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On November 21 2017 15:31 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2017 11:42 a_flayer wrote:On November 21 2017 10:45 Danglars wrote:On November 21 2017 09:57 Stratos_speAr wrote:On November 21 2017 08:14 Danglars wrote:On November 21 2017 07:40 Gahlo wrote:On November 21 2017 07:30 TheTenthDoc wrote:Speaking of education, the other day I was shown some absurdly long Twitch (or maybe Youtube) ad about how current school curricula are "anti-boy" and that there's a "war on boys" (here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFpYj0E-yb4). I'd never heard of PragerU, but apparently it's built around 5-minute conservative pseudo-TED talks. I freely admit I skipped after like a minute when they said normal boys are treated like defective girls in school. An interesting view into what analytics have decided constitutes a good ad for me, I guess? Anecodtal, but with what I had to go through I can't help but at least give the idea consideration. Maybe "war on boys" and "defective girls" is harsh language for the situation though. To the extent that wild labels should prompt reactive disbelief, sure, an actual "war on boys" isn't useful to start out looking why they do worse in elementary and secondary education. When you look at the topics in isolation, like overprescription of ADHD drugs, or reactions to typical young male behavior like engaging in mock fights and finger pistols, or recess time alotted, or reading books shown, I think you can make the case that there's a lot of harm being done. Especially in today's era where everybody has heightened awareness of little things having big effects. Seems interesting that when the right uses an arbitrary (and patently ridiculous) label, you try to parse out the nuanced meaning of it, whereas whenever the left does it, you slam it as gross generalizations, identity politics, etc. etc. Is this true as a general statement? STEM is a pretty broad class, there are probably some subfields where there aren't enough jobs to go around. For instance it wouldn't surprise me if theoretical physics was such a field. But is it generally true for STEM as a whole? No. It's much more complicated. https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2015/article/stem-crisis-or-stem-surplus-yes-and-yes.htmSTEM is such a broad category that you can't really talk about it as a single entity. There are a surplus of Ph.D's in most science fields, but a lack of them in certain areas of the private sector. Conversely, there's a high need for bachelor's level STEM education in fields like software development, but much less needs in other areas of science/math. "War on boys" isn't some generic right term. It's a culture term. It cuts across both political camps. Now if you think the academic success and social development of our youngsters is a politically charged topic, I pity you. Well, there's definitely a political angle to it that can be defined as socially progressive and conservative, and you're playing into that angle by using the terms that you do which causes the reaction that you quoted. There's also undoubtedly a group of people who are also playing into that angle (apparently through ads - I wouldn't know, I avoid ads like the plague and certainly haven't seen any referring to "war on boys") probably in an effort to win votes? Anyway, this issue clearly cannot be completely removed from politics. You're absolutely hypocritical in the way you denounce the progressive left-wing for generalization and identity politics while doing the very same thing when arguing on behalf of the conservative right-wing on social matters. Yeah you're all washed up on motivations and what caused the reaction. Let's boil down to the real arguments and not toot your own horn on how you see all these angles and provocations and we'd better take this issue back to political sides. I stated specifically the areas of interest on the topic of underachieving male children and young adults. You can go pound sand if you want to generalize my other interactions as just a hypocritical example of this. It's absolutely ludicrous.
If you don't intend for this to be a political issue, why are you posting about this in the politics thread to begin with. Besides, your constant smug usage of "the Left" is super annoying, so you don't get to complain if it bites you in the ass.
On November 21 2017 15:31 doomdonker wrote:
Financial literacy doesn’t change a culture obsessed with conspicuous consumption.
Not to mention that a not insignificant part of the money that piles up on one side of the ever-increasing inequality is invested into marketing that very much aims on perpetuating consumerism and keeping people stupid & uninformed through mass media. Another part goes into influencing politicians and political campaigns - where money from the very same pile works very deliberately towards undermining funding for education and implementing policies that directly increase inequality.
I mean, as a high school drop out without a car, and a five year old phone+computer I certainly agree with the basis of what mozoku is saying. I just don't see a way out of the cycle that I described above for society at large without attacking corporations/financial institutions in the way that I do. Ideologies notwithstanding.
Besides, considering I don't buy new crap constantly, I'm at fault for a potential shitty economy, right? If nobody buys the crap that is peddled, the numbers will go down and the economy crashes, right? What do they call it? Consumer confidence? If consumer confidence goes down, people buy less shit, and that's said to be a bad thing for the economy. Do you secretly want to tank the economy, mozoku? Is that your angle here? Tank it all, buy a bunch of shares, then sell at a high to make a profit? Haha.
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On November 21 2017 14:57 mozoku wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2017 14:12 IgnE wrote:On November 21 2017 12:29 mozoku wrote:On November 21 2017 12:02 IgnE wrote:On November 21 2017 11:37 xDaunt wrote:On November 21 2017 11:01 IgnE wrote:On November 21 2017 05:13 xDaunt wrote:On November 21 2017 04:40 TheYango wrote:On November 21 2017 02:59 Nebuchad wrote:
I have no problem with the notion that some people play the lottery with sums that aren't insignificant to them and that they're wrong to do so. It isn't a notion that contradicts my initial objection. The people for whom the cost of the lottery is *actually* insignificant don't play the lottery. You have to be exceedingly wealthy for $500 a year to represent effectively no marginal utility. Even people for whom that represents 1/1000th of their yearly income could probably think of a lot of practically useful things that they would do with an extra $500 a year. What's more common is that people *perceive* the cost of the lottery to be insignificant when it isn't because they are poor/inefficient at evaluating their own personal finances and the relative value of small sums of money. A lot of these people would probably respond differently to the lottery if it was framed as "$500 a year" and not "$10 a week". Exactly. The root problem is the financial illiteracy of too many Americans. Let's just put the lotto aside for a moment. These are the same people that don't hesitate to drop $5 for a frappucino from Starbucks instead of brewing their own coffee at home. And don't even get me started on the vacations that they take or the money that they blow on other frivolous shit. The worst part is that these poor financial habits carry on from generation to generation. We're two or three generations into an expanding class of financial invalids who have no concept of how to properly manage money. Fuck music and arts classes in high school. We need to start teaching our kids what a credit score is and why it's important. Be careful what you wish for. The American economy runs on consumption of frivolous shit. Further, with more financial literacy comes more class-consciousness. Do you think people will be happy with low wages when they can't numb the scenes of their slow deaths with $5 sugar and caffeine bombs? I'd rather empower individuals than continue to bear the social and economic costs of their ongoing stupidity. My bet is that class-consciousness would be less of a problem if the lower classes were suddenly given the tools that they need to improve their lots in life. You benefit quite a bit by your relative position in the social hierarchy. This "bearing the social and economic costs of others' stupidity" (as a hard-working professional who benefits from less competition) stops short of thinking things through to the end. No it doesn't? You realize that if we stop wasting resources producing useless shit like new cars or cigarettes, we can reallocate that to producing useful shit and the overall pie gets bigger? The economy isn't a zero sum game. Sorry, you're going to have to define "useful shit" for me. New cars aren't useful? What do you mean by "the economy isn't a zero sum game?" Do you think we lack capital for investment? Is that why the pie isn't getting bigger at 5% or 6% or 10% instead of 3%? What do you think corporations want to do with all their offshore money? I was referring to the fact that Americans buy a new car, on average, every 4-5 years despite the average car having a useful life of 10+ years. Cars lose their value with time (regardless of use), and a better car does little to increase your income. Thus, repeatedly paying for new cars when you have a working car is a horrible financial decision for the average American who has little to no savings. Cigarettes are pretty self-explanatory. These are the sorts of burdens I'm assuming xDaunt is referring to, as people who retire with no savings require wealth/income redistribution to survive. Moving to my opinion, even if I think such redistribution may be morally permissible, I agree with xDaunt that I'd rather have these people taught financial literacy to lead better lives on their own than effectively bailing them out when they're essentially bankrupt. "Useful shit" is stuff that isn't a zero or negative net impact on society (e.g. as cigarettes are). If humans make intelligent financial decisions, less resources are wasted and consequently the pie of usable resources gets bigger. That's what a non-zero sum game is. We're not competing over a pie of fixed-size. I'll tell you what corporations want to do with their offshore funds: deploy it to produce more stuff that consumers want, or distribute it to shareholders (who then reinvest it to someone who can produce even more stuff that consumers want than the corporation could have). The problem is that neither decision makes sense when the government is going to take a 40% cut as the funds are repatriated. If you think there are zero value-creating ideas out there that additional productive capital couldn't help make a reality, you need to spend more time talking to people with some ideas that don't involve class warfare and Marxist revolutions.
I don't know where you are getting this "pie of fixed size" from. I said xDaunt benefits relative to the schmoes who make bad decisions with their life.
GDP doesn't distinguish between "useful" and "useless" shit. If everyone starts making "smart financial decisions" with an eye towards investment, the demand gap that has led to the current economic malaise will only grow. There don't have to be zero value-creating ideas out there, just fewer ideas than needed to soak up all the exponentially increasing accumulated capital out there. And we must keep in mind that those ideas are always embedded in a given market landscape. A market landscape dominated by highly profitable, rent-seeking corporations who see little reason to reinvest the trillions in liquid capital they hold.
Your analysis of what corporations want to do with their offshore cash holdings illuminates precisely the problem. According to you corporations will produce more stuff or shareholders will reinvest their buy-back money in other corporations (all those wildly successful corporations who don't have significant profits stashed overseas?) who will produce more stuff.
Here's Joseph Stiglitz enumerating a number of reasons why investment is down and will not go up significantly even if the trillions in offshore holdings are repatriated:
The adverse consequences of the resulting inequality are obvious. But there are numerous indirect consequences, which result in a more poorly performing economy. - First, this wealth originating from the capitalization of rents, what I shall call rent-wealth, crowds out capital formation. The weak capital formation of recent years is part and parcel of the growth of rents and rent-wealth—leading to economic stagnation.
- Secondly, with monopolies, the marginal return to investment is lower than the average return—they know that their prices may decline if they produce more—explaining the anomalous result of huge corporate profits but low corporate investment rates, even as the cost of capital has plummeted.
- Third, the distortions in the allocation of resources associated with market power lead to a less efficient economy.
- Fourth, in particular, market power has been used to stifle innovation—just the opposite of the claim of the Chicago School. There is evidence of a decline in the pace of creation of new innovative firms, and especially of new firms headed by young entrepreneurs.
- Fifthly, the ability of these new behemoths to avoid taxation means that the public is being deprived of essential revenues to invest in infrastructure, people, and technology—contributing again to our economy’s stagnation and distorting our economy by giving these firms an unfair competitive advantage.
- Sixthly, with money moving from the bottom of the pyramid to the top, which spends a smaller share of income, aggregate demand is weakened, unless offset by other macro-policies. In the decade since the beginning of the Great Recession, fiscal policy has been restrained and, given those constraints, monetary policy has been unable to fill the breach.
In any case my argument is not "we need the poors to keep being stupid!" My argument was more along the lines of, "if everyone suddenly became financially literate, educationally accomplished, and highly skilled, there'd be a lot of turmoil." That is because surplus value extraction, the essence of capitalism, depends on a reserve army of labor: the supply of labor power must be kept higher than the demand. Even from a capitalistic, growth-oriented vantage point, it is entirely backwards to argue that people are just not making smart decisions, not "investing" in themselves, and that that leads to "wasted" resources. The only way to "fix it" without disrupting the economy is by reducing inequality first.
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On November 21 2017 15:45 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2017 11:47 Atreides wrote:On November 21 2017 08:11 Simberto wrote:On November 21 2017 07:37 ticklishmusic wrote:On November 21 2017 07:09 doomdonker wrote:On November 21 2017 06:55 ticklishmusic wrote:
My sense is that in some of the humanities it's possible to slide by somehow, while in STEM things tend to be a little more metric driven with grades corresponding pretty well to future career performance. The example I go back to is this kid I knew who majored in music performance. He somehow graduated with honors, but his violin playing was pretty garbage (I played violin for 10+ years, so I felt reasonably qualified to make that judgement). I guess there's a reason he didn't go to Julliard or some other conservatory, though.
This is fully acknowledging that there is certainly plenty of coursework in the humanities which is really fucking rigorous, especially to someone with minimal training in social science writing and research. In secondary school, that's definitely not really true. You can grind through the sciences through pure ROTE learning and paying for a whole book of practice questions. Eventually, you'll see a question you've seen before and you can spit it out verbatim. I got over 40 in specialist mathematics (top 9% in the state) but I couldn't do shit in university Calculus 201 for that reason. I didn't actually learn how to learn until university and I'm still pretty terrible at mathematics, despite being an engineer by trade. In fact, some of the schools obsessed with metric results will do exactly that and it completely hampers the future development of all students who teach by this method. They rush through the curriculum, because secondary school can seem extremely slow, and spend the second half of the year feeding practice exams to students. I think this is mostly a Commonwealth nation thing however. I was referring to higher ed/ undergrad. My mistake if that wasn't clear. Oddly, my high school experience was kinda the opposite. I took every single STEM AP class at my school, and there was a ton of memorization but most of it was problem solving, (a lot of designing an experiment to validate a hypothesis). For the humanities there were some classes where it was much more memorization based (APUSH and Art History were the big examples), though there were a couple like World History or English Lit where there was a big writing and/or critical thinking component. I also was lucky and went to a pretty kickass high school, and I'd rate most of my teachers there over most of my college professors. I think the idea is not that there is no problem solving being done in maths in school, but that usually the amount of problems that are possible to solve with the knowledge that the students currently have is so limited that you can often brute force especially standardized tests by just memorizing shitloads of questions, answers, standard procedures, random facts, etc.... (And thus skip the one thing that the teacher actually wants to teach you by doing a lot of easy but boring work) You can also be successful by learning the problem solving techniques and basic ideas that are taught in the maths class. In your example, you can either design an experiment to validate the hypothesis, or just know all of the experiments which are usually covered in your school classes and write down the correct one. This is something that i have always found weird. I was always rather good at understanding maths, and thus i got the interesting experience without the boring memorization. But a lot of the students i tutor have no interest in trying to understand the more abstract concepts, usually because they have a self-image with involves not being good at maths based on previous experiences. They want maths to be turned into a memorization class, and are willing to do way more work just to avoid having to gain a deeper understanding. I have the hypothesis that this is based on something going wrong in their earlier educational lives which makes them have a completely different understanding of how math classes work compared to mine, and seeing maths as something that you just need to do. They are willing to put in a lot of effort, but they have a deeply ingrained view of maths being just "Memorize how to solve problem type A1. Memorize how to solve problem type A2...." I have no idea how to change this view. It is so sad because it turns a beautiful and enjoyable thing into an awful chore you just have to get done with so nobody gets angry at you for failing maths. I once had to TA a "Math for Elementary School Teachers" class that was part of the undergrad program for elementary teachers. It was awe inspiring how much these students exemplified the attitude you describe. Compared to the pre-med or engineering or w/e students that you are trying to teach much more difficult stuff to. The attitude of "im just bad at math" "this just doesnt make sense" was omnipresent. I had more people just start crying because they thought it would make me do their homework for them in that class then all others combined. I do sadly think that for whatever reason, people who are drawn to a career in elementary education tend to have these attitudes and consciously or unconsciously pass them on the to their students. Ironically, the entire purpose of the class was to try and make them think about and understand things and problem solving techniques rather than just doing math by rote. I am curious but I do feel a lot of people had good teachers in Highschool who loved math and tried to inspire that in their students. What about earlier on? Because a lot of people come in to highschool with those attitudes pretty ingrained. It isn't just teachers either you see cases where you are tutoring students and their parents attitude and the things they say ("I was never good at math either" is super common) and its pretty obvious they have unfortunately influenced their kids. Its kind of a continuing problem. The implementation was ehh... but a big part of the reasoning for common core was trying to address this problem. Similar experience here. Students are taught by these teachers and programs to memorize the process to a solution for Type A1 and Type A2 problem. One small twist in the problem statement and it's an ingrained mental route to memorize Type A3's "trick" when they just shuffled givens or said something in a different way. Predictable result as Atreides and Simberto illustrated. I tutor math at the prealgebra to calculus level to Jr High/High School students for fun in my off hours. It's sad how many gifted students get stumped trying to memorize the next thing in an interminable list of things. + Show Spoiler +As an aside, they also hate breaking out four colored pencils to represent 3x as three green boxes and (-x) as a single yellow box.
I am someone currently studying to become a high school maths teacher. I want to mention that the problem is definitively not unwillingness in the teaching community. The goal is always to try to ingrain understanding over mechanical solutions. But a big problem is that it is simply not clear how one does that. Theories exist, and teaching material and teaching slowly evolves to try to fit these theories. This is a slow process, however.
Regarding the elementary school teachers: Here you have the phenomenon that high school maths teachers are math teachers. They study how to teach maths specifically, and are thus usually people who had positive experiences with maths beforehand. If they hadn't, and still wanted to become high school teachers, they would study teaching history or english or geography or whatever.
Elementary school teachers are primary elementary school teachers. They are expected to teach a lot more subjects than an high school teacher. They didn't decide to become a maths teacher, they decided to become an elementary teacher, and maths is just one out of a lot of things they have to do to do that.
Side note: There are some really weird processes in education
Have a guess at how money 5th and 6th graders correctly answer the following question:
"It takes 40 musicians 60 minutes to play Beethovens 9th symphony. How long does it take for 120 musicians?"
+ Show Spoiler + About 10 % answer that question correctly
Most either answer with "180 minutes" or "20 minutes".
There has been a process to substitute calculation tasks with applied calculation tasks. So instead of having to calculate 5*3 you get a question like "Jimmy has 5 boxes with three oranges each in it. How many oranges does Jimmy have?"
The goal is to make students learn how maths is applied to real world situations instead of only school situations by giving them context. But that is not how students see these word problems. They recognize them in a school context as not representing real situations, but puzzles with a determined solution algorithm which involves taking all the numbers from the problem, applying one or more algebraic processes to them, and returning the answer. Which algebraic operations are chosen is usually not very related to the actual situation described in the problem, but by lots of superficial stuff like key words, the types of number involved, etc...
So basically, education is weird, and teaching people to actually gain a deeper understanding is hard and not a figured out science.
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On November 21 2017 16:06 a_flayer wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2017 15:31 Danglars wrote:On November 21 2017 11:42 a_flayer wrote:On November 21 2017 10:45 Danglars wrote:On November 21 2017 09:57 Stratos_speAr wrote:On November 21 2017 08:14 Danglars wrote:On November 21 2017 07:40 Gahlo wrote:On November 21 2017 07:30 TheTenthDoc wrote:Speaking of education, the other day I was shown some absurdly long Twitch (or maybe Youtube) ad about how current school curricula are "anti-boy" and that there's a "war on boys" (here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFpYj0E-yb4). I'd never heard of PragerU, but apparently it's built around 5-minute conservative pseudo-TED talks. I freely admit I skipped after like a minute when they said normal boys are treated like defective girls in school. An interesting view into what analytics have decided constitutes a good ad for me, I guess? Anecodtal, but with what I had to go through I can't help but at least give the idea consideration. Maybe "war on boys" and "defective girls" is harsh language for the situation though. To the extent that wild labels should prompt reactive disbelief, sure, an actual "war on boys" isn't useful to start out looking why they do worse in elementary and secondary education. When you look at the topics in isolation, like overprescription of ADHD drugs, or reactions to typical young male behavior like engaging in mock fights and finger pistols, or recess time alotted, or reading books shown, I think you can make the case that there's a lot of harm being done. Especially in today's era where everybody has heightened awareness of little things having big effects. Seems interesting that when the right uses an arbitrary (and patently ridiculous) label, you try to parse out the nuanced meaning of it, whereas whenever the left does it, you slam it as gross generalizations, identity politics, etc. etc. Is this true as a general statement? STEM is a pretty broad class, there are probably some subfields where there aren't enough jobs to go around. For instance it wouldn't surprise me if theoretical physics was such a field. But is it generally true for STEM as a whole? No. It's much more complicated. https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2015/article/stem-crisis-or-stem-surplus-yes-and-yes.htmSTEM is such a broad category that you can't really talk about it as a single entity. There are a surplus of Ph.D's in most science fields, but a lack of them in certain areas of the private sector. Conversely, there's a high need for bachelor's level STEM education in fields like software development, but much less needs in other areas of science/math. "War on boys" isn't some generic right term. It's a culture term. It cuts across both political camps. Now if you think the academic success and social development of our youngsters is a politically charged topic, I pity you. Well, there's definitely a political angle to it that can be defined as socially progressive and conservative, and you're playing into that angle by using the terms that you do which causes the reaction that you quoted. There's also undoubtedly a group of people who are also playing into that angle (apparently through ads - I wouldn't know, I avoid ads like the plague and certainly haven't seen any referring to "war on boys") probably in an effort to win votes? Anyway, this issue clearly cannot be completely removed from politics. You're absolutely hypocritical in the way you denounce the progressive left-wing for generalization and identity politics while doing the very same thing when arguing on behalf of the conservative right-wing on social matters. Yeah you're all washed up on motivations and what caused the reaction. Let's boil down to the real arguments and not toot your own horn on how you see all these angles and provocations and we'd better take this issue back to political sides. I stated specifically the areas of interest on the topic of underachieving male children and young adults. You can go pound sand if you want to generalize my other interactions as just a hypocritical example of this. It's absolutely ludicrous. Besides, considering I don't buy new crap constantly, I'm at fault for a potential shitty economy, right? If nobody buys the crap that is peddled, the numbers will go down and the economy crashes, right? What do they call it? Consumer confidence? If consumer confidence goes down, people buy less shit, and that's said to be a bad thing for the economy. Do you secretly want to tank the economy, mozoku? Is that your angle here? Tank it all, buy a bunch of shares, then sell at a high to make a profit? Haha.
I never said "don't spend money." I said don't spend it on frivolous things when you can't afford it. If people stopped spending money on cigarettes, new cars, payday loans, and lottery tickets and instead spent that money on after-school education for their children, a healthier diet, and a gym membership, the increase in demand would lead to more capital being deployed to reduce the cost of those goods and services. Assuming the same amount of money is being spent today, there's no change in present-day GDP. But the long-term benefits (in both personal happiness and GDP) of a healthier and more educated populace would make for a better society.
Igne, it's late here and I'm going to have to to sleep. Sorry I'm not responding, but tbh I'm in agreement with a a good portion of what they guy says (though not all of it).
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On November 21 2017 16:06 a_flayer wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2017 15:31 Danglars wrote:On November 21 2017 11:42 a_flayer wrote:On November 21 2017 10:45 Danglars wrote:On November 21 2017 09:57 Stratos_speAr wrote:On November 21 2017 08:14 Danglars wrote:On November 21 2017 07:40 Gahlo wrote:On November 21 2017 07:30 TheTenthDoc wrote:Speaking of education, the other day I was shown some absurdly long Twitch (or maybe Youtube) ad about how current school curricula are "anti-boy" and that there's a "war on boys" (here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFpYj0E-yb4). I'd never heard of PragerU, but apparently it's built around 5-minute conservative pseudo-TED talks. I freely admit I skipped after like a minute when they said normal boys are treated like defective girls in school. An interesting view into what analytics have decided constitutes a good ad for me, I guess? Anecodtal, but with what I had to go through I can't help but at least give the idea consideration. Maybe "war on boys" and "defective girls" is harsh language for the situation though. To the extent that wild labels should prompt reactive disbelief, sure, an actual "war on boys" isn't useful to start out looking why they do worse in elementary and secondary education. When you look at the topics in isolation, like overprescription of ADHD drugs, or reactions to typical young male behavior like engaging in mock fights and finger pistols, or recess time alotted, or reading books shown, I think you can make the case that there's a lot of harm being done. Especially in today's era where everybody has heightened awareness of little things having big effects. Seems interesting that when the right uses an arbitrary (and patently ridiculous) label, you try to parse out the nuanced meaning of it, whereas whenever the left does it, you slam it as gross generalizations, identity politics, etc. etc. Is this true as a general statement? STEM is a pretty broad class, there are probably some subfields where there aren't enough jobs to go around. For instance it wouldn't surprise me if theoretical physics was such a field. But is it generally true for STEM as a whole? No. It's much more complicated. https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2015/article/stem-crisis-or-stem-surplus-yes-and-yes.htmSTEM is such a broad category that you can't really talk about it as a single entity. There are a surplus of Ph.D's in most science fields, but a lack of them in certain areas of the private sector. Conversely, there's a high need for bachelor's level STEM education in fields like software development, but much less needs in other areas of science/math. "War on boys" isn't some generic right term. It's a culture term. It cuts across both political camps. Now if you think the academic success and social development of our youngsters is a politically charged topic, I pity you. Well, there's definitely a political angle to it that can be defined as socially progressive and conservative, and you're playing into that angle by using the terms that you do which causes the reaction that you quoted. There's also undoubtedly a group of people who are also playing into that angle (apparently through ads - I wouldn't know, I avoid ads like the plague and certainly haven't seen any referring to "war on boys") probably in an effort to win votes? Anyway, this issue clearly cannot be completely removed from politics. You're absolutely hypocritical in the way you denounce the progressive left-wing for generalization and identity politics while doing the very same thing when arguing on behalf of the conservative right-wing on social matters. Yeah you're all washed up on motivations and what caused the reaction. Let's boil down to the real arguments and not toot your own horn on how you see all these angles and provocations and we'd better take this issue back to political sides. I stated specifically the areas of interest on the topic of underachieving male children and young adults. You can go pound sand if you want to generalize my other interactions as just a hypocritical example of this. It's absolutely ludicrous. If you don't intend for this to be a political issue, why are you posting about this in the politics thread to begin with. Besides, your constant smug usage of "the Left" is super annoying, so you don't get to complain if it bites you in the ass.
Hilarious. Let's see, how often in politics do we return to shared truths by means of debate? Come on, you can do much better to answer the charges I wrote. All I'm seeing is you want to generalize and insinuate for no good reason other than your penchant for bickering. Come off it and give a position germane to the topic or back the hell out. Everything doesn't have to be political partisanship and tribalism, though I'm starting to understand better your way of viewing the world, and you can actually state what you think about the topic other than labeling others.
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Financial literacy doesn't stop people from getting addicted to cigarettes at a very young age. Nor does it stop parents from taking high interest loans because they don't want their children to be without Christmas presents. Nor does it stop people from buying lottery tickets because of a belief that they'll strike it big one day and live life like everyone they see on TV.
No, its not logical. No, its not financially sensible. Which is why these problems exist and can't be solved with mere financial education. Because these people, more or less, know taking a payday loan is fucking stupid. But they still do it because who wants to be the only family in America who couldn't provide their children with the same Christmas they see everywhere.
Its no different no matter where you go, its like saying Chinese people should stop one upping themselves when they hand out hong bao at weddings because its illogical and financially stupid. Most people there secretly agree that its stupid but no one wants to look like the cheap ass guest. There's enough cultural inertia that no one wants to buck the trend.
Same thing with American consumerism. As a Commonwealth transplant, let me be the first to say that American consumerism during any holiday season is a whole different level to those in other English speaking capitalist societies.
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But of course: i’m sure he defends family values such as attacking lgbt people, fighting against abortion whatever the context, crusading against feminists and so forth and so on.
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Eric Trump is slamming a Forbes report that alleges his charity, the Eric Trump Foundation, has been funneling donations -- from donors who believed the money was going to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital -- to the Trump Organization by paying high sums for use of Trump properties during fundraisers and redonating some funds to charities friendly with Trump interests.
Forbes reported Tuesday that the Eric Trump Foundation paid the Trump family business hundreds of thousands of dollars over the last seven years for use of one of the organization's golf courses, funds which he claimed were being donated nearly in full to the children's cancer charity.
"We were able to come up with this concept of raising a lot of money with really no expense and it's because we were incurring the expenses at the assets we were taking on the expenses as Trump. We were using our own facilities," Eric told donors in a promotional video.
According to IRS filings, the Eric Trump Foundation in 2012 spent $59,085 on its annual Golf Invitational fundraiser held at the Trump National Golf Club in Westchester County, New York -- money that skimmed from donations to St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital. Those expenses ballooned to $230,080 in 2013 and to $242,294 in 2014, according to the filings. It is unclear from these tax forms how much of those payments went to the Trump Organization.
Forbes reported that in 2011, costs for Eric Trump's golf tournament fundraiser tripled because his father realized that the organization had not been charging for the event and there were no bills to prove it. The Foundation declined to provide Forbes with an itemized list of expenses for the tournament.
Charity experts told Forbes that the amount paid to the Trump Organization for a golf tournament fundraiser for St. Jude's "defy any reasonable cost."
The increased costs for the tournament coincided with changes to the Foundation's board in 2010, when it changed from being made up of mostly Eric's personal friends to those closely connected with the financial interests of the Trump Organization, according to Forbes.
The tax filings also show that the Eric Trump Foundation made a 2014 payment of $87,665 to another Trump property, the Trump National Golf Club in Washington, D.C., for fundraising events.
In addition, the Forbes report claims that Eric Trump's charity redirected some donations. More than $500,000 was given by the Eric Trump Foundation to other charities, "many of which were connected to Trump family members or interests," according to Forbes.
In a statement released Tuesday, a spokesman for the president's son defended the Eric Trump Foundation.
"During the past decade, the Eric Trump Foundation has raised over $16.3 million for St. Jude Children's Research hospital while maintaining an expense ratio of just 12.3 percent," the statement reads. "The Eric Trump Foundation was also responsible for building a $20 million dollar ICU which treats the sickest children anywhere in the world suffering from the most catastrophic terminal illnesses."
The statement continues, "Contrary to recent reports, at no time did the Trump Organization profit in any way from the foundation or any of its activities. While people can disagree on political issues, to infer malicious intent on a charity that has changed so many lives, is not only shameful but is truly disgusting. At the end of the day the only people who lose are the children of St. Jude and other incredibly worthy causes."
And as Forbes points out in its report, "Altruism as a business-development strategy isn't necessarily illegal. But a situation in which outside donor money is redeployed away from the core mission in ways that seem to ultimately benefit the family that pays the majority of the board is -- at best -- an appearance problem."
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On November 21 2017 12:29 mozoku wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2017 12:02 IgnE wrote:On November 21 2017 11:37 xDaunt wrote:On November 21 2017 11:01 IgnE wrote:On November 21 2017 05:13 xDaunt wrote:On November 21 2017 04:40 TheYango wrote:On November 21 2017 02:59 Nebuchad wrote:
I have no problem with the notion that some people play the lottery with sums that aren't insignificant to them and that they're wrong to do so. It isn't a notion that contradicts my initial objection. The people for whom the cost of the lottery is *actually* insignificant don't play the lottery. You have to be exceedingly wealthy for $500 a year to represent effectively no marginal utility. Even people for whom that represents 1/1000th of their yearly income could probably think of a lot of practically useful things that they would do with an extra $500 a year. What's more common is that people *perceive* the cost of the lottery to be insignificant when it isn't because they are poor/inefficient at evaluating their own personal finances and the relative value of small sums of money. A lot of these people would probably respond differently to the lottery if it was framed as "$500 a year" and not "$10 a week". Exactly. The root problem is the financial illiteracy of too many Americans. Let's just put the lotto aside for a moment. These are the same people that don't hesitate to drop $5 for a frappucino from Starbucks instead of brewing their own coffee at home. And don't even get me started on the vacations that they take or the money that they blow on other frivolous shit. The worst part is that these poor financial habits carry on from generation to generation. We're two or three generations into an expanding class of financial invalids who have no concept of how to properly manage money. Fuck music and arts classes in high school. We need to start teaching our kids what a credit score is and why it's important. Be careful what you wish for. The American economy runs on consumption of frivolous shit. Further, with more financial literacy comes more class-consciousness. Do you think people will be happy with low wages when they can't numb the scenes of their slow deaths with $5 sugar and caffeine bombs? I'd rather empower individuals than continue to bear the social and economic costs of their ongoing stupidity. My bet is that class-consciousness would be less of a problem if the lower classes were suddenly given the tools that they need to improve their lots in life. You benefit quite a bit by your relative position in the social hierarchy. This "bearing the social and economic costs of others' stupidity" (as a hard-working professional who benefits from less competition) stops short of thinking things through to the end. No it doesn't? You realize that if we stop wasting resources producing useless shit like new cars or cigarettes, we can reallocate that to producing useful shit and the overall pie gets bigger? The economy isn't a zero sum game.
that sounds like communism
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I don't think that lawmaker is wrong.
I said awhile ago that there are 4 ways this can turn out (which I rank from best to worst for the GoP) and only first one was really a win.
1. Moore drops out. You protect the seat andthe story goes away. All in all a total victory but it looks like that won't happen.
2. The Democrat wins. This sounds weird considering you lose a senate seat but voters rejecting him and getting rid of the problem for them keeps the damage limited to 1 Senate seat for 3 years.
3. Moore wins and senate expels him. With this scenario you protectthe seat but piss off his base and you need his base to win national elections.
4. Moore wins and serves his term. This is a doomsday scenario. There is nothing worse you can be than a pedophile and that Republicans have one serving and that the party is too scared to stand up to a pedophile would be the rope that hangs them. What will be a bad midterm would be historically bad.
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On November 21 2017 17:44 mozoku wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2017 16:06 a_flayer wrote:On November 21 2017 15:31 Danglars wrote:On November 21 2017 11:42 a_flayer wrote:On November 21 2017 10:45 Danglars wrote:On November 21 2017 09:57 Stratos_speAr wrote:On November 21 2017 08:14 Danglars wrote:On November 21 2017 07:40 Gahlo wrote:On November 21 2017 07:30 TheTenthDoc wrote:Speaking of education, the other day I was shown some absurdly long Twitch (or maybe Youtube) ad about how current school curricula are "anti-boy" and that there's a "war on boys" (here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFpYj0E-yb4). I'd never heard of PragerU, but apparently it's built around 5-minute conservative pseudo-TED talks. I freely admit I skipped after like a minute when they said normal boys are treated like defective girls in school. An interesting view into what analytics have decided constitutes a good ad for me, I guess? Anecodtal, but with what I had to go through I can't help but at least give the idea consideration. Maybe "war on boys" and "defective girls" is harsh language for the situation though. To the extent that wild labels should prompt reactive disbelief, sure, an actual "war on boys" isn't useful to start out looking why they do worse in elementary and secondary education. When you look at the topics in isolation, like overprescription of ADHD drugs, or reactions to typical young male behavior like engaging in mock fights and finger pistols, or recess time alotted, or reading books shown, I think you can make the case that there's a lot of harm being done. Especially in today's era where everybody has heightened awareness of little things having big effects. Seems interesting that when the right uses an arbitrary (and patently ridiculous) label, you try to parse out the nuanced meaning of it, whereas whenever the left does it, you slam it as gross generalizations, identity politics, etc. etc. Is this true as a general statement? STEM is a pretty broad class, there are probably some subfields where there aren't enough jobs to go around. For instance it wouldn't surprise me if theoretical physics was such a field. But is it generally true for STEM as a whole? No. It's much more complicated. https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2015/article/stem-crisis-or-stem-surplus-yes-and-yes.htmSTEM is such a broad category that you can't really talk about it as a single entity. There are a surplus of Ph.D's in most science fields, but a lack of them in certain areas of the private sector. Conversely, there's a high need for bachelor's level STEM education in fields like software development, but much less needs in other areas of science/math. "War on boys" isn't some generic right term. It's a culture term. It cuts across both political camps. Now if you think the academic success and social development of our youngsters is a politically charged topic, I pity you. Well, there's definitely a political angle to it that can be defined as socially progressive and conservative, and you're playing into that angle by using the terms that you do which causes the reaction that you quoted. There's also undoubtedly a group of people who are also playing into that angle (apparently through ads - I wouldn't know, I avoid ads like the plague and certainly haven't seen any referring to "war on boys") probably in an effort to win votes? Anyway, this issue clearly cannot be completely removed from politics. You're absolutely hypocritical in the way you denounce the progressive left-wing for generalization and identity politics while doing the very same thing when arguing on behalf of the conservative right-wing on social matters. Yeah you're all washed up on motivations and what caused the reaction. Let's boil down to the real arguments and not toot your own horn on how you see all these angles and provocations and we'd better take this issue back to political sides. I stated specifically the areas of interest on the topic of underachieving male children and young adults. You can go pound sand if you want to generalize my other interactions as just a hypocritical example of this. It's absolutely ludicrous. Besides, considering I don't buy new crap constantly, I'm at fault for a potential shitty economy, right? If nobody buys the crap that is peddled, the numbers will go down and the economy crashes, right? What do they call it? Consumer confidence? If consumer confidence goes down, people buy less shit, and that's said to be a bad thing for the economy. Do you secretly want to tank the economy, mozoku? Is that your angle here? Tank it all, buy a bunch of shares, then sell at a high to make a profit? Haha. I never said "don't spend money." I said don't spend it on frivolous things when you can't afford it. If people stopped spending money on cigarettes, new cars, payday loans, and lottery tickets and instead spent that money on after-school education for their children, a healthier diet, and a gym membership, the increase in demand would lead to more capital being deployed to reduce the cost of those goods and services. Assuming the same amount of money is being spent today, there's no change in present-day GDP. But the long-term benefits (in both personal happiness and GDP) of a healthier and more educated populace would make for a better society. Igne, it's late here and I'm going to have to to sleep. Sorry I'm not responding, but tbh I'm in agreement with a a good portion of what they guy says (though not all of it).
That is not how supply and demand works. The result is at best indeterminate without more information on whether the increase in suppliers that want to enter the market will counter the tendency for prices to go up when there is increased demand for a good.
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The Trump camp is anti-democracy as ever.
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That article is interesting. I wasnt aware illegal aliens were included in the census.
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The Trump administration is ending a humanitarian program that has allowed some 59,000 Haitians to live and work in the United States since an earthquake ravaged their country in 2010, Homeland Security officials said on Monday.
Haitians with what is known as Temporary Protected Status will be expected to leave the United States by July 2019 or face deportation.
The decision set off immediate dismay among Haitian communities in South Florida, New York and beyond, and was a signal to other foreigners with temporary protections that they, too, could soon be asked to leave.
About 320,000 people now benefit from the Temporary Protected Status program, which was signed into law by President George Bush in 1990, and the decision on Monday followed another one last month that ended protections for 2,500 Nicaraguans.
Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, is still struggling to recover from the earthquake and relies heavily on money its expatriates send to relatives back home. The Haitian government had asked the Trump administration to extend the protected status.
“I received a shock right now,” Gerald Michaud, 45, a Haitian who lives in Brooklyn, said when he heard the news. He has been working at La Guardia Airport as a wheelchair attendant, sending money to family and friends back home. He said he feared for his welfare and safety back in Haiti now that his permission to remain in the United States was ending.
“The situation is not good in my country,” he said. “I don’t know where I am able to go.”
Haitians are the second-largest group of foreigners with temporary status. The protection is extended to people already in the United States who have come from countries crippled by natural disasters or armed conflict that prevents their citizens from returning or prevents their country from adequately receiving them. The government periodically reviews each group’s status and decides whether to continue the protections.
The Obama administration renewed the protections for Haitians several times, after determining that conditions in Haiti remained precarious. But the Trump administration, which has sought greater controls on immigration, has said that the program, which was intended to provide only temporary relief, has turned into a permanent benefit for tens of thousands of people.
In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said that after meeting with Haitian government officials and Haitian communities in the United States, it had decided to let the protections end.
“Since the 2010 earthquake, the number of displaced people in Haiti has decreased by 97 percent,” the statement said. “Significant steps have been taken to improve the stability and quality of life for Haitian citizens, and Haiti is able to safely receive traditional levels of returned citizens.”
The protection for Haitians was most recently extended in May, by John F. Kelly, the Homeland Security secretary at the time. He allowed only a six-month extension, a shorter one than is typical, saying that the Haitians “need to start thinking about returning.”
The decision on Monday by Elaine Duke, the acting secretary, set a termination date of July 2019 to give people time to make arrangements to leave.
The largest group of Temporary Protected Status beneficiaries, nearly 200,000 people, are from El Salvador. The Department of Homeland Security is scheduled to announce next month whether it will rescind or renew protection for that country, which is plagued with gang violence and high unemployment. The protection applies to Salvadorans who were in the United States without permission on Feb. 13, 2001, and was granted after deadly earthquakes in their home country.
Though Ms. Duke ended protections for Nicaraguans last month, she continued, at least for now, protections for Hondurans despite pressure from Mr. Kelly, now President Trump’s chief of staff, to end them.
Others who now benefit include people from Nepal, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen. In 2016, the Obama administration decided to end temporary protection for citizens from three West African countries that had been devastated by the Ebola virus several years ago.
The United States offered the protection to Haitians after the earthquake in January 2010 that killed hundreds of thousands of people, displaced more than a million and led to a cholera outbreak. Haitians who entered the United States within a year of the disaster qualified for the status.
A variety of American groups, including the Congressional Black Caucus, the United States Chamber of Commerce and immigrant advocacy organizations had urged the Trump administration to extend the protections again. On Monday, Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, called the decision “unconscionable.”
“There is no reason to send 60,000 Haitians back to a country that cannot provide for them,” he wrote on Twitter. “I am strongly urging the administration to reconsider.”
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican congresswoman from South Florida, said on Twitter that she had traveled to Haiti after the earthquake in 2010 and after Hurricane Matthew in 2015. “So I can personally attest that Haiti is not prepared to take back nearly 60,000 TPS recipients under these difficult and harsh conditions,” she said.
Those with temporary protection constitute about half of the estimated 110,000 Haitians living in the United States without permanent permission, according to the Pew Research Center. Since Mr. Kelly signaled that Haiti might lose its special designation, thousands of Haitians have crossed the border between the United States and Canada to apply for asylum in Quebec.
Nearly 30,000 children have been born in the United States to Haitians with protected status. Those children are citizens and entitled to stay. Some of their parents may seek to avoid deportation by claiming it would cause extreme hardship to a United States-born child, but that option is limited.
Most will soon have to make a wrenching decision: take their children back to Haiti; leave them with relatives or guardians in the United States; or remain in the country illegally and risk arrest and deportation.
Mark Silverman, an attorney and director of policy at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center in San Francisco, said that if they are arrested, they would be entitled to deportation hearings. And contesting their cases “gives them at least seven to 10 years,” he said, because of the long backlogs in the immigration courts.
The decision is sure to be felt in Haiti, where remittances from the Haitian diaspora totaled $2.36 billion in 2016, an increase of 7 percent over the previous year, according to the World Bank. That money represented more than one-fourth of the country’s national income.
But Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which lobbies for restrictions on immigration, said the cancellation of temporary protections for Haitians was “long overdue.”
“The notion that this would be reflexively renewed again and again is a corruption of the entire concept,” said Mr. Stein, adding, “it’s not a refugee program or an immigration program.”
“It’s supposed to be reviewed and it’s supposed to be temporary,” he said.
One of the younger beneficiaries of the program, Peterson Exais, barely survived the earthquake. He arrived in the United States when he was 9 years old to receive emergency medical care after surviving for days under the rubble. He endured more than a dozen surgeries and has become a promising dancer at a magnet school in Miami.
Now 17 years old, he dreams of pursuing studies at the Juilliard School.
“This is very devastating for me,” he said on Monday. “I might not be able to give all that I could give back if I went back to Haiti.”
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that really is unconscionable. I don’t think one should expect Temporary Protection status to be interminable, but we should at least be able to come up with a better plan than ‘ok fuck off back to your broken island.’
it looks like the powers that be have decided it’s a livable community again, so i guess that’s that. i wish i could honestly say i believe that. but oh well.
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I can understand the idea of "temporary means temporary", but if all their buildings are still a pile of rubble, the reason still exists. Haiti is in a shitty situation because it is a shitty country. It is rebuilding slowly for the same reason. It is ridiculous to send these people back just because it is taking too long to repair their homes.
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But the reasoning behind sending these folks back is all about white grievance and removing as many immigrants as possible.
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On November 22 2017 00:53 Plansix wrote:
But the reasoning behind sending these folks back is all about white grievance and removing as many immigrants as possible.
If we can't afford to subsidize the egos of broken, unskilled coal workers, how we we afford to make houses for foreign blacks?
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EPT
