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At 9/28/13 04:06 PM, Warforger wrote:

At 9/28/13 02:54 PM, Th-e wrote: If that is the case, then why haven't these trillion dollar deficits over the past 4-5 years fixed our economy? Why is the labor force as small as it was in the 1970s?

We don't have trillion dollar DEFICITS, we have a trillion dollar debt not deficit. That and because government spending has contracted, not expanded (especially after the sequester), under Obama because of the idea that the Private sector will create a net increase in jobs. While the private sector did increase it wasn't enough to outpace the loss in public sector jobs, so that didn't work out.

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/Content/GIF/fed_receipt_sum_historical.gif

Scrolling down we see Deficits in excess of 1 Trillion from 09 to 012, They are projected to fall below 1 trillion in 2013, assuming the economy continues to do what it's been doing for the last few years.

Total Outlays per year starting in 2009 [in billions]

3517.7, 3456.2, 3603.1, 3537.1

Projected... 3684.9, 3777.8, 3903.2, 4089.8, 4247.4, 4449.2

We are instructed to treat this period as a period of government contraction. 2009 was in absolute terms a historic high in spending. 2010 saw a decrease of 1.7% then an increase of a little over 4%, then then a decrease of 1.8%, All subsequent federal spendings involve annualized increases of somewhere between 3 and 4 percent per year. Deficits are projected to close on the assumption that tax revenues will grow at roughly double the annualized rate of federal spending increases.

You can look at this one of two ways. One is that since 2009 we have been living in an era of great federal austerity, since there has been relatively little net increase from 2009 to 2012. Or that federal spending is at a historic high but has been temporarily halted.

I don't know, maybe the engineering field is saturated by people who think that simply having an engineering degree means that they can get a job easily. There are actually alot of open jobs, it's just there are not enough people who have the appropriate skill set like a Liberal Arts degree.

Are you calling a liberal arts degree an appropriate skill set? Before I show you my data perhaps you'd like to show me yours.

At any rate a more plausible set of non-counter-propositional explanations:

1. The University the individual went to was not reputable
2. He majored in a Particular type of Engineering he majored in was saturated or on the decline [Aerospace is an example]
3. Simply bad luck, since no degree has an unemployment rate of 0%

At 9/27/13 06:48 PM, Feoric wrote:

Considering many experts are anticipating premiums to be even cheaper than previous projections, you run the risk even more people liking and depending on the program, making any changes to the program highly unpopular, similar to Social Security and Medicare.

Well the previous projections were extraordinarily high to begin with.

If the program is good, then it's good. If it's bad, it will either cause harm or hasten the bankruptcy of the US Government or cause general misery [or both] -- Both outcomes are good. The former for obvious reasons, the latter because it will eventually bring down the US Government.

At 9/27/13 06:14 PM, Feoric wrote:

So the way to kill a health insurance law is to make more people have health insurance. Well I'll be!

Well if PACA is as bad as Republicans believe, the only *just* thing is for everyone to share in the misery.

But realistically if the only thing the ACA did was mandate the purchase of already expensive health insurance, it would not be as insufferable as it will be to many people now.

The only thing that is worth doing at this point is expanding Obamacare to those who are currently exempted. Rand Paul seems to be the only one who is close to having the right idea.

You can't stop the implementation of bad laws, what you *can* do is lend a hand to make them worse. And the worse they are made the better we'll all be in the long run.

There are two reasons i regard as compelling to oppose the death penalty, one is that there are instances where someone is executed and then found to have been innocent ex-post-facto. The second reason is that in the present legal regime it is actually more expensive to execute someone than to keep them in life for prison.

There are some sensible alternatives to the death penalty.

1. In the event that an inmate wishes to commit suicide, he should not be prohibited from doing so by law.

and/or

2. Substitute the death penalty with exile or outlawing. [An outlaw is someone who is declared to be outside the law, and while the government does not punish them directly, it is no longer illegal for someone to commit a transgression against an outlaw, including murder]

All forms of fascism if practiced by whites are racist in the sense that they are liable to be called such. [The truest criteria of racism is whether or not something is liable to be called racist, because the most essential feature of racists and racism is people's reaction towards the accusation, not the nature of the thing itself] -- Authoritarian and nationalistic governments of other races may or may not be called racist.

But nowadays fascism is a slur, which means, like racism, it has no clear definition.

Did anyone actually believe anything would come of this?

At 9/20/13 12:01 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

More importantly are there good defenses that can be found online against the criticisms made of the study since?

Wait nevermind, found some stuff.

Share!

Your the academically trained economist, go find your own damn research. >:(

On a more serious note. You did call it the *best* study, the fact that it was made 20 years ago notwithstanding. So my assumption had been that you needed to have known more about what happened afterwards then you let on.

I did a google search of "Card Krueger Controversy" and skimmed through the writings on the first 3 pages or so of Google listings. I also Google searched 'Card Krueger debate' -- got some more stuff.

At 9/20/13 12:01 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

More importantly are there good defenses that can be found online against the criticisms made of the study since?

Wait nevermind, found some stuff.

At 9/19/13 04:19 PM, Der-Lowe wrote:

At 9/15/13 12:58 PM, RydiaLockheart wrote:

At 9/15/13 11:24 AM, Der-Lowe wrote:

If Card Kreuger is the best study done, does that mean that nothing better has been done within the last 20 years?

More importantly are there good defenses that can be found online against the criticisms made of the study since?

That army picture is somewhat misleading. If a soldier is in the tour of duty, his food, clothing, room and board, and transportation costs are all paid for, so that 25,000 dollars is *all* spending money. Plus he'll get a decent pension.

Not saying a soldier's job is better than a burger flippers, or worse, but there are too many variables left out in that picture.

Income inequality isn't a terribly salient reason to raise the minimum wage, as we are talking about a relatively small increase in a wage that few americans earn. It's not going to put a dent

I also suspect that chart of income stagnation would be worse if the cost of living index used relied upon the same methodology that was used at the beginning of the trend which appears to have begun in the early 1970s.

Though what I would like to see is a graph of changes in income when AGE has been controlled for. Fewer young people are working now than ever before, and more and more aged 55+ Americans are either coming out of retirement to work or putting off retirement out of insecurity [financial and otherwise]

At 9/14/13 12:24 PM, morefngdbs wrote:

At 9/13/13 10:15 PM, Korriken wrote: I have a better idea. We don't need to go hiking the minimum wage. We need more access to education.

;;;

THe education system is set up to give the maximum people just enough skills to keep the toilets working, the coffee ready & the floors clean & shiny.

The college system does not teach job skills. It's an intelligence screen, basically it's an overpriced IQ test and gauge of a person's willingness to do things they don't want to. Both are good worker qualities.

Even with technical degrees like STEM, you find that none of what the colleges teach has anything to do with what you do when working.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpk_u_VmPD4

http://www.gallup.com/poll/164321/majority-workers-say-job-require-degree.aspx

All an employer needs to know is that a university graduate is probably smarter and harder working than a highschool graduate. Even if the graduate majored in something useless [relative to the job] like Archeology, or women's studies.

At 9/14/13 01:25 AM, BumFodder wrote:

At 9/13/13 07:16 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote: As more and more Americans find themselves working part time low paying service sector jobs, like those of the MacDonald's workers, the demands to raise the MW will probably increase.

stopped reading here

Matter-of-factly the number of people working in the low paying service sector has been increasing. Another more recent trend is the fall of full time employment and the rise of 1. hiring temp workers 2. hiring part time. Both of which involve people being 'employed' but not being able to earn as much money as they would like. [Not in terms of per hour pay but in terms of hours worked]

Now I'm not actually sure how many people *actually* pay minimum wage. But my guess is that even those who are earning, my guess is though

If more people find themselves at or close to low paying work, and also don't feel like advancement is possible, they will eventually start *demanding* things from their government.

There's nothing melodramatic about it.

The whole reason Socialism [as it was understood in the late 19th century] was so unpopular in the US was because of the relative ease with which one could make a decent living.

of Course it could be that people today simply have a ridiculously high standard for what consists in a decent living.

At 9/13/13 10:20 PM, Ravariel wrote:

Today is opposite day, isn't it? Why did nobody tell me?

I'm not advocating raising the minimum wage out of a belief that it will help people.

it *might*, though I suspect it won't.

As long as there is a sizable number of people who believe in a minimum wage [that it is a good thing] then there is a rationale behind raising it just to prove those people wrong. The greater the damage done the greater the evidence.

Camaro put forward reasons for not raising the MW that are more or less fancy elaborations on the reasons I put forward for why people generally object to a MW increase.

At 9/13/13 08:19 PM, Warforger wrote: People are calling to raise the minimum wage because the wage set by market forces is already higher than it so it's not really a minimum wage just an excuse for employers to underpay their employees.

That seems a bit contradictory. If the wage set by market forces is above the minimum wage, how does a legal minimum actually *help* employers resist market forces?

At 9/13/13 08:15 PM, RydiaLockheart wrote: In all seriousness, if we were to raise the minimum wage, how much do you think would be fair? No way to $15, but maybe there could be a sliding scale for places that are more expensive. Like, minimum wage would be a little higher in NYC than, say, Fargo.

Interesting fact: Ohio's minimum wage is higher than the federal, but it's tied to inflation.

"Fair" can mean multiple things.

If by fair, you mean a living wage, then 15$ per hour would not cut it in most places. [Especially blue states and metropolitan areas] If I'm not mistaken, a 10 dollar minimum wage is roughly 20,000 dollars per year, or half of the median income of an American.

If by fair, you mean a wage which represents the workers actual productivity, I have no idea.

A better case could be made *now* than could be made in the late 19th century that American workers are not being paid the full value of their labor, and people generally [wrongfully in my opinion] portray that era as an era of mass exploitation of working people. And by better case, I mean that

Conservatives and progressives could come to a compromise. Let progressives bring back the old-timey Labor Union stuff that will supposedly raise workers wages. And in return, progressives can agree to stop supporting policies that make everything [Food, Healthcare, Education, etc.] So goddamn expensive.

I'm personally more confident that price deflation of consumer goods will help the common man then labor unions, but I'm more confident that labor unions can help the common man than i am progressives and conservatives coming to such a compromise.

There's been some talk recently about demands to raise the minimum wage

http://dailycaller.com/2013/09/13/liberally-yours-a-living-wage-is-the-essence-of-american-exceptionalism/

As more and more Americans find themselves working part time low paying service sector jobs, like those of the MacDonald's workers, the demands to raise the MW will probably increase.

The two main criticisms of this are that it will either raise the price of whatever the business in question is selling, or create dis-employment that will suppress wages elsewhere, or leave people without jobs entirely.

I don't buy the first argument, since contra-marx the prices of goods are not determined by costs of production but, generally by the price that the producer thinks will maximize his profits [at least generally]. But the second argument carries a great deal more water, especially since it explains how workers wages/salaries can increase but the costs of business can remain constant.

I'm not actually going to attempt to refute the idea that raising the minimum wage will cause unemployment.

Now it may be that it does raise unemployment but the benefits to those still employed are greater than harm done to those who lost their job. I'm not going to make that argument either. For one, whether that would be better is a value judgement. Secondly, I don't have the evidence to prove it's true

Instead I'm going to argue that if we compare the two possibilities, raising the Minimum wage is still a good idea.

Obviously if it's the case that MW increases have little to no effect on employment, increasing the MW is pretty harmless.

If it DOES cause unemployment, *noticeable* unemployment. Two things will happen, both of which in my view are positive.

1. It will prove the economists right. [The ones who predicted such an outcome anyway]
2. It will punish those working minimum wage for their economic illiteracy.

And of course if larger minimum wage increases cause more unemployment, all the more reason to jack them up.

If #2 causes you to raise an eyebrow, consider that opponents of the minimum wage are generally perceived as being heartless. In my mind, since this accusation is not going to die as long as the minimum wage is debated, people who oppose the minimum wage might as well embrace the dark side and become the fiendish villains everyone else thinks they are. And what better way to do that then support something like a 30 dollar minimum wage?

I think it more likely that the economists predicting greater unemployment from a raise in the MW are correct. Call me psychotic, but I think it's more important in the long run to prove a point than to act like a compassionate economist, all the while losing popularity.

At 9/12/13 08:29 PM, AxTekk wrote:

At 9/12/13 08:10 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote: I don't see much contemporary evidence of it,

Can I ask - why would we have loan words if our own language covered everything? There is no English word for "schaudenfreude" or "entrepeneur" so we have had to borrow from other languages. Of course, this is the tip of the iceberg and the vast majority of gaps in our language remain unfilled.

What I mean is, I don't see much evidence of group differences in language manifesting in the kinds of advances.

And when I say I don't see much evidence, I'm not saying there isn't any; which is partly why I thought it sensible to include historical examples.

Partly because the languages have already done a great deal of crossing over, I see the benefits as being saturated beyond a particular point.

At 9/12/13 07:45 PM, poxpower wrote:

At 9/12/13 06:44 PM, Preternatural wrote:

Perhaps. But it seems to me that some languages express thoughts and ideas better than others and, as such, native speakers of different languages are prone to have different world views.

Why would you think that?
??
I don't see any evidence of this anywhere.

I don't see much contemporary evidence of it, but I do think there may be HISTORICAL evidence.

I know for example that certain languages actually *lacked* words to describe concepts that we take for granted. English is a particularly powerful language in that it has SO many words to describe concepts.

An example possibly similar to this would be how the Greeks were able to develop fairly advanced geometric theories but their mathematical 'language' was based, essentially, on ideas relating to compasses and rulers. In fact they, like the hebrews, represented numbers in terms of letters, and did not use the 10-digit number system that makes arithmetic and algebra so simple.

But of course no one should be so stupid as to say that Arabic numerals are proof that the west should become islamified.

I disagree with you though on the idea that standardizing is a good thing in all areas.

I opposition to multiculturalism makes more sense on the grounds that cultures ought to be unique from one another, as opposed to homogenized through mass immigration. Mass uniformity is an insane egalitarian aesthetic. Beauty comes from differences.

People who subscribe to anthropogenic climate change for reasons of intellectual authoritarianism are not going to be convinced by this kind of argument. And people who subscribe to anthropogenic climate change for scientific reasons will certainly not be convinced. So I don't see what can really be accomplished here.

The point of agitation among proponents and opponents of what is called multiculturalism is usually on the issue of mass immigration of the citizens of one country into another.

The Transmission of knowledge and culture can, and traditionally has occured without such mass immigration. The issue, therefore, of whether such a thing is good or bad is moot. Cultural diffusion has existed for hundreds of years, the cohabitation of different racial and ethnic groups within the same geopolitical units as a deliberate matter of state policy, taken upon by various first world governments, is a relatively recent phenomenon.

Even if it did, it would at best justify the immigration of scientists and artists; an immigration policy far more restrictive than what is practiced in most multi-culturally minded governments.

At 9/9/13 01:18 PM, poxpower wrote: There's been lots of talk about mutliculturalism and how awesome and important it is in my province recently.

Your title is somewhat misleading. I thought you were going to argue that culture wasn't real.

Notwithstanding, You didn't bring up the strongest major criticism of diversity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Putnam#Diversity_and_trust_within_communities

A harvard political scientist more or less comes to the conclusion that diversity reduces the amount of trust between *and* within ethnic/racial/cultural groups after spending years trying to disprove said conclusion.

I don't see much of a point in saying anything as long as Meng Hu is posting.

http://humanvarieties.org/2013/01/22/introducing-myself-meng-hu/

@CaptainLolz nihil sub sole novum. You're not going to score points by citing "rationalwiki" on

There's no group more despised by us racists than "Rational, freethinking, skeptical, and open minded atheists"

@Naronic: Where exactly does your background in this topic come from exactly? I can't imagine a school actually equipping students with rebuttals to hereditarian arguments, as that entails acknowledging the existence of a very dangerous debate.

At 8/31/13 11:10 PM, Feoric wrote:

At 8/31/13 10:06 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote: For one I really wish you'd use the word "we" less.

Then who else should I be referring to?

It's not your military and it's not mine, and the overwhelming majority of american citizens have no control let alone interest in the details of the US Army. If this was some collective action project, you could in good faith use the word "we" to describe the people involved.

If you see another likely outcome please share it, but there is not a single person here who thinks that any country is capable of bringing "rainbows and sunshine" to Syria so let's leave straw man arguments out of this.

If this is the case then there's little fear of history books second guessing a decision not to intervene at this point.

And Democrats can easily rebut that by saying "This republican congressman/woman advanced the interests of Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and a murderous dictator who killed hundreds of children with chemical weapons." Both are equally effective, don't you think?

Most conservative networks I'm familiar with are, surprisingly, more critical of the war then they are in favor of it. Combine that with the fact that your rebut requires democrats to take a hard neoconservative line. The people who opposed intervention will probably fair better than those who supported it, especially if military action *is* taken.

I don't much care for strategic politics because in 30 years time it will all become moot, but that's another issue entirely.

But It still makes sense for the outer party to allow the inner party to 'own' the compounding consequences of US Foreign policy, and that means being less pro-intervention than they have [at least recently] been.

At 8/31/13 07:05 PM, Feoric wrote:

:American involvement usually destabilizes things, especially in the Middle East. I don't think Obama is dumb and he knows this, so he played his cards right and now the ball is in Congress's court. I am happy that we have finally managed to slam on the break when it seems military action is inevitable.

For one I really wish you'd use the word "we" less. But assuming the history books are written with the sentence 'American involvement usually destabilizes things' in mind, I think they'll forgive him for the one time he wasn't able to use the military to bring rainbows and sunshine to the third world.

I think this puts the GOP in a much tighter spot than you realize.

Unless republican voters are even dumber than I give them credit for, a republican politician can fairly easily explain the decision. "We will not support a political faction which 1. Murders christians 2. is associated with Al Qaeda"

At 8/31/13 05:43 PM, Feoric wrote:

Well this seems to be the most prevalent theme among people who aren't convinced the regime carried out the attack. Honestly I've covered this issue so many times it can't fit it all into one post, so although it may seem rude I'm just gonna have to ask you to read my previous posts about the issue starting on page 2 in this thread and the other Syria thread staring with this post (it would make more chronological sense to start from there). If there's anything not addressed by that point feel free to bring it up and we'll take it from there.

You stated seven days ago that you don't think Obama wants to go to war with Syria, for fear of losing face. With who exactly?

It seems strange that a comment that Obama made about chemical weapons being the red line for 'action' against Syria would somehow do irreparable damage to him if he failed to go on his promise. It's not as if there's a shortage of audio and video clips of him saying things which were later contradicted by his actions.

If the rest of what you said is true then the Syrian government using chemical weapons seems more plausible.

At 8/31/13 04:47 PM, Feoric wrote:

At 8/31/13 04:32 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote: I think Bayesian inference would suggest that the Chemicals were used by the rebels rather than Assad.

Take us through your logic, step by step.

Basically, was Assad losing against the rebels so badly that it was worth risking having a direct military confrontation with the US Army?

I didn't get the impression that he was losing at all.

The rebels, on the other hand, stand to gain considerably from US presence in Syria.

Now this isn't proof that Assad didn't use them or the Rebels did, but given the incentives involved, one seems more likely than another.

At 8/30/13 11:57 PM, MH19870410 wrote:

Of course not.

You write : "But I’m also wondering if you’re comfortable saying back a few posts ago that IQ is highly malleable ..."

A lot of people are not able to make the distinction between IQ changes and g changes.

I'm pretty new to the topic. :'( So I'm trying more to establish the essential plausibility behind the idea that natural selection did not end at the neck.

I think Bayesian inference would suggest that the Chemicals were used by the rebels rather than Assad.

At 8/29/13 05:59 AM, BumFodder wrote:

At 8/4/13 10:50 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote: If the Government of the UK takes the issue of rising violent crime seriously, then by all means arm the police.

But if they are more interested in preserving an illusion of tolerance and peace in a multicultural Britain, they are more likely to use those guns to subdue bitter natives than use them to subdue actual criminal behavior.

What? Violent crime has been falling rapidly for like 20 years and it wasnt even high in the first place. stop making shit up please lol

Ten years. My understanding was also that UK's violent crime was worse than the US at it's peak. Although I get different figures depending on who is doing the measuring and where. For example.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/6438601/Gun-crime-doubles-in-a-decade.html