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On August 21 2014 05:50 bookwyrm wrote: We just disagree about the reality of the narrative that you are proposing. I think it is a fantasy (and I'm suggesting that so do the dropouts, and they are right about it).
My own experience as a graduate student at a state university is that the only purpose of the institution is a student-debt credential inflation factory. None of the students are learning anything because the expectations are very low and they are completely unprepared for college level work (what they are doing is just remedial high school). The only point is to push them through the system so they can end up with a bunch of debt and a rapidly-inflating credential. If they get indoctrinated with some version of the Official State Orthodoxy of Pomo Mush along the way, that's icing on the cake.
Diplomas are like fiat money. You can print as many of them as you like but that doesn't mean they're going to end up being worth anything. The idea that you can fix an economy or social inequality by increasing access to higher education is Educational Keynesianism and just as stupid as the economic kind.
On August 21 2014 05:23 bookwyrm wrote: What if the school system is so utterly, systemically fucked that dropping out is a rational choice because our educational system is a ponzi scheme and therefore a waste of time?
That is, when someone says "Well, if you had not dropped out of school, things would have gone great" they are wrong. When the underclass child says "I dropped out of school because it was pointless anyway, preferring to face the reality of my systematic disenfranchisement than continue to embrace the cynical illusion that continuing through the school system will someone open up my horizon of possibilities" he is much closer to the truth. The dropping out of school thus merely confirms (/symbolically authorizes) what was already the case.
The idea that education is a scam is part of the problem. Staying in school and studying hard is a really, really important thing to do.
yes, this is the narrative that I don't believe in. Coming from someone who has done very little with his life besides staying in school and studying hard. And knowing a lot of people who came from the same privileged background as I, who are complete idiots but daddy bought them a diploma, who are perfectly "successful." They certainly didn't "study hard", they were just born to the manor. That's the reality of American society, your mythology be damned. The dropouts know it.
This is absurd. How are you going to earn a good salary as an engineer, accountant, computer programmer, etc. if you didn't go to school and learn how to do those things? Magic and pixy dust??
If you have a HS diploma or less the odds of you having a good paying job are very low. If you have a 4 year degree or better your odds go up dramatically. If you think dropouts are making a good call, you don't know shit.
Aren't they rational, outcome-maximizing homines oeconomici? Doesn't their dropping out prove that school wasn't worth it? This would be the logic you would apply to the stock market. If they choose not to purchase the commodity "education," then that is a market signal imparting information about the value of that commodity. Right?? (of course, you don't actually think this, since minorities aren't rational actors like the white investing class are, but merely beasts of passion).
Of course, you don't understand the point, since you say:
This is absurd. How are you going to earn a good salary as an engineer, accountant, computer programmer, etc. if you didn't go to school and learn how to do those things? Magic and pixy dust??
Obviously, my claim is not that they would be able to without, the claim is that they wouldn't be able to anyway. Don't make me assign you some homework on conditional operators, this is basic stuff.
edit: an education is like some weird twisted version of buying an option. When you buy an option you get the right but not the obligation to purchase something in the future. When you buy an education you buy the possibility, but not the assurance, of being hired. Paying for an education is like buying an option for somebody else - "we get the option, but you pay for it.". It's basically extortion: "pay us now and we might hire you in the future (but not necessarily), don't pay us and we definitely won't hire you." Dropping out is just a way of saying that the "option" is overpriced. Your claim is basically that it's just impossible for this "option" to be overpriced and that it should always be purchased no matter the price or the probability of payoff, and that it's a moral failing on the part of any individual who DOES decide that it's overpriced. This is the logic bubbles are made of.
On August 21 2014 05:50 bookwyrm wrote: We just disagree about the reality of the narrative that you are proposing. I think it is a fantasy (and I'm suggesting that so do the dropouts, and they are right about it).
My own experience as a graduate student at a state university is that the only purpose of the institution is a student-debt credential inflation factory. None of the students are learning anything because the expectations are very low and they are completely unprepared for college level work (what they are doing is just remedial high school). The only point is to push them through the system so they can end up with a bunch of debt and a rapidly-inflating credential. If they get indoctrinated with some version of the Official State Orthodoxy of Pomo Mush along the way, that's icing on the cake.
Diplomas are like fiat money. You can print as many of them as you like but that doesn't mean they're going to end up being worth anything. The idea that you can fix an economy or social inequality by increasing access to higher education is Educational Keynesianism and just as stupid as the economic kind.
On August 21 2014 05:50 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
On August 21 2014 05:23 bookwyrm wrote: What if the school system is so utterly, systemically fucked that dropping out is a rational choice because our educational system is a ponzi scheme and therefore a waste of time?
That is, when someone says "Well, if you had not dropped out of school, things would have gone great" they are wrong. When the underclass child says "I dropped out of school because it was pointless anyway, preferring to face the reality of my systematic disenfranchisement than continue to embrace the cynical illusion that continuing through the school system will someone open up my horizon of possibilities" he is much closer to the truth. The dropping out of school thus merely confirms (/symbolically authorizes) what was already the case.
The idea that education is a scam is part of the problem. Staying in school and studying hard is a really, really important thing to do.
yes, this is the narrative that I don't believe in. Coming from someone who has done very little with his life besides staying in school and studying hard. And knowing a lot of people who came from the same privileged background as I, who are complete idiots but daddy bought them a diploma, who are perfectly "successful." They certainly didn't "study hard", they were just born to the manor. That's the reality of American society, your mythology be damned. The dropouts know it.
This is absurd. How are you going to earn a good salary as an engineer, accountant, computer programmer, etc. if you didn't go to school and learn how to do those things? Magic and pixy dust??
If you have a HS diploma or less the odds of you having a good paying job are very low. If you have a 4 year degree or better your odds go up dramatically. If you think dropouts are making a good call, you don't know shit.
No, he's right. There's a huge difference between having a diploma and actually knowing a marketable skill. You're correct in that you're probably disadvantaged without the piece of paper, but that piece of paper isn't going to guarantee you anything given how "cheap" diplomas have become. This is a really big problem that the legal profession is facing right now.
On August 21 2014 06:09 bookwyrm wrote: Aren't they rational, outcome-maximizing homines oeconomici? Doesn't their dropping out prove that school wasn't worth it? This would be the logic you would apply to the stock market. If they choose not to purchase the commodity "education," then that is a market signal imparting information about the value of that commodity. Right?? (of course, you don't actually think this, since minorities aren't rational actors like the white investing class are, but merely beasts of passion).
Of course, you don't understand the point, since you say:
This is absurd. How are you going to earn a good salary as an engineer, accountant, computer programmer, etc. if you didn't go to school and learn how to do those things? Magic and pixy dust??
Obviously, my claim is not that they would be able to without, the claim is that they wouldn't be able to anyway. Don't make me assign you some homework on conditional operators, this is basic stuff.
edit: an education is like some weird twisted version of buying an option. When you buy an option you get the right but not the obligation to purchase something in the future. When you buy an education you buy the possibility, but not the assurance, of being hired. Paying for an education is like buying an option for somebody else - "we get the option, but you pay for it.". It's basically extortion: "pay us now and we might hire you in the future (but not necessarily), don't pay us and we definitely won't hire you." Dropping out is just a way of saying that the "option" is overpriced. Your claim is basically that it's just impossible for this "option" to be overpriced and that it should always be purchased no matter the price or the probability of payoff, and that it's a moral failing on the part of any individual who DOES decide that it's overpriced. This is the logic bubbles are made of.
Sorry, but you don't know what the hell you're talking about. If you want to assume that people are rational outcome-maximizes, the outcome being maximized isn't strictly life-time earnings. Rational =/= money seeking. Also, an individual rational outcome-maximizer may not have perfect information. If minorities wrongly think that education is a scam or a white person thing, they're going to make bad decisions about education.
Edit: Not to mention that people aren't always rational...
Moreover, the value of the commodity in question (education) has been rising, so if you want to go with market signals, well, the market is clearly signaling that higher education is increasingly valuable.
Your analogy on options doesn't make a whole lot of sense. A better analogy would be an investment - an upfront cost with an expected payoff. Yes dropping out could be interpreted as a decision that the payoff isn't greater than the cost, but again, the person making that decision may have bad information or may not be trying to maximize money.
I never claimed that it's impossible for education to be too expensive. But if you look at the real world data, we have too many unskilled workers and not enough skilled workers. People who drop out of high school or don't go to college typically earn much less than those with degrees.
An option is a kind of investment - an upfront cost with an expected payoff. Only in this case, the student is paying money so that the private sector can have an option to hire her (she's certainly not paying for an education, since she is not learning anything in her classes and doesn't particularly want to - I know, because I'm the one teaching them and reading their papers). The private sector gets a free option, the student foots the bill. If you print too many of those "options", they become more and more worthless.
I never meant it to be an exact analogy. More of an intentionally ridiculous illustration of an absurd situation. But if you want to say I'm wrong because it's "not an option, but an investment" when an option is very clearly a type of investment (according to your own definition), it just gets silly.
On August 21 2014 06:50 JonnyBNoHo wrote: Edit: Not to mention that people aren't always rational...
Yes, yes, obviously *I* don't believe that. I'm making a satire on the implications of your overall theoretical commitments when they are applied to this particular situation and pointing out what I perceive to be a fundamental hypocrisy in your worldview. People making decisions about what to buy are valid market signals, unless they are decisions made by poor black children about school, in which case they are just ignorant, stupid, and short-sighted and they need Jonny to enlighten them so they can do a better job of pursing all those wonderful possibilities they would have if only they were not so foolish as to throw them away.
edit: if you don't like the analogy, how about this one: Lottery Ticket.
edit: what we need is the 21st century version of the Solonic reforms. Make it possible to repudiate student debt in bankruptcy. then you make it equivalent to other forms of investment in your lauded "innovative, entrepreneurial economy". Otherwise it's just a fancy form of debt-bondage (a.k.a. slavery, in the original meaning of this term).
On August 21 2014 06:59 bookwyrm wrote: An option is a kind of investment - an upfront cost with an expected payoff. Only in this case, the student is paying money so that the private sector can have an option to hire her. The private sector gets a free option, the student foots the bill. If you print too many of those options, they become more and more worthless.
I never meant it to be an exact analogy. But if you want to say I'm wrong because it's "not an option, but an investment" when an option is very clearly a type of investment, it just gets silly.
Your option analogy doesn't make sense on a few levels. It's not an option to get hired, so you have to twist to to be an option you buy for someone else.. which is just weird. It's like saying an auto company that buys a factory isn't making an investment. Instead they're buying the consumer an option to buy cars from them at no cost to the consumer. Uhh, ok, why the hell would you want to think of it that way? But whatever...
As to the idea that if you print too many diplomas you get worthless diplomas... that's not something supported by historical data. The value of college degrees has been increasing, and the value of HS or less has been falling. If anything, we need more skilled and fewer unskilled workers.
On August 21 2014 06:50 JonnyBNoHo wrote: Edit: Not to mention that people aren't always rational...
Yes, yes, obviously *I* don't believe that. I'm making a satire on the implications of your overall theoretical commitments when they are applied to this particular situation. People making decisions about what to buy are valid market signals, unless they are decisions made by poor black children about school, in which case they are just ignorant, stupid, and short-sighted.
I don't believe it either. Nor is it something taught in either econ of finance class. Where are you getting that it's part of my "overall theoretical commitments"?
Edit:
edit: what we need is the 21st century version of the Solonic reforms. Make it possible to repudiate student debt in bankruptcy. then you make it equivalent to other forms of investment in your lauded "innovative, entrepreneurial economy". Otherwise it's just a fancy form of debt-bondage (a.k.a. slavery, in the original meaning of this term).
You can discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy (about 4 in 10 who try, do). It's harder to do so that other types of debt, but that's the price for lower rates.
On August 21 2014 07:19 JonnyBNoHo wrote: Your option analogy doesn't make sense on a few levels. It's not an option to get hired, so you have to twist to to be an option you buy for someone else.. which is just weird.
Which is more or less word-for-word what I said. I think I used the words "weird, twisted" and then said "option which you buy for someone else." The entire point was that this is a weird, fucked up state of affairs. Glad you've finally grasped the point.
On August 21 2014 07:19 JonnyBNoHo wrote: The value of college degrees has been increasing
We just disagree about this. The price has been increasing, but this is a phenomenon called "inflation." The price of higher education is one of the more inflationary parts of the economy (because it's being sold as a ticket to the middle class, but you can't just create more middle class by creating diplomas - so the more diplomas you sell relative to the actual slots in the middle class, the more credential inflation you have.) The value of a diploma is backed by nothing but vague expectations of future returns, so you can print as many of them as you want (it's easy, since you don't actually even have to teach the students anything in order to give them one. You just wave your hands around for four years and then pronounce them "educated."). It's not like there's a window where you can trade in your diploma for gold, or something (now there's an idea).
On August 21 2014 07:19 JonnyBNoHo wrote: I don't believe it either. Nor is it something taught in either econ of finance class. Where are you getting that it's part of my "overall theoretical commitments"?
rational expectations is a foundational assumption of neoclassical economics.
edit: what we need is the 21st century version of the Solonic reforms. Make it possible to repudiate student debt in bankruptcy. then you make it equivalent to other forms of investment in your lauded "innovative, entrepreneurial economy". Otherwise it's just a fancy form of debt-bondage (a.k.a. slavery, in the original meaning of this term).
You can discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy (about 4 in 10 who try, do). It's harder to do so that other types of debt, but that's the price for lower rates.
it needs to be a lot easier. Actually, education should be free and it shouldn't even be an issue. The punitive nature of student loans puts a lot of pressure on students to choose very "safe" paths, which herds students into bubble fields (nursing, computer science, and so on) and prevents the taking of risks (which is the basis of the entire ideology of "innovation" and "freedom to fail"). You lionize fools like Steve Jobs as "innovative geniuses", but the entire educational system is set up to prevent exactly anything like his life path.
On August 21 2014 01:55 Wolfstan wrote: I think you are confused, you can't choose to be white or black. You can choose to be wealthy or poor, a drug addict or not.
I wonder why not everyone chooses to be really rich then! The 19th century called, they want their definition of personal freedom back.
It's not like a lot of them don't even have the money in the first place to get education, healthcare, or as if a lot of them don't even grew up in functional families, I guess they're all just incredibly bad at decision-making.
And yes, most people are born wealthy or poor. Some individuals are self made millionaires or billionaires,great for them, but most people will end up in a similar position as their parents.
The choice of being wealthy or healthy is not as simple as choosing between a Big Mac or Quarter Pounder. That is why so many people fail at both goals, you have to wake up every day and reaffirm that choice, it gets harder when there are conflicting values and compulsions.
"I chose to be wealthy and in shape, but it didn't magically appear. I blame the 1% and my lineage." The defeatist, bleeding heart counter arguments like that are incredibly destructive to at-risk individuals who allow statements like that to reinforce the belief they have no control over their life.
Bull fucking baloney horse shit. Depending on where you were born on the social totem pole, you either have to "reaffirm" that daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly, or never. I have gone months completely giving up on myself and being successful (and healthy), but I'm not sitting in jail nor am I poor. Why is that? Because I'm a white male from a middle class family. I had plenty of access to activities because I could afford it and lived in higher class areas. When I was short on money, my parents were able to lend a hand. In the case that I did something illegal, nobody was scrutinizing me closely to punish me for my mistakes. When I finally did get back on track, the track was waiting for me because none of my screwing around got on record.
So you are saying that you cut the shit and took control of your life and it is working out? Sounds like working as intended to me.
I'm not sure why coloured folk shouldn't be insulted that you think they couldn't do that as well because you seem to think they are lesser people than the "white male from a middle class family". That attitude just insults them and enables unaccountable, undesirable behavior because self hating apologists convince them there is no way out of the situation they were born into.
Then again I know no poor black people so I'm hardly an authority on the matter. I'm more comparing the US black situation to my familiarity with Canada's First Nations problems.
His point is that for him your imaginary system worked not solely because of his actions but because he was in an environment designed to work for people like him, he had a support group around him with resources to help him, he had no pressing financial or healthcare concerns, he was not punished for the mistakes he made. The point is that if you take away that, if you have the same mentality but have nobody waiting to support you for a few months while you work shit out, if you get a record for something you wouldn't have in a richer area (the coke vs crack sentencing issue) and so forth then that track that fixes everything disappears.
There is a track. It was built by middle class white guys to make sure middle class white guys have an easy time. You keep going "well I don't know why poor black guys are having so much trouble, this track seems pretty awesome to me".
I tried like ten times typing a response to this but kept ending up derailing it with a Canada/First Nations or Canada/Black viewpoint. I admit defeat until next time a situation triggers a discussion of America vs. Blacks. I still feel there is too much blame, not enough accountability and no solutions to the problem with black people.
I hope for a future where the black individual will make choices for personal growth and not destructive choices, where successful black people are attempted to be emulated not discarded as unreachable anomalies.
On August 21 2014 07:19 JonnyBNoHo wrote: Your option analogy doesn't make sense on a few levels. It's not an option to get hired, so you have to twist to to be an option you buy for someone else.. which is just weird.
Which is more or less word-for-word what I said. I think I used the words "weird, twisted" and then said "option which you buy for someone else." The entire point was that this is a weird, fucked up state of affairs. Glad you've finally grasped the point.
Like I said though, it's no different than an automaker making an investment and so buying the consumer a new option to buy a car. You're just showing the mirror of an investment and calling it backwards. Well shit, that's what mirrors do.
On August 21 2014 07:19 JonnyBNoHo wrote: The value of college degrees has been increasing
We just disagree about this. The price has been increasing, but this is a phenomenon called "inflation." The price of higher education is one of the more inflationary parts of the economy (because it's being sold as a ticket to the middle class, but you can't just create more middle class by creating diplomas - so the more diplomas you sell relative to the actual slots in the middle class, the more credential inflation you have.)
Inflation has nothing to do with it. The real value of a college diploma relative to a HS degree has widened.
Here's a graph, all numbers are adjusted for inflation:
On August 21 2014 07:19 JonnyBNoHo wrote: I don't believe it either. Nor is it something taught in either econ of finance class. Where are you getting that it's part of my "overall theoretical commitments"?
rational expectations is a foundational assumption of neoclassical economics.
Because no one has found a better alternative. Everyone knows that if you look at the real economy people aren't strictly rational. Yet when you set up a mathematical model, rational works well because people can only be rational one way. You can be irrational in a lot of unique ways though, and so using rational as a base... works(ish).
3. "Macro thinks the economy is a representative agent with rational expectations. Ha!"
The representative-agent thing had actually been challenged long before the crisis. Simpler macro models, like OLG-type models, often include multiple types of agents. There have been efforts to put heterogeneity into big DSGE-type models too - for example, the Krusell-Smith (1998) model (these didn't get quite as far, because this kind of thing is very technically difficult to model). Heterogeneity also exists in a number of the labor search type models that were getting popular even before the crisis. In most of the new financial-macro models, there are heterogeneous agents of various types - for example, creditworthy borrowers and bad borrowers, in models of bank lending. Of course, representative consumers and firms still dominate the literature, because they're simply a lot easier to use than the alternative. But they're not the only game in town; macroeconomists are definitely thinking about heterogeneity.
As for rational expectations, there have not been many attempts to replace rational agents with irrational ones (though some top theorists have played around with the idea). An alternative concept of rationality, Bayesian learning, has been getting more attention from DSGE theorists. But so far, macroeconomists are still very timid about abandoning this pillar of the Lucas/Prescott Revolution. Why? One big reason is that there's no clear alternative. There are lots and lots of ways people could be irrational, and it takes a big leap of faith to pick one of those ways and run with it. That's probably why critics of this aspect of macro are frustrated, and will continue to be frustrated - it's easy to see that rational expectations isn't a law of the Universe, but it's devilishly hard to agree on which alternative should replace it. Source
edit: what we need is the 21st century version of the Solonic reforms. Make it possible to repudiate student debt in bankruptcy. then you make it equivalent to other forms of investment in your lauded "innovative, entrepreneurial economy". Otherwise it's just a fancy form of debt-bondage (a.k.a. slavery, in the original meaning of this term).
You can discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy (about 4 in 10 who try, do). It's harder to do so that other types of debt, but that's the price for lower rates.
it needs to be a lot easier. Actually, education should be free and it shouldn't even be an issue.
Printing diplomas is bad, therefore print more? Not following you here...
On August 21 2014 07:53 JonnyBNoHo wrote: Printing diplomas is bad, therefore print more? Not following you here...
Education being free doesn't mean anyone can get them. It means that if you are good enough to do university lack of money should never be a reason to skip on it.
Ofc education has to pass a certain standard because else it is meaningless, which I guess is currently a problem aswel.
On August 21 2014 07:19 JonnyBNoHo wrote: I don't believe it either. Nor is it something taught in either econ of finance class. Where are you getting that it's part of my "overall theoretical commitments"?
rational expectations is a foundational assumption of neoclassical economics.
Because no one has found a better alternative. Everyone knows that if you look at the real economy people aren't strictly rational. Yet when you set up a mathematical model, rational works well because people can only be rational one way. You can be irrational in a lot of unique ways though, and so using rational as a base... works(ish).
3. "Macro thinks the economy is a representative agent with rational expectations. Ha!"
The representative-agent thing had actually been challenged long before the crisis. Simpler macro models, like OLG-type models, often include multiple types of agents. There have been efforts to put heterogeneity into big DSGE-type models too - for example, the Krusell-Smith (1998) model (these didn't get quite as far, because this kind of thing is very technically difficult to model). Heterogeneity also exists in a number of the labor search type models that were getting popular even before the crisis. In most of the new financial-macro models, there are heterogeneous agents of various types - for example, creditworthy borrowers and bad borrowers, in models of bank lending. Of course, representative consumers and firms still dominate the literature, because they're simply a lot easier to use than the alternative. But they're not the only game in town; macroeconomists are definitely thinking about heterogeneity.
As for rational expectations, there have not been many attempts to replace rational agents with irrational ones (though some top theorists have played around with the idea). An alternative concept of rationality, Bayesian learning, has been getting more attention from DSGE theorists. But so far, macroeconomists are still very timid about abandoning this pillar of the Lucas/Prescott Revolution. Why? One big reason is that there's no clear alternative. There are lots and lots of ways people could be irrational, and it takes a big leap of faith to pick one of those ways and run with it. That's probably why critics of this aspect of macro are frustrated, and will continue to be frustrated - it's easy to see that rational expectations isn't a law of the Universe, but it's devilishly hard to agree on which alternative should replace it. Source
Yes, they don't want to abandon it because they don't know any other way to make the math tractable. Unfortunately, reality is not tractable. All that stuff the spoiler talks about is just stuff tacked on to the RE hypothesis to try to model some "grit", but it's not really any different. For a refutation of the argument you are making here I recommend a book by Philip Mirowski called _Never Let a Serious Crisis Go To Waste_ (not that you are going to read it).
The idea that you can only be rational in one way is a fallacy and is part of the problem. How do you know there aren't two different ways to be rational? Even in mathematics there are plenty of problems with multiple solutions. The idea that there is a single rationality is already just a dogma (and only even begins to work if you reduce all ends to a one-dimensional value calculus, which is another ungrounded assumption). Mirowski addresses this problem in his book, that neoclassical economics assumes only one kind of actor, instead of the reality, which is a dynamical ecosystem of distinct but mutually related types of actors.
One of the points Mirowski makes in the book is that anytime you criticize anything about neoclassical economics you get the same response: "oh yes, it's in the literature, somebody has already thought about this problem, it's in the model." It's a one-size fits all response. It doesn't happen to be true.
edit: what we need is the 21st century version of the Solonic reforms. Make it possible to repudiate student debt in bankruptcy. then you make it equivalent to other forms of investment in your lauded "innovative, entrepreneurial economy". Otherwise it's just a fancy form of debt-bondage (a.k.a. slavery, in the original meaning of this term).
You can discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy (about 4 in 10 who try, do). It's harder to do so that other types of debt, but that's the price for lower rates.
it needs to be a lot easier. Actually, education should be free and it shouldn't even be an issue.
Printing diplomas is bad, therefore print more? Not following you here...
No. School should be free but it should be much harder and a lot of people should fail. Free school, much lower pass rate. But it should be about education, not training. Companies should do their own training, not outsource it to the state. You shouldn't need a degree to get a job, you don't use it anyway. The expectation that everyone is going to do college level work just dumbs down college to the point that everyone can do it. We should have a society in which it's perfectly okay not to go to college, so that they people who do want to college can actually get what they came for instead of just being herded along.
On August 21 2014 01:55 Wolfstan wrote: I think you are confused, you can't choose to be white or black. You can choose to be wealthy or poor, a drug addict or not.
I wonder why not everyone chooses to be really rich then! The 19th century called, they want their definition of personal freedom back.
It's not like a lot of them don't even have the money in the first place to get education, healthcare, or as if a lot of them don't even grew up in functional families, I guess they're all just incredibly bad at decision-making.
And yes, most people are born wealthy or poor. Some individuals are self made millionaires or billionaires,great for them, but most people will end up in a similar position as their parents.
The choice of being wealthy or healthy is not as simple as choosing between a Big Mac or Quarter Pounder. That is why so many people fail at both goals, you have to wake up every day and reaffirm that choice, it gets harder when there are conflicting values and compulsions.
"I chose to be wealthy and in shape, but it didn't magically appear. I blame the 1% and my lineage." The defeatist, bleeding heart counter arguments like that are incredibly destructive to at-risk individuals who allow statements like that to reinforce the belief they have no control over their life.
Bull fucking baloney horse shit. Depending on where you were born on the social totem pole, you either have to "reaffirm" that daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly, or never. I have gone months completely giving up on myself and being successful (and healthy), but I'm not sitting in jail nor am I poor. Why is that? Because I'm a white male from a middle class family. I had plenty of access to activities because I could afford it and lived in higher class areas. When I was short on money, my parents were able to lend a hand. In the case that I did something illegal, nobody was scrutinizing me closely to punish me for my mistakes. When I finally did get back on track, the track was waiting for me because none of my screwing around got on record.
So you are saying that you cut the shit and took control of your life and it is working out? Sounds like working as intended to me.
I'm not sure why coloured folk shouldn't be insulted that you think they couldn't do that as well because you seem to think they are lesser people than the "white male from a middle class family". That attitude just insults them and enables unaccountable, undesirable behavior because self hating apologists convince them there is no way out of the situation they were born into.
Then again I know no poor black people so I'm hardly an authority on the matter. I'm more comparing the US black situation to my familiarity with Canada's First Nations problems.
His point is that for him your imaginary system worked not solely because of his actions but because he was in an environment designed to work for people like him, he had a support group around him with resources to help him, he had no pressing financial or healthcare concerns, he was not punished for the mistakes he made. The point is that if you take away that, if you have the same mentality but have nobody waiting to support you for a few months while you work shit out, if you get a record for something you wouldn't have in a richer area (the coke vs crack sentencing issue) and so forth then that track that fixes everything disappears.
There is a track. It was built by middle class white guys to make sure middle class white guys have an easy time. You keep going "well I don't know why poor black guys are having so much trouble, this track seems pretty awesome to me".
I tried like ten times typing a response to this but kept ending up derailing it with a Canada/First Nations or Canada/Black viewpoint. I admit defeat until next time a situation triggers a discussion of America vs. Blacks. I still feel there is too much blame, not enough accountability and no solutions to the problem with black people.
I hope for a future where the black individual will make choices for personal growth and not destructive choices, where successful black people are attempted to be emulated not discarded as unreachable anomalies.
The problem with the conservative viewpoint is that they just hand-wave away intricate and nuanced discussions of the problem that black Americans have.
Everyone knows that they have responsibility for their own actions. A random black kid that shoots up a convenience store and robs them gets thrown in jail. He deserves to be there. He broke the law.
The problem that liberals focus on and conservatives refuse to acknowledge is that society actively works against black people and keeps them down. The legal system (police, juries, and judges) disproportionately targets and punishes black people. Black people are disproportionately affected by and are born into poverty. black people are significantly less likely to be hired at companies; even if employers are looking at resumes only, they are far more likely to throw out a resume with a black-sounding name, even if it has equal or superior credentials. Social mobility in the U.S. is more difficult than in Canada, England, Germany, France, the Low Countries, and all Scandinavian countries, which disproportionately affects black people.
Our country is one of the most racist in the world, even if overtly racist actions aren't as common, due to the fact that racism is institutionalized and heavily entrenched in all parts of society. A discussion about how "black people should take more responsibility for their own actions" is complete bullshit. They take responsibility for it all the time. Everyone acknowledges that a black person committing a crime deserves punishment. Everyone knows that you don't just magically hand out money to the black community. The real discussion is what leads black people to commit crimes or end up in poverty at such disproportionate levels and how we can fix that.
The discussion isn't about how we even the outcomes between the black community and other communities. The discussion is about how we level the playing field of society for the black community when compared to other communities so that they can then take responsibility for themselves like you want to. Because right now, the playing field is not level, and black people can't just "take responsibility for themselves" because the system doesn't let them; it oppresses them.
Equal opportunity, not equal outcome. Black people currently do not have equal opportunity. That's what we are trying to fix.
EDGARTOWN, Mass. — A United States Special Operations team tried and failed to rescue James Foley and other Americans held hostage in Syria during a secret mission in early July authorized by President Obama, senior administration officials said Wednesday.
A day after Sunni militants posted a video showing Mr. Foley being beheaded, officials described what they called a “complicated operation” in which several dozen commandos were dropped into a remote area of Syria where American intelligence agencies believed several hostages were being held by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The officials said they believed a number of the terrorists were killed in the operation.
But when the Special Operations team arrived on the scene, the hostages were not there. Officials said the commandos exchanged fire with militants, and one American was slightly wounded when one of the United States aircraft came under fire.
On August 21 2014 07:19 JonnyBNoHo wrote: I don't believe it either. Nor is it something taught in either econ of finance class. Where are you getting that it's part of my "overall theoretical commitments"?
rational expectations is a foundational assumption of neoclassical economics.
Because no one has found a better alternative. Everyone knows that if you look at the real economy people aren't strictly rational. Yet when you set up a mathematical model, rational works well because people can only be rational one way. You can be irrational in a lot of unique ways though, and so using rational as a base... works(ish).
3. "Macro thinks the economy is a representative agent with rational expectations. Ha!"
The representative-agent thing had actually been challenged long before the crisis. Simpler macro models, like OLG-type models, often include multiple types of agents. There have been efforts to put heterogeneity into big DSGE-type models too - for example, the Krusell-Smith (1998) model (these didn't get quite as far, because this kind of thing is very technically difficult to model). Heterogeneity also exists in a number of the labor search type models that were getting popular even before the crisis. In most of the new financial-macro models, there are heterogeneous agents of various types - for example, creditworthy borrowers and bad borrowers, in models of bank lending. Of course, representative consumers and firms still dominate the literature, because they're simply a lot easier to use than the alternative. But they're not the only game in town; macroeconomists are definitely thinking about heterogeneity.
As for rational expectations, there have not been many attempts to replace rational agents with irrational ones (though some top theorists have played around with the idea). An alternative concept of rationality, Bayesian learning, has been getting more attention from DSGE theorists. But so far, macroeconomists are still very timid about abandoning this pillar of the Lucas/Prescott Revolution. Why? One big reason is that there's no clear alternative. There are lots and lots of ways people could be irrational, and it takes a big leap of faith to pick one of those ways and run with it. That's probably why critics of this aspect of macro are frustrated, and will continue to be frustrated - it's easy to see that rational expectations isn't a law of the Universe, but it's devilishly hard to agree on which alternative should replace it. Source
Yes, they don't want to abandon it because they don't know any other way to make the math tractable. Unfortunately, reality is not tractable. All that stuff the spoiler talks about is just stuff tacked on to the RE hypothesis to try to model some "grit", but it's not really any different. For a refutation of the argument you are making here I recommend a book by Philip Mirowski called _Never Let a Serious Crisis Go To Waste_ (not that you are going to read it).
The idea that you can only be rational in one way is a fallacy and is part of the problem. How do you know there aren't two different ways to be rational? Even in mathematics there are plenty of problems with multiple solutions. The idea that there is a single rationality is already just a dogma. Mirowski addresses this problem in his book, that neoclassical economics assumes only one kind of actor, instead of the reality, which is a dynamical ecosystem of distinct but mutually related types of actors.
I think you're combining multiple things. One is how the actors act (rational or not) and another is who the actors are (heterogeneous or homogeneous). None of this is dogma anyways - econ isn't insisting that everyone's rational and homogeneous. Econ is using rational and homogeneous as a shortcut. It is also widely known that macro isn't a finished product where macro models can be used to accurately predict the future.
edit: what we need is the 21st century version of the Solonic reforms. Make it possible to repudiate student debt in bankruptcy. then you make it equivalent to other forms of investment in your lauded "innovative, entrepreneurial economy". Otherwise it's just a fancy form of debt-bondage (a.k.a. slavery, in the original meaning of this term).
You can discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy (about 4 in 10 who try, do). It's harder to do so that other types of debt, but that's the price for lower rates.
it needs to be a lot easier. Actually, education should be free and it shouldn't even be an issue.
Printing diplomas is bad, therefore print more? Not following you here...
No. School should be free but it should be much harder and a lot of people should fail. Free school, much lower pass rate. But it should be about education, not training. Companies should do their own training, not outsource it to the state.
So a college degree should be made more valuable? Isn't that a bit self-serving? Also, what of those who go and don't finish? They still suffer an opportunity cost.
The biggest curiosity is not the rescue but the fact that there was a large scale military operation in Syria. Probably it was a one-off mission there, but could special forces have been running more missions in Syria that the government is not telling?
On August 21 2014 07:19 JonnyBNoHo wrote: I don't believe it either. Nor is it something taught in either econ of finance class. Where are you getting that it's part of my "overall theoretical commitments"?
rational expectations is a foundational assumption of neoclassical economics.
Because no one has found a better alternative. Everyone knows that if you look at the real economy people aren't strictly rational. Yet when you set up a mathematical model, rational works well because people can only be rational one way. You can be irrational in a lot of unique ways though, and so using rational as a base... works(ish).
3. "Macro thinks the economy is a representative agent with rational expectations. Ha!"
The representative-agent thing had actually been challenged long before the crisis. Simpler macro models, like OLG-type models, often include multiple types of agents. There have been efforts to put heterogeneity into big DSGE-type models too - for example, the Krusell-Smith (1998) model (these didn't get quite as far, because this kind of thing is very technically difficult to model). Heterogeneity also exists in a number of the labor search type models that were getting popular even before the crisis. In most of the new financial-macro models, there are heterogeneous agents of various types - for example, creditworthy borrowers and bad borrowers, in models of bank lending. Of course, representative consumers and firms still dominate the literature, because they're simply a lot easier to use than the alternative. But they're not the only game in town; macroeconomists are definitely thinking about heterogeneity.
As for rational expectations, there have not been many attempts to replace rational agents with irrational ones (though some top theorists have played around with the idea). An alternative concept of rationality, Bayesian learning, has been getting more attention from DSGE theorists. But so far, macroeconomists are still very timid about abandoning this pillar of the Lucas/Prescott Revolution. Why? One big reason is that there's no clear alternative. There are lots and lots of ways people could be irrational, and it takes a big leap of faith to pick one of those ways and run with it. That's probably why critics of this aspect of macro are frustrated, and will continue to be frustrated - it's easy to see that rational expectations isn't a law of the Universe, but it's devilishly hard to agree on which alternative should replace it. Source
Yes, they don't want to abandon it because they don't know any other way to make the math tractable. Unfortunately, reality is not tractable. All that stuff the spoiler talks about is just stuff tacked on to the RE hypothesis to try to model some "grit", but it's not really any different. For a refutation of the argument you are making here I recommend a book by Philip Mirowski called _Never Let a Serious Crisis Go To Waste_ (not that you are going to read it).
The idea that you can only be rational in one way is a fallacy and is part of the problem. How do you know there aren't two different ways to be rational? Even in mathematics there are plenty of problems with multiple solutions. The idea that there is a single rationality is already just a dogma. Mirowski addresses this problem in his book, that neoclassical economics assumes only one kind of actor, instead of the reality, which is a dynamical ecosystem of distinct but mutually related types of actors.
I think you're combining multiple things. One is how the actors act (rational or not) and another is who the actors are (heterogeneous or homogeneous). None of this is dogma anyways - econ isn't insisting that everyone's rational and homogeneous. Econ is using rational and homogeneous as a shortcut. It is also widely known that macro isn't a finished product where macro models can be used to accurately predict the future.
Do you know the formula for fetishistic disavowal? "Je sais bien, mais quand meme..." "I know very well, but all the same..."
I wish you could read that book, you're like a walking version of his straw man.
I don't understand the continuity of your other comment so I won't respond. I think it's probably best if we leave the discussion here You can have the last word.
On August 21 2014 08:15 coverpunch wrote: The biggest curiosity is not the rescue but the fact that there was a large scale military operation in Syria. Probably it was a one-off mission there, but could special forces have been running more missions in Syria that the government is not telling?
You're kidding yourself if you think that American special forces have not been conducting operations in Syria and Iraq since this mess began. The public never hears about more than 99% of the shit that those guys do -- and with good reason.
On August 21 2014 07:19 JonnyBNoHo wrote: I don't believe it either. Nor is it something taught in either econ of finance class. Where are you getting that it's part of my "overall theoretical commitments"?
rational expectations is a foundational assumption of neoclassical economics.
Because no one has found a better alternative. Everyone knows that if you look at the real economy people aren't strictly rational. Yet when you set up a mathematical model, rational works well because people can only be rational one way. You can be irrational in a lot of unique ways though, and so using rational as a base... works(ish).
3. "Macro thinks the economy is a representative agent with rational expectations. Ha!"
The representative-agent thing had actually been challenged long before the crisis. Simpler macro models, like OLG-type models, often include multiple types of agents. There have been efforts to put heterogeneity into big DSGE-type models too - for example, the Krusell-Smith (1998) model (these didn't get quite as far, because this kind of thing is very technically difficult to model). Heterogeneity also exists in a number of the labor search type models that were getting popular even before the crisis. In most of the new financial-macro models, there are heterogeneous agents of various types - for example, creditworthy borrowers and bad borrowers, in models of bank lending. Of course, representative consumers and firms still dominate the literature, because they're simply a lot easier to use than the alternative. But they're not the only game in town; macroeconomists are definitely thinking about heterogeneity.
As for rational expectations, there have not been many attempts to replace rational agents with irrational ones (though some top theorists have played around with the idea). An alternative concept of rationality, Bayesian learning, has been getting more attention from DSGE theorists. But so far, macroeconomists are still very timid about abandoning this pillar of the Lucas/Prescott Revolution. Why? One big reason is that there's no clear alternative. There are lots and lots of ways people could be irrational, and it takes a big leap of faith to pick one of those ways and run with it. That's probably why critics of this aspect of macro are frustrated, and will continue to be frustrated - it's easy to see that rational expectations isn't a law of the Universe, but it's devilishly hard to agree on which alternative should replace it. Source
Yes, they don't want to abandon it because they don't know any other way to make the math tractable. Unfortunately, reality is not tractable. All that stuff the spoiler talks about is just stuff tacked on to the RE hypothesis to try to model some "grit", but it's not really any different. For a refutation of the argument you are making here I recommend a book by Philip Mirowski called _Never Let a Serious Crisis Go To Waste_ (not that you are going to read it).
The idea that you can only be rational in one way is a fallacy and is part of the problem. How do you know there aren't two different ways to be rational? Even in mathematics there are plenty of problems with multiple solutions. The idea that there is a single rationality is already just a dogma. Mirowski addresses this problem in his book, that neoclassical economics assumes only one kind of actor, instead of the reality, which is a dynamical ecosystem of distinct but mutually related types of actors.
I think you're combining multiple things. One is how the actors act (rational or not) and another is who the actors are (heterogeneous or homogeneous). None of this is dogma anyways - econ isn't insisting that everyone's rational and homogeneous. Econ is using rational and homogeneous as a shortcut. It is also widely known that macro isn't a finished product where macro models can be used to accurately predict the future.
Do you know the formula for fetishistic disavowal? "Je sais bien, mais quand meme..." "I know very well, but all the same..."
I wish you could read that book, you're like a walking version of his straw man.
I don't understand the continuity of your other comment so I won't respond. I think it's probably best if we leave the discussion here You can have the last word.
Ok, I'll take the last word.
You're attacking econ for its belief in things that it does not believe in. That's stupid.
On August 21 2014 01:55 Wolfstan wrote: I think you are confused, you can't choose to be white or black. You can choose to be wealthy or poor, a drug addict or not.
I wonder why not everyone chooses to be really rich then! The 19th century called, they want their definition of personal freedom back.
It's not like a lot of them don't even have the money in the first place to get education, healthcare, or as if a lot of them don't even grew up in functional families, I guess they're all just incredibly bad at decision-making.
And yes, most people are born wealthy or poor. Some individuals are self made millionaires or billionaires,great for them, but most people will end up in a similar position as their parents.
The choice of being wealthy or healthy is not as simple as choosing between a Big Mac or Quarter Pounder. That is why so many people fail at both goals, you have to wake up every day and reaffirm that choice, it gets harder when there are conflicting values and compulsions.
"I chose to be wealthy and in shape, but it didn't magically appear. I blame the 1% and my lineage." The defeatist, bleeding heart counter arguments like that are incredibly destructive to at-risk individuals who allow statements like that to reinforce the belief they have no control over their life.
Bull fucking baloney horse shit. Depending on where you were born on the social totem pole, you either have to "reaffirm" that daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly, or never. I have gone months completely giving up on myself and being successful (and healthy), but I'm not sitting in jail nor am I poor. Why is that? Because I'm a white male from a middle class family. I had plenty of access to activities because I could afford it and lived in higher class areas. When I was short on money, my parents were able to lend a hand. In the case that I did something illegal, nobody was scrutinizing me closely to punish me for my mistakes. When I finally did get back on track, the track was waiting for me because none of my screwing around got on record.
So you are saying that you cut the shit and took control of your life and it is working out? Sounds like working as intended to me.
I'm not sure why coloured folk shouldn't be insulted that you think they couldn't do that as well because you seem to think they are lesser people than the "white male from a middle class family". That attitude just insults them and enables unaccountable, undesirable behavior because self hating apologists convince them there is no way out of the situation they were born into.
Then again I know no poor black people so I'm hardly an authority on the matter. I'm more comparing the US black situation to my familiarity with Canada's First Nations problems.
His point is that for him your imaginary system worked not solely because of his actions but because he was in an environment designed to work for people like him, he had a support group around him with resources to help him, he had no pressing financial or healthcare concerns, he was not punished for the mistakes he made. The point is that if you take away that, if you have the same mentality but have nobody waiting to support you for a few months while you work shit out, if you get a record for something you wouldn't have in a richer area (the coke vs crack sentencing issue) and so forth then that track that fixes everything disappears.
There is a track. It was built by middle class white guys to make sure middle class white guys have an easy time. You keep going "well I don't know why poor black guys are having so much trouble, this track seems pretty awesome to me".
I tried like ten times typing a response to this but kept ending up derailing it with a Canada/First Nations or Canada/Black viewpoint. I admit defeat until next time a situation triggers a discussion of America vs. Blacks. I still feel there is too much blame, not enough accountability and no solutions to the problem with black people.
I hope for a future where the black individual will make choices for personal growth and not destructive choices, where successful black people are attempted to be emulated not discarded as unreachable anomalies.
The problem with the conservative viewpoint is that they just hand-wave away intricate and nuanced discussions of the problem that black Americans have.
Everyone knows that they have responsibility for their own actions. A random black kid that shoots up a convenience store and robs them gets thrown in jail. He deserves to be there. He broke the law.
The problem that liberals focus on and conservatives refuse to acknowledge is that society actively works against black people and keeps them down. The legal system (police, juries, and judges) disproportionately targets and punishes black people. Black people are disproportionately affected by and are born into poverty. black people are significantly less likely to be hired at companies; even if employers are looking at resumes only, they are far more likely to throw out a resume with a black-sounding name, even if it has equal or superior credentials. Social mobility in the U.S. is more difficult than in Canada, England, Germany, France, the Low Countries, and all Scandinavian countries, which disproportionately affects black people.
Our country is one of the most racist in the world, even if overtly racist actions aren't as common, due to the fact that racism is institutionalized and heavily entrenched in all parts of society. A discussion about how "black people should take more responsibility for their own actions" is complete bullshit. They take responsibility for it all the time. Everyone acknowledges that a black person committing a crime deserves punishment. Everyone knows that you don't just magically hand out money to the black community. The real discussion is what leads black people to commit crimes or end up in poverty at such disproportionate levels and how we can fix that.
The discussion isn't about how we even the outcomes between the black community and other communities. The discussion is about how we level the playing field of society for the black community when compared to other communities so that they can then take responsibility for themselves like you want to. Because right now, the playing field is not level, and black people can't just "take responsibility for themselves" because the system doesn't let them; it oppresses them.
Equal opportunity, not equal outcome. Black people currently do not have equal opportunity. That's what we are trying to fix.
So does "black culture" or the like bear any responsibility? (that's a topic many conservative African-Americans have talked about.) How is it the fault of "the system" that so many African-Americans are born out of wedlock or have their fathers leave them and their mother? Despite it being the year 2014, somehow these numbers are higher than they've ever been- true for all groups, but espeically AA (and Hispanics).
To be clear, there are obviously multiple factors at work, but it seems that on the flip side of your post, liberals place undue emphasis on the system despite the fact that all their tinkering makes minimal progress (in terms of economic and education outcomes).
Another edit: I know this was something that xDaunt was mentioning, but the issue is so complicated that it seems odd and quite hasty to chalk it up the "system" especially when you consider how other minorities (immigrants and natives) fare.
EPT![[image loading]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/72070179/SDT-higher-education-02-11-2014-0-03.png)
You can have the last word.
