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Thread: OT: Politics

  1. #1071
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    Quote Originally Posted by cockerpunk View Post
    no, you guys keep tossing things into the conversation. my claim is still the same as it has been. the only clarification has been due to the conversation with lurker, in that racism can be part of the justification (spoken or unspoken) or the express intent. but its always there. really, at the end of the day, i don't care that much between racism that sells a bad policy, and policies that are explicitly racist ... its just racism either way.

    either in the justification or the purpose of all GOP policies, there is racism. this has not changed.

    you and josh can toss as many grenades as you want, but this is the claim, and it has not changed. no goal posts have changed. just you and josh have been tossing grenades on all manner of topics into the conversation. my claim remains untouched.

    i already framed it based on fiscal policy. i cannot think of a reason why the rank and file of the GOP is perfectly ok, even ecstatic to run a massive deficit that hurts them, as long as its spent of rich white people, but it is a crisis to spend money on poor black people .... besides racism.

    if you want to suggest and show another reason, you are welcome to. but really, its racism.
    So what? You claimed the moon is made of cheese. The burden of proof is on you. You can't use your confirmation bias to say it's spent on rich people, rich people are usually white, therefore racism. That's idiotic and it's all you have. What if Occam's razor applies here and I interject that simply omitting details makes a better argument. Rich people are ok with money being spent on rich people. On that principle alone, you lose.

  2. #1072
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lurker27 View Post
    Gordon #1 takesman

    If you had to assign percentages to why GOP policy is so messed up what would you assign to corporate capture, and what to racism?

    I'm like 85/15 minimum towards corporate capture.
    Ryan,
    I'm sorry, I kind of lost this post. I believe that a proper analysis of every single political and social issue is multivariate. I'd be interested to see how you came to those numbers. My belief is that sub-cultural identity is likely more relevant than race in the US. So, my dart throwing suggests republican policies breakdown more like greed:85%/ sub-culture (identity politics): 10%/ education: 4%/ race: 1%. I don't deny racism exists, in fact, it's a statistical inevitability. It exists and it always will, so it's a problem you cannot take to 0%. Liberals just use this (false moral high-ground) to claim authority by framing the opposition as racist. Even if you were to argue that race influences policy support, we'd still need to segregate the ideas of implicit <racial> bias and racism (explicit racial bias). They're not the same.

    Racism is also not exclusive to whites nor republicans. So, a racist policy is one that's outcome favors individuals explicitly based on race. Affirmative action fits that definition. I'm not necessarily saying I am opposed to the idea as a stop-loss, but what "disadvantages" is this trying to counter? What criteria need to be met before it is ended?

  3. #1073
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    Quote Originally Posted by cockerpunk View Post
    i already framed it based on fiscal policy. i cannot think of a reason why the rank and file of the GOP is perfectly ok, even ecstatic to run a massive deficit that hurts them, as long as its spent of rich white people, but it is a crisis to spend money on poor black people .... besides racism.
    The theory is that reduced corporate tax rate, closed loopholes, and better tax situations for business owners will make the tax cuts revenue neutral in the long run.

    This is, of course, wrong:
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.cbae8b70bc1b

    But the revenue neutral RHETORIC is out there, even if it's demonstrably incorrect. I'm mostly on the side of Hanlon's Razor here when it comes to the electorate: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

    Dollars spent on direct redistribution are notoriously ineffective at enacting change. Conservative's argue that's at the crux of "welfare reform":
    https://fivethirtyeight.com/features...eople-anymore/

    But I think simpler than racism, is that giving money for nothing (cash benefits, basic income) has a psychologically different profile than cutting a tax on the wealthy. The argument is simple and non-racial: All taxation is theft. The market determined I was worth that much money, why should the government be entitled to any of it. (I am not making this argument, and it's clearly intellectually flawed).

    Giving money as direct assistance crosses zero, and people FEEL weird about this. In market theory, it incentivizes doing nothing, and that's why middle class (white) moderates can be scared at the spectre of the unemployed (black) welfare queen, though her existence is now, and was always, somewhat dubious.

    The point is, Gordon, I think you're being pretty intellectually lazy in invoking racism. I also think that we're being myopic if we say it's a nonfactor. Everyone needs to first admit that a multivariate analysis is warranted, and then tease out the motivating factors from the available evidence. I have given my numbers (15% racism), and I'm willing to admit they might be wrong, but if everyone else is going to be 100/0 or 0/100 there's really no reasonable discussion we can have.

    Aside:
    A free app feels very different than a 0.99 cent app, doesn't it? Wouldn't a -$0.99 cent app feel different still? I wonder what facebook's cost of customer acquisition is and how it scales with their market cap. Network theory says the worth of a network scales as the square of the userbase, so given a linear cost of user acquisition, a "negative join price" social network is probably viable (especially if it scraped->deleted your facebook...hrm, I should invent this).





    EDIT: @ John I started typing before you posted, haha. Thanks!
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  4. #1074
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    easy.
    Wrong. From that same article, the context you missed:

    First, remember who were there originally. Some people trying to not have a statue tore down, and some who supported it.

    Then Shelper and the rest of his small band of idiots show up, followed by Antifa.

    He also said that counter-protesters deserve an equal amount of blame for the violence.

    ?What about the alt-left that came charging at, as you say, at the alt-right?? Trump said. ?Do they have any semblance of guilt??

    "I've condemned neo-Nazis. I've condemned many different groups. But not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me," he said.

    "You had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists," Trump said. "The press has treated them absolutely unfairly."
    Notice the part where he said 'Other'? Also, "Them" is in reference to people who were not antifa or neo nazis. I made it big so maybe you can't avoid it, but I have a feeling you will, or will just not comprehend it.

    Then he said (from the same article):

    "You also had some very fine people on both sides," he said.
    These 'Very Fine People' were the other, non nazi, non antifa protesters who got caught in the idiocy of Alt-right and Anti-Fa.

    Your inability to comprehend anything you read really doesn't slow you down, does it?

    if you don't defend it, then why can't you state its wrong?
    Because I don't feel the need to virtue signal would be the snarky reply, but the truth is there were not concentration camps made up for kids, per your entirely false claim. It would be as wrong as me saying, ah, "I think we should leave the cheese on the moon" just to appease your current brand of total stupid.

    Trump did not plan or create a provision for that, and in result, while kids were separated from the parent while the parent was detained and in trial, they were reconnected afterwards. That was so the kid wasn't part of the court process. Per the law from the William Wilberforce Act of 2008 and the Homeland Security act of 2002. Which I linked to earlier and you avoided. Maybe you think the Acts shouldn't apply to them? You like sex trafficking for kids? Is that what you are supporting? So what you are saying is you want kids to not be kept in detention centers, but to be sex trafficked. Got it.

    Part of the work done by Trump was to strongly increase the amount of judges to the border so they could process parents in a timely manner due to the increased amount of people trying to illegally cross. Normally they would come to the border and, this is where Obama goofed up a bit, they often waited longer than the 20 days, which was illegal. In those cases the kids were separated from the parent, but for much longer time. Not ALL of them, just most. Under Trump that was reduced to a couple days. If Trump hadn't done that then the kids, instead of sitting around watching movies for a couple days, would have to stay in a detention center (read Jail) for almost a month.

    Which is better than it was with Bush - that is why Obama increased funding by a factor of 36 times.

    Your comprehension of what actually is going on is almost an entire falsehood. I am not going to buttress your malformed version of reality at appease your weak arguments that I need to virtue signal.

    Your position needs to be rejected in full due to your ignorance.
    Last edited by pbjosh; 10-26-2018 at 02:10 PM.
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  5. #1075
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    Ignoring Gordon in general might lead to something constructive. Just saying.

    So, my dart throwing suggests republican policies breakdown more like greed:85%/ sub-culture (identity politics): 10%/ education: 4%/ race: 1%
    Now, I would use some of these same variables. But lets do both sides of the coin. What drives the liberal side? Since most of you are liberal, you can speak from some sort of direct experience. Instead of guessing.

    That being said, I would rearrange John's variables like this for the GOP

    Stay out of my pocket* (greed/I earned it, not you) 30%
    Distrust of Government in general* 20%
    Belief that government is inefficient in it's job.* 15%
    Other 20%
    Education 10%
    Race 2-4%

    *Subculture

    Though, there are many topics, this is mostly the budget. Immigration would result in a far different percentages than defense or the budget. I place race higher than John does because it is a factor, and that is about the rate most people make racist choices.

    Mind you, this would be my guess for the 25% conservative side. The GOP only represents 25% of the population. For liberals? Hmm....I erased it, the urge to reply with snark was just too great.
    Last edited by pbjosh; 10-26-2018 at 01:56 PM.
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  6. #1076
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    Ryan,

    The 538 link is a decent one - but it reminded me of a link I saved this last week to review a couple times:



    In the lowest quintile, households pay only $400 in taxes (as of 2014, the most recent data available) while receiving more than $16,000 in various types of tax-funded transfer payments.

    The end result is households in the bottom three quintiles have higher incomes after taxes and transfers than they do before taxes and transfers:


    Saying the system is controlled by the rich, as a few of you have claimed, would result in a graph that looks like the opposite of this. In truth the largest portion of the system has voted themselves in a lot of income redistribution.

    I would say that the rich being in control is, well, falsified. If it was really controlled by they rich, the lower 3/5th of the country would pay....well, more into taxes than they receive? Or even a portion of total net taxes? Instead of the rich paying almost all of the total tax burden themselves?

    In the end, about half of the time the rich are paying over 100% of the total tax burden:



    I have watched these metrics for years, so I know this is fairly historic. In doing so, if the rich are controlling things to benefit themselves, this would be a stupid way to do it. Because....ah....it would be cheaper to do anything else?

    OR: It could be said that a portion of the population has found it can vote to have others pay for things they didn't earn, and now get $16k of benefits from the rich already. Because that is what it looks like.

    Just sayin.
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  7. #1077
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    Josh,

    It does not logically follow that just because there is a net transfer of wealth through governmental mechanisms, that "the rich aren't in control". We'd have to know a lot more than that to even begin to answer this question.

    A better question is, is the current end distribution (outcomes) of wealth equitable and desirable? And equitable can take the form of any number of meanings. By most measures that's you'd use to define equitable (% paid to top 10% or 1%, CEO to average working pay, GDP/productivity increases versus median wage) the rich have done extraordinarily well over the last 40 years, because they've enjoyed the leverages of globalization and automation.

    At minimum it behooves the economically powerful to provide an appeasement level of assistance to the economically disenfranchised to avoid violent upheaval.

    It would be far better to act "upstream" of taxation or redistribution (unionized labor, syndicates, worker owned corporations), but that's scarcely extant in the western economic paradigm. Wealth redistribution is probably necessary, increasingly so if we can't fix the underpinnings of our increasingly hypercapitalist system.
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  8. #1078
    Quote Originally Posted by ironyusa View Post
    So what? You claimed the moon is made of cheese. The burden of proof is on you. You can't use your confirmation bias to say it's spent on rich people, rich people are usually white, therefore racism. That's idiotic and it's all you have. What if Occam's razor applies here and I interject that simply omitting details makes a better argument. Rich people are ok with money being spent on rich people. On that principle alone, you lose.
    i presented an explanation that fits the facts, your going to have to present a counter one if you want to disprove it.
    social conservatism: the mortal fear that someone, somewhere, might be having fun.

  9. #1079
    Quote Originally Posted by Lurker27 View Post
    The theory is that reduced corporate tax rate, closed loopholes, and better tax situations for business owners will make the tax cuts revenue neutral in the long run.

    This is, of course, wrong:
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.cbae8b70bc1b

    But the revenue neutral RHETORIC is out there, even if it's demonstrably incorrect. I'm mostly on the side of Hanlon's Razor here when it comes to the electorate: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

    Dollars spent on direct redistribution are notoriously ineffective at enacting change. Conservative's argue that's at the crux of "welfare reform":
    https://fivethirtyeight.com/features...eople-anymore/

    But I think simpler than racism, is that giving money for nothing (cash benefits, basic income) has a psychologically different profile than cutting a tax on the wealthy. The argument is simple and non-racial: All taxation is theft. The market determined I was worth that much money, why should the government be entitled to any of it. (I am not making this argument, and it's clearly intellectually flawed).

    Giving money as direct assistance crosses zero, and people FEEL weird about this. In market theory, it incentivizes doing nothing, and that's why middle class (white) moderates can be scared at the spectre of the unemployed (black) welfare queen, though her existence is now, and was always, somewhat dubious.

    The point is, Gordon, I think you're being pretty intellectually lazy in invoking racism. I also think that we're being myopic if we say it's a nonfactor. Everyone needs to first admit that a multivariate analysis is warranted, and then tease out the motivating factors from the available evidence. I have given my numbers (15% racism), and I'm willing to admit they might be wrong, but if everyone else is going to be 100/0 or 0/100 there's really no reasonable discussion we can have.

    Aside:
    A free app feels very different than a 0.99 cent app, doesn't it? Wouldn't a -$0.99 cent app feel different still? I wonder what facebook's cost of customer acquisition is and how it scales with their market cap. Network theory says the worth of a network scales as the square of the userbase, so given a linear cost of user acquisition, a "negative join price" social network is probably viable (especially if it scraped->deleted your facebook...hrm, I should invent this).





    EDIT: @ John I started typing before you posted, haha. Thanks!
    im happy to discuss the percentage if you will of "corporate corny lies" to "racism" as a justification .... but the mere fact that we are discussing that, shows that racism is a key factor. as detailed there is difference between policies sources, and purpose, and there being made popular and arguable, should we also assign percentages to them as well?

    if we can all agree that racism is at least a part of the reason why poor whites are A-OK with getting robbed and then having there money given to rich white people, while when its given to brown people they freak out ... is racism ... then we can have a productive conversation again.

    i think you and I agree that racism is playing a part here. irony and josh want to argue about god only knows what, they can't seem to stay on topic to save there lives.
    Last edited by cockerpunk; 10-26-2018 at 03:19 PM.
    social conservatism: the mortal fear that someone, somewhere, might be having fun.

  10. #1080
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    Quote Originally Posted by cockerpunk View Post
    i presented an explanation that fits the facts, your going to have to present a counter one if you want to disprove it.
    No, I don't Gordon. You made an unfounded accusation. For me to disprove it then it means that I'd have to accept the pretense that you made a rational assertion. You didn't. The step missing is for you to discuss the definition of racism, specific policies that contain language that is implicitly biased or racist, etc. You can't. You lose. Tuck your tail between your legs and run back to your pack of liberal bullies.

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