US Politics Mega-thread - Page 747

On December 27 2013 03:55 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
To your edit - was 12% unemployment really not a problem for Germany?

There's more to it than just skin color. Economics, history, culture and language play roles as well.

On December 27 2013 02:40 sam!zdat wrote:
that's what I try to mean when I say that the subject is always-already interpellated but maybe this is too 'philosophical' for mixed company

it's the liberal fantasy of the autonomous self-constituted subject which leads people like crushinator into their delusions of a priori knowledge of the social order

On December 27 2013 04:07 Nyxisto wrote:


Sure it was, there's no reason to deny that. But reducing unemployment by deregulated labour markets and low wage policies is the cheapest imaginable way. If I'm not mistaken we are now sitting at 5%, but how do we generate more growth now? Productivity is rising slower than in our neighbour-countries, public investment is lacking(18% compared to the 25% OECD average). Not to mention we will have a whole generation of low paid workers that will need financial aid when they'll go into pension.

I'm not saying these kind of policies aren't working in the short run, but in the long run they're not an option. And because politicians tend to never fix any long-term problems anyway I'd favour to not put these policies into action in the first place.

House Republican leaders and allied groups have hatched a strategy to weaken the influence of the GOP's most conservative members ahead of 2014 elections, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) memorably lambasted outside conservative groups for opposing the recent budget deal and urging Republicans to vote against it. But according to the Journal, GOP leadership has also begun taking steps internally to keep members in line -- particularly those whose support has wavered during major fiscal battles.

Ahead of the House vote on the budget deal earlier this month, for example, committee chairmen who were leaning against supporting the bill were warned that their opposition could jeopardize their posts, according to insiders who spoke with the Journal. The goal was to reverse a growing trend in which committee chairmen voted against priority legislation.

Boehner spokesman Michael Steel did not immediately return a request for comment, but told the Journal, "the speaker, and the entire leadership team, urged all House Republicans to support the [budget] agreement, which lowered the deficit without raising taxes."

House GOP leaders are eager to shift the focus toward a legislative agenda for 2014, rather than the intra-party fighting that dominated headlines throughout 2013. The Republican Party took a record beating at the polls in October when conservatives dragged leadership into an ill-fated strategy to shut down the government over Obamacare.

Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes will ask the Supreme Court to keep counties from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples while the state appeals a federal district court's ruling, now that a federal appeals court has denied the request for an emergency stay on the decision three times, according to Fox 13 News Salt Lake City.

Justice Sonia Sotamayor, who oversees Utah in the 10th Circuit for the Supreme Court, will review the emergency stay request.

On December 27 2013 03:59 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

There's more to it than just skin color. Economics, history, culture and language play roles as well.

IS a cool map though

WASHINGTON -- New documents reveal that a high-ranking official in the administration of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) knew that Fort Lee, N.J., had issues with traffic congestion around the George Washington Bridge, long before he authorized a seemingly unnecessary study that closed down lanes to the bridge and made traffic even worse.

Fort Lee is an essential access point to New York City, serving as the gateway to the George Washington Bridge, which is the busiest bridge in the United States. In November 2010, Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich (D) wrote to Bill Baroni, deputy director of the Port Authority of New York and Jersey, and complained of traffic problems in the borough. The letter was obtained by The Record in a public records request.

"On approximately 20 occasions in the last forty days, our Borough has been completely gridlocked," wrote Sokolich to Baroni, who was Christie's top official at the Port Authority. "Traveling from the south to the north end of our Borough takes upwards of one hour. Our safety vehicles are unable to traverse our own thoroughfares to attend to emergencies which place our residents in harms way."

On December 27 2013 04:04 PassiveAce wrote:
^Mexican town is southwest of that map. It is like 100% mexican/south american. My brother went to high school at a catholic school there, his nickname was Leche because he was the only white kid lol

On December 27 2013 10:52 Mb79584 wrote:

Same story but in westminister colorado

On December 27 2013 21:18 WhiteDog wrote:

I didn't adress it before but I'm pretty sure you never had class or any class on rationality at all. Why do you think discrimination toward women is "irrational" ? And do you even know what is irrational ? It's an act that has not for objective your self interest ? Maximisation of consumption, utility ? Definitly not, that economist's irrationality.

You don't see that in your class you are taking for granted the fact that "economic agent are rational" because it is the normative basis of that said theory (the invisible hand, that nobody use explicitly, but that still act as a philosophical background to justify what was considered as a "sin" back then, when we called that greed) ? What if I tell you discriminating women is rational in value ?
Secondly, why should they have to be rational ? Did you ever heard about Pareto ? He takes the exemple of a boat, and says that economy can study the people on the boat trying to arrive at their destination the fastest way possible, but he cannot explain why those same people chant a prayer while rowing. Do you see Pareto actually saying that those people rowing are not chanting ? Do you think he consider that this specific (irrational) act of chanting have no effect on the (rational) act of rowing ? Of course not. He is not blatantly refusing to see the reality that he was just describing, he is merely setting a bridge between sociology and economy, a division of labor for those two sciences. So maybe economy cannot explain discrimination, because it is certainly not a total science that can totally understands the action of men.

On December 28 2013 03:23 KwarK wrote:
I notice you inserted the work expectations into that. You haven't gone for "women are paid less because they're worse because invisible hand" but rather "women are paid less because people expect them to be worse". Pretty big difference there. Unless you couple that with evidence that they're actually worse (that isn't derived a priori from economic theory) all you've done is demonstrate sexism in hiring.