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2nd Worst City in CA8938 Posts
On October 17 2012 02:49 BluePanther wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2012 02:44 Souma wrote:On October 17 2012 02:37 DeepElemBlues wrote:On October 17 2012 02:00 Souma wrote:On October 16 2012 14:45 kmillz wrote:On October 16 2012 07:41 Souma wrote:On October 16 2012 07:39 DoubleReed wrote:On October 16 2012 07:38 Souma wrote:On October 16 2012 07:33 DoubleReed wrote:On October 16 2012 07:26 Souma wrote:
[quote]
'They hate our freedomz!!1' is one of the most oversimplified explanations of anything I have ever heard of. It exemplifies the ignorance of the typical American on U.S.-Middle East relations. Did you know that Muslims once upon a time were actually incredibly tolerant and would not lift a finger when directly insulted? Yes, well the Muslim Brotherhood has been gaining power in many many countries, including Turkey of all places. They are well funded, well coordinated, and have a lot going for them. They are a lot less racist and divisive then a lot of organizations, because they welcome all Muslims. Look at what is happening in the UK right now: http://tehrantimes.com/world/102400-10000-protest-anti-muslim-video-at-googles-uk-hqThis trend is very troubling. Indeed, it is troubling, but to brush it off simply by saying "They hate our freedomz!!1" is ridiculous. The Muslim Brotherhood was not formed nor has it been gaining power simply because "They hate our freedomz!!1" Well in this case they actually do hate our freedoms... Yeah, they do hate that there is a viral video insulting their prophet; however, there are underlying factors that cause them to riot and participate in violent protests, just like there are underlying causes as to why the Muslim Brotherhood was formed and is gaining power, and just like there are underlying causes as to why people participate in terrorism. Wow I love how everyone is trying to paint my post as some ignorant average American citizen who doesn't know shit about Muslims or their culture just because I said one big reason they hate us is that our freedoms allow us to do things that they deem sacrilegious. I didn't say that was the only reason so get off of your high horses and stfu with the "They hate our freedomz!!1" bullshit, I took a year and a half of Arabic and Middle Eastern studies in the military. I learned how to speak, read and write Arabic fluently from actual Arabs and my job title was Arabic Cryptologic Linguist. My only point was that yes there are a lot of things that America does that pisses off Muslims, but I am only saying even if many of those things didn't happen they would already still hate us very much. I'm telling you your hypothesis has no basis grounded in reality, unless we are gauging 'hate' very differently. Without all the underlying causes I highly doubt they'd 'hate' us enough to ram airplanes into our buildings, suicide bomb innocent civilians, and assassinate our diplomats. As time passes the younger Muslim generations are beginning to harbor more pro-Western sentiments than their predecessors (even in Iran!). This is because they didn't have to grow up alongside the reality of those 'underlying causes.' So to say that they'd 'hate us very much' regardless of what we did is ludicrous. As long as we don't continue spreading our tyranny throughout the Middle East, we can at least erase a lot of that ill will we rightfully deserve with the passage of time. Drone strikes aren't doing us any favors with Yemen and Pakistan but that's a whole different topic. Yeah, tell the guy whose job was to deal with Arabs and Muslims his hypothesis has no basis grounded in reality. Because it doesn't fit in with what you already believed. That makes sense. They sure seem to have no trouble murdering girls who just want to learn how to read, so how does that fit in with your theory? You've obviously never read Qutb or Zawahiri, guess what they hate us because of our decadent sexualized culture and freedom of religion and expression. And because we're spreading that culture to "their" countries, and we don't recognize "their" right to rule those countries in whatever barbaric ass backwards way they want to. Who voted terrorists as the One True Spokesgroup for Muslims? Who voted them the One True Rulers of "Muslim" lands? The reality of the underlying causes is that they're a bunch of racist, xenophobic fascists who murder "their" own people just as brutally and gleefully as they murder Westerners. Yeah I really don't want to waste time trying to argue with such blind bigotry. Have fun living in your scary world where Muslims are crazy monsters trying to subdue the world under the confines of Sharia Law. To be quite frank, the terrorist factions in the Middle East are pretty much religious bigots, in reverse. The ones who commit violence do so because of very fringe and fanatical beliefs in scripture statements that are (at least in my mind), taken out of context. Terrorist groups believe that everyone should live by THEIR interpretation of the Quran -- which isn't a majority view among religious scholars.
Yeah but that doesn't explain why they cling to their religion so passionately nor does it explain how a fervent belief can incite such hostilities towards innocents. While there are definitely crazed leaders (I believe the leaders of these organizations are quite fanatic) people need to realize what is making it so easy for these maniacs to recruit others. For all the bullshit we spout about crazy terrorists killing civilians, we sure as hell seem to never mention the atrocities the U.S. and Israel have committed in the region that leads to the formation/recruitment of these terrorists in the first place. So yes they are religious fanatics, and yes they hate our freedomz!!1 But this shit isn't formed in a vacuum. Nothing is.
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On October 17 2012 02:26 Klondikebar wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2012 02:17 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On October 16 2012 23:58 paralleluniverse wrote:On October 16 2012 23:43 kmillz wrote:On October 16 2012 22:35 paralleluniverse wrote:http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic-experts-panel/poll-results?SurveyID=SV_cw5O9LNJL1oz4XiQuestion A: Because of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the U.S. unemployment rate was lower at the end of 2010 than it would have been without the stimulus bill.
Responses weighted by each expert's confidence:
93% Agree
2% Uncertain
4% Disagree
Question B:
Taking into account all of the ARRA’s economic consequences — including the economic costs of raising taxes to pay for the spending, its effects on future spending, and any other likely future effects — the benefits of the stimulus will end up exceeding its costs.
Responses weighted by each expert's confidence:
60% Agree
26% Uncertain
14% Disagree There's a lot of results for many questions on that website which I found interesting. I think it is interesting to note that the economics profession has a 3:1 Democrat to Republican ratio. Bryan Caplan points to a piece by Justin Wolfers. Let’s start with Obama’s stimulus. The standard Republican talking point is that it failed, meaning it didn’t reduce unemployment. Yet in a survey of leading economists conducted by the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, 92 percent agreed that the stimulus succeeded in reducing the jobless rate. On the harder question of whether the benefit exceeded the cost, more than half thought it did, one in three was uncertain, and fewer than one in six disagreed. We here at the Cat are the 8 percent. Let’s look at Caplan’s critique first. Wolfers says that the panel is “ideologically diverse.” When I asked Kashyap, however, he said that there’s no public data on panel members’ political views. If you casually peruse the list, its members seem to lean heavily Democratic. Dan Klein’s systematic empirics say that the economics profession has Democrat to Republican ratio of 3:1. None of this would be a problem if becoming an economist caused people to join the Democratic party. In my experience, though, most economists picked their party long before they started studying economics. Okay – so most academic economists are part of the highly educated elite and have political views consistent with that status. Not surprising – both Hayek and Schumpeter have theories of why intellectuals are likely to have left-wing views. Caplan goes on to talk about the stimulus. My complaint: These results are basically what you’d expect from a non-expert panel with two Democrats for every Republican. What’s the value-added of the IGM’s economic expertise on this question? Hard to see. Partisan bias seems particularly troubling when the IGM deals with policies that have recently been in the news. When economists analyze events decades in the past, it’s relatively easy to put politics aside and coolly apply abstract economics to concrete cases. When they analyze events they recently lived through, however, objectivity is harder to achieve. This is especially true when they’re personally close to the administrations that adopted the policies they’re now asked to judge. I’m not convinced – the evidence is in. I’m happy to believe that people could be wrong ex ante, but ex post? Not so much. Here is an earlier version of a very famous graph. ![[image loading]](http://catallaxyfiles.com/files/2012/07/US-unemployment-may-2011.jpg) A model was used to generate two series of estimates in that graph. First the unemployment figures without a stimulus and then the unemployment figures with the stimulus. The red dots reveal what actually happened. The red dots invalidate the model. If you believe – as do 92 percent of leading US economists in the sample believe – that “the stimulus succeeded in reducing the jobless rate” then you must also believe that the stock standard Keynesian model that generated both sets of forecasts in the graph is wrong too. Now some argue that the stimulus was too small, but why weren’t those 92 percent of economists saying so at the time? Of course, that simply raises the question; how did they know it was too small at the time? Where is their model and its predictions? Maybe the reason so many economists lean Democratic is because Democrats have better economic policies? Or maybe it's because Republicans have "cranks and charlatans" (Republican economist Greg Mankiw's words) that believe lower taxes will increase revenue, and crackpots who advocate for the return to a gold standard (which 100% of economist disagree with in this survey). Sort of like how scientist have a democrat ratio of like 9 to 1 (or something ridiculous like that), because Republican's denial of evolution and climate change makes them anti-science. Nah. More likely people's pre-existing ideas gravitate them towards different fields. If you believe in government intervention then go study economics. If you believe the opposite than go study finance. What? A HUGE swath of the Economics profession loathes government intervention. Financiers were the ones who cried for bailouts and tax breaks (government intervention). And, for the record, most Economists are actually more confident in Republican tax/economic policy http://www.economist.com/node/21564175You see a lot of economists who vote democrat because they prefer spending on welfare to spending on war. They are for immigration reform. And they want a less hostile foreign policy. They consider all of those things more important than a few percentage points in the tax code.
Money spent on war is literally a waste. Just imagine all the billions of dollars that goes into warships. Now imagine those ships sinking to the bottom of the ocean. Your investment sure does sink and is lost forever.
*badum-tssk*
War is bad for the future as it wastes resources that could better be spent investing in the education of our youth, etc. An economist sees the value of money spent in our future and our welfare over the waste of it on war tools that serve no purpose other than to be used in war.
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On October 17 2012 02:48 Klondikebar wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2012 02:37 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On October 17 2012 02:26 Klondikebar wrote:On October 17 2012 02:17 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On October 16 2012 23:58 paralleluniverse wrote:On October 16 2012 23:43 kmillz wrote:On October 16 2012 22:35 paralleluniverse wrote:http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic-experts-panel/poll-results?SurveyID=SV_cw5O9LNJL1oz4XiQuestion A: Because of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the U.S. unemployment rate was lower at the end of 2010 than it would have been without the stimulus bill.
Responses weighted by each expert's confidence:
93% Agree
2% Uncertain
4% Disagree
Question B:
Taking into account all of the ARRA’s economic consequences — including the economic costs of raising taxes to pay for the spending, its effects on future spending, and any other likely future effects — the benefits of the stimulus will end up exceeding its costs.
Responses weighted by each expert's confidence:
60% Agree
26% Uncertain
14% Disagree There's a lot of results for many questions on that website which I found interesting. I think it is interesting to note that the economics profession has a 3:1 Democrat to Republican ratio. Bryan Caplan points to a piece by Justin Wolfers. Let’s start with Obama’s stimulus. The standard Republican talking point is that it failed, meaning it didn’t reduce unemployment. Yet in a survey of leading economists conducted by the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, 92 percent agreed that the stimulus succeeded in reducing the jobless rate. On the harder question of whether the benefit exceeded the cost, more than half thought it did, one in three was uncertain, and fewer than one in six disagreed. We here at the Cat are the 8 percent. Let’s look at Caplan’s critique first. Wolfers says that the panel is “ideologically diverse.” When I asked Kashyap, however, he said that there’s no public data on panel members’ political views. If you casually peruse the list, its members seem to lean heavily Democratic. Dan Klein’s systematic empirics say that the economics profession has Democrat to Republican ratio of 3:1. None of this would be a problem if becoming an economist caused people to join the Democratic party. In my experience, though, most economists picked their party long before they started studying economics. Okay – so most academic economists are part of the highly educated elite and have political views consistent with that status. Not surprising – both Hayek and Schumpeter have theories of why intellectuals are likely to have left-wing views. Caplan goes on to talk about the stimulus. My complaint: These results are basically what you’d expect from a non-expert panel with two Democrats for every Republican. What’s the value-added of the IGM’s economic expertise on this question? Hard to see. Partisan bias seems particularly troubling when the IGM deals with policies that have recently been in the news. When economists analyze events decades in the past, it’s relatively easy to put politics aside and coolly apply abstract economics to concrete cases. When they analyze events they recently lived through, however, objectivity is harder to achieve. This is especially true when they’re personally close to the administrations that adopted the policies they’re now asked to judge. I’m not convinced – the evidence is in. I’m happy to believe that people could be wrong ex ante, but ex post? Not so much. Here is an earlier version of a very famous graph. A model was used to generate two series of estimates in that graph. First the unemployment figures without a stimulus and then the unemployment figures with the stimulus. The red dots reveal what actually happened. The red dots invalidate the model. If you believe – as do 92 percent of leading US economists in the sample believe – that “the stimulus succeeded in reducing the jobless rate” then you must also believe that the stock standard Keynesian model that generated both sets of forecasts in the graph is wrong too. Now some argue that the stimulus was too small, but why weren’t those 92 percent of economists saying so at the time? Of course, that simply raises the question; how did they know it was too small at the time? Where is their model and its predictions? Maybe the reason so many economists lean Democratic is because Democrats have better economic policies? Or maybe it's because Republicans have "cranks and charlatans" (Republican economist Greg Mankiw's words) that believe lower taxes will increase revenue, and crackpots who advocate for the return to a gold standard (which 100% of economist disagree with in this survey). Sort of like how scientist have a democrat ratio of like 9 to 1 (or something ridiculous like that), because Republican's denial of evolution and climate change makes them anti-science. Nah. More likely people's pre-existing ideas gravitate them towards different fields. If you believe in government intervention then go study economics. If you believe the opposite than go study finance. What? A HUGE swath of the Economics profession loathes government intervention. Financiers were the ones who cried for bailouts and tax breaks (government intervention). And, for the record, most Economists are actually more confident in Republican tax/economic policy http://www.economist.com/node/21564175You see a lot of economists who vote democrat because they prefer spending on welfare to spending on war. They are for immigration reform. And they want a less hostile foreign policy. They consider all of those things more important than a few percentage points in the tax code. Most economists favor stimulus to remedy a recession - to clarify I count that as government intervention. Ofc financiers called for a bailout. Politics fall to the wayside when reality is staring you in the face. Edit: the survey you linked to favored Obama over Romney on every issue except entitlement reform... Not a single one of the Economists I know favored the stimulus. They are ok with stimulus in theory but they know that in reality an enormous amount of resources will be expended with rent seeking (to the point that the stimulus may even be a net loss for the economy) and the stimulus will not be spent at all efficiently. Calling for a bailout wasn't putting politics by the wayside...it was exploiting politics to get a big old end of the year bonus. Entitlement reform is a big deal no? And they are neck and neck in Tax Reform, Fiscal Discipline, and Long Run Growth. The other things are mostly social issues that Republicans have repeatedly effed up and it's no surprise they're still effing them up.
My understanding is that most economists favor the stimulus / complain that it was too small. If the economists you know disagree, then, well, they are an exceptional bunch IMHO 
As for the bailouts, I'm not sure how else you stop the bleeding enough to prevent a full on bank run.
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On October 17 2012 03:01 Souma wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2012 02:49 BluePanther wrote:On October 17 2012 02:44 Souma wrote:On October 17 2012 02:37 DeepElemBlues wrote:On October 17 2012 02:00 Souma wrote:On October 16 2012 14:45 kmillz wrote:On October 16 2012 07:41 Souma wrote:On October 16 2012 07:39 DoubleReed wrote:On October 16 2012 07:38 Souma wrote:On October 16 2012 07:33 DoubleReed wrote:[quote] Yes, well the Muslim Brotherhood has been gaining power in many many countries, including Turkey of all places. They are well funded, well coordinated, and have a lot going for them. They are a lot less racist and divisive then a lot of organizations, because they welcome all Muslims. Look at what is happening in the UK right now: http://tehrantimes.com/world/102400-10000-protest-anti-muslim-video-at-googles-uk-hqThis trend is very troubling. Indeed, it is troubling, but to brush it off simply by saying "They hate our freedomz!!1" is ridiculous. The Muslim Brotherhood was not formed nor has it been gaining power simply because "They hate our freedomz!!1" Well in this case they actually do hate our freedoms... Yeah, they do hate that there is a viral video insulting their prophet; however, there are underlying factors that cause them to riot and participate in violent protests, just like there are underlying causes as to why the Muslim Brotherhood was formed and is gaining power, and just like there are underlying causes as to why people participate in terrorism. Wow I love how everyone is trying to paint my post as some ignorant average American citizen who doesn't know shit about Muslims or their culture just because I said one big reason they hate us is that our freedoms allow us to do things that they deem sacrilegious. I didn't say that was the only reason so get off of your high horses and stfu with the "They hate our freedomz!!1" bullshit, I took a year and a half of Arabic and Middle Eastern studies in the military. I learned how to speak, read and write Arabic fluently from actual Arabs and my job title was Arabic Cryptologic Linguist. My only point was that yes there are a lot of things that America does that pisses off Muslims, but I am only saying even if many of those things didn't happen they would already still hate us very much. I'm telling you your hypothesis has no basis grounded in reality, unless we are gauging 'hate' very differently. Without all the underlying causes I highly doubt they'd 'hate' us enough to ram airplanes into our buildings, suicide bomb innocent civilians, and assassinate our diplomats. As time passes the younger Muslim generations are beginning to harbor more pro-Western sentiments than their predecessors (even in Iran!). This is because they didn't have to grow up alongside the reality of those 'underlying causes.' So to say that they'd 'hate us very much' regardless of what we did is ludicrous. As long as we don't continue spreading our tyranny throughout the Middle East, we can at least erase a lot of that ill will we rightfully deserve with the passage of time. Drone strikes aren't doing us any favors with Yemen and Pakistan but that's a whole different topic. Yeah, tell the guy whose job was to deal with Arabs and Muslims his hypothesis has no basis grounded in reality. Because it doesn't fit in with what you already believed. That makes sense. They sure seem to have no trouble murdering girls who just want to learn how to read, so how does that fit in with your theory? You've obviously never read Qutb or Zawahiri, guess what they hate us because of our decadent sexualized culture and freedom of religion and expression. And because we're spreading that culture to "their" countries, and we don't recognize "their" right to rule those countries in whatever barbaric ass backwards way they want to. Who voted terrorists as the One True Spokesgroup for Muslims? Who voted them the One True Rulers of "Muslim" lands? The reality of the underlying causes is that they're a bunch of racist, xenophobic fascists who murder "their" own people just as brutally and gleefully as they murder Westerners. Yeah I really don't want to waste time trying to argue with such blind bigotry. Have fun living in your scary world where Muslims are crazy monsters trying to subdue the world under the confines of Sharia Law. To be quite frank, the terrorist factions in the Middle East are pretty much religious bigots, in reverse. The ones who commit violence do so because of very fringe and fanatical beliefs in scripture statements that are (at least in my mind), taken out of context. Terrorist groups believe that everyone should live by THEIR interpretation of the Quran -- which isn't a majority view among religious scholars. Yeah but that doesn't explain why they cling to their religion so passionately nor does it explain how a fervent belief can incite such hostilities towards innocents. While there are definitely crazed leaders (I believe the leaders of these organizations are quite fanatic) people need to realize what is making it so easy for these maniacs to recruit others. For all the bullshit we spout about crazy terrorists killing civilians, we sure as hell seem to never mention the atrocities the U.S. and Israel have committed in the region that leads to the formation/recruitment of these terrorists in the first place. So yes they are religious fanatics, and yes they hate our freedomz!!1 But this shit isn't formed in a vacuum. Nothing is.
All we ever really did in the region was try to stabilize governments and improve their quality of living. Sure we killed a few militants and a bunch of civilians, but they should be thanking us for even being there in the first place!
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On October 17 2012 03:12 Jormundr wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2012 03:01 Souma wrote:On October 17 2012 02:49 BluePanther wrote:On October 17 2012 02:44 Souma wrote:On October 17 2012 02:37 DeepElemBlues wrote:On October 17 2012 02:00 Souma wrote:On October 16 2012 14:45 kmillz wrote:On October 16 2012 07:41 Souma wrote:On October 16 2012 07:39 DoubleReed wrote:On October 16 2012 07:38 Souma wrote:
[quote]
Indeed, it is troubling, but to brush it off simply by saying "They hate our freedomz!!1" is ridiculous. The Muslim Brotherhood was not formed nor has it been gaining power simply because "They hate our freedomz!!1" Well in this case they actually do hate our freedoms... Yeah, they do hate that there is a viral video insulting their prophet; however, there are underlying factors that cause them to riot and participate in violent protests, just like there are underlying causes as to why the Muslim Brotherhood was formed and is gaining power, and just like there are underlying causes as to why people participate in terrorism. Wow I love how everyone is trying to paint my post as some ignorant average American citizen who doesn't know shit about Muslims or their culture just because I said one big reason they hate us is that our freedoms allow us to do things that they deem sacrilegious. I didn't say that was the only reason so get off of your high horses and stfu with the "They hate our freedomz!!1" bullshit, I took a year and a half of Arabic and Middle Eastern studies in the military. I learned how to speak, read and write Arabic fluently from actual Arabs and my job title was Arabic Cryptologic Linguist. My only point was that yes there are a lot of things that America does that pisses off Muslims, but I am only saying even if many of those things didn't happen they would already still hate us very much. I'm telling you your hypothesis has no basis grounded in reality, unless we are gauging 'hate' very differently. Without all the underlying causes I highly doubt they'd 'hate' us enough to ram airplanes into our buildings, suicide bomb innocent civilians, and assassinate our diplomats. As time passes the younger Muslim generations are beginning to harbor more pro-Western sentiments than their predecessors (even in Iran!). This is because they didn't have to grow up alongside the reality of those 'underlying causes.' So to say that they'd 'hate us very much' regardless of what we did is ludicrous. As long as we don't continue spreading our tyranny throughout the Middle East, we can at least erase a lot of that ill will we rightfully deserve with the passage of time. Drone strikes aren't doing us any favors with Yemen and Pakistan but that's a whole different topic. Yeah, tell the guy whose job was to deal with Arabs and Muslims his hypothesis has no basis grounded in reality. Because it doesn't fit in with what you already believed. That makes sense. They sure seem to have no trouble murdering girls who just want to learn how to read, so how does that fit in with your theory? You've obviously never read Qutb or Zawahiri, guess what they hate us because of our decadent sexualized culture and freedom of religion and expression. And because we're spreading that culture to "their" countries, and we don't recognize "their" right to rule those countries in whatever barbaric ass backwards way they want to. Who voted terrorists as the One True Spokesgroup for Muslims? Who voted them the One True Rulers of "Muslim" lands? The reality of the underlying causes is that they're a bunch of racist, xenophobic fascists who murder "their" own people just as brutally and gleefully as they murder Westerners. Yeah I really don't want to waste time trying to argue with such blind bigotry. Have fun living in your scary world where Muslims are crazy monsters trying to subdue the world under the confines of Sharia Law. To be quite frank, the terrorist factions in the Middle East are pretty much religious bigots, in reverse. The ones who commit violence do so because of very fringe and fanatical beliefs in scripture statements that are (at least in my mind), taken out of context. Terrorist groups believe that everyone should live by THEIR interpretation of the Quran -- which isn't a majority view among religious scholars. Yeah but that doesn't explain why they cling to their religion so passionately nor does it explain how a fervent belief can incite such hostilities towards innocents. While there are definitely crazed leaders (I believe the leaders of these organizations are quite fanatic) people need to realize what is making it so easy for these maniacs to recruit others. For all the bullshit we spout about crazy terrorists killing civilians, we sure as hell seem to never mention the atrocities the U.S. and Israel have committed in the region that leads to the formation/recruitment of these terrorists in the first place. So yes they are religious fanatics, and yes they hate our freedomz!!1 But this shit isn't formed in a vacuum. Nothing is. All we ever really did in the region was try to stabilize governments and improve their quality of living. Sure we killed a few militants and a bunch of civilians, but they should be thanking us for even being there in the first place!
Oo that is one damn distorted look at things.
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On October 17 2012 03:10 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2012 02:48 Klondikebar wrote:On October 17 2012 02:37 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On October 17 2012 02:26 Klondikebar wrote:On October 17 2012 02:17 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On October 16 2012 23:58 paralleluniverse wrote:On October 16 2012 23:43 kmillz wrote:On October 16 2012 22:35 paralleluniverse wrote:http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic-experts-panel/poll-results?SurveyID=SV_cw5O9LNJL1oz4XiQuestion A: Because of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the U.S. unemployment rate was lower at the end of 2010 than it would have been without the stimulus bill.
Responses weighted by each expert's confidence:
93% Agree
2% Uncertain
4% Disagree
Question B:
Taking into account all of the ARRA’s economic consequences — including the economic costs of raising taxes to pay for the spending, its effects on future spending, and any other likely future effects — the benefits of the stimulus will end up exceeding its costs.
Responses weighted by each expert's confidence:
60% Agree
26% Uncertain
14% Disagree There's a lot of results for many questions on that website which I found interesting. I think it is interesting to note that the economics profession has a 3:1 Democrat to Republican ratio. Bryan Caplan points to a piece by Justin Wolfers. Let’s start with Obama’s stimulus. The standard Republican talking point is that it failed, meaning it didn’t reduce unemployment. Yet in a survey of leading economists conducted by the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, 92 percent agreed that the stimulus succeeded in reducing the jobless rate. On the harder question of whether the benefit exceeded the cost, more than half thought it did, one in three was uncertain, and fewer than one in six disagreed. We here at the Cat are the 8 percent. Let’s look at Caplan’s critique first. Wolfers says that the panel is “ideologically diverse.” When I asked Kashyap, however, he said that there’s no public data on panel members’ political views. If you casually peruse the list, its members seem to lean heavily Democratic. Dan Klein’s systematic empirics say that the economics profession has Democrat to Republican ratio of 3:1. None of this would be a problem if becoming an economist caused people to join the Democratic party. In my experience, though, most economists picked their party long before they started studying economics. Okay – so most academic economists are part of the highly educated elite and have political views consistent with that status. Not surprising – both Hayek and Schumpeter have theories of why intellectuals are likely to have left-wing views. Caplan goes on to talk about the stimulus. My complaint: These results are basically what you’d expect from a non-expert panel with two Democrats for every Republican. What’s the value-added of the IGM’s economic expertise on this question? Hard to see. Partisan bias seems particularly troubling when the IGM deals with policies that have recently been in the news. When economists analyze events decades in the past, it’s relatively easy to put politics aside and coolly apply abstract economics to concrete cases. When they analyze events they recently lived through, however, objectivity is harder to achieve. This is especially true when they’re personally close to the administrations that adopted the policies they’re now asked to judge. I’m not convinced – the evidence is in. I’m happy to believe that people could be wrong ex ante, but ex post? Not so much. Here is an earlier version of a very famous graph. A model was used to generate two series of estimates in that graph. First the unemployment figures without a stimulus and then the unemployment figures with the stimulus. The red dots reveal what actually happened. The red dots invalidate the model. If you believe – as do 92 percent of leading US economists in the sample believe – that “the stimulus succeeded in reducing the jobless rate” then you must also believe that the stock standard Keynesian model that generated both sets of forecasts in the graph is wrong too. Now some argue that the stimulus was too small, but why weren’t those 92 percent of economists saying so at the time? Of course, that simply raises the question; how did they know it was too small at the time? Where is their model and its predictions? Maybe the reason so many economists lean Democratic is because Democrats have better economic policies? Or maybe it's because Republicans have "cranks and charlatans" (Republican economist Greg Mankiw's words) that believe lower taxes will increase revenue, and crackpots who advocate for the return to a gold standard (which 100% of economist disagree with in this survey). Sort of like how scientist have a democrat ratio of like 9 to 1 (or something ridiculous like that), because Republican's denial of evolution and climate change makes them anti-science. Nah. More likely people's pre-existing ideas gravitate them towards different fields. If you believe in government intervention then go study economics. If you believe the opposite than go study finance. What? A HUGE swath of the Economics profession loathes government intervention. Financiers were the ones who cried for bailouts and tax breaks (government intervention). And, for the record, most Economists are actually more confident in Republican tax/economic policy http://www.economist.com/node/21564175You see a lot of economists who vote democrat because they prefer spending on welfare to spending on war. They are for immigration reform. And they want a less hostile foreign policy. They consider all of those things more important than a few percentage points in the tax code. Most economists favor stimulus to remedy a recession - to clarify I count that as government intervention. Ofc financiers called for a bailout. Politics fall to the wayside when reality is staring you in the face. Edit: the survey you linked to favored Obama over Romney on every issue except entitlement reform... Not a single one of the Economists I know favored the stimulus. They are ok with stimulus in theory but they know that in reality an enormous amount of resources will be expended with rent seeking (to the point that the stimulus may even be a net loss for the economy) and the stimulus will not be spent at all efficiently. Calling for a bailout wasn't putting politics by the wayside...it was exploiting politics to get a big old end of the year bonus. Entitlement reform is a big deal no? And they are neck and neck in Tax Reform, Fiscal Discipline, and Long Run Growth. The other things are mostly social issues that Republicans have repeatedly effed up and it's no surprise they're still effing them up. My understanding is that most economists favor the stimulus / complain that it was too small. If the economists you know disagree, then, well, they are an exceptional bunch IMHO As for the bailouts, I'm not sure how else you stop the bleeding enough to prevent a full on bank run.
Economists don't "favor" the stimulus. After they took all the data they did agree that it helped. Jobs were created. But what they aren't sure about is whether or not it was really better than alternatives (including doing nothing). Acknowledging what it did and actually favoring it are two different things.
Those bailouts didn't prevent bank runs. Remember the AIG scandal? Those bailouts actually went directly into the pockets of executives as "performance bonuses." It was rent seeking at it's most transparent.
You don't prevent bank runs with bailouts. When the money multiplier starts to collapse you run your printing presses 24/7 and you lower the interest rate to near zero so the federal reserve can act as the lender of last resort.
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2nd Worst City in CA8938 Posts
On October 17 2012 03:14 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2012 03:12 Jormundr wrote:On October 17 2012 03:01 Souma wrote:On October 17 2012 02:49 BluePanther wrote:On October 17 2012 02:44 Souma wrote:On October 17 2012 02:37 DeepElemBlues wrote:On October 17 2012 02:00 Souma wrote:On October 16 2012 14:45 kmillz wrote:On October 16 2012 07:41 Souma wrote:On October 16 2012 07:39 DoubleReed wrote:
[quote]
Well in this case they actually do hate our freedoms... Yeah, they do hate that there is a viral video insulting their prophet; however, there are underlying factors that cause them to riot and participate in violent protests, just like there are underlying causes as to why the Muslim Brotherhood was formed and is gaining power, and just like there are underlying causes as to why people participate in terrorism. Wow I love how everyone is trying to paint my post as some ignorant average American citizen who doesn't know shit about Muslims or their culture just because I said one big reason they hate us is that our freedoms allow us to do things that they deem sacrilegious. I didn't say that was the only reason so get off of your high horses and stfu with the "They hate our freedomz!!1" bullshit, I took a year and a half of Arabic and Middle Eastern studies in the military. I learned how to speak, read and write Arabic fluently from actual Arabs and my job title was Arabic Cryptologic Linguist. My only point was that yes there are a lot of things that America does that pisses off Muslims, but I am only saying even if many of those things didn't happen they would already still hate us very much. I'm telling you your hypothesis has no basis grounded in reality, unless we are gauging 'hate' very differently. Without all the underlying causes I highly doubt they'd 'hate' us enough to ram airplanes into our buildings, suicide bomb innocent civilians, and assassinate our diplomats. As time passes the younger Muslim generations are beginning to harbor more pro-Western sentiments than their predecessors (even in Iran!). This is because they didn't have to grow up alongside the reality of those 'underlying causes.' So to say that they'd 'hate us very much' regardless of what we did is ludicrous. As long as we don't continue spreading our tyranny throughout the Middle East, we can at least erase a lot of that ill will we rightfully deserve with the passage of time. Drone strikes aren't doing us any favors with Yemen and Pakistan but that's a whole different topic. Yeah, tell the guy whose job was to deal with Arabs and Muslims his hypothesis has no basis grounded in reality. Because it doesn't fit in with what you already believed. That makes sense. They sure seem to have no trouble murdering girls who just want to learn how to read, so how does that fit in with your theory? You've obviously never read Qutb or Zawahiri, guess what they hate us because of our decadent sexualized culture and freedom of religion and expression. And because we're spreading that culture to "their" countries, and we don't recognize "their" right to rule those countries in whatever barbaric ass backwards way they want to. Who voted terrorists as the One True Spokesgroup for Muslims? Who voted them the One True Rulers of "Muslim" lands? The reality of the underlying causes is that they're a bunch of racist, xenophobic fascists who murder "their" own people just as brutally and gleefully as they murder Westerners. Yeah I really don't want to waste time trying to argue with such blind bigotry. Have fun living in your scary world where Muslims are crazy monsters trying to subdue the world under the confines of Sharia Law. To be quite frank, the terrorist factions in the Middle East are pretty much religious bigots, in reverse. The ones who commit violence do so because of very fringe and fanatical beliefs in scripture statements that are (at least in my mind), taken out of context. Terrorist groups believe that everyone should live by THEIR interpretation of the Quran -- which isn't a majority view among religious scholars. Yeah but that doesn't explain why they cling to their religion so passionately nor does it explain how a fervent belief can incite such hostilities towards innocents. While there are definitely crazed leaders (I believe the leaders of these organizations are quite fanatic) people need to realize what is making it so easy for these maniacs to recruit others. For all the bullshit we spout about crazy terrorists killing civilians, we sure as hell seem to never mention the atrocities the U.S. and Israel have committed in the region that leads to the formation/recruitment of these terrorists in the first place. So yes they are religious fanatics, and yes they hate our freedomz!!1 But this shit isn't formed in a vacuum. Nothing is. All we ever really did in the region was try to stabilize governments and improve their quality of living. Sure we killed a few militants and a bunch of civilians, but they should be thanking us for even being there in the first place! Oo that is one damn distorted look at things.
Haha I think he's being sarcastic... though I wouldn't be surprised if there were Americans who thought that way.
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On October 17 2012 03:16 Klondikebar wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2012 03:10 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On October 17 2012 02:48 Klondikebar wrote:On October 17 2012 02:37 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On October 17 2012 02:26 Klondikebar wrote:On October 17 2012 02:17 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On October 16 2012 23:58 paralleluniverse wrote:On October 16 2012 23:43 kmillz wrote:On October 16 2012 22:35 paralleluniverse wrote:http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic-experts-panel/poll-results?SurveyID=SV_cw5O9LNJL1oz4XiQuestion A: Because of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the U.S. unemployment rate was lower at the end of 2010 than it would have been without the stimulus bill.
Responses weighted by each expert's confidence:
93% Agree
2% Uncertain
4% Disagree
Question B:
Taking into account all of the ARRA’s economic consequences — including the economic costs of raising taxes to pay for the spending, its effects on future spending, and any other likely future effects — the benefits of the stimulus will end up exceeding its costs.
Responses weighted by each expert's confidence:
60% Agree
26% Uncertain
14% Disagree There's a lot of results for many questions on that website which I found interesting. I think it is interesting to note that the economics profession has a 3:1 Democrat to Republican ratio. Bryan Caplan points to a piece by Justin Wolfers. Let’s start with Obama’s stimulus. The standard Republican talking point is that it failed, meaning it didn’t reduce unemployment. Yet in a survey of leading economists conducted by the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, 92 percent agreed that the stimulus succeeded in reducing the jobless rate. On the harder question of whether the benefit exceeded the cost, more than half thought it did, one in three was uncertain, and fewer than one in six disagreed. We here at the Cat are the 8 percent. Let’s look at Caplan’s critique first. Wolfers says that the panel is “ideologically diverse.” When I asked Kashyap, however, he said that there’s no public data on panel members’ political views. If you casually peruse the list, its members seem to lean heavily Democratic. Dan Klein’s systematic empirics say that the economics profession has Democrat to Republican ratio of 3:1. None of this would be a problem if becoming an economist caused people to join the Democratic party. In my experience, though, most economists picked their party long before they started studying economics. Okay – so most academic economists are part of the highly educated elite and have political views consistent with that status. Not surprising – both Hayek and Schumpeter have theories of why intellectuals are likely to have left-wing views. Caplan goes on to talk about the stimulus. My complaint: These results are basically what you’d expect from a non-expert panel with two Democrats for every Republican. What’s the value-added of the IGM’s economic expertise on this question? Hard to see. Partisan bias seems particularly troubling when the IGM deals with policies that have recently been in the news. When economists analyze events decades in the past, it’s relatively easy to put politics aside and coolly apply abstract economics to concrete cases. When they analyze events they recently lived through, however, objectivity is harder to achieve. This is especially true when they’re personally close to the administrations that adopted the policies they’re now asked to judge. I’m not convinced – the evidence is in. I’m happy to believe that people could be wrong ex ante, but ex post? Not so much. Here is an earlier version of a very famous graph. A model was used to generate two series of estimates in that graph. First the unemployment figures without a stimulus and then the unemployment figures with the stimulus. The red dots reveal what actually happened. The red dots invalidate the model. If you believe – as do 92 percent of leading US economists in the sample believe – that “the stimulus succeeded in reducing the jobless rate” then you must also believe that the stock standard Keynesian model that generated both sets of forecasts in the graph is wrong too. Now some argue that the stimulus was too small, but why weren’t those 92 percent of economists saying so at the time? Of course, that simply raises the question; how did they know it was too small at the time? Where is their model and its predictions? Maybe the reason so many economists lean Democratic is because Democrats have better economic policies? Or maybe it's because Republicans have "cranks and charlatans" (Republican economist Greg Mankiw's words) that believe lower taxes will increase revenue, and crackpots who advocate for the return to a gold standard (which 100% of economist disagree with in this survey). Sort of like how scientist have a democrat ratio of like 9 to 1 (or something ridiculous like that), because Republican's denial of evolution and climate change makes them anti-science. Nah. More likely people's pre-existing ideas gravitate them towards different fields. If you believe in government intervention then go study economics. If you believe the opposite than go study finance. What? A HUGE swath of the Economics profession loathes government intervention. Financiers were the ones who cried for bailouts and tax breaks (government intervention). And, for the record, most Economists are actually more confident in Republican tax/economic policy http://www.economist.com/node/21564175You see a lot of economists who vote democrat because they prefer spending on welfare to spending on war. They are for immigration reform. And they want a less hostile foreign policy. They consider all of those things more important than a few percentage points in the tax code. Most economists favor stimulus to remedy a recession - to clarify I count that as government intervention. Ofc financiers called for a bailout. Politics fall to the wayside when reality is staring you in the face. Edit: the survey you linked to favored Obama over Romney on every issue except entitlement reform... Not a single one of the Economists I know favored the stimulus. They are ok with stimulus in theory but they know that in reality an enormous amount of resources will be expended with rent seeking (to the point that the stimulus may even be a net loss for the economy) and the stimulus will not be spent at all efficiently. Calling for a bailout wasn't putting politics by the wayside...it was exploiting politics to get a big old end of the year bonus. Entitlement reform is a big deal no? And they are neck and neck in Tax Reform, Fiscal Discipline, and Long Run Growth. The other things are mostly social issues that Republicans have repeatedly effed up and it's no surprise they're still effing them up. My understanding is that most economists favor the stimulus / complain that it was too small. If the economists you know disagree, then, well, they are an exceptional bunch IMHO As for the bailouts, I'm not sure how else you stop the bleeding enough to prevent a full on bank run. Economists don't "favor" the stimulus. After they took all the data they did agree that it helped. Jobs were created. But what they aren't sure about is whether or not it was really better than alternatives (including doing nothing). Acknowledging what it did and actually favoring it are two different things. Those bailouts didn't prevent bank runs. Remember the AIG scandal? Those bailouts actually went directly into the pockets of executives as "performance bonuses." It was rent seeking at it's most transparent. You don't prevent bank runs with bailouts. When the money multiplier starts to collapse you run your printing presses 24/7 and you lower the interest rate to near zero so the federal reserve can act as the lender of last resort.
The bank run was in the repo markets... I'm not sure if the Fed's traditional tools work in that circumstance. Regardless there's no FDIC insurance in that market so traditional policy tools are already weaker. If you have a source that says it would have worked, I'd gladly take a look.
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On October 17 2012 03:12 Jormundr wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2012 03:01 Souma wrote:On October 17 2012 02:49 BluePanther wrote:On October 17 2012 02:44 Souma wrote:On October 17 2012 02:37 DeepElemBlues wrote:On October 17 2012 02:00 Souma wrote:On October 16 2012 14:45 kmillz wrote:On October 16 2012 07:41 Souma wrote:On October 16 2012 07:39 DoubleReed wrote:On October 16 2012 07:38 Souma wrote:
[quote]
Indeed, it is troubling, but to brush it off simply by saying "They hate our freedomz!!1" is ridiculous. The Muslim Brotherhood was not formed nor has it been gaining power simply because "They hate our freedomz!!1" Well in this case they actually do hate our freedoms... Yeah, they do hate that there is a viral video insulting their prophet; however, there are underlying factors that cause them to riot and participate in violent protests, just like there are underlying causes as to why the Muslim Brotherhood was formed and is gaining power, and just like there are underlying causes as to why people participate in terrorism. Wow I love how everyone is trying to paint my post as some ignorant average American citizen who doesn't know shit about Muslims or their culture just because I said one big reason they hate us is that our freedoms allow us to do things that they deem sacrilegious. I didn't say that was the only reason so get off of your high horses and stfu with the "They hate our freedomz!!1" bullshit, I took a year and a half of Arabic and Middle Eastern studies in the military. I learned how to speak, read and write Arabic fluently from actual Arabs and my job title was Arabic Cryptologic Linguist. My only point was that yes there are a lot of things that America does that pisses off Muslims, but I am only saying even if many of those things didn't happen they would already still hate us very much. I'm telling you your hypothesis has no basis grounded in reality, unless we are gauging 'hate' very differently. Without all the underlying causes I highly doubt they'd 'hate' us enough to ram airplanes into our buildings, suicide bomb innocent civilians, and assassinate our diplomats. As time passes the younger Muslim generations are beginning to harbor more pro-Western sentiments than their predecessors (even in Iran!). This is because they didn't have to grow up alongside the reality of those 'underlying causes.' So to say that they'd 'hate us very much' regardless of what we did is ludicrous. As long as we don't continue spreading our tyranny throughout the Middle East, we can at least erase a lot of that ill will we rightfully deserve with the passage of time. Drone strikes aren't doing us any favors with Yemen and Pakistan but that's a whole different topic. Yeah, tell the guy whose job was to deal with Arabs and Muslims his hypothesis has no basis grounded in reality. Because it doesn't fit in with what you already believed. That makes sense. They sure seem to have no trouble murdering girls who just want to learn how to read, so how does that fit in with your theory? You've obviously never read Qutb or Zawahiri, guess what they hate us because of our decadent sexualized culture and freedom of religion and expression. And because we're spreading that culture to "their" countries, and we don't recognize "their" right to rule those countries in whatever barbaric ass backwards way they want to. Who voted terrorists as the One True Spokesgroup for Muslims? Who voted them the One True Rulers of "Muslim" lands? The reality of the underlying causes is that they're a bunch of racist, xenophobic fascists who murder "their" own people just as brutally and gleefully as they murder Westerners. Yeah I really don't want to waste time trying to argue with such blind bigotry. Have fun living in your scary world where Muslims are crazy monsters trying to subdue the world under the confines of Sharia Law. To be quite frank, the terrorist factions in the Middle East are pretty much religious bigots, in reverse. The ones who commit violence do so because of very fringe and fanatical beliefs in scripture statements that are (at least in my mind), taken out of context. Terrorist groups believe that everyone should live by THEIR interpretation of the Quran -- which isn't a majority view among religious scholars. Yeah but that doesn't explain why they cling to their religion so passionately nor does it explain how a fervent belief can incite such hostilities towards innocents. While there are definitely crazed leaders (I believe the leaders of these organizations are quite fanatic) people need to realize what is making it so easy for these maniacs to recruit others. For all the bullshit we spout about crazy terrorists killing civilians, we sure as hell seem to never mention the atrocities the U.S. and Israel have committed in the region that leads to the formation/recruitment of these terrorists in the first place. So yes they are religious fanatics, and yes they hate our freedomz!!1 But this shit isn't formed in a vacuum. Nothing is. All we ever really did in the region was try to stabilize governments and improve their quality of living. Sure we killed a few militants and a bunch of civilians, but they should be thanking us for even being there in the first place!
Well, there were also those sanctions before, after, and during the Gulf War that are cited in the Arab world as killing around 400,000-800,000 women and children.
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On October 17 2012 03:01 Souma wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2012 02:49 BluePanther wrote:On October 17 2012 02:44 Souma wrote:On October 17 2012 02:37 DeepElemBlues wrote:On October 17 2012 02:00 Souma wrote:On October 16 2012 14:45 kmillz wrote:On October 16 2012 07:41 Souma wrote:On October 16 2012 07:39 DoubleReed wrote:On October 16 2012 07:38 Souma wrote:On October 16 2012 07:33 DoubleReed wrote:[quote] Yes, well the Muslim Brotherhood has been gaining power in many many countries, including Turkey of all places. They are well funded, well coordinated, and have a lot going for them. They are a lot less racist and divisive then a lot of organizations, because they welcome all Muslims. Look at what is happening in the UK right now: http://tehrantimes.com/world/102400-10000-protest-anti-muslim-video-at-googles-uk-hqThis trend is very troubling. Indeed, it is troubling, but to brush it off simply by saying "They hate our freedomz!!1" is ridiculous. The Muslim Brotherhood was not formed nor has it been gaining power simply because "They hate our freedomz!!1" Well in this case they actually do hate our freedoms... Yeah, they do hate that there is a viral video insulting their prophet; however, there are underlying factors that cause them to riot and participate in violent protests, just like there are underlying causes as to why the Muslim Brotherhood was formed and is gaining power, and just like there are underlying causes as to why people participate in terrorism. Wow I love how everyone is trying to paint my post as some ignorant average American citizen who doesn't know shit about Muslims or their culture just because I said one big reason they hate us is that our freedoms allow us to do things that they deem sacrilegious. I didn't say that was the only reason so get off of your high horses and stfu with the "They hate our freedomz!!1" bullshit, I took a year and a half of Arabic and Middle Eastern studies in the military. I learned how to speak, read and write Arabic fluently from actual Arabs and my job title was Arabic Cryptologic Linguist. My only point was that yes there are a lot of things that America does that pisses off Muslims, but I am only saying even if many of those things didn't happen they would already still hate us very much. I'm telling you your hypothesis has no basis grounded in reality, unless we are gauging 'hate' very differently. Without all the underlying causes I highly doubt they'd 'hate' us enough to ram airplanes into our buildings, suicide bomb innocent civilians, and assassinate our diplomats. As time passes the younger Muslim generations are beginning to harbor more pro-Western sentiments than their predecessors (even in Iran!). This is because they didn't have to grow up alongside the reality of those 'underlying causes.' So to say that they'd 'hate us very much' regardless of what we did is ludicrous. As long as we don't continue spreading our tyranny throughout the Middle East, we can at least erase a lot of that ill will we rightfully deserve with the passage of time. Drone strikes aren't doing us any favors with Yemen and Pakistan but that's a whole different topic. Yeah, tell the guy whose job was to deal with Arabs and Muslims his hypothesis has no basis grounded in reality. Because it doesn't fit in with what you already believed. That makes sense. They sure seem to have no trouble murdering girls who just want to learn how to read, so how does that fit in with your theory? You've obviously never read Qutb or Zawahiri, guess what they hate us because of our decadent sexualized culture and freedom of religion and expression. And because we're spreading that culture to "their" countries, and we don't recognize "their" right to rule those countries in whatever barbaric ass backwards way they want to. Who voted terrorists as the One True Spokesgroup for Muslims? Who voted them the One True Rulers of "Muslim" lands? The reality of the underlying causes is that they're a bunch of racist, xenophobic fascists who murder "their" own people just as brutally and gleefully as they murder Westerners. Yeah I really don't want to waste time trying to argue with such blind bigotry. Have fun living in your scary world where Muslims are crazy monsters trying to subdue the world under the confines of Sharia Law. To be quite frank, the terrorist factions in the Middle East are pretty much religious bigots, in reverse. The ones who commit violence do so because of very fringe and fanatical beliefs in scripture statements that are (at least in my mind), taken out of context. Terrorist groups believe that everyone should live by THEIR interpretation of the Quran -- which isn't a majority view among religious scholars. Yeah but that doesn't explain why they cling to their religion so passionately nor does it explain how a fervent belief can incite such hostilities towards innocents. While there are definitely crazed leaders (I believe the leaders of these organizations are quite fanatic) people need to realize what is making it so easy for these maniacs to recruit others. For all the bullshit we spout about crazy terrorists killing civilians, we sure as hell seem to never mention the atrocities the U.S. and Israel have committed in the region that leads to the formation/recruitment of these terrorists in the first place. So yes they are religious fanatics, and yes they hate our freedomz!!1 But this shit isn't formed in a vacuum. Nothing is.
No, but I think you're over-emphasizing things you WANT to be more important. It has a lot more to do with a failure of scriptural interpretation than it does the actions we took 30 years ago.
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2nd Worst City in CA8938 Posts
On October 17 2012 03:49 BluePanther wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2012 03:01 Souma wrote:On October 17 2012 02:49 BluePanther wrote:On October 17 2012 02:44 Souma wrote:On October 17 2012 02:37 DeepElemBlues wrote:On October 17 2012 02:00 Souma wrote:On October 16 2012 14:45 kmillz wrote:On October 16 2012 07:41 Souma wrote:On October 16 2012 07:39 DoubleReed wrote:On October 16 2012 07:38 Souma wrote:
[quote]
Indeed, it is troubling, but to brush it off simply by saying "They hate our freedomz!!1" is ridiculous. The Muslim Brotherhood was not formed nor has it been gaining power simply because "They hate our freedomz!!1" Well in this case they actually do hate our freedoms... Yeah, they do hate that there is a viral video insulting their prophet; however, there are underlying factors that cause them to riot and participate in violent protests, just like there are underlying causes as to why the Muslim Brotherhood was formed and is gaining power, and just like there are underlying causes as to why people participate in terrorism. Wow I love how everyone is trying to paint my post as some ignorant average American citizen who doesn't know shit about Muslims or their culture just because I said one big reason they hate us is that our freedoms allow us to do things that they deem sacrilegious. I didn't say that was the only reason so get off of your high horses and stfu with the "They hate our freedomz!!1" bullshit, I took a year and a half of Arabic and Middle Eastern studies in the military. I learned how to speak, read and write Arabic fluently from actual Arabs and my job title was Arabic Cryptologic Linguist. My only point was that yes there are a lot of things that America does that pisses off Muslims, but I am only saying even if many of those things didn't happen they would already still hate us very much. I'm telling you your hypothesis has no basis grounded in reality, unless we are gauging 'hate' very differently. Without all the underlying causes I highly doubt they'd 'hate' us enough to ram airplanes into our buildings, suicide bomb innocent civilians, and assassinate our diplomats. As time passes the younger Muslim generations are beginning to harbor more pro-Western sentiments than their predecessors (even in Iran!). This is because they didn't have to grow up alongside the reality of those 'underlying causes.' So to say that they'd 'hate us very much' regardless of what we did is ludicrous. As long as we don't continue spreading our tyranny throughout the Middle East, we can at least erase a lot of that ill will we rightfully deserve with the passage of time. Drone strikes aren't doing us any favors with Yemen and Pakistan but that's a whole different topic. Yeah, tell the guy whose job was to deal with Arabs and Muslims his hypothesis has no basis grounded in reality. Because it doesn't fit in with what you already believed. That makes sense. They sure seem to have no trouble murdering girls who just want to learn how to read, so how does that fit in with your theory? You've obviously never read Qutb or Zawahiri, guess what they hate us because of our decadent sexualized culture and freedom of religion and expression. And because we're spreading that culture to "their" countries, and we don't recognize "their" right to rule those countries in whatever barbaric ass backwards way they want to. Who voted terrorists as the One True Spokesgroup for Muslims? Who voted them the One True Rulers of "Muslim" lands? The reality of the underlying causes is that they're a bunch of racist, xenophobic fascists who murder "their" own people just as brutally and gleefully as they murder Westerners. Yeah I really don't want to waste time trying to argue with such blind bigotry. Have fun living in your scary world where Muslims are crazy monsters trying to subdue the world under the confines of Sharia Law. To be quite frank, the terrorist factions in the Middle East are pretty much religious bigots, in reverse. The ones who commit violence do so because of very fringe and fanatical beliefs in scripture statements that are (at least in my mind), taken out of context. Terrorist groups believe that everyone should live by THEIR interpretation of the Quran -- which isn't a majority view among religious scholars. Yeah but that doesn't explain why they cling to their religion so passionately nor does it explain how a fervent belief can incite such hostilities towards innocents. While there are definitely crazed leaders (I believe the leaders of these organizations are quite fanatic) people need to realize what is making it so easy for these maniacs to recruit others. For all the bullshit we spout about crazy terrorists killing civilians, we sure as hell seem to never mention the atrocities the U.S. and Israel have committed in the region that leads to the formation/recruitment of these terrorists in the first place. So yes they are religious fanatics, and yes they hate our freedomz!!1 But this shit isn't formed in a vacuum. Nothing is. No, but I think you're over-emphasizing things you WANT to be true. It has a lot more to do with a failure of scriptural interpretation than it does the actions we took 30 years ago.
I don't think I'm over-emphasizing anything, in fact that's exactly what you're doing. Clinging to religion is merely a symptom for a lot of these kids. And our actions were not merely taken 30 years ago, they've been committed since the end of WW2 up until the present, so I have no idea what you're talking about.
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For those who haven't seen this, there's a Gallup/USA Today poll out there showing a huge swing of women voters towards Romney.
Source.
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That is not how ideology works. "Scriptural interpretation" is not a prime mover of history. There are always a number of possible interpretations, but in order for one meme (one particular interpretation) to be successful it has to find conditions conducive to its spread. If you ever explain historical dynamics with ideology as a self-sufficient cause you are doing bad theory.
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On October 17 2012 03:12 Jormundr wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2012 03:01 Souma wrote:On October 17 2012 02:49 BluePanther wrote:On October 17 2012 02:44 Souma wrote:On October 17 2012 02:37 DeepElemBlues wrote:On October 17 2012 02:00 Souma wrote:On October 16 2012 14:45 kmillz wrote:On October 16 2012 07:41 Souma wrote:On October 16 2012 07:39 DoubleReed wrote:On October 16 2012 07:38 Souma wrote:
[quote]
Indeed, it is troubling, but to brush it off simply by saying "They hate our freedomz!!1" is ridiculous. The Muslim Brotherhood was not formed nor has it been gaining power simply because "They hate our freedomz!!1" Well in this case they actually do hate our freedoms... Yeah, they do hate that there is a viral video insulting their prophet; however, there are underlying factors that cause them to riot and participate in violent protests, just like there are underlying causes as to why the Muslim Brotherhood was formed and is gaining power, and just like there are underlying causes as to why people participate in terrorism. Wow I love how everyone is trying to paint my post as some ignorant average American citizen who doesn't know shit about Muslims or their culture just because I said one big reason they hate us is that our freedoms allow us to do things that they deem sacrilegious. I didn't say that was the only reason so get off of your high horses and stfu with the "They hate our freedomz!!1" bullshit, I took a year and a half of Arabic and Middle Eastern studies in the military. I learned how to speak, read and write Arabic fluently from actual Arabs and my job title was Arabic Cryptologic Linguist. My only point was that yes there are a lot of things that America does that pisses off Muslims, but I am only saying even if many of those things didn't happen they would already still hate us very much. I'm telling you your hypothesis has no basis grounded in reality, unless we are gauging 'hate' very differently. Without all the underlying causes I highly doubt they'd 'hate' us enough to ram airplanes into our buildings, suicide bomb innocent civilians, and assassinate our diplomats. As time passes the younger Muslim generations are beginning to harbor more pro-Western sentiments than their predecessors (even in Iran!). This is because they didn't have to grow up alongside the reality of those 'underlying causes.' So to say that they'd 'hate us very much' regardless of what we did is ludicrous. As long as we don't continue spreading our tyranny throughout the Middle East, we can at least erase a lot of that ill will we rightfully deserve with the passage of time. Drone strikes aren't doing us any favors with Yemen and Pakistan but that's a whole different topic. Yeah, tell the guy whose job was to deal with Arabs and Muslims his hypothesis has no basis grounded in reality. Because it doesn't fit in with what you already believed. That makes sense. They sure seem to have no trouble murdering girls who just want to learn how to read, so how does that fit in with your theory? You've obviously never read Qutb or Zawahiri, guess what they hate us because of our decadent sexualized culture and freedom of religion and expression. And because we're spreading that culture to "their" countries, and we don't recognize "their" right to rule those countries in whatever barbaric ass backwards way they want to. Who voted terrorists as the One True Spokesgroup for Muslims? Who voted them the One True Rulers of "Muslim" lands? The reality of the underlying causes is that they're a bunch of racist, xenophobic fascists who murder "their" own people just as brutally and gleefully as they murder Westerners. Yeah I really don't want to waste time trying to argue with such blind bigotry. Have fun living in your scary world where Muslims are crazy monsters trying to subdue the world under the confines of Sharia Law. To be quite frank, the terrorist factions in the Middle East are pretty much religious bigots, in reverse. The ones who commit violence do so because of very fringe and fanatical beliefs in scripture statements that are (at least in my mind), taken out of context. Terrorist groups believe that everyone should live by THEIR interpretation of the Quran -- which isn't a majority view among religious scholars. Yeah but that doesn't explain why they cling to their religion so passionately nor does it explain how a fervent belief can incite such hostilities towards innocents. While there are definitely crazed leaders (I believe the leaders of these organizations are quite fanatic) people need to realize what is making it so easy for these maniacs to recruit others. For all the bullshit we spout about crazy terrorists killing civilians, we sure as hell seem to never mention the atrocities the U.S. and Israel have committed in the region that leads to the formation/recruitment of these terrorists in the first place. So yes they are religious fanatics, and yes they hate our freedomz!!1 But this shit isn't formed in a vacuum. Nothing is. All we ever really did in the region was try to stabilize governments and improve their quality of living. Sure we killed a few militants and a bunch of civilians, but they should be thanking us for even being there in the first place!
Nononono, all you ever did was the exact same as every other country did in remote parts of the world : have your companies get all the contracts during the aftermath. This is especially true about oil, but also on security, rebuilding, etc etc etc the list goes on.
NO war, ZERO of them, was waged purely to "help stabilize governments and improve quality of living".
They should NOT thank us, since OUR companies get all the money and profits afterwards.
This was especially true during Bush Jr, but even during the world wars, or every african/mideastern/arabic conflict in the 20th century.
edit : oh, and thus, of course, war is not lost money. It is lost money for the country and its people, but not for companies who do huge profits (and in return get people some jobs, and investors some dividends)
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On October 17 2012 03:57 Nouar wrote:
Nononono, all you ever did was the exact same as every other country did in remote parts of the world : have your companies get all the contracts during the aftermath.
This man understands.
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On October 17 2012 03:58 sam!zdat wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2012 03:57 Nouar wrote:
Nononono, all you ever did was the exact same as every other country did in remote parts of the world : have your companies get all the contracts during the aftermath. This man understands.
I could be wrong, but I seem to recall a disproportionate number of contracts going to non-American companies after the Iraq war.
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On October 17 2012 03:51 Souma wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2012 03:49 BluePanther wrote:On October 17 2012 03:01 Souma wrote:On October 17 2012 02:49 BluePanther wrote:On October 17 2012 02:44 Souma wrote:On October 17 2012 02:37 DeepElemBlues wrote:On October 17 2012 02:00 Souma wrote:On October 16 2012 14:45 kmillz wrote:On October 16 2012 07:41 Souma wrote:On October 16 2012 07:39 DoubleReed wrote:
[quote]
Well in this case they actually do hate our freedoms... Yeah, they do hate that there is a viral video insulting their prophet; however, there are underlying factors that cause them to riot and participate in violent protests, just like there are underlying causes as to why the Muslim Brotherhood was formed and is gaining power, and just like there are underlying causes as to why people participate in terrorism. Wow I love how everyone is trying to paint my post as some ignorant average American citizen who doesn't know shit about Muslims or their culture just because I said one big reason they hate us is that our freedoms allow us to do things that they deem sacrilegious. I didn't say that was the only reason so get off of your high horses and stfu with the "They hate our freedomz!!1" bullshit, I took a year and a half of Arabic and Middle Eastern studies in the military. I learned how to speak, read and write Arabic fluently from actual Arabs and my job title was Arabic Cryptologic Linguist. My only point was that yes there are a lot of things that America does that pisses off Muslims, but I am only saying even if many of those things didn't happen they would already still hate us very much. I'm telling you your hypothesis has no basis grounded in reality, unless we are gauging 'hate' very differently. Without all the underlying causes I highly doubt they'd 'hate' us enough to ram airplanes into our buildings, suicide bomb innocent civilians, and assassinate our diplomats. As time passes the younger Muslim generations are beginning to harbor more pro-Western sentiments than their predecessors (even in Iran!). This is because they didn't have to grow up alongside the reality of those 'underlying causes.' So to say that they'd 'hate us very much' regardless of what we did is ludicrous. As long as we don't continue spreading our tyranny throughout the Middle East, we can at least erase a lot of that ill will we rightfully deserve with the passage of time. Drone strikes aren't doing us any favors with Yemen and Pakistan but that's a whole different topic. Yeah, tell the guy whose job was to deal with Arabs and Muslims his hypothesis has no basis grounded in reality. Because it doesn't fit in with what you already believed. That makes sense. They sure seem to have no trouble murdering girls who just want to learn how to read, so how does that fit in with your theory? You've obviously never read Qutb or Zawahiri, guess what they hate us because of our decadent sexualized culture and freedom of religion and expression. And because we're spreading that culture to "their" countries, and we don't recognize "their" right to rule those countries in whatever barbaric ass backwards way they want to. Who voted terrorists as the One True Spokesgroup for Muslims? Who voted them the One True Rulers of "Muslim" lands? The reality of the underlying causes is that they're a bunch of racist, xenophobic fascists who murder "their" own people just as brutally and gleefully as they murder Westerners. Yeah I really don't want to waste time trying to argue with such blind bigotry. Have fun living in your scary world where Muslims are crazy monsters trying to subdue the world under the confines of Sharia Law. To be quite frank, the terrorist factions in the Middle East are pretty much religious bigots, in reverse. The ones who commit violence do so because of very fringe and fanatical beliefs in scripture statements that are (at least in my mind), taken out of context. Terrorist groups believe that everyone should live by THEIR interpretation of the Quran -- which isn't a majority view among religious scholars. Yeah but that doesn't explain why they cling to their religion so passionately nor does it explain how a fervent belief can incite such hostilities towards innocents. While there are definitely crazed leaders (I believe the leaders of these organizations are quite fanatic) people need to realize what is making it so easy for these maniacs to recruit others. For all the bullshit we spout about crazy terrorists killing civilians, we sure as hell seem to never mention the atrocities the U.S. and Israel have committed in the region that leads to the formation/recruitment of these terrorists in the first place. So yes they are religious fanatics, and yes they hate our freedomz!!1 But this shit isn't formed in a vacuum. Nothing is. No, but I think you're over-emphasizing things you WANT to be true. It has a lot more to do with a failure of scriptural interpretation than it does the actions we took 30 years ago. I don't think I'm over-emphasizing anything, in fact that's exactly what you're doing. Clinging to religion is merely a symptom for a lot of these kids. And our actions were not merely taken 30 years ago, they've been committed since the end of WW2 up until the present, so I have no idea what you're talking about.
You are. I do research on Islamic legal structures and Government Theory as part of a pet project. I'm telling you, the whole "terrorist" system falls apart within Islam without the religious interpretations. I don't mean to imply we're universally loved, which seems to be what you're reading into what I said.
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On October 17 2012 04:00 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2012 03:58 sam!zdat wrote:On October 17 2012 03:57 Nouar wrote:
Nononono, all you ever did was the exact same as every other country did in remote parts of the world : have your companies get all the contracts during the aftermath. This man understands. I could be wrong, but I seem to recall a disproportionate number of contracts going to non-American companies after the Iraq war.
Meh, what matters the flag of convenience?
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On October 17 2012 04:01 BluePanther wrote:
I'm telling you, the whole "terrorist" system falls apart within Islam without the religious interpretations.
Yes, yes, ideology is glue. It is not primum movens
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2nd Worst City in CA8938 Posts
On October 17 2012 04:01 BluePanther wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2012 03:51 Souma wrote:On October 17 2012 03:49 BluePanther wrote:On October 17 2012 03:01 Souma wrote:On October 17 2012 02:49 BluePanther wrote:On October 17 2012 02:44 Souma wrote:On October 17 2012 02:37 DeepElemBlues wrote:On October 17 2012 02:00 Souma wrote:On October 16 2012 14:45 kmillz wrote:On October 16 2012 07:41 Souma wrote:
[quote]
Yeah, they do hate that there is a viral video insulting their prophet; however, there are underlying factors that cause them to riot and participate in violent protests, just like there are underlying causes as to why the Muslim Brotherhood was formed and is gaining power, and just like there are underlying causes as to why people participate in terrorism. Wow I love how everyone is trying to paint my post as some ignorant average American citizen who doesn't know shit about Muslims or their culture just because I said one big reason they hate us is that our freedoms allow us to do things that they deem sacrilegious. I didn't say that was the only reason so get off of your high horses and stfu with the "They hate our freedomz!!1" bullshit, I took a year and a half of Arabic and Middle Eastern studies in the military. I learned how to speak, read and write Arabic fluently from actual Arabs and my job title was Arabic Cryptologic Linguist. My only point was that yes there are a lot of things that America does that pisses off Muslims, but I am only saying even if many of those things didn't happen they would already still hate us very much. I'm telling you your hypothesis has no basis grounded in reality, unless we are gauging 'hate' very differently. Without all the underlying causes I highly doubt they'd 'hate' us enough to ram airplanes into our buildings, suicide bomb innocent civilians, and assassinate our diplomats. As time passes the younger Muslim generations are beginning to harbor more pro-Western sentiments than their predecessors (even in Iran!). This is because they didn't have to grow up alongside the reality of those 'underlying causes.' So to say that they'd 'hate us very much' regardless of what we did is ludicrous. As long as we don't continue spreading our tyranny throughout the Middle East, we can at least erase a lot of that ill will we rightfully deserve with the passage of time. Drone strikes aren't doing us any favors with Yemen and Pakistan but that's a whole different topic. Yeah, tell the guy whose job was to deal with Arabs and Muslims his hypothesis has no basis grounded in reality. Because it doesn't fit in with what you already believed. That makes sense. They sure seem to have no trouble murdering girls who just want to learn how to read, so how does that fit in with your theory? You've obviously never read Qutb or Zawahiri, guess what they hate us because of our decadent sexualized culture and freedom of religion and expression. And because we're spreading that culture to "their" countries, and we don't recognize "their" right to rule those countries in whatever barbaric ass backwards way they want to. Who voted terrorists as the One True Spokesgroup for Muslims? Who voted them the One True Rulers of "Muslim" lands? The reality of the underlying causes is that they're a bunch of racist, xenophobic fascists who murder "their" own people just as brutally and gleefully as they murder Westerners. Yeah I really don't want to waste time trying to argue with such blind bigotry. Have fun living in your scary world where Muslims are crazy monsters trying to subdue the world under the confines of Sharia Law. To be quite frank, the terrorist factions in the Middle East are pretty much religious bigots, in reverse. The ones who commit violence do so because of very fringe and fanatical beliefs in scripture statements that are (at least in my mind), taken out of context. Terrorist groups believe that everyone should live by THEIR interpretation of the Quran -- which isn't a majority view among religious scholars. Yeah but that doesn't explain why they cling to their religion so passionately nor does it explain how a fervent belief can incite such hostilities towards innocents. While there are definitely crazed leaders (I believe the leaders of these organizations are quite fanatic) people need to realize what is making it so easy for these maniacs to recruit others. For all the bullshit we spout about crazy terrorists killing civilians, we sure as hell seem to never mention the atrocities the U.S. and Israel have committed in the region that leads to the formation/recruitment of these terrorists in the first place. So yes they are religious fanatics, and yes they hate our freedomz!!1 But this shit isn't formed in a vacuum. Nothing is. No, but I think you're over-emphasizing things you WANT to be true. It has a lot more to do with a failure of scriptural interpretation than it does the actions we took 30 years ago. I don't think I'm over-emphasizing anything, in fact that's exactly what you're doing. Clinging to religion is merely a symptom for a lot of these kids. And our actions were not merely taken 30 years ago, they've been committed since the end of WW2 up until the present, so I have no idea what you're talking about. You are. I do research on Islamic legal structures and Government Theory as part of a pet project. I'm telling you, the whole "terrorist" system falls apart within Islam without the religious interpretations. I don't mean to imply we're universally loved, which seems to be what you're reading into what I said.
What part of what I say do you not understand? The religious interpretation bit is merely a medium. It is not the causation. I never said it wasn't a factor.
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EPT
