American Domestic Policy - No Clear Solution for "Haves vs. Have nots"

[Weganator]

30 minutes ago, LadySkinsFan said:

I'm going to stick this right here. If anyone can answer the question, that would be appreciated.

 

 

 

 

 

Explain to me how rising worker wages due to the reduction in illegal labor meets any of these criteria (unless you mean 'unable to vote' for the undocumented). Otherwise, its not 'an absolute fact that Republicans are aiming at X'

[Going Commando]

On 9/3/2017 at 2:02 PM, No Excuses said:

Deindustrialization and globalization was handled much better by almost every other developed nation. 

 

It's far easier to govern small populations of like-minded, ethnically and religiously homogenous people.  It's far easier to build a strong social safety net in such a country.  It's far easier to build cohesive and supportive communities within as well as educate such a population.

 

There's no country in the fully developed world with a population that is as large and ethnically and culturally diverse as even the white population of this country is, not to mention the significant Hispanic, Black, and Asian American populations. We're unique and that's why we've never been able to copy the best social safety net policies that work for Canada, Europe, Australia, Japan and the Asian miracle countries.  We're in the same boat as the massive and ultra diverse countries like India, China, Brazil, Russia, and whatever African powers emerge over the next century.  We're doing way better than them.

On 9/3/2017 at 11:04 AM, Fergasun said:

I think both parties need to admit, Obamacare is not what is putting this country in crises.  Both parties need to also admit that lack of tax reform is not putting this country in crises.  Both parties need to admit that immigration is not putting this country into crises.

 

Um, one of the parties is perfectly willing to admit all of those things.

[LadySkinsFan]

We could solve a lot of these issues if we weren't constantly at war and spending trillions of dollars on those endeavors. 

 

We think of giving out more corporate welfare and breaks to the wealthy than we are promoting the general welfare of actual humans. 

 

CEO salaries are through the roof. Profits are at an all-time high. 

 

I'd go along with lower tax rates for corporations if and only if corporate welfare were abolished. It would simplify the tax code. A bunch of tax lawyers would have to find other work, corporations wouldn't have to employ a tax department looking for esoteric deductions.

[tshile]

19 minutes ago, stevemcqueen1 said:

 

It's far easier to govern small populations of like-minded, ethnically and religiously homogenous people.  It's far easier to build a strong social safety net in such a country.  It's far easier to build cohesive and supportive communities within as well as educate such a population.

 

There's no country in the fully developed world with a population that is as large and ethnically and culturally diverse as even the white population of this country is, not to mention the significant Hispanic, Black, and Asian American populations.

 

This doesn't get enough consideration when people throw around statistical information about who's better at what where.

 

It should be the an undertone of every political discussion, but it's not.

 

What we're trying to do, as a country, is hard. I don't think it's smart that we've consolidated so much power to the federal government. It's unreasonable to manage the entire country that way, and I think it's a major source of a lot of the strife we see.

 

 

[Weganator]

32 minutes ago, tshile said:

 

This doesn't get enough consideration when people throw around statistical information about who's better at what where.

 

It should be the an undertone of every political discussion, but it's not.

 

What we're trying to do, as a country, is hard. I don't think it's smart that we've consolidated so much power to the federal government. It's unreasonable to manage the entire country that way, and I think it's a major source of a lot of the strife we see.

 

 

 

The other one that gets me is these people that throw out the Nordics for their Universal Healthcare and Free College.. They don't have the GDP growth to support a reliable strong standing army. Many of these countries still have the draft / conscription.

 

If 'eligible for conscription' is comparable to military service, then these services are comparable to the GI Bill and the VA Hospitals. I'm willing to pay for my own college and healthcare so as to prevent my rights from being violated by being forced into compulsory military service.

 

If you aren't, join the military.... or maybe we can come up with some sort of a "give me free stuff, but now I'm draft eligible" pool.

 

EDIT: The US Reserves almost meet this, but aren't as generous with benefits as active duty.

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-norway-women-conscription/norway-becomes-first-nato-country-to-draft-women-into-military-idUSBRE95D0NB20130614

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/03/sweden-conscription/518571/

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Denmark

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Finland

[NoCalMike]

56 minutes ago, twa said:

 

Of late?....seems a lifetime thing to me

 

 

 

 

Well what I meant was that some of it is legitimate.  I think it is fair to say there have been disadvantages and bias and privilege throughout the country's history, but more recently the backlash and resentment has been tapped into by politicians in which they are telling them that they are "true ones left behind" 

[Going Commando]

On 9/4/2017 at 9:13 AM, The Sisko said:

This goes back to before the revolutionary war. Nathaniel Bacon tried to unite poor whites and blacks in a rebellion against the planter class. It was put down but the result was the creation of policies and ideas designed to put them against one another and create in essence a caste system that has largely endured to this day. If you think about a lot of the GOP's policies, they track along similar lines. 

 

This is accurate.  Although I'll be pedantic and note that Bacon was an ambitious and opportunistic aristocrat who was actually just trying to leverage the class conflict between rich and poor Virginians and also conflict between whites and Indians to drive out his political enemy in Governor Berkeley and seize control of the colony for himself.  He wasn't actually interested in egalitarianism or racial harmony, and in fact, the issue that sparked the rebellion was that the rich planters wouldn't let lower class white frontiersmen kill the Indians and take their land.

 

But you're right to say that Bacon's Rebellion plus the decline in immigration of white indentured servants by the late 1600's led directly to the creation of the specific system of white supremacy that still defines our society today.  And you're also right that the whole intent behind the creation of this system of white supremacy was to mollify and distract poor whites from the hardships and inequalities of the massive wealth gap that was created by the tobacco bust in the 1660's and 1670's and the grievances caused by the brutality of the elitist government.  And this system of white supremacy was so successful in pacifying poor whites that it spread to Barbados and Jamaica and Carolina and eventually the entire English colonial world.

[mcsluggo]

On 9/3/2017 at 2:02 PM, No Excuses said:

At one point or another, both Democrats and Republicans have sacrificed the American worker to the altar of profit and big business growth.

 

Deindustrialization and globalization was handled much better by almost every other developed nation. 

 

We, for some reason, just decided that large chunks of our population were useless and we had no practical need for them to participate in our economy and governance.

 

The real tragedy of all is that working poor of both white and colored groups have it rough, but they are driven apart politically and often pit against each other.

 

Why do you think this?   

 

It seems the opposite to me.   Where did technology firms spring up most adroitly?    where is the higher education center of the world?   the entertainment center?  the financial center?   the monetary center?   

[LadySkinsFan]

1 hour ago, mcsluggo said:

 

It seems the opposite to me.   Where did technology firms spring up most adroitly?    where is the higher education center of the world?   the entertainment center?  the financial center?   the monetary center?   

 

You do know that these will change under the Trump years.

 

Remember, Bush 43 called his base "the Haves and the Have Mores".

[Going Commando]

1 hour ago, mcsluggo said:

Why do you think this?   

 

Probably a suite of public health, standard of living, crime, and educational outcome indicators.  We're falling behind on the Democracy Index too.

 

Our elites who attend top universities and work for industry leading tech companies or in the financial services or entertainment sectors are doing very well.  But that doesn't reflect the experience of what, 99% of our population?  Your average American has a worse life than your average Western/Northern European, Australian, and Canadian in every meaningful way.

[Vilandil Tasardur]

2 hours ago, mcsluggo said:

 

Why do you think this?   

 

It seems the opposite to me.   Where did technology firms spring up most adroitly?    where is the higher education center of the world?   the entertainment center?  the financial center?   the monetary center?   

 

38 minutes ago, stevemcqueen1 said:

 

Probably a suite of public health, standard of living, crime, and educational outcome indicators.  We're falling behind on the Democracy Index too.

 

Our elites who attend top universities and work for industry leading tech companies or in the financial services or entertainment sectors are doing very well.  But that doesn't reflect the experience of what, 99% of our population?  Your average American has a worse life than your average Western/Northern European, Australian, and Canadian in every meaningful way.

I may be wrong abut this; I don't have data and wasn't in Western Europe when the shift happened, but I suspect that it's also about the trade offs.

 

Tech and Education boomed in the US, but they did so while leaving behind a HUGE amount of the US as well. Europe has, at least given the impression, that they transitioned from an industrial and manufacturing society to a tech, science, and service based society on the whole. In the US, that happened on the coast and in the cities and everyone else basically got left behind wondering where their life went.

[PeterMP]

11 hours ago, Weganator said:

Explain to me how rising worker wages due to the reduction in illegal labor meets any of these criteria (unless you mean 'unable to vote' for the undocumented). Otherwise, its not 'an absolute fact that Republicans are aiming at X'

 

It isn't at all clear that eliminating illegal labor will increase wages vs. just encourage more out sourcing and automation and as such actually decrease wages and increase unemployment.

 

Anybody that is telling you with any certainty that reducing illegal immigration is going to increase wages or decrease unemployment is either stupid or lying to you.

[PeterMP]

 

10 hours ago, Weganator said:

 

The other one that gets me is these people that throw out the Nordics for their Universal Healthcare and Free College.. They don't have the GDP growth to support a reliable strong standing army. Many of these countries still have the draft / conscription.

 

If 'eligible for conscription' is comparable to military service, then these services are comparable to the GI Bill and the VA Hospitals. I'm willing to pay for my own college and healthcare so as to prevent my rights from being violated by being forced into compulsory military service.

 

If you aren't, join the military.... or maybe we can come up with some sort of a "give me free stuff, but now I'm draft eligible" pool.

 

EDIT: The US Reserves almost meet this, but aren't as generous with benefits as active duty.

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-norway-women-conscription/norway-becomes-first-nato-country-to-draft-women-into-military-idUSBRE95D0NB20130614

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/03/sweden-conscription/518571/

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Denmark

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Finland

 

Ah no.  I'm not sure what their issue is in terms of creating a military, but their per capitia GDP is essentially the same or even greater than ours.

 

https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&idim=country:USA:CHN&hl=en&dl=en#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=ny_gdp_pcap_cd&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:USA:SWE:NOR&ifdim=region&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false

 

And their GDP growth rate

 

https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&idim=country:USA:CHN&hl=en&dl=en#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=ny_gdp_mktp_kd_zg&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:USA:SWE:NOR&ifdim=region&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false

 

(Most reasonably sized stable democracies have essentially the same GDP long term growth (ln linear), which sort of kills the argument that minor fluctuations in things like tax policy affect GDP growth.  All those things do is affect who benefits from the growth (i.e. the workers or the people with money).)

 

I don't know, but I'd guess the issues are mostly population based ethics/psychology.

[mcsluggo]

the gains in European countries happened in the 60s-90s (and Japan too, even more so)... they have suffered much more economic malaise than the USA in the last 20 years.   there HAS been a flip in equality (the US has been getting much more unequal, and much faster than the Europeans) but that has been a failure of distribution, not a failure to grasp the new economic opportunities in a post industrial age.

 

(i'd also point out that people like to ignore european immigrants when making generalizations about how successful European societies are at generating equality....   European immigrants are NOT doing as well as "society on the whole", not by a long shot .... unlike in the US.) 

 

In the USA there is a failure of US tax policy, not of economic growth policy.      ------    actually it has been a purposeful feature of changes in tax policy, to redistribute income from the poor and middle class to the rich.   it hasn't been accidental.    THis purposeful tax policy shift in income to the rich combined with the fact that in a globalized information/service economy there are different winners and losers than in a more isolated and/or industrial based economy has really ****ed unskilled labor (mostly non-urban labor, where mills and foundries and factories have shuttered, but haven;t been replaced by knowledge industries).   This has also been exacerbated by the fact that "tangible goods" industries in the US suffer from a strong dollar  (the "dutch" disease, that was named after the observation that the dutch goods export industry was devastated by the appreciation of the Dutch Gilder in the 70s and 80s, after the discovery and booming sales of North Sea oil in Dutch waters) ....   the world wants dollars, as the reserve currency, whether or not they want US goods... this keeps the US$ permanently "strong"  (expensive), and makes US based goods permanently expensive as well.  

 

but the USA has GROWN faster than the rest of the industrialized (post industrialized?) world for years.   

[The Sisko]

5 minutes ago, mcsluggo said:

...In the USA there is a failure of US tax policy, not of economic growth policy.      ------    actually it has been a purposeful feature of changes in tax policy, to redistribute income from the poor and middle class to the rich.   it hasn't been accidental.    THis purposeful tax policy shift in income to the rich combined with the fact that in a globalized information/service economy there are different winners and losers than in a more isolated and/or industrial based economy has really ****ed unskilled labor (mostly non-urban labor, where mills and foundries and factories have shuttered, but haven;t been replaced by knowledge industries).   

Income redistribution upwards? Not directed at you, but we were and are constantly told for 30 years or more that the US has been *GASP* teetering on the brink of communism. What with income and other taxes on the wealthy dropping like a rock, ever expanding corporate welfare and stagnant wages for all but the upper class, it's a wonder we're not all calling each other comrade by now while toiling away on our collective farms. ??

 

Regarding the schtupping of unskilled labor, I'd argue that much of that owes to two things, i.e. a lack of serious inputs to worker retraining and the gutting of any power by labor. I'm not a huge fan of unions, but they serve a valuable purpose in maintaining some semblance of a balance of power between labor and management. This is especially important in an era when anti-trust law has been gutted and corporate consolidation has given management even more power.

 

My wife finished her MBA recently and her class had a number of guest lecturers over the course of the program. One of them blatantly said that everyone below the c-suite are immaterial, replaceable and of little or no consequence. So there you have it. That's what you and I are worth to them. It's nothing new of course, but hearing it said so nakedly and explicitly was a little surprising. 

 

We call ourselves a free country, but 90% of us will knuckle under and felate our bosses if the threat of job loss is on the table. That's just part of what our national shift rightward has bought us. Great. Just great.

[Fergasun]

@The Sisko

If you can't get a C than there must be a problem with you... after all, God helps people who help themselves.  And since I know I helped myself, and only my effort mattered, I can look down on you.....

[PeterMP]

22 hours ago, stevemcqueen1 said:

 

It's far easier to govern small populations of like-minded, ethnically and religiously homogenous people.  It's far easier to build a strong social safety net in such a country.  It's far easier to build cohesive and supportive communities within as well as educate such a population.

 

There's no country in the fully developed world with a population that is as large and ethnically and culturally diverse as even the white population of this country is, not to mention the significant Hispanic, Black, and Asian American populations. We're unique and that's why we've never been able to copy the best social safety net policies that work for Canada, Europe, Australia, Japan and the Asian miracle countries.  We're in the same boat as the massive and ultra diverse countries like India, China, Brazil, Russia, and whatever African powers emerge over the next century.  We're doing way better than them.

 

This sounds like an excuse and not a particularly good one to me vs. anything that has any actual evidence supporting it.  For example, with respect to education there is good data that shows diversity is an important part of education even for things like middle school math.  That more homogenous populations should be able to truly create a better education system due to their homogeneous nature seems unlikely.

 

I  suspect that the difference in the US and countries like India, Brazil, and Africa are tied to other things.  Mostly I suspect it is the way colonization happened where in the US it was really a policy of genocide with respect to the believed inferior natives and then re-settlement with at least about believed to be equivalent people vs. mostly subjugation, oppression, and profiting from the supposedly inferior native populations in the other areas of the world and that combined with things like tropical diseases have the largest impact (it is hard to create a stable society when you have things like Ebola that can come through and decimate a population center even today, but especially before our modern understanding of disease, which realistically is relatively recent).

 

Russia is a different situation.  I think their biggest issue is just the lack of historical stable institutions related to democratic thought and in that sense, I think we can thank the founding fathers vs. the founding fathers of post-tsarist Russia (though, I do wonder what would have happened in Russia if Lenin would have generaly been healthy and then lived vs. being sick, dying and transferring power to the paranoid sociopath Stalin).

 

(I'll also point that I think India historically has another obstacle in terms of the dominant religion believes that "good" people benefit in the Earthly world and so people that are suffering are doing so because of their own (previous life) bad deeds and (at least at some level) that people that are successful are successful due to their true moral superiority.  While in Christianity that wasn't historically a widely accepted belief and is a more recently accepted belief with the rise of the prosperity gospel.) 

[Going Commando]

35 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

 

This sounds like an excuse and not a particularly good one to me vs. anything that has any actual evidence supporting it.  For example, with respect to education there is good data that shows diversity is an important part of education even for things like middle school math.  That more homogenous populations should be able to truly create a better education system due to their homogeneous nature seems unlikely.

 

I think it's a byproduct of more stable social situations.  I can agree that it's intuitively true that more diverse environments increase dynamism which stimulates education.  But I think it's also intuitively true that homogeneity facilitates social cohesion and that cohesion creates stability which in turn facilitates education.  I think that humans tend to cohere along ethnic, religious, and cultural lines.  In the absence of ethnic homogeneity, communities who eventually successfully cohere do so by creating a new social construct built around religious or cultural similarity--the process of the "whitening" of diverse European immigrants to the US is an example of this.

 

Communities that are already ethnically homogeneous have a head start on building social cohesion and thus they are typically more stable.  Down to the family unit level.  Certainly not always, it definitely takes more than homogeneity to create social stability.  There are failed families and failed communities throughout ethnically homogeneous Appalachia, for example.  But generally, I bet it's a faithful correlation between homogeneity-->social cohesion-->stability-->good educational outcomes.

 

I think it's just easier to get people in communities with strong social cohesion to sacrifice and agree on best practices for taxation and funding schools and the methods for raising and educating their children.

 

I want to talk about the second part of your post about the colonial experience of the big nations.  I'll try and do it when I get home tonight.

[zoony]

11 hours ago, The Sisko said:

Regarding the schtupping of unskilled labor, I'd argue that much of that owes to two things, i.e. a lack of serious inputs to worker retraining and the gutting of any power by labor. I'm not a huge fan of unions, but they serve a valuable purpose in maintaining some semblance of a balance of power between labor and management. This is especially important in an era when anti-trust law has been gutted and corporate consolidation has given management even more power.

 

You must also recognize how lazy and soft our society has become, in particular millenials.

 

Do a bit of research on commercial pipe fitter unions, plumbing and mechanical trade organizations like the phcc and mcaa.  They are BEGGING for workers.  You think Im exaggerating, Im not.  If you are 18 years old and have an IQ above 60 they will pay you $14 per hour and give you free schooling to become a journeyman, full union.  Kids will be making $60k by the age of 30.

 

There are commercial firms all over the country right now not bidding work simply because they lack the capacity from a labor point of view.  It is a crisis

 

However, never convenient to point out in these discussions.  But if we want to look at the problem, lets look at all aspects of the problem.  Entitlement in this country has reached critical levels.

[grego]

3 minutes ago, zoony said:

 

You must also recognize how lazy and soft our society has become, in particular millenials.

 

Do a bit of research

 

 

meh. sounds like too much work.

[Vilandil Tasardur]

3 minutes ago, zoony said:

 

You must also recognize how lazy and soft our society has become, in particular millenials.

 

Do a bit of research on commercial pipe fitter unions, plumbing and mechanical trade organizations like the phcc and mcaa.  They are BEGGING for workers.  You think Im exaggerating, Im not.  If you are 18 years old and have an IQ above 60 they will pay you $14 per hour and give you free schooling to become a journeyman, full union.  Kids will be making $60k by the age of 30.

 

There are commercial firms all over the country right now not bidding work simply because they lack the capacity from a labor point of view.  It is a crisis

 

However, never convenient to point out in these discussions.  But if we want to look at the problem, lets look at all aspects of the problem.  Entitlement in this country has reached critical levels.

I think that's fair, but I don't think it's fair to put that all on millenials. Historically, children are poor decision makers. I think a lot of this falls on boomer nad gen X parents who push their children towards "more".

 

I've lost count of how many neighborhood block parties I sat through with suburban yuppies spouting things like "the world desperately needs blue collar workers" but what they really mean is "someone needs to do those jobs, but not MY child!". 

 

Kids are told from day 1 that college is their way to a better life, largely because, on a macro level it is true. You are statistically more likely to do well if you go to college. But it ignores the ven-diagram of "middle class" that exists between blue and white collar work. 

[LadySkinsFan]

That's because blue collar jobs have been devalued, especially by Republicans who are busy killing unions and instilling right to work laws. 

 

People are increasingly without recourse and at the whims of corporations. 

 

Look at teachers and nurses. They are required to take advanced training and education, take extra courses, yet are among the least paid of professions. Because they are mostly female, and yet these are our society's care givers caring and educating for our young, sick, and elderly. Because these populations largely don't vote and are considered not valuable citizens.

 

It's a shame, and We the People should be ashamed.

[Kosher Ham]

Umm.. My SIL works 3 days a week and clears nearly 6 figures as what most would consider a nurse. She is a young 36. I wouldn't call that underpaid. 

 

On 9/5/2017 at 9:32 AM, Busch1724 said:

patients accounted for 39%, 28%, 25% and 9%. 

 

 

Is my math fuzzy ? 

[Busch1724]

4 minutes ago, Kosher Ham said:

Is my math fuzzy ? 

 

Not sure what you're asking here, but sure if the numbers are added up; it's 101%. Maybe the site I copied and pasted it from, rounded numbers from the original data source. If you were getting at something else, let me know. I'm mildly confused haha. 

[Kosher Ham]

That part of this discussion is odd to me. I am not really trying to be quaint. I really don't get why abortion should be a part of this discussion. I do understand why you responded. I simply don't get why anyone would think that at this point in time that this should be part of the topic. 

 

Not to mention... my math is still good. Thanks for the clarification. I seriously looked at it twice.