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Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread |
On April 16 2018 03:53 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2018 03:31 zlefin wrote:On April 16 2018 03:13 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:Vice President Joe Biden is not ruling out a White House run in 2020, telling MSNBC host Al Sharpton that all options remain open.
"I’m really hoping that some other folks step up. I think we have some really good people," Biden said of the potential other 2020 Democratic hopefuls in an interview that aired Sunday.
The former vice president and two-time presidential aspirant (1988 and 2008) said he needs to know that whoever carries the Democratic Party's nomination is someone who can beat President Donald Trump.
In response to a Sharpton question — “What would make Joe Biden really consider running in 2020 for president? — Biden said former President Barack Obama gave some good advice.
"I know Barack always asked me that question. And he said what’s going to make the decision," Biden said. "I‘ve got to be able to look in the mirror and if I walk away knowing — not walking away because I’m afraid or I’m worried about losing or that I just don’t want to take on the responsibility." SourceNot much to go off of, but just wanted to see what you all thought. It doesn't add anything new really, or change anything; but i can give you my prior thoughts: he'd be ok, and seems to have a fair bit of support/being liked, especially amongst more blue collar workers iirc, but there are some issues: he's really getting a bit too old. it'd be good to have someone younger. (both for the future of the party, and also just general concerns about age) there's a history of some creepiness without women which would cause some issues. That's what I was thinking. He'd probably have the most success in the liberal party besides Sanders or Warren. Ultimately, I think it comes down to who the RNC runs that will ultimately shape who gets into the ring. While I would love for someone younger (late 40s - mid 50s), unless they're Obama 2.0 with the level of celebrity, charisma, and semi-decent understanding of the law, then we're stuck with old people for the foreseeable future. While his history is certainly a bit, odd, in regards to women, I don't think it would be enough to derail his campaign. I mean shit, trump.
I dunno about that. Is it really likely the RNC doesn't run Trump?
If the economy keeps improving, by the time the election comes round Trump will be able to say he did better than Obama. The chance of him getting re-elected is pretty high. US politics has resettled around this new ecosystem.
Trump's popularity ratings HAVE dropped... but they're not that much lower than past Presidents, are they? Still in the 30-40 range.
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On April 16 2018 04:50 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2018 04:34 zlefin wrote:On April 16 2018 04:31 Grumbels wrote:
I thought Biden was signalling he might run as a “sensible” centrist, opposed to the Sanders wing of the party. That means he will be pro-military, pro-business and against any meaningful reform, unless his hand is forced. He would be better than any GOP candidate, but that is not saying much. The USA needs sweeping reforms and hostility to the establishment from a radical left perspective, not a continuation of the Obama presidency. the US, as with everywhere else, needs a whole lot of things that aren't gonna happen. sweeping reforms won't happen under a far left candidate either, because they probably won't win/wont' have enough support if they do. and hostility to the "establishment" doesn't tend to work that well. What is your point here? Give up, and instead vote for someone who explicitly promises to do nothing? The Trump presidency is very radical and is achieving a lot of (bad) things, the only reason that the Democrats can’t achieve similar results is because of people like Biden who are fundamentally happy with the status quo and with tens of millions of uninsured, staggering inequality and overseas imperialism. If you want to push the Dems into a better direction, start with painting Biden as toxic today.
I stated my point pretty clearly and well; I think you understood my point and are simply choosing to ignore it in favor of ranting.
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The main issues I have with the notion that "the US won't accept leftwing ideas and so we have to settle for less" is 1) that the polls of american people typically don't support it, and 2) that it's typically made in a self-serving fashion. By that I mean, it's mostly made by people whose views already align with a more centrist approach and who describe their view as "leftwing but realistic". The end result of that situation is that we, as leftists, are being asked to give up a ton of stuff, and the other guys, as centrists, get to keep what they already believe and more or less feign that it's a sacrifice.
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Man take out "leftwing" and replace "centrists" with "establishment" and it sounds like something Bannon could have said.
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On April 16 2018 06:54 mozoku wrote:
Man take out "leftwing" and replace "centrists" with "establishment" and it sounds like something Bannon could have said.
I would argue that Bannon would be full of shit in saying that, cause the republican establishment understands that their base is extreme and caters to it way more than it does "centrist/moderate" republicans. There's a reason why they're so reluctant to speak against anything Trump.
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The thing about Trump's popularity is that Trump and the current GOP is awful for the US's reputation around the world.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/amp/opinion/article-canadians-are-seeing-the-whole-world-through-an-anti-american-lens/?__twitter_impression=true
The soft power lost through the state department is literally going to take decades to repair.
Its findings are dominated by one overwhelming fact: For the first time since pollsters started measuring such attitudes almost 40 years ago, a majority of Canadians now hold an overall unfavourable view of the United States. As of last year, only 44 per cent of Canadians said they hold a positive view of their neighbouring country, the lowest ranking ever.
It is not a subtle drift – Canadians were overwhelmingly positive about the United States as recently as 2016, until Donald Trump’s inauguration put a majority into the anti-American column. The proportion of Canadians who see the United States as “a negative force in today’s world” is now almost 6 in 10, a 12-per-cent rise over 2008, making America by far the most negative country in the eyes of Canadians (even North Korea comes a distant second, at 46 per cent).
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It's misleading to talk only about signalling. Of course it's ridiculously inefficient if you only look at that. University does do other things, though, and those other things are important. Really we can probably think of it as achieving three main goals:
1. is specialised vocational training, pre-loaded learning essential to a job that would otherwise be the responsibility of the graduate's employer. This is what people think university is for, but it's probably the least important aspect of most degrees.
2. is "signalling", probably better termed filtering/grading. It is more than just a case of pay-for-label, since completing a degree does certify is that the graduate is at or above some standard. This is of benefit to both employers and the graduate themselves, but could be achieved much more cost-effectively by other means.
3. is intangibles, like general critical thinking and communication skills, engagement with society and politics, diversity of experience, networking etc etc. Most of this is not of direct benefit for employment, but does help the graduate in other ways and is also of benefit to society as a whole.
It's worth noting that the breakdown of each is going to vary by degree. An engineering degree is probably like 8/6/3
training/signalling/intangibles. A liberal arts major might be 2/2/8, a law degree 7/9/5.
When we talk about public funding for university, the core of the issue seems to be #3: the value to a society of having an educated, engaged, socially-aware population capable of critical thinking. I think it's fair to say that the right undervalues this and the left overvalues it, but in either case it's a significant product of the sector, and if you shift to some super-trade-school system where higher education focuses only on #1 and #2, you sacrifice this aspect heavily.
I do think that doing so would have unintended consequences. For one thing, there's a bit of irony in raising this in the Trump era, when a bunch more useless BA's throughout rural america would almost certainly have prevented the current situation.
On April 16 2018 04:53 mozoku wrote:
In fact, you're actually not practicing any of the values you're preaching in this post that universities are supposed to be teaching. You're just assuming status quo four year universities are better than nothing, which isn't even a relevant question. The relevant question is whether the traditional four year university is better than the alternative way of spending that four years. That's a question that would certainly involve lots of time and thought (not least of which to figure out what possible alternatives might look like), but if we can't prove the current universities provide any benefit beyond signaling then the bar for the alternatives to clear is pretty low. So again, it comes back to whether the original premise is true.
I mean, is this not the same thing as GH's abolish the police shtick? The answer to "but could we do it differently" is "well... maybe", but how you get there from the current situation, exactly what you switch to, and whether it even turns out to be better are such huge hypotheticals that they're barely worth discussing.
It seems more productive, at least here, to focus on specifics. For example, I think there's a fair bit of merit in pushing #3 back into schools as much as possible, offloading a number of lower-skilled technical #1 focused courses onto trade schools at a reduction in cost and time, and working to find some means of providing #2 more cheaply.
Personally, I think the biggest issue with higher-education is the mismatch between what individuals think they get from university (ie. #1), and what they actually get, which varies by degree but is usually a lot of #3, and debt.
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On April 15 2018 10:02 Nebuchad wrote:I'm back! Thanks for waiting for me to get home before you start a world war guys, it was close but I'm grateful =) While I was gone, two of my favourite people on the interwebs made videos on the alt-right, and I thought I'd share them here. It's slightly off topic for where the thread is right now, I'm doing this mainly because they deserve all the views they can get. + Show Spoiler ++ Show Spoiler +
I finally got around to watching those, and surprise, the Alt-Right playbook video is part of a series I've already watched most of. He is super informative about how the alt-right operates in an easy to parse manner. I strongly recommend the entire series to anyone who keeps trying to discuss issues with people in this thread and getting frustrated because those people don't seem to hold any positions of their own and are instead constantly attacking small parts of the frustrated person's arguments.
Although two entire videos can be summed up as "Don't engage with those people," knowing why can be useful.
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On April 16 2018 07:21 Belisarius wrote:It's misleading to talk only about signalling. University does do other things, and those other things are important. Really we can probably think of it as achieving three main goals: 1. is specialised vocational training, pre-loaded learning essential to a job that would otherwise be the responsibility of the graduate's employer. This is what people think university is for, but it's probably the least important aspect of most degrees. 2. is "signalling", probably better termed filtering/grading. It's not simply a case of pay-for-label; completing a degree does certify is that the graduate is at or above some standard. This is of benefit to both employers and the graduate themselves, but could be achieved much more cost-effectively by other means. 3. is intangibles, like general critical thinking and communication skills, engagement with society and politics, diversity of experience, networking etc etc. This is not of direct benefit to employment but is good for the candidate and is of some benefit to society as a whole. It's worth noting that the breakdown of each is going to vary by degree. An engineering degree is probably like 8/6/3 training/signalling/intangibles. A liberal arts major might be 2/2/8, a law degree 6/9/5. When we talk about public funding for university, the core of the issue is actually #3. The value to a society of having an educated, engaged, socially-aware population capable of critical thinking. I think it's fair to say that the right undervalues this and the left overvalues it, but in either case it's a significant product of the sector, and if you shift to some super-trade-school system where higher education focuses only on #1 and #2, you sacrifice this aspect heavily. I do think that doing so would have unintended consequences.Also: Show nested quote +On April 16 2018 04:53 mozoku wrote:
In fact, you're actually not practicing any of the values you're preaching in this post that universities are supposed to be teaching. You're just assuming status quo four year universities are better than nothing, which isn't even a relevant question. The relevant question is whether the traditional four year university is better than the alternative way of spending that four years. That's a question that would certainly involve lots of time and thought (not least of which to figure out what possible alternatives might look like), but if we can't prove the current universities provide any benefit beyond signaling then the bar for the alternatives to clear is pretty low. So again, it comes back to whether the original premise is true.
I mean, is this not the same thing as GH's "abolish the police" shtick? The answer to "but could we do it differently" is "well... maybe", but how you get there from the current situation, exactly what you switch to, and whether it turns out to be any better are such huge hypotheticals that they're barely worth discussing. To me it's more productive, at least here, to focus on specifics.
There has been several studies that conclude most college students make little measurable progress in critical thinking skills during college. I haven't examined them enough to comment on their quality (most studies don't replicate), but again it's more reason to raise eyebrows. Esp when most people seem to be focused on anything but learning when they're actually at college.
To answer to direct point, you're making a different argument here than the previous posters. They do the first thing you did where they basically say "Of course education provides these benefits that I think are awesome" without actually stopping to consider why they're so convinced it does. That's a mistake unto itself that is separate from the mistake of assuming the bar for maintaining traditional four year universities is that they provide non-zero gross value.
I don't study this stuff all day and thus I don't have alternatives offhand, but if you want to call yourself an informed and competent voter/thinker you should at least acknowledge when you don't have strong support for why you hold certain beliefs.
It's hard not to point out the irony of raising this in the Trump era, when a bunch more useless BA's throughout rural america would almost certainly have prevented the current situation.
Uhhh, aren't you assuming your own premise here (i.e. which also happens to be the very point in contention)? If you're a would-be Trump voter from rural America and you get a BA and then go back to work on a farm in rural America, I'm willing to bet you're still a likely Trump voter.
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I'm extremely pleased to be able to say that Dana Nessel received the Michigan Democratic endorsement, which means that she's the de-facto Democrat going into November general. She was the lead plaintiff's attorney in DeBoer v. Snyder, one of the cases that was consolidated into the Obergefell decision that constitutionalized gay marriage, and she was both a Wayne County (Detroit) prosecutor and a defense attorney. She's about as progressive as it gets and she defeated the establishment candidate, a former US attorney who primarily worked as a lobbyist at a relatively conservative law firm in Michigan, at today's convention.
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On April 16 2018 08:01 mozoku wrote:Show nested quote +It's hard not to point out the irony of raising this in the Trump era, when a bunch more useless BA's throughout rural america would almost certainly have prevented the current situation. Uhhh, aren't you assuming your own premise here (i.e. which also happens to be the very point in contention)? If you're a would-be Trump voter from rural America and you get a BA and then go back to work on a farm in rural America, I'm willing to bet you're still a likely Trump voter.
Might as well zoom in on this since I agree it's the point in contention.
I'd be willing to bet that if you took a sample of likely-trump-voting youth and sent half of them to university, the university cohort would be less likely to vote trump after their degrees. They may still be net trump voters, especially if we then further select for those that go back home, but we're obviously concerned about the shift and not the absolute propensity. It seems very likely to me that there would be a shift.
I wouldn't have the first clue how to find any data on this within the american system, but I would be interested if you did. This also, obviously, assumes we accept decrease-in-trump-voting as a proxy for societal good.
On the rest, even assuming those studies are reasonable, critical thinking is only one of the soft benefits of university, and probably the "hardest" at that. It would be difficult to argue that things like increased social awareness and exposure to alternative points of view aren't outputs. "The benefits of university do not justify the cost" is a much easier argument to make than "there are no such benefits at all".
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On April 16 2018 04:31 Grumbels wrote:
I thought Biden was signalling he might run as a “sensible” centrist, opposed to the Sanders wing of the party. That means he will be pro-military, pro-business and against any meaningful reform, unless his hand is forced. He would be better than any GOP candidate, but that is not saying much. The USA needs sweeping reforms and hostility to the establishment from a radical left perspective, not a continuation of the Obama presidency.
Why does the U.S need to move to a radical left perspective? What nations have ever thrived under such a thing? More over, why should the U.S shake up it's culture in such an enormous way?
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On April 16 2018 09:24 bo1b wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2018 04:31 Grumbels wrote:
I thought Biden was signalling he might run as a “sensible” centrist, opposed to the Sanders wing of the party. That means he will be pro-military, pro-business and against any meaningful reform, unless his hand is forced. He would be better than any GOP candidate, but that is not saying much. The USA needs sweeping reforms and hostility to the establishment from a radical left perspective, not a continuation of the Obama presidency. Why does the U.S need to move to a radical left perspective? What nations have ever thrived under such a thing? More over, why should the U.S shake up it's culture in such an enormous way?
Radical left for the US is normal left for EU. Healthcare is tops on my list of "I'd like this off of the EU a la carte, please."
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On April 16 2018 10:53 Gahlo wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2018 09:24 bo1b wrote:On April 16 2018 04:31 Grumbels wrote:
I thought Biden was signalling he might run as a “sensible” centrist, opposed to the Sanders wing of the party. That means he will be pro-military, pro-business and against any meaningful reform, unless his hand is forced. He would be better than any GOP candidate, but that is not saying much. The USA needs sweeping reforms and hostility to the establishment from a radical left perspective, not a continuation of the Obama presidency. Why does the U.S need to move to a radical left perspective? What nations have ever thrived under such a thing? More over, why should the U.S shake up it's culture in such an enormous way? Radical left for the US is normal left for EU. Healthcare is tops on my list of "I'd like this off of the EU a la carte, please."
Radical left is pretty much ubiquitous in EU. Atleast here in Portugal no right wing party would want to end universal healthcare or even gay marriage.
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The truly radical left idea to freely choose a partner for your monogamous marriage. Right off the first page of Das Kapital
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Because its more a religious/conservative than a left/right issue.
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Well it says "About seven-in-ten (73%) Democrats and independents (70%) favor same-sex marriage. A smaller share of Republicans favor same-sex marriage (40%), although they also have become more supportive in recent years."
And then says "Support for same-sex marriage now stands at 85% among self-described liberals and 70% among moderates. Far fewer conservatives (41%) support same-sex marriage. But like liberals and moderates, conservatives have also grown more supportive of same-sex marriage over time."
Not sure why you mentioned a circle jerk, but I don't think you'll find much disagreement with the fact that even conservative ideologies have become more progressive over the years when it comes to equality/ gay marriage, or that everyone (especially conservatives) still has a long way to go.
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On April 15 2018 23:28 Liquid`Drone wrote:
I think arts degrees are just as valuable as stem degrees. Probably not for a developing country, but in Norway? Absolutely.
Just depends what you do with it, most people don't work in the specific area their degree covers. Degrees are often just used as a way to negotiate your starting pay before you get any experience, they also help you get interviews. It's a show of discipline and commitment, kinda at the end of the day you sell yourself.
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On April 16 2018 20:05 semantics wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2018 23:28 Liquid`Drone wrote:
I think arts degrees are just as valuable as stem degrees. Probably not for a developing country, but in Norway? Absolutely. Just depends what you do with it, most people don't work in the specific area their degree covers. Degrees are often just used as a way to negotiate your starting pay before you get any experience, they also help you get interviews. It's a show of discipline and commitment, kinda at the end of the day you sell yourself.
Depends where. In the US or in the UK, certainly, but in France for example, there is a strict continuation between diploma and job, and you won’t find work in most sectors unless you have the one precise diploma that covers your specialty (especially if you work for the public sector). That’s dumb as hell, obviously. You absolutely want people with art, humanities or philosophy degrees in as many sectors as possible. The french system makes for a uniform, non dynamic and uncreative work environments.
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EPT
