Politics' Official Eighteenth Thread

[Chilloutman]

well she can hardly be neutral/independent if she was head of unions right?

[HoonDing]

Not even Trump could save Sweden now

 

Edited May 23, 2018 by HoonDing

[Hurlshort]

 

I mean, that's technically true - the best kind of true! -, but at the same time, when Canada has three times the generational earnings mobility without the weird obsession with self-made men, I'd say that maybe the American attitude is somewhat misplaced.

 

 

I wouldn't say it is misplaced. I mean, it is excellent that Canada has that kind of earnings mobility. I would love to see the US make improvements there. But US companies still dominate the global economy. The tech industry was basically born from that 'misplaced' attitude and it still continues to be driven by US entrepreneurs.

 

The world is saturated in products that were born in the US. Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Apple...they were created by self-made men. Why is that? Why doesn't Canada have more of those stories?

[Malcador]

 

 

I mean, that's technically true - the best kind of true! -, but at the same time, when Canada has three times the generational earnings mobility without the weird obsession with self-made men, I'd say that maybe the American attitude is somewhat misplaced.

 

 

I wouldn't say it is misplaced. I mean, it is excellent that Canada has that kind of earnings mobility. I would love to see the US make improvements there. But US companies still dominate the global economy. The tech industry was basically born from that 'misplaced' attitude and it still continues to be driven by US entrepreneurs.

 

The world is saturated in products that were born in the US. Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Apple...they were created by self-made men. Why is that? Why doesn't Canada have more of those stories?

 

 

Products of self made men seem pretty bad when you list those three....

 

As for Canada, being right next to the US does hurt the talent pool a bit as people leave for higher pay - not sure why Canadian firms pay lower, well other than them being greedy as sin (see our entire telecom industry).  When you say 'those stories' what do you mean ? Corporations that have some titanic impact or just corporations that started from one or two guys and do well ?

[Guard Dog]

 

Rising productivity provides the potential for substantial growth in the pay for the vast majority. However, this potential has been squandered in recent decades. The income, wages, and wealth generated over the last four decades have failed to “trickle down” to the vast majority largely because policy choices made on behalf of those with the most income, wealth, and power have exacerbated inequality. In essence, rising inequality has prevented potential pay growth from translating into actual pay growth for most workers. The result has been wage stagnation.

 

For future productivity gains to lead to robust wage growth and widely shared prosperity, we need to institute policies that reconnect pay and productivity, such as those in EPI’s Agenda to Raise America’s Pay. Without such policies, efforts to spur economic growth or increase productivity (the largest factor driving growth) will fail to lift typical workers’ wages.

So... let me see if I have this straight. The GOVERNMENT caused this problem because people with money used that money to buy favorable policies. So the solution is to get that exact same GOVERNMENT to fix those policies to help the workers. That begs the question.... do the workers have any money to buy that kind of help? It sounds like the answer is no. So.... good luck with that.

 

Everyone sneers are how the, the, rich (say it in a tone of disgust) use their money to corrupt the government. Sounds to me like you should be mad at the government not the rich. Who sold favors to who? And before anyone comes back with "we need to elect people who won't take their money" yeah. Like I said, good luck.

 

People by favors from government because governments sell favors. Yet no one wants to pull their fangs out. Something I will never understand.

 

OK, you can all go  back to bashing rich capitalists now. Or whatever it was you were doing.

 

Edit: One last thought. If you don;t like the pay you don't have to take the job. If there were fewer teachers teachers would be paid more. Just sayin'

Edited May 23, 2018 by Guard Dog

[smjjames]

 

I mean, that's technically true - the best kind of true! -, but at the same time, when Canada has three times the generational earnings mobility without the weird obsession with self-made men, I'd say that maybe the American attitude is somewhat misplaced.

 

 

I wouldn't say it is misplaced. I mean, it is excellent that Canada has that kind of earnings mobility. I would love to see the US make improvements there. But US companies still dominate the global economy. The tech industry was basically born from that 'misplaced' attitude and it still continues to be driven by US entrepreneurs.

 

The world is saturated in products that were born in the US. Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Apple...they were created by self-made men. Why is that? Why doesn't Canada have more of those stories?

That’s certainly an excellent question. I suppose part of it comes down to business and corporate policies and just sheer American influence that allowed the, to spread worldwide. Also, of those three examples, Cocoa-Cola and McDonalds are the elders, with Cocoa-Cola being almost twice as old as McDonalds.

 

However, longevity can’t explain it either as there are plenty of more recent examples and Canada has its share of companies that have been around for hundreds of years, ditto for Europe.

[ShadySands]

Well, we can't all be acupuncturists

[Maedhros]

Edit: One last thought. If you don;t like the pay you don't have to take the job. If there were fewer teachers teachers would be paid more. Just sayin'

 

 

 

You kind of want the teacher job to be attractive to ambitious and smart people though. A good teacher can save/earn the country millions of dollars throughout his/her career. Obviously not quantifiable, but there's little doubt that to many kids nowadays the teacher is basically a second parent. At least for the young ones.

[smjjames]

 

 

Rising productivity provides the potential for substantial growth in the pay for the vast majority. However, this potential has been squandered in recent decades. The income, wages, and wealth generated over the last four decades have failed to “trickle down” to the vast majority largely because policy choices made on behalf of those with the most income, wealth, and power have exacerbated inequality. In essence, rising inequality has prevented potential pay growth from translating into actual pay growth for most workers. The result has been wage stagnation.

 

For future productivity gains to lead to robust wage growth and widely shared prosperity, we need to institute policies that reconnect pay and productivity, such as those in EPI’s Agenda to Raise America’s Pay. Without such policies, efforts to spur economic growth or increase productivity (the largest factor driving growth) will fail to lift typical workers’ wages.

 

So... let me see if I have this straight. The GOVERNMENT caused this problem because people with money used that money to buy favorable policies. So the solution is to get that exact same GOVERNMENT to fix those policies to help the workers. That begs the question.... do the workers have any money to buy that kind of help? It sounds like the answer is no. So.... good luck with that.

 

Everyone sneers are how the, the, rich (say it in a tone of disgust) use their money to corrupt the government. Sounds to me like you should be mad at the government not the rich. Who sold favors to who? And before anyone comes back with "we need to elect people who won't take their money" yeah. Like I said, good luck.

 

People by favors from government because governments sell favors. Yet no one wants to pull their fangs out. Something I will never understand.

 

OK, you can all go  back to bashing rich capitalists now. Or whatever it was you were doing.

 

Edit: One last thought. If you don;t like the pay you don't have to take the job. If there were fewer teachers teachers would be paid more. Just sayin'

Isn’t there already a bit of a teacher shortage? I’ve never heard of anybody complaining of too many teachers in the workforce.

[Guard Dog]

If that is so it sounds like teachers should have a bit more leverage when negotiating a salary.

[HoonDing]

i hear you can make a killing by selling gunz.

[213374U]

The tech industry was basically born from that 'misplaced' attitude and it still continues to be driven by US entrepreneurs.

The tech industry was born from a culture of technical excellence and focus on the hard sciences that arose from the US being the #1 destination for brains migrating from Europe in the first half of the 20th century, and which only intensified after WWII, in the wake of Operation Paperclip and East European brains fleeing communist regimes. Snake oil salesmanship wouldn't have amounted to anything without eleventy billion imported super geniuses.

 

The guy who invented the modern architecture that computers are based on to this day was a Hungarian.

 

With the current focus on disciplines like "gender studies", the general decline of education, as well as the advance of utter irrationality as an acceptable and accepted state of mind as embodied in the tangerine in chief, it's only a matter of time before you lose your edge.

 

As for why the world is saturated by American brands... I guess you have a point. The one true greatest American invention is marketing as a science. Good job?

 

edit: can't into English

Edited May 23, 2018 by 213374U

[Malcador]

There's a focus on gender studies ?  All I ever see here is pretty much press ganging people into STEM

[Hurlshort]

If that is so it sounds like teachers should have a bit more leverage when negotiating a salary.

That sounds very pro-union from you.

 

They do have good leverage in states where unions aren't considered a dirty word. California gets bashed over the power of the CEA pretty regularly by Republicans.

[ShadySands]

Official list of Teacher Shortage Areas dating back to 1990. Link to the page as the list is either a PDF or a Doc and I didn't want to link directly to it. Those links are at the bottom

[213374U]

There's a focus on gender studies ?  All I ever see here is pretty much press ganging people into STEM

 

You're right.

 

No such thing as a focus on gender studies or similar. If anything the focus is on... business degrees. Note also the decrease in math and education degrees conferred.

 

I guess that even casually mistaking the twatterverse for the real world is as good a sign as I'm going to get that I should get the **** off the internet.

Edited May 23, 2018 by 213374U

[HoonDing]

Well, considering the many genders nowadays, im sure gender studies is about as complicated as quantumchromodynamics.

[smjjames]

Or just treat gender like the electromagnetic spectrum? Because it really is a spectrum.

[Blarghagh]

 

 

I mean, that's technically true - the best kind of true! -, but at the same time, when Canada has three times the generational earnings mobility without the weird obsession with self-made men, I'd say that maybe the American attitude is somewhat misplaced.

 

I wouldn't say it is misplaced. I mean, it is excellent that Canada has that kind of earnings mobility. I would love to see the US make improvements there. But US companies still dominate the global economy. The tech industry was basically born from that 'misplaced' attitude and it still continues to be driven by US entrepreneurs.

 

The world is saturated in products that were born in the US. Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Apple...they were created by self-made men. Why is that? Why doesn't Canada have more of those stories?

Why are all your examples terrible products that make the world a worse place?

[aluminiumtrioxid]

 

So... let me see if I have this straight. The GOVERNMENT caused this problem because people with money used that money to buy favorable policies. So the solution is to get that exact same GOVERNMENT to fix those policies to help the workers. That begs the question.... do the workers have any money to buy that kind of help? It sounds like the answer is no. So.... good luck with that.

 

Everyone sneers are how the, the, rich (say it in a tone of disgust) use their money to corrupt the government. Sounds to me like you should be mad at the government not the rich. Who sold favors to who? And before anyone comes back with "we need to elect people who won't take their money" yeah. Like I said, good luck.

 

People by favors from government because governments sell favors. Yet no one wants to pull their fangs out. Something I will never understand.

 

 

 

Okay, so, correct me if I'm getting any of this wrong...

 

Your problem is that the government has the power to create legislation that unduly favors those with the power and influence to buy their favor, which the disempowered workers can't do.

 

Your proposed solution is to negate the government's ability to do so.

 

This would presumably bring about a change, because then the workers would still be without power and influence, but the rich would be... deprived from one of the vectors to exert theirs, leaving all the rest? How is that supposed to help?

Edited May 23, 2018 by aluminiumtrioxid

[injurai]

MBA's were disproportionately the degrees awarded at my recent graduation. Engineering being 4th most common, right behind medical, but engineering sub-divides into like 30 highly different specialties that are in demand. So for any specific (BSE:XX) there were only a hundred or so for each.

 

The 2nd most common were generic Bachelors of Arts & Science (BSA), and I can't help but feel many of those degrees were awarded generically to spare the people the shame of getting such trivial degrees. Trivial in the grand scheme of things, in that they are mostly soft skills of some discipline's orthodoxy rather than any real foundational hard skills. We do need some of this, but I get the feeling that a lot of these people never find employment for their degrees.

 

Chemists were oddly awarded generics Bachelors of Science (BS) degrees.

 

As for the modern tech industry, all of it is really built off of research that comes out of world institutions and universities. Large public sector spending on research. What American capital does is build out the global and consumer infrastructure to deliver all that research at scale. I don't think the market attitudes are as misplaces as some like to make out, although the speculative markets on Wallstreet have no doubt formulated a parasitic relationship off the backs of these industries. The US was always great at inviting the best minds in the world together to tackle immense problems.

 

Further, so much of todays research is produced directly in relation to what this market industry achieves. Tons of research for example relies on empirical analysis of the real practical results that these supply chains produce. Not everything can be done solely in the ivory towers of research. You need these sustained global systems that deliver real results first, before a lot of research can have anything meaningful to be applied to.

[Hurlshort]

 

Why are all your examples terrible products that make the world a worse place?

 

 

Well if they weren't immensely successful, they wouldn't have the opportunity to wreck the world.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

 

There's a focus on gender studies ?  All I ever see here is pretty much press ganging people into STEM

 

 

You're right.

 

No such thing as a focus on gender studies or similar. If anything the focus is on... business degrees. Note also the decrease in math and education degrees conferred.

 

I guess that even casually mistaking the twatterverse for the real world is as good a sign as I'm going to get that I should get the **** off the internet.

Yeah, business degrees are a lot more common than whatever incels and JBP fans are butthurt about. A large part of the problem too, most are training for some sort of management and the result has been a decrease in stemlords, and even those positions are now in competition with 2nd and 3rd world wages due to the magic of globalization which further pushes into business degrees. Such is the will of the market.

 

So... let me see if I have this straight. The GOVERNMENT caused this problem because people with money used that money to buy favorable policies. So the solution is to get that exact same GOVERNMENT to fix those policies to help the workers. That begs the question.... do the workers have any money to buy that kind of help? It sounds like the answer is no. So.... good luck with that.

 

Everyone sneers are how the, the, rich (say it in a tone of disgust) use their money to corrupt the government. Sounds to me like you should be mad at the government not the rich. Who sold favors to who? And before anyone comes back with "we need to elect people who won't take their money" yeah. Like I said, good luck.

 

People by favors from government because governments sell favors. Yet no one wants to pull their fangs out. Something I will never understand.

 

 

 

Okay, so, correct me if I'm getting any of this wrong...

 

Your problem is that the government has the power to create legislation that unduly favors those with the power and influence to buy their favor, which the disempowered workers can't do.

 

Your proposed solution is to negate the government's ability to do so.

 

This would presumably bring about a change, because then the workers would still be without power and influence, but the rich would be... deprived from one of the vectors to exert theirs, leaving all the rest? How is that supposed to help?

The free market will balance **** out despite accumulation being intrinsic to capitalism and the state protecting the interests of the upper class has been a constant since at least the slave empires. And if it doesn't **** it as long as the age of consent is abolished for voluntary transactions between parties.

[smjjames]

The heck does abolishing age of consent have to do with transactions between voluntary parties? There are limitations, mainly the age 18 thing and theres parental consent. I don’t see where you’re going with the second sentence.

[aluminiumtrioxid]

The heck does abolishing age of consent have to do with transactions between voluntary parties? There are limitations, mainly the age 18 thing and theres parental consent. I don’t see where you’re going with the second sentence.

 

He was poking fun at internet libertarians. It's kind of a meme.

Edited May 24, 2018 by aluminiumtrioxid