society at large got a chance to weigh in and now there are no issues with rape, rape culture, abortion or sexual consent? In fact if we're using the fact that a candidate lost an election as evidence that society got a chance to weigh in and say "no thanks" then a huge number of racist and homophobic politicians have lost elections... does that mean that society has rejected racism and homophobia?

Ephiral

Quote from: consortium11 on October 13, 2014, 05:55:16 PM
Well, no.

What I actually said... and you quoted this so you should remember... was:
See the bit about "simply by repealing discriminatory laws"? That was what I was challenging. This is saying that their position was achieved by challenging the laws and nothing else. I'll withdraw my argument about shifting social attitudes (though I still hold it as a hypothesis) as I really can't dig up a lot of concrete material right now, but that still leaves you with the burden of supporting this assertion.

Quote from: consortium11 on October 13, 2014, 05:55:16 PMThe shop signs being in English wasn't a clue? Or the fact that one of the central foreground figures is black (not exactly a large population in China even in Guangzhou)?
In a three-second clip where the focus was elsewhere, half of which had a massive graphics overlay? No, sorry, it wasn't.

Quote from: consortium11 on October 13, 2014, 05:55:16 PM40% of voters supported him in that election... that's hardly a ringing endorsement by society. Todd Akin, he of "if it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down" fame, got a lesser share of the vote during his election... does that mean that society at large got a chance to weigh in and now there are no issues with rape, rape culture, abortion or sexual consent? In fact if we're using the fact that a candidate lost an election as evidence that society got a chance to weigh in and say "no thanks" then a huge number of racist and homophobic politicians have lost elections... does that mean that society has rejected racism and homophobia?
For. Fuck's. Sake. Let me say it again, in large print, in the hopes that it will sink in:

I am not saying that these problems are over.

In fact, I find it rather insulting that you keep putting these words in my mouth despite my repeated repudiation. I am saying that they are not, as a rule, the prevailing attitudes, and that certain groups face far less systemic oppression than other groups, or than they historically did. Racism, sexism, you-name-it-ism are not over - looking at my post history should disabuse you of any possible belief that I think this - but certain subsets of them have passed out of common, actively-held belief by the general populace. Believe it or not, oppression does vary in nature and degree between differing groups.

consortium11

Quote from: Steampunkette on October 13, 2014, 05:18:44 PM
Yes... and no. How many people would buy the high end stereo is an important factor, there. If we're talking about the majority of the population living under the poverty line under crushing debt then most of that $30k is going to go to securing one's stability. Housing, food, utilities... And that's pretty much it. Minimum Wage living puts you right above the poverty line but it's not like you have cash to throw around after that point. Sure someone could live, with modest comfort, at the poverty line indefinitely, but if they ever hope to improve their lot in life or supply a better life to their family or friends then they're SoL.

But that doesn't correspond with the evidence we have; from roughly 2000 to 2008 as average household income increased so did average household debt. As people earn or are given more money they spend more money and generally not on paying debts down but instead on consumer goods. For the most blatant example of that look at Nauru; during the 1960's and 1970's it had the highest per-capita income in the world due to payments by companies which wanted to use it's natural gas (there's quite an interesting short segment on it here). The problem was that the people simply spent the money, their attempts to save or create a viable income stream were laughable (notably funding the musical flop Leonardo the Musical). As much as we may hope that people may pay down debt the truth is they're unlikely to.

And even if they do pay down debt, what happens when it's all paid off? Average US debt today (including mortgages) is just over $200,000 (note, that only applies to households that have some debt; if you remove the households that don't have any credit card debt for example then the average credit card debt drops from around $15,000 to around $7,200). That means that within a decade of getting $30,000 a year all that debt will likely be paid off and thus the issues about demand rise again.

Quote from: Steampunkette on October 13, 2014, 05:18:44 PMA lot of people in this nation skip meals or don't eat for multiple days in a row because they can't afford to put food on the table. Basic Income would give them that ability. High end or luxury items would still be exactly that. They'd just be slightly more attainable by people working to improve their lot in life.

The poverty threshold (the point at which all basic needs can be fulfilled) is set at around $23,000 at the moment for a family of four. Even if we say that's too restrictive and it's closer to say $30,000 a family of four with two parents would get at least double that through the $30k a year gift. That's not just putting food on the table; it's giving $30k above that.

Quote from: Steampunkette on October 13, 2014, 05:18:44 PMA Person who makes $25,000 a year will not be able to afford a Mercedes Benz with Basic Income added to it. At least, not if they want to pay off all their bills, cover debts, put food on the table, and enjoy some nights or weekends out partying or enjoying themselves. And those who forgo simple pleasures in favor of getting a Benz are still working 40 hours a week, 50 weeks out of the year to afford a new car (assuming they get any vacation pay).

A person making $55,000 per year can certainly afford a Benz while still buying food, partying and paying off some debt. Under your plan it wasn't a $30,000 one-off, it was per year.

Quote from: Steampunkette on October 13, 2014, 05:18:44 PMReally simplistic examples fall apart super fast. that's not a surprise. But let's get into it, anyway. You can work at a Widget Factory and pull down $55,000 a year or you can not work at a widget factory and make $30,000 per year. You'll have to make the choice to stop hanging out with work friends and disconnect yourselves from their lives, ignore the time and energy and emotional investment you've put into the company, and all other considerations to do it, but you could give up that $30,000 a year "Raise" and instead get a $5,00 a year "Raise". Sure.

Why can't you hang our with work friends? I still hang out with a lot of people who work at companies that I used to work at (and who often earn considerably more than me).

While you can find people with what could be described as stereotypical "working class pride" you can also find a lot of people... especially in lower level jobs... who don't care about their employer or work beyond picking up their pay.

Remember, each individual person would earn more than the US national average wage for a household today under the system. With prices being forced to remain the same that means that they get a pretty damn good lifestyle without having to work... and certainly without having to work fulltime.

Quote from: Steampunkette on October 13, 2014, 05:18:44 PMAnd, again, I point to the ability to get the money you need to improve your life, pay off your debts, and work towards a brighter future for yourself, your family, and your friends.

But with $30k a year in my pocket I can also get the money I need to improve my life, pay off debts and work toward a brighter future while also getting to spend far more time with my family, indulging my passions, doing creative work like writing, crafting, painting etc, volunteering, doing charity work etc etc.

Quote from: Steampunkette on October 13, 2014, 05:18:44 PMThe key component to your example is, as it has ever been, that the factors presented are the only factors that are important to the worker's decision. Well... that and the terribly wrong conceit that $25k a year isn't worthwhile to someone making just above poverty level wages. "We're asking you to work the same amount as before for the same amount as before and you'll have even more money, too" does not equate.

As above, the poverty level for a four person household is $23,000. Under this system a four person household with two parents and two children would be earning going on three times as much without working. IIRC the individual poverty threshold is around $11,000... again, around a third of what they'd be earning under your system. With prices remaining the same the poverty threshold wouldn't change.

Let's also remember what might not equate; "we're asking you to work a full 40 hour week in a widget factory for less money than you earn simply by sitting there doing nothing."

Quote from: Steampunkette on October 13, 2014, 05:18:44 PMAnd even when you do find these "Lazy" people that your premise pushes for, our unemployment rate is high enough that people from all over the nation would scramble to make widgets because they WANT $55,000 a year instead of $30,000 a year. And that's not even touching on the Migrant Workers who would be ecstatic beyond reason to get into a factory rather than traveling from location to location picking plants in the hot summer months.

1) I'm specifically avoiding the talk of "lazy" people because that wasn't my point. Very few people live to work... there's a reason we don't tend to do our jobs for free when off the clock. We have interests and wants outside our working lives; if given the chance to indulge them full time while still earning around three times the poverty threshold wouldn't you be tempted?

2) US unemployment level if 5.9%... that's not a historic low but neither is it particularly high.

3) So if the migrant workers are working at the factory and not in the fields (assuming they do decide to work in the factory to begin with), who's picking pants in the hot summer months? Why would they choose to pick plants in the hot summer months in pretty backbreaking, unreliable labour rather than simply collect their $30,000?

Quote from: Steampunkette on October 13, 2014, 05:18:44 PMThe premise itself is flawed because it doesn't consider all of the variables involved. It assumes that no one wants more than to live on the absolute minimum level of money.

The absolute minimum level of money would be around $11-12,000 per adult; that's enough to put them over the poverty threshold. This is roughly three times that.

Quote from: Steampunkette on October 13, 2014, 05:18:44 PMYou're still hanging on to that flawed line of reasoning. Yeah, situations with price controls have historically been met with inflation and shortages. But you're looking at nations with 1/10th the economic power of the US. Often with about 1/3rd it's population or less.

California's frequent power shortages in the late 90's and early 2000's were at least partially the fault of price controls that meant that it cost more for utility companies to buy electricity than they were allowed to sell it for. Market manipulation (notably by Enron) deservedly gets much of the blame but price controls shouldn't be ignored either; it forced Pacific Gas and Electric Company into bankrucpcy within three years. Likewise one can look at the situation relating to oil in 1973 where the US introduced price controls and was caught out when the wholesale price shot up, leading to huge queues, rationing and rioting.

Quote from: Steampunkette on October 13, 2014, 05:18:44 PMWould there be shortages in the short run? Probably. Really it's almost definite. Wal-Mart doesn't stock each of it's stores with shitloads more product than it currently sells, though it has the ability to increase the throughput at a moment's notice through a massive fleet of trucks. Wal-Mart could afford, however, to constantly restock it's stores with absolutely ridiculous quantities of product, day after day after day. And would be able to access even more product to put on it's shelves with the increased spending.

What happens when the wholesale price increases? What happens when there's an sharp increase in oil prices and it costs more to get goods to the stores then they make by selling them? What happens if electricity prices go up? What happens when Walmart staff on zero-hour part time contracts earning minimum wage decide that it's not worth working there and don't? What happens when international traders, not bound by these price restrictions, massively hike the costs of imports?

And I thought we wouldn't see a huge increase in spending, with most of the money going on paying off debt?

Quote from: Steampunkette on October 13, 2014, 05:18:44 PMAmerica has massive surpluses of basically everything. Especially food and other basic necessities. We ship overseas and throw away massive amounts of food because we can't sell it all.

A significant amount of food waste is bought by consumers and then not consumed; it's not all overproduction, it's also overourchasing; people purchasing more food would likely only contribute to that. For example, 33% of the seafood that reaches the consumer is wasted, far more than at the production stage (11%), handling and storage (5%), processing and packaging (5%) or distribution and retail (9.5%). For an even more stark example, 17.5% of all milk that reaches consumers is wasted... vastly more than the 3% lost at production, 0.25% lost at handling and storage, 0.5% lost in processing and packaging and 0.25% lost at retail (i.e spoiled or unsold).

Quote from: Steampunkette on October 13, 2014, 05:18:44 PMAnd it should be noted that this paycheck wouldn't be a $30,000 check with your tax returns, but a $570 check mailed out weekly (or $1,140 mailed out once every two weeks). How much of that would be immediately turned over for rent, McDonald's, electric bills, medical bills, student loan debt, and more?

Aren't most of those bills paid either at least monthly (if not tri-monthly) or on a meter system rather than on a weekly or bi-weekly basis? On that account relatively few.

Anyway, back of a matchbox maths.

Average rent in the USA for a three bed apartment is just over $300 a week (although presumably the people we're aiming this at would be living in properties that cost less than the average apartment). Basic utilities are just under $40 a week. Weekly student loan repayments are around $50. Out of pocket healthcare expenses average out at around $60. That combines to $450 leaving $130 for McDonalds and other expenses each week... and remember, that's the average where a huge difference can be made depending on where someone lives for example (a relatively slick three bedroom, two bathroom apartment in Kansas City can be had for $795 a month which averages out to under $200 a week giving an extra $100 to spend).

consortium11

Quote from: Ephiral on October 13, 2014, 06:17:45 PM
See the bit about "simply by repealing discriminatory laws"? That was what I was challenging. This is saying that their position was achieved by challenging the laws and nothing else. I'll withdraw my argument about shifting social attitudes (though I still hold it as a hypothesis) as I really can't dig up a lot of concrete material right now, but that still leaves you with the burden of supporting this assertion.

In the early 1900's when most of the discriminatory laws were still in place both Jews and Chinese-Americans were demographically an underclass. As the century progressed these laws were repealed and the Jews and Chinese-Americans improved demographically. Now, with around 50 years of those laws being repealed entirely both have risen to be right at the top of pretty much all the key demographics; income, life expectancy, education etc in a way that they hadn't done throughout the entire previous history of the US when those laws were in place.

That's a supported assertion. The laws were in place; the group were an underclass. The laws were removed; in a short time (in historical terms) they rose to the top of the pile.

Now, the interesting question... and the one that touches more on the thread title and many of the points in the original post is why these two groups were able to throw off their "legacy of oppression" and progress to the top of the demographics once those laws were appealed but why African-Americans (for example) haven't been able to... and why recent African immigrants outperform African-Americans demographically. Jews and Chinese-Americans were oppressed in similar (if not always quite as severe) ways to African-Americans over their history and you'd think that prima-facie African immigrants should face the same legacy of oppression today.

Quote from: Ephiral on October 13, 2014, 06:17:45 PMFor. Fuck's. Sake. Let me say it again, in large print, in the hopes that it will sink in:

I am not saying that these problems are over.

In fact, I find it rather insulting that you keep putting these words in my mouth despite my repeated repudiation. I am saying that they are not, as a rule, the prevailing attitudes, and that certain groups face far less systemic oppression than other groups, or than they historically did. Racism, sexism, you-name-it-ism are not over - looking at my post history should disabuse you of any possible belief that I think this - but certain subsets of them have passed out of common, actively-held belief by the general populace. Believe it or not, oppression does vary in nature and degree between differing groups.

I don't disagree with any of this.

But antisemitism is alive and well and pretty well ingrained into society at large... again, look at the reaction by non-Jews whenever Israel does something newsworthy and follow twitter (in today's world frequently cited as evidence of "isms"). Or look at these stats produced by the ADL (so admittedly a biased source): 30% of Americans believe Jews are more loyal to Israel than the US and 30% believe the Jews killed Jesus.

And I disagree with your way of supporting your assertion. The fact that a politician who ran a dog-whistle (to be very generous to him) anti-Chinese-American ad lost an election isn't evidence that society as a whole has said no to racism against them when he still got 40% of the vote. And if losing an election where you dogwhistle a particular 'ism is evidence that society as a whole has abandoned that idea then the fact that so many Republicans who made sexist, misogynistic and racist (primarily at Hispanics and African-Americans) comments during their election campaigns lost should likewise mean that those 'ism's are a thing of the past; I think we'd both agree they aren't. 

Ephiral

Quote from: consortium11 on October 13, 2014, 08:21:18 PM
In the early 1900's when most of the discriminatory laws were still in place both Jews and Chinese-Americans were demographically an underclass. As the century progressed these laws were repealed and the Jews and Chinese-Americans improved demographically. Now, with around 50 years of those laws being repealed entirely both have risen to be right at the top of pretty much all the key demographics; income, life expectancy, education etc in a way that they hadn't done throughout the entire previous history of the US when those laws were in place.

That's a supported assertion. The laws were in place; the group were an underclass. The laws were removed; in a short time (in historical terms) they rose to the top of the pile.
"Simply" is the key problem here, though. Are you saying that nothing else happened that improved their lot? At all? Because that's what that implies, and what I was objecting to.

Quote from: consortium11 on October 13, 2014, 08:21:18 PMNow, the interesting question... and the one that touches more on the thread title and many of the points in the original post is why these two groups were able to throw off their "legacy of oppression" and progress to the top of the demographics once those laws were appealed but why African-Americans (for example) haven't been able to... and why recent African immigrants outperform African-Americans demographically. Jews and Chinese-Americans were oppressed in similar (if not always quite as severe) ways to African-Americans over their history and you'd think that prima-facie African immigrants should face the same legacy of oppression today.
Well... for one thing, there hasn't been quite the same cultural shift. There might not be explicit laws against being black, but it's an awfully good way to get shot while unarmed, or to get far more scrutiny from police, or worse sentences for the same crimes, or to be targeted by subprime lenders...

As to the question about African immigrants: I'd argue that transoceanic immigrants from impoverished nations that often have problems with violence are self-selecting for exceptional drive and willingness to tolerate shit conditions. They should be expected, given similar opportunities, to perform above average.

Quote from: consortium11 on October 13, 2014, 08:21:18 PMBut antisemitism is alive and well and pretty well ingrained into society at large... again, look at the reaction by non-Jews whenever Israel does something newsworthy and follow twitter (in today's world frequently cited as evidence of "isms"). Or look at these stats produced by the ADL (so admittedly a biased source): 30% of Americans believe Jews are more loyal to Israel than the US and 30% believe the Jews killed Jesus.
First: I'm not able to view the article, but if more than one-third of those groups overlap... then they're still a minority in society at large. (Somehow, I expect the overlap is way way higher. Second: I think I'm expressing myself poorly; let me try to put it in other terms. "Jews are bad" is not one of the memes that define and shape US culture. Even if thousands of people express the idea, those people appear to be a minority, and cultural portrayals of Jews and Jewish culture are neutral to positive - the antisemitic stereotypes basically don't turn up in the zeitgeist, except to be mocked. Policy and culture aren't shaped in any meaningful sense by antisemitism.

Now compare this to how black people, as the most obvious example, are handled. It's not hard to find black people portrayed in the media as violent criminals, doing little or nothing productive. Black culture is mocked, undervalued, or decried as harmful. There is active and visible anti-black bias in employment and law enforcement - bias which, in turn, leaves them less able to meaningfully impact the wider culture. Politicians still get elected on dog-whistle platforms about reducing black entitlement and black crime. Laws are being passed to disenfranchise groups of people that just happen to be predominantly black.

That's the shift I'm talking about. Jews were where blacks are once, and they still have to deal with antisemitism - but it's nowhere near as all-pervasive and omnipresent, and it doesn't shape their world to anywhere near the same extent. Hell, if you're going to say "Look at attitudes toward Israel", then I would argue that there's a strong overtone of pro-semitism in American policy.

Quote from: consortium11 on October 13, 2014, 08:21:18 PMAnd I disagree with your way of supporting your assertion. The fact that a politician who ran a dog-whistle (to be very generous to him) anti-Chinese-American ad lost an election isn't evidence that society as a whole has said no to racism against them when he still got 40% of the vote. And if losing an election where you dogwhistle a particular 'ism is evidence that society as a whole has abandoned that idea then the fact that so many Republicans who made sexist, misogynistic and racist (primarily at Hispanics and African-Americans) comments during their election campaigns lost should likewise mean that those 'ism's are a thing of the past; I think we'd both agree they aren't.
We will agree that they aren't because, yet again, I never said any of this - including discrimination against Jewish or Chinese people - was a thing of the past. Again, though, it's not an idea that shapes culture or policy on any meaningful level. And no, one politician isn't definitive - but again, literally every single example that year (and there are multiples on both sides of the US political divide) lost. They literally asked everybody, in a number of places throughout the US, whether someone whose defining aspect was "says bad things about the Chinese" is representative of their values and desires. Every single time, in every single place, the majority said no. If that's not the broader society rejecting an idea, what exactly is?

elone

#44
Quote from: consortium11 on October 13, 2014, 08:21:18 PM

Now, the interesting question... and the one that touches more on the thread title and many of the points in the original post is why these two groups were able to throw off their "legacy of oppression" and progress to the top of the demographics once those laws were appealed but why African-Americans (for example) haven't been able to... and why recent African immigrants outperform African-Americans demographically. Jews and Chinese-Americans were oppressed in similar (if not always quite as severe) ways to African-Americans over their history and you'd think that prima-facie African immigrants should face the same legacy of oppression today.

This statement to me seems to imply that Jews and Chinese Americans are genetically superior as a group than are African Americans, or are you just saying that African Americans are just naturally lazy and have no desire to raise themselves out of poverty. Also, to think that discrimination against Jewish and Chinese in this country can be in any way similar to hundreds of years of slavery is just wrong.


Quote from: consortium11 on October 13, 2014, 08:21:18 PM
But antisemitism is alive and well and pretty well ingrained into society at large... again, look at the reaction by non-Jews whenever Israel does something newsworthy and follow twitter (in today's world frequently cited as evidence of "isms"). Or look at these stats produced by the ADL (so admittedly a biased source): 30% of Americans believe Jews are more loyal to Israel than the US and 30% believe the Jews killed Jesus.

To quote any study done by the ADL, even with a disclaimer, is inviting controversy. If there is any group that has no  clear moral compass when dealing with the subject of anti-semitism, they are it. Throwing the anti-semitism card into the game every time someone speaks unkindly of a government's actions is old news.

Also, while there is definitely still anti-semitism in the world, there is also a lot of justifiable criticism of the policies and government of Israel. This does not translate nor necessarily imply anti-semitism any more than criticism of the United States government implies anti-Christianism.

Sorry for getting off track on this thread, but someone had to say something about this.
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Ephiral

Honestly, I was avoiding the "questioning Israel is antisemitic!" thing because holy shit is that a huge derailing shitfight waiting to happen... which was kinda small-minded and lazy of me. So I'm glad you said it.

elone

Quote from: Ephiral on October 13, 2014, 09:31:54 PM
Honestly, I was avoiding the "questioning Israel is antisemitic!" thing because holy shit is that a huge derailing shitfight waiting to happen... which was kinda small-minded and lazy of me. So I'm glad you said it.

You are right about that shitfight, it seems to be a taboo subject here on E. Not one word on Gaza. Enough said, sorry for derailing this interesting topic, I have followed every word of it and find it quite interesting.
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Steampunkette

I'm not gonna go into a point by point discussion because it's rapidly becoming obvious that it's not going to help. But here are three notes.

Yes. People who get a WINDFALL are more likely to use the windfall on immediate needs, enjoyment, or securing things they want but normally cannot afford. Look to Tax Returns or Christmas Bonuses, maybe Inheritance or Lottery Wins for an example of what I mean by that. People who essentially get a -raise- don't typically go out and rack up a shitload of additional debt. When it's a consistent amount of money that will not decrease over time they are more likely to treat it in a completely different manner. And sure, people took on additional debt from 2000 to 2008. I wonder if that might have anything to do with the predatory lending practices that collapsed the housing market and wiped most of those people out?

Yes. Apartments on average don't cost a whole lot compared to the money being discussed. And then you hit big cities and other places with large minority populations and you'll see the prices jump higher for less space, quality, and so forth. Of course all of that is kind of irrelevant since the intent is to help repair economic oppressive structures that have kept people from owning HOMES. Cars. Real Estate. Real Property that gives them further buying power over time through improvements and the ability to apply for liens.

As for the Benz: Credit is important. And sure. Someone who works a 40 hour a week minimum wage job (or more likely two jobs at 20 a week) can afford a Benz... So? That's another debt that will last for 3-7 years (depending on credit rating and such). Shouldn't that be an option? Shouldn't that be something that we look towards? More people having the buying power to help revive the automotive industry? Or is it specifically the idea that only people of a certain "Class" should have new cars of this kind? Even if it is that case, Benzes aren't that much more expensive than Hondas. Low end of a new Benz is right there with the mid-range of a Honda. High end is beyond it but, hey, if someone's willing to spend the money what, exactly is the problem?

It just really seems like you're using a lot of "Well they're poor." in your position. The insistence that 30k is too much, that nice cars or good stereos will be purchased, and 11k is closer to "Right" and I can't help but ask: Why? We are the wealthiest nation on the planet. Why shouldn't our lowest class of people have money and nice things and a good life, just for being Americans?

Homelessness: Severely reduced (There's kids on the street)
Muggings: Severely reduced (People who are desperate attack others)
Prostitution: Severely reduced (People who are desperate turn to it)
Gang Violence: Significantly reduced (People getting out and moving)
Destitution: People would have the money to support themselves and live good lives.
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Steampunkette

Oh. Unemployment. VERY Misleading.

5.9% of people are DRAWING Unemployment Benefits.

Shitloads more are past the maximum limit on Unemployment.

Also 5.9% of the country is 18,644,000 people. That's a hell of a lot of people, no matter how small 5.9% looks.
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elone

Quote from: Steampunkette on October 13, 2014, 10:01:26 PM

Homelessness: Severely reduced (There's kids on the street)
Muggings: Severely reduced (People who are desperate attack others)
Prostitution: Severely reduced (People who are desperate turn to it)
Gang Violence: Significantly reduced (People getting out and moving)
Destitution: People would have the money to support themselves and live good lives.

I'm not nearly as optimistic.

Homelessness: Rents raised, housing prices triple. People taken advantage of by unscrupulous landlords. Living in their Benz parked on the street.
Muggings: Increased, more people with money to rob.
Prostitution: Becomes a more lucrative profession, more people with money to burn means higher pay.
Gang Violence: Gangs go to better neighborhoods. Drug use increases and gang turf wars increase.
Destitution: People blow their money and are left wanting more. Rioting ensues.

What you haven't accounted for in all of this are human failings. Not everyone is going to be content just because they have more money. Greed would quickly kick in. Actually, this would make a good novel, could be either wonderful or disaster.
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Ephiral

On the other hand, Consortium, I think you underestimate how many people get into some of this stuff purely because of a lack of opportunity. Gang violence, for instance... we already have upper-middle-class kids getting involved with gangs, but they're waaaaaay less common than kids who see gangs as the only way to some possible measure of success. Prostitution: Overall, it might go up or down, based on the factors you've both named - but you're likely to see a lot less exploitative prostitution. The factor you've cited would lead to an increase in people choosing to enter sex work, maybe... but that's not really a problem. Muggings, too, are generally a crime born of desperation and poverty - I wouldn't expect to see more of them when nobody feels they need to commit a violent crime to put food on the table. On destitution: People do that now and are somehow not rioting on a regular basis. What is your basis for saying that this would happen?

So... you might be right on one out of five here?

Steampunkette

All of the Ephiral.

Contrary to popular belief most criminals don't commit crimes because they're antisocial shitstains that deserve to be gunned down like dogs. It's because they're desperate. It's because they have a terrible need that goes unfulfilled and are willing to break laws to fulfill it.

And yeah, to be clear: Exploitative Prostitution is what I was referring as opposed to reasoned sex work. People going out to the corner so they can buy enough food to survive would be less common. I have no qualms about sex workers who choose their career path.

And the idea that all people (or enough to be a problem) are inherently greedy is dumb. It always has been. You raise people in a Capitalist Society and they will act like Capitalists. It's learned behavior, not inherent to humanity. And the only way to objectively prove whether it's inherent or learned would be to give birth to a set of children and raise them in a completely unbiased environment with no human interaction outside of each other, then study them. Then you would have some idea of what humans are like "Inherently" and what sort of innate moral codes develop.

My money is on a cooperative commune like apes, where greed and theft are punished by exile and death!

Of course such a thing is unthinkable and immoral on a massive scale, and is thus beyond the pale of what we could do, even if we had the technology and ability to winnow out all social factors.
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elone

Quote from: Steampunkette on October 14, 2014, 12:54:20 AM
All of the Ephiral.

Contrary to popular belief most criminals don't commit crimes because they're antisocial shitstains that deserve to be gunned down like dogs. It's because they're desperate. It's because they have a terrible need that goes unfulfilled and are willing to break laws to fulfill it.

And yeah, to be clear: Exploitative Prostitution is what I was referring as opposed to reasoned sex work. People going out to the corner so they can buy enough food to survive would be less common. I have no qualms about sex workers who choose their career path.

And the idea that all people (or enough to be a problem) are inherently greedy is dumb. It always has been. You raise people in a Capitalist Society and they will act like Capitalists. It's learned behavior, not inherent to humanity. And the only way to objectively prove whether it's inherent or learned would be to give birth to a set of children and raise them in a completely unbiased environment with no human interaction outside of each other, then study them. Then you would have some idea of what humans are like "Inherently" and what sort of innate moral codes develop.

My money is on a cooperative commune like apes, where greed and theft are punished by exile and death!

Of course such a thing is unthinkable and immoral on a massive scale, and is thus beyond the pale of what we could do, even if we had the technology and ability to winnow out all social factors.

You are right, criminals do have a terrible need they need to fulfill. That need is for more than they have. Giving them an extra $575 a week or so is not going to fulfill that need. I spent time in the military, probably the most equal place you might find. Equal pay, equal housing, etc., yet there was no lack of crime on post. Muggings, robbery, theft, drugs, etc. My background was Military Police Investigations.

So now we have to completely rid ourselves of a Capitalist society to get rid of greed. You have travelled far from just giving people 30k a year. I did not say greed was inherent by the way, I don't actually believe it is. I do believe that we are products of our environment. Perhaps after many many generations your utopian society might work. Then again, it never has, at least not for the long term to any degree.

We already have a cooperative commune like the apes. Greed and theft are punished by exile, but not death. It is called prison. Are you seriously recommending that we instill the death penalty for theft? We are better than apes, that is called evolution. You might also throw into the mix survival of the fittest.
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kylie

#53
Quote from: elone
What you haven't accounted for in all of this are human failings. Not everyone is going to be content just because they have more money...
How have you determined that so many people are this greedy, that there must be riots and all the other things you predict in that scenario?

Quote
You are right, criminals do have a terrible need they need to fulfill. That need is for more than they have. Giving them an extra $575 a week or so is not going to fulfill that need. I spent time in the military, probably the most equal place you might find. Equal pay, equal housing, etc., yet there was no lack of crime on post. Muggings, robbery, theft, drugs, etc. My background was Military Police Investigations.
First, I'm not sure a military base is a great candidate for microcosm of the broader society.  Even assuming that "equal" refers to a level of pay and quality of life that is deemed sufficient and stable here (dubious if the VA hospitals are anything to go by; I'm not sure about day to day base life)...  I can think of a few reasons that might be a rather exceptional situation: 

1)  In my understanding, many people are in the military precisely because they started out with considerable poverty.  Even if they themselves seem to be getting by for the moment (and planning along such lines requires them to commit in their own mind to stay in - if poverty was their motive for joining, how many really desire to stay in so long?)...  Many are probably still connected to families and friends somewhere who are struggling day to day and reminding them of that possible black hole in the society -- if not calling on some of their resources. 

2)  Perhaps in some cases, soldiers even began their military careers as a form of voluntary restitution for crimes (where the alternative might have been a rather undesirable other sentence)?  I don't know really how common that is, but I believe I have heard of it happening for youth cases in some states.  At the least, some are sent to military-style youth offender "boot camps."  And once in the military system, they might find it easier to keep on going without certainty their original issues have been solved. 

3)  Moreover, it is the military.  It's a war machine.  If you're going to happen to choose anywhere with a rather high incidence (I imagine) of, or at least (certainly) very high-profile cases of aggression and overly competitively inclined people, people who are perhaps more likely to insist on exploiting power...  Well, why not such a field where macho acting out, tribal mentality, and excessive force is often encouraged?  Though certain regular police forces seem to be competing pretty well too for the title these days...  But the military is a much larger employer, and I suspect easier to join.

Quote
So now we have to completely rid ourselves of a Capitalist society to get rid of greed. You have travelled far from just giving people 30k a year. I did not say greed was inherent by the way, I don't actually believe it is. I do believe that we are products of our environment.
You don't believe it's inherent, but at the same time you say there has to be a complete change in order for steam's suggestion to count as an overall success?  I dunno, sounds to me like you want to disclaim a lot on your own part while demanding a perfectly ideal outcome immediately out of steam's side.  Is there no room for incrementalism and "good enough" outcomes (something decisively better than we have now) here? 

      What we have now is a rather small minority denying a living wage to a very large number of people and keeping life even at a living wage increasingly tenuous for quite a few more (much of the so-called, but actually sinking middle class), with racial multipliers at play inside all of that affecting who falls where.  If improving from that situation means moving to one where another small minority, even a slightly larger one suppose, are still finding some way to suck a few more resources out of the system but the vast majority of people can keep on a comfortable living and it's not by and large obviously weighted by race as it IS now, then I would consider that a worthwhile improvement.  And those who like to deal in courtrooms or chasing paramilitaries for a living etc., could go on trying to minimize the greedy minority, as you put it.  Much as the government somewhat does now.  But in the present overall structure where the greed and racial bias are allowed to rule to such a vast degree, agents of the "system" can hardly cover the scope and depth of the inequality even when it does attempt to bandaid over certain symptoms.
     

elone

First of all, let me clear up some things.

My whole point in participating in this exercise was to note that giving people more money is not a panacea to all of societies ills. Period.

Actually, the military is a prime example of a social group in equality. Like I said, we are products of our environments, and that carries through to the military. I think I mentioned that it would take a long time for people to stop bad behavior and get on the free lunch, no need to act up, bandwagon.

I do think that as a nation we can afford to house, feed, and improve the quality of life of all those who need it. I would gladly raise taxes and redistribute wealth. I think we should have free health care. All we need to do is quit policing the world and put our resources where they belong. It is an obscenity that we have mega billionaires at the same time we have people starving.

I am actually on your side.
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Steampunkette

The military is a TERRIBLE example of any sort of microcosm of an equal society.

Racism, sexism, homophobia, and other deep-seated biases are magnified on post. And the educational inequities, economic inequities, and more that produce people who join the military still exist. Further, there's significant incitement to aggression and violence on any "Othered" identity that exists. It's why soldiers and cops both tend to create a hierarchy of people "Worth" living. It goes Cops and Military, then EMTs, then Citizens, then Criminals and then Politicians... Well okay, some soldiers put criminals below politicians or put them on the same level... But yeah. The military magnifies and intensifies bias, it doesn't remove it.

No. Giving out "Free Money" wouldn't fix all social ills. But it would help to offset the economic disparity we've constructed along majority/minority lines. Which is the stated goal in the beginning of this thread.

However: Muggings and similar crimes are primarily motivated by need. Not need for a nebulous "More". Otherwise you'd have a shitload of WASPS with business suits and derringers shouting "Awlraight you wohrthless bum, put your hands where I cahn see them! Diamonds and Jewelry in the bag." at the country club through their lockjaw. But a need for enough to make it through the damned day.

Same thing for Burglaries and Gas Station robberies.
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Ephiral

I'd like to point out another flaw in the military-as-example: It's a high-trust environment. Personal property is left basically unsecured except by the goodwill of bunkmates all the time. That vastly lowers the opportunity cost of betrayal.

Elone, it seems like your criticism boils down to "This won't make things perfect." My answer is: So? Neither will anything; there will always be betrayers. What we should be aiming for is to make sure the betrayers can a) inflict as little damage as possible, and b) be reduced in number. The current model fails catastrophically on both points, but particularly A. You don't need to be perfect to be better.

elone

Quote from: Steampunkette on October 14, 2014, 05:24:01 PM
The military is a TERRIBLE example of any sort of microcosm of an equal society.

Racism, sexism, homophobia, and other deep-seated biases are magnified on post. And the educational inequities, economic inequities, and more that produce people who join the military still exist. Further, there's significant incitement to aggression and violence on any "Othered" identity that exists. It's why soldiers and cops both tend to create a hierarchy of people "Worth" living. It goes Cops and Military, then EMTs, then Citizens, then Criminals and then Politicians... Well okay, some soldiers put criminals below politicians or put them on the same level... But yeah. The military magnifies and intensifies bias, it doesn't remove it.

No. Giving out "Free Money" wouldn't fix all social ills. But it would help to offset the economic disparity we've constructed along majority/minority lines. Which is the stated goal in the beginning of this thread.

However: Muggings and similar crimes are primarily motivated by need. Not need for a nebulous "More". Otherwise you'd have a shitload of WASPS with business suits and derringers shouting "Awlraight you wohrthless bum, put your hands where I cahn see them! Diamonds and Jewelry in the bag." at the country club through their lockjaw. But a need for enough to make it through the damned day.

Same thing for Burglaries and Gas Station robberies.

Maybe you should read what I write instead of interpreting it to suit your own opinion. The use of the military as an example was that it represents a group of people who exist in a setting where they all have basically equal access to pay, housing etc., yet many commit criminal acts.  Contrary to your assertion that all crime comes from desperation, crime can come from greed or any number of other factors. Your stipend for everyone will not cure all crime. Do rapists rape for the money??

According to you, the only people who join the military are those that have suffered some inequities in their life. What about when we had the draft? Soldiers came from all walks of life, rich, poor, educated, barely literate, all teated equally, yet crime was common.  Also, where do you get the idea that cops and soldiers have a list of people who are worth living? Can you give me some example of that? What does bias have to do with this subject anyway, I thought we were talking about giving people money to help everyone be able to live a quality life.

Quote from: Ephiral on October 14, 2014, 05:33:04 PM
I'd like to point out another flaw in the military-as-example: It's a high-trust environment. Personal property is left basically unsecured except by the goodwill of bunkmates all the time. That vastly lowers the opportunity cost of betrayal.

Elone, it seems like your criticism boils down to "This won't make things perfect." My answer is: So? Neither will anything; there will always be betrayers. What we should be aiming for is to make sure the betrayers can a) inflict as little damage as possible, and b) be reduced in number. The current model fails catastrophically on both points, but particularly A. You don't need to be perfect to be better.

When I was in the military, everything was locked tight. Personal property was never left out where it could disappear.

Not sure I understand your concept of betrayers. Would they be the ones who don't go along with the program or the ones that control the wealth?

I don't think things have to be perfect, I just don't think that giving everyone 30k is going to solve the inequalities that have plagued our society for hundreds of years. I would rather see the money spent on educating everyone, free healthcare cradle to grave, maternity care and pay, free university for anyone who can't afford it, feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, etc. Take the money from our massive military budget, tax the hell out of billionaires, close corporate tax loopholes, ban lobbyists, stop gerrymandering our voting districts, get money out of politics, what have I left out?
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Ephiral

Huh. Must be differences in military culture between there and here, then.

"Betrayers" in the context I've been using it here, comes from the venerable Prisoner's Dilemma; it refers to people who refuse to cooperate with others, who break the social contract for their own gain. Any attempt to design a system around human interaction is going to need to deal with the problem of betrayers, and "make sure they never happen" isn't ever on the table. A perfectly secure system is perfectly useless.

What the basic living stipend idea is all about is removing some very powerful incentives for betrayal, and thereby reducing how often it occurs - and, y'know, giving everybody enough to live on. We've got very little to indicate that it wouldn't be successful at that goal - which doesn't mean your ideas aren't worthy either, but they certainly don't seem as well-formulated or viable in the form you've proposed them.

elone

I think a basic stipend is a decent idea, I am just not sure what percentage of people will do the right thing with the money. The right thing being using the money to better themselves or their surroundings. Besides, if someone is unemployed and homeless, 30k is not going to get them educated, health care, transportation, housing, food, clothing, etc, that are basic needs. I don't think I could exist on 30k today, and prices would certainly go up.

I really don't see how giving people the services I suggested as being any less viable or well-formulated than throwing money at someone. All it takes is the political will to do what is needed. Of course that is the problem with all gains proposed for a society that takes money from one person or group and gives it to another.

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Ephiral

30k is pretty basic but not so sure it's impossible, in most places. What was less viable and well-formulated about your idea is that it's way more expensive, and you've shown no numbers to demonstrate its viability. I think it's an interesting concept, not sure if I agree with all of it but most of it's good... but what exactly will it take?

Steampunkette

"Muggings and similar crimes" does not equate to All Crimes. Don't put words in my mouth.

And yes. There is rape in the military. If you think rape is about sex I've got a land bridge from Australia to England to sell you. Sex is just the weapon being used. Rape is about power and violence. Two things that the military does it's damnedest to instill and magnify in soldiers.

And no. I didn't say "The Only People" that join are desperate or downtrodden. I said the problems that exist outside exist inside, carried with the people who hold them. Both those who are minority members holding internalized bias and those who are majority members enacting bias on others was the implication, there.

As for the cop example: Talk to Soldiers and Soldiers who became Cops. Head on over to the Paragon Unleashed forums and you can hang out with Duck Armada, who will tell you in no uncertain terms where he, and the rest of the police force he works with, rate civilians as a class: Just above worthless.

And if you're confused as to where the Bias comes into it go back and reread the first post to understand what oppressive legacy is and how it creates and maintains economic oppression.
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kylie

#62
 
Quote from: elone
I would rather see the money spent on educating everyone, free healthcare cradle to grave, maternity care and pay, free university for anyone who can't afford it, feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, etc. Take the money from our massive military budget, tax the hell out of billionaires, close corporate tax loopholes, ban lobbyists, stop gerrymandering our voting districts, get money out of politics, what have I left out?

          Much of this (I'm inclined to think, probably all of it) is good stuff.  I'd love to see it too.  I suppose I'd also prefer to see it along with a guaranteed living income, if society can afford it.  And there is a simply massive amount of money sitting in a portion of the economy that very few, but very wealthy families tend to control and hoard.  So perhaps, hopefully, that might be feasible too if there were only political will. 

          If only.  But then the US is not anything near a pure meritocracy at all -- let alone a serious, egalitarian form of welfare state (and there is some of that flavor in the proposal too) -- so thus far there isn't.  Even at the regional mass movement level, people are barely getting around these days to organizing to raise the legal minimum wage.  Which not every industry polices well as things are, and that doesn't even begin to deal with problems like the housing market and spiraling prices (in fact we're here partly because wage hikes have not been linked to cost of living, and have not kept pace, for decades).

          You say you're on this or that "side," but I didn't feel I was all that sure where you stood on what before exactly.  The military case seems problematic for the argument you suggested, but hey it's just one case and I actually didn't feel you had really explained a great deal about your overall view yet.  Now, l was at least a little surprised when you said (above quote) you support these things -- that is, after the bit earlier about how there would be riots and so on with a guaranteed income level.  I do suppose there might be say a few outbreaks of violence. 
a bit tangential to my point but here's why I say that.

Just guessing, on the general principle that it's hard to please everyone and even a few principled greedy can get rather explosive in protest or even a small revolt?  And after all, when you currently have massive resources at your command and some of your wealth might be diminished by the proposal, it could be tempting for a few people to put some of their resources to work first causing disruption.  Or maybe on the basis that simply changing things is technically hard, especially if there is a chance it might not be done in a way that makes for a very smooth transition and then some people feel caught in the meantime. 
But I thought that you were suggesting, even if you might (perhaps) support the proposal in principle, that somehow 'too many' people would turn to crime, or perhaps just act out in extra-judicial displays of outrage or frustration (say, as often enough happens somewhere around large-scale protests, though not always).  I felt there was some hint of 'too many' in the way you said it and that probably you were trying to say providing a flat guaranteed income was not viable for that reason -- you expected the social backlash or maybe just local crime to be somehow too intense to accept.  But if that were the case, I'm not sure why the same assumptions of backlash would not apply to these things above that you do support, as well.  Did I just read too much into your listing of riots and other possible problems?

         To put it another way -- and I actually think this is probably more to the point: How about the reasons we have some of the sort of blow-ups and frustrations we already have now?  Take riots, as it's one of those things people often point to as an example of how masses on the street demanding justice 'just can't seem to get anything done without somewhere deteriorating into violence and threats to business' etc.  We already have periodic riots emerging out of situations where White police officers kill or beat Blacks in somewhat uncertain (sometimes but not always immediately sketchy) circumstances, all multiplied by the general tensions between the police and many Black communities (see policy for style and concentration of policing, I mentioned above).  Or:  We also already have riots when it appears the national government is bent on creating trade regimes that many working class people might reasonably anticipate will result in a huge incentive for business to remove jobs from one area and place them somewhere else entirely (thinking of things like NAFTA and the WTO), again most importantly multiplied or abetted in that reality by the low pay and lack of mobility that also often persists among many people such that they have very little to no security if some of those industries move away.

...  So given that these are some of the huge periodic disruptions that we presently have, when it comes to rioting...  Now consider simply handing everyone 30k, or whatever number is practical (and setting up an appropriate system of food/ housing distribution such that people can continue to live on that comfortably, if necessary - avoiding the sort of inflationary spiral that also keeps many people stuck at the bottom today)...  Why would that result in a worse situation as far as the likelihood of riots goes?  If I were putting it all on a balance sheet, I also think many of the outbreaks that happen for the kind of reasons in the paragraph above this would go away. 
     

HannibalBarca

#63
I've been lurking for a while, meaning to post a response, or at least a meaningful comment, so here I am.

I'm a solid Liberal when it comes to social and most economic issues, but I have a couple of caveats when it comes to the topics discussed here:  I was raised in a U.S. Air Force family, and I'm currently an elementary school teacher in a very poor community with a diverse ethnic background.

As far as military bases being a microcosm of a nation in general--yes and no.  Those in the military are members of the general population before they join, and raised in various communities, ethnic, economic, and otherwise.  However, I have seen a general change in the military population over time, just like the change in the general population.  When I was a child, doors were left unlocked on base, neighbors disciplined and watched over each others' children, and there was a much greater acceptance of other ethnic and mult-iethnic members of the community.  We had racists, sure--but so many of my friends in school had mothers who were from other nations, that to act racist in school was to ostracize yourself from pretty much everyone else. 

10% of the military on the base were officers, the balance being enlisted.  That meant 90% of the children on base received free or reduced lunches, because enlisted pay for an average enlisted airman was at or below the poverty level.  All military, with families or not, had access to free housing.  Virtually everyone was employed.  Motivation among parents was high.  Back to school night was standing room only in the classrooms.  Corporal punishment was still an option at school, if parents signed a form and sent it back to school...needless to say, the exceptions were rare.  Curfews were in force for children and adults.  Yards were expected to be kept up, and the best-kept yards were awarded yard-of-the-month, including a sign posted on it.  Virtually all children were expected to excel in school, regardless of ethnic, cultural, or economic background.  Social norms were strictly enforced by the community--the social norms of the military, not the cultures one originally came from.

I also benefited from parents who were raised in Southern California in mixed-ethnicity communities.  My father and mother are white/Native American, but grew up in communities that were balanced or majority Hispanic.  While my father was stationed in Vietnam, my mother and I lived with her parents in a community that was 85% Hispanic.  I was the only white kid in my class while I was there, and got a small taste of what being an ethnic minority is like.

My father retired within the same month I graduated from high school, and my younger brother graduated from junior high.  I started going to college while he went to high school for the first time in a civilian school.  The differences were stark and shocking.  Kids divided along ethnic lines at the school, there were fights primarily over racial tensions, and poverty was endemic.  My brothers dealt with culture shock, basically.  I'd lived in civilian communities when younger, but they had spent their entire lives sheltered, as it were, in military culture.

Fast-forward to today.  I'm 45 and have been teaching for over 12 years at the same elementary school.  The last base my family lived at is, incidentally, only about ten miles away from the small town I live in.  Our ethnic makeup here is roughly 1/3 black, 1/3 Hispanic, 1/3 white, and around 10% Filipino, Chinese, and Thai.  90% of the children at my school receive free or reduced-price lunches.  I'm lucky if 1/3 of my student's parents show up for parent-teacher conferences or back-to-school night--just one parent.  The great majority of my students live in a single-parent home.  Some are raised by grandparents, uncles/aunts, older siblings, or are homeless.  Around 20% of them have one (or both) parents in prison.  About 20% also have a family member in a gang.

The similarities and differences between the military communities I grew up in and the one I live in now can be seen in the above paragraphs, but some of the details are startling.  I've had parents tell me they didn't want their children to grow up smarter than them; I've had parents tell me their children were stupid.  I've had parents insist their children couldn't behave because they had ADHD.  I've had parents insist it was my job to teach their children morals, not theirs.  I've had most of these comments from native parents--mostly black and white.  The particular culture of Hispanic and Asian families, regardless of the nation their culture originated from, tends to value education...most immigrant families do, regardless of nation of origin.  What is surprising, however, is the blatant attitude of entitlement I get from both black and white families of poverty.  Not all, mind you, but a very high percentage.  With what I know from first-hand knowledge of the reservation system in the United States, it brings me to the conclusion that any kind of welfare system, while well-meaning, tends to become broken, and the way we go about such matters in the U.S. desperately needs fixing...but it is not the primary problem.

How does all this relate to the thread topic?

In this community of deep poverty, multi-ethnicity, and confused and bankrupt culture, there is virtually no racism.  Poverty ties the majority of the citizens together in a kind of desperate brotherhood.  A sense of victimhood, of someone else being to blame for their misfortunes, runs deep.  A sense of helplessness runs right next to it--the attitude that their situation cannot be helped; a kind of self-defeating fatalism that only makes their conditions worse.  I have children of all ethnic varieties that have told me that they expect to go to prison when they grow up, just like so many of their family members.  There is virtually no motivation to improve one's self.

My point is that, aside from racism--which does exist in our nation still--inequalities in this nation are primarily a problem of culture, not poverty.  Or the culture of poverty.  There are generations of families, regardless of ethnicity, that have lived on welfare and have no motivation to better themselves.  They have a deep sense of desperation--the kind that drives individuals to crime.  They lack an appreciation for what an education can do for your life, for a variety of factors, but including the fact that many of the schools they attended or attend are unable to effectively educate, because of other factors, such as disciplinary problems, emotional disturbances, and basics like lack of sleep or hunger.  I have students whose only meals are the breakfast and lunch they receive at school.  Three and four day weekends are times of deprivation for them, not extended fun times.

With all of this, do you really think, that many of these poor parents and their children will be using that $30,000 wisely?  I have had children every year whose parents are poor, own multiple video game systems, and yet the children are dressed in filthy, worn-out clothes, have rotten teeth, and go hungry often.  The lack of common-sense and basic living skills are stunning.  Another factor that often goes along with these families is the bunker mentality--everyone else is out to get them.  Too many times I have had conferences with parents over a child's bullying, only to have them blame the other children, the teachers and administration, the other parents--everyone but their children.  To blame their children would, by extension, mean blaming themselves as parents--and there are a huge number of parents here that have extremely low self-esteem, to the point where they can't or won't make critical self-judgements necessary to make self-improvements--the kind that would help them out of the situations they are in economically and personally.

I'm usually a big-picture guy.  But my career puts me in the trenches where I see the little details that make large, sweeping generalizations null and void.  Stereotypes don't work in my field.  Neither do generalizations of how society would be improved or harmed by a sweeping increase in income.  It will take much more than money to help large swaths of the poor in the United States.  It will take, in my opinion, a concerted effort by all economic and social levels within the nation to improve more than the economic well-being, but the cultural well-being of our country.  The problem is, our nation is, at its core, a multi-cultural society, in which people do not easily, readily, or understandably accept new cultural values.  A monolithic culture, like Japan, has a better chance at making sweeping national changes.  The U.S., by its very nature, stymies efforts to make a rising tide that lifts all boats.  Our cultural complexity is at once one of our greatest strengths and most glaring weaknesses.
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Quote from: Steampunkette on October 14, 2014, 12:54:20 AMContrary to popular belief most criminals don't commit crimes because they're antisocial shitstains that deserve to be gunned down like dogs. It's because they're desperate. It's because they have a terrible need that goes unfulfilled and are willing to break laws to fulfill it.

I'd say it's more complex than that. Crimes are committed because of a diverse range of reasons but are mostly covered by the following in my opinion (not in any particular order):

1) A person's vital need is not covered, forcing them to break the law out of desperation.
2) The law is an attempt to legislate a certain morality or cultural value not shared by the individual and is rejected as invalid. (laws against interracial marriage, gay relationships, drug use, etc)
3) The person possesses a mental or personality disorder which inhibits their ability to recognize or follow the law.
4) The person's cultural or subcultural background encourages rejecting the authority of law as a positive trait.
5) The perceived gain outweighs the perceived risk and no other factors such as morality, cultural values, etc are sufficiently involved to interfere for whatever reason.

QuoteAnd the only way to objectively prove whether it's inherent or learned would be to give birth to a set of children and raise them in a completely unbiased environment with no human interaction outside of each other, then study them. Then you would have some idea of what humans are like "Inherently" and what sort of innate moral codes develop.

While this has not ever been deliberately performed because of psychological ethics, there have been several examples of 'feral children' throughout history. Unfortunately without human interaction, they're severely crippled and basically don't act in any way recognizably human usually without much success in recovery or treatment. I personally think that this is both because humans need contact with other people and also that many of our ideas of humanity are the cumulative work of a hundred thousand years of social development being passed from generation to generation. They generally don't display much of any morality at all, however I personally suspect that isn't because human don't have an innate morality (studies generally confirm that we do) but rather because the trauma of their experience and isolation has led to difficulties in them feeling empathy for other humans.

Quote from: HannibalBarca on October 19, 2014, 07:44:31 PMWith all of this, do you really think, that many of these poor parents and their children will be using that $30,000 wisely?  I have had children every year whose parents are poor, own multiple video game systems, and yet the children are dressed in filthy, worn-out clothes, have rotten teeth, and go hungry often.  The lack of common-sense and basic living skills are stunning.  Another factor that often goes along with these families is the bunker mentality--everyone else is out to get them.

This can of course be a factor, not everyone necessarily is going to make good life choices and it is especially difficult if you've been denied opportunities and role-models to obtain life skills. It tends to self-perpetuate from generation to generation. With our media pumping millions of dollars into careful psychological manipulation of people to believe that they require those luxury goods it's also not surprising that it sometimes works.

However there was an interesting point brought up regarding some of this behaviour by Tim Harford in his book The Undercover Economist that pointed out that frequently poorer people are forced to make substandard choices because of the difficulties in obtaining the upfront investment in household infrastructure required to reduce recurring costs. For example a family that pays for laundromat fees for any washing spends more money in the longrun than a family that purchases a washing machine, however one requires an upfront investment whereas the other one doesn't. Families that rely on fast-food rather than taking the time to learn cooking skills and the cost to obtain the cooking equipment will often have trouble affording food in the long-run even.
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HannibalBarca very well spoken and general representative of what I see in the day to day world. I simply cannot add anything *quietly applauds*

kylie

          Well if you can't add anything to that, then you very obviously don't want to talk about legacy.
     

Primal

Interesting thread, good stuff!

I think Basic Income, as I understand it (an unconditional sum of money all citizens receive yearly, no questions asked), has a great chance at being implemented in the U.S., and I'm speaking from my Libertarian/capitalist-pig/personal-freedom point of view.  That might seem antithetical at first look, but I think Basic Income offers goodies that people from all political viewpoints can find appealing.

Presently, the US has a large welfare state.  It's a complex and bloated bureaucracy that promotes dependency not only via direct monetary means, but with a maze of condescending, personally invasive, and socially subjugating rules that span across 100+ anti-poverty programs.  Basic Income removes the need for all of that.  Welfare, Food Stamps, Unemployment, TANF, etc., etc. ... dump all of it.  Everybody gets a check.  You don't have to check in with Big Brother and ensure he approves of your behavior in order to keep receiving it.  Work doesn't affect it, so you're not penalized for working.  The poor are given assistance in a manner that actually treats them like free people in a free society that have agency.

Government bureaucracy gets substantially smaller.  The poor are getting money without a poverty trap.  It's not perfect, but hey... what is?  There's something for everybody like.

Sethala

Mostly skimmed this topic, and I have a few thoughts...

First off, I agree with the general idea of the topic, that there's very much a "rich get richer, poor get poorer" issue in the United States (and, I imagine, in many other first-world countries, though I don't pay enough attention to them to be sure).  The idea that yes, someone who's well off today can usually trace a few hundred years of lineage though people who were also well off, while someone who's stuck in poverty usually had grandparents and great-grandparents also stuck in poverty, is an issue, and one worth addressing.  The problem is that then I see this idea and see some people trying to shove racial politics into the matter, when really, the issue is less about racism than it is about opportunity to succeed in society being tied to what your parents are able to provide you while growing up.

Don't get me wrong, I'm under no illusion that there's no racism in the US.  However, I see a lot of correlation here between "minorities" and "people in poverty", and I think too many take the leap and think that correlation implies causation, when that's not always the case.  I think that these are two issues that intersect when you look at demographics, but have wholly different methods to solving them, and trying to conflate both issues by tying them together removes a lot of the nuance that could lead to a solution to them.  It also invites an issue of "racist solutions" (is there a better term for this?).  For instance, trying to elevate African-American people by instituting some form of tax break or welfare ignores the issue of white people who are stuck in the same poverty loop because of the same social factors affecting them.

Anyway, I think Steampunkette's idea has some merit, although I also think her idea of giving people that much money "because we're a rich country and we can afford it" isn't enough of a reason thanks to the issues that large of an influx will cause on inflation, not to mention the number of people doing vital but menial tasks that will up and quit because they don't have to work to make money (even if they'll earn more money by working).  Personally, I think an annual supplement of $5,000-$10,000 would be enough of a boost to most people that it would help fix a lot of the economy's issues, especially if it's an equal handout to everyone regardless of other income (and perhaps a small supplement beyond that to people who are more in need, though I don't know enough about such systems to suggest anything right now).  It's not enough to bring everyone out of poverty, but it is enough for the people who are stuck in a cycle of being unable to even get a part-time job because they have nowhere to start to at least get the ball rolling.

Ephiral

I'm... really, really confused about your position, Sethala. You open by saying that there are in fact class divides, which can be traced back through "a few hundred years" - the wealthy can trace their wealth back that far, as a rule, and the poor can trace their poverty similarly. And yet you don't think that being non-white has a causative connection to poverty? Just what do you think was happening with non-white people in America in the early 1700s?

Sethala

I'm not saying that racism isn't a factor, it's just not a direct factor in why African-American people are, in general, worse off than white people in America.  The direct factor is that a disproportionately large portion of the African-American population in the US comes from families in poverty, and the economic system in the US means that people who come from rich families tend to end up rich on their own and vice versa  The indirect reason behind all of this is racism, yes, because that's the cause of the African-American population mostly descending from people in poverty, but racism by itself is not a major direct cause.  (I'll concede that it is a factor, but it's not as significant as lineage and inheritance is.)

The reason this matters is because anyone trying to say "Black people will be better off in society if we create programs focused on helping African-Americans" is ignoring that the root cause of the issue isn't racism, it's a lineage of poverty, and the solution would be generally flawed because it wouldn't account for people of other races (other minorities or even white people) that are in the same position.

Oniya

Quote from: Ephiral on November 15, 2014, 05:47:59 PM
I'm... really, really confused about your position, Sethala. You open by saying that there are in fact class divides, which can be traced back through "a few hundred years" - the wealthy can trace their wealth back that far, as a rule, and the poor can trace their poverty similarly. And yet you don't think that being non-white has a causative connection to poverty? Just what do you think was happening with non-white people in America in the early 1700s?

All he's saying is that there are both blacks and whites (and every other race besides) that are stuck below the poverty line.  Therefore, a solution to the problem should be directed at 'poor people' rather than any other factor.  Although I would go slightly further and say it should include not just Basic Income, but also things like how to avoid fraud, how to budget money in the first place, and so on.
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Sethala

Quote from: Oniya on November 15, 2014, 08:43:32 PM
All he's saying is that there are both blacks and whites (and every other race besides) that are stuck below the poverty line.  Therefore, a solution to the problem should be directed at 'poor people' rather than any other factor.  Although I would go slightly further and say it should include not just Basic Income, but also things like how to avoid fraud, how to budget money in the first place, and so on.

Exactly, thank you.

Ephiral

All right, thanks for the explanation. Still don't think I agree, though - as an offhand example, redlining is still a thing.

Valthazar

Quote from: Ephiral on November 16, 2014, 10:31:03 AMAll right, thanks for the explanation. Still don't think I agree, though - as an offhand example, redlining is still a thing.

There are many poor white folks too (and not just the ones in Appalachia). 

The problem is, many of these poor white people aren't considered to be poor because their incomes suggest a different story.  When you factor in car payments, student loans, credit cards, and more, you'll see that poverty is far more common than we think.  Many seemingly "middle class" people with iPhones are literally one broken car transmission away from being on the street.  76% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.

Ephiral

Quote from: Valthazar on November 16, 2014, 06:13:06 PM
There are many poor white folks too (and not just the ones in Appalachia). 

The problem is, many of these poor white people aren't considered to be poor because their incomes suggest a different story.  When you factor in car payments, student loans, credit cards, and more, you'll see that poverty is far more common than we think.  Many seemingly "middle class" people with iPhones are literally one broken car transmission away from being on the street.  76% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.
Is... is this intended to be a response to what I said? Because... it isn't. The existence of poor white people has absolutely no bearing on the targeting of people for less favourable terms in housing or finance based on their skin colour.

Sethala

Quote from: Ephiral on November 16, 2014, 10:31:03 AM
All right, thanks for the explanation. Still don't think I agree, though - as an offhand example, redlining is still a thing.

Fair enough, there's probably a mix of factors in here that, to be honest, I never really had the interest to learn about.  I agree that redlining is wrong (although if a district has a history of bad credit, I can understand not wanting to give loans to people from that district, but giving loans to white people but not black people from the same district is still wrong), and that making laws to make it illegal and enforcing those laws when possible is necessary.  Granted, considering how much other crap banks get away with nowadays might make racism in loans a fairly low priority by comparison, but that's a wholly different discussion.