The Current Events, News, and Politics Thread
11-12-2018, 02:49 PM
Boost Czar
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when you punish capital, you punish labor.
Wages for workers are very much tied to the amount of capital that’s invested. In other words, capitalists are the best friends of workers.
source:
Capital here refers to physical capital — the machinery, factory space and office equipment that allows workers to be more productive. A garment worker with a sewing machine produces more blouses per hour than a garment worker with a needle and thread; therefore the garment worker with a sewing machine earns higher wages. (A good rule of thumb is that workers are paid about 2/3 the value of what they produce.) If you want rich garment workers, you need a lot of high-quality sewing machines. If you want rich farm workers, you need a lot of high-quality tractors.
And if you want more high-quality tractors, you need more factories producing them — which means fewer factories producing consumer goods like, say, cars. That in turn requires consumers to rein in their immediate appetites, spending less and saving more. In other words, capital accumulation is driven in part by frugality. Forgo that car purchase and the factories will produce another tractor instead. That’s why tax policies matter. A tax that punishes saving (e.g. the estate tax) is a tax that encourages spending. Because of that tax, the rich buy more cars, the factories produce fewer tractors, and farm wages fall. If you doubt that farm wages depend heavily on the production of tractors, have another look at the graph.
Do not, however, jump to the conclusion that if, say, Nigerians had access to Japanese levels of capital, then Nigerian wages would rise to Japanese levels. Part of the reason Nigerians have so little capital is that capital is used less efficiently in Nigeria, so people choose to accumulate less of it. To move up this ladder, you need to do more than just accumulate capital — you’ve got to be the sort of country where capital is worth accumulating. What that entails will be a topic for a future post.
And if you want more high-quality tractors, you need more factories producing them — which means fewer factories producing consumer goods like, say, cars. That in turn requires consumers to rein in their immediate appetites, spending less and saving more. In other words, capital accumulation is driven in part by frugality. Forgo that car purchase and the factories will produce another tractor instead. That’s why tax policies matter. A tax that punishes saving (e.g. the estate tax) is a tax that encourages spending. Because of that tax, the rich buy more cars, the factories produce fewer tractors, and farm wages fall. If you doubt that farm wages depend heavily on the production of tractors, have another look at the graph.
Do not, however, jump to the conclusion that if, say, Nigerians had access to Japanese levels of capital, then Nigerian wages would rise to Japanese levels. Part of the reason Nigerians have so little capital is that capital is used less efficiently in Nigeria, so people choose to accumulate less of it. To move up this ladder, you need to do more than just accumulate capital — you’ve got to be the sort of country where capital is worth accumulating. What that entails will be a topic for a future post.
even 1920s British agree:
but I dunno, this cow's blood theory has good merits -- considering not one economist thinks it's a good idea, i think we should run with it.
Last edited by Braineack; 11-12-2018 at 03:05 PM.
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11-12-2018, 03:13 PM
Boost Pope
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Kinda surprised it wasn't anchored to the ground.
Here in Chicago, all of our speed and red-light cameras are up on poles.
To be honest, the speed cameras are kind of pointless (it's nearly impossible to reach 30 MPH in the city, much less exceed it), and I, personally, appreciate the red-light cameras. Chicagoans are infamous for running red lights. It's not uncommon to see 3-5 cars blow through a red light several seconds after the cross-light has already changed to green.
Here in Chicago, all of our speed and red-light cameras are up on poles.
To be honest, the speed cameras are kind of pointless (it's nearly impossible to reach 30 MPH in the city, much less exceed it), and I, personally, appreciate the red-light cameras. Chicagoans are infamous for running red lights. It's not uncommon to see 3-5 cars blow through a red light several seconds after the cross-light has already changed to green.
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11-13-2018, 08:39 AM
Boost Czar
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they are EVERYWHERE in DC. and easy to trip.
has red-light camera stopped/slowed the amount of people who run red-lights?
if we designed roads in 2018, and not 1942, we could get away with red lights.
also red-lights are not very accessible.
has red-light camera stopped/slowed the amount of people who run red-lights?
if we designed roads in 2018, and not 1942, we could get away with red lights.
also red-lights are not very accessible.
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11-13-2018, 08:50 AM
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also red-lights are not very accessible.
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11-13-2018, 10:51 AM
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lol at CNN suing the president for pulling the press credentials for a bloviating tv personality posing as a journalist. CNN could, you know, apply for new credentials for an actual non-disruptive journalist.
I'm curious why the press room didn't chant TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP and scream "i love you"
I'm curious why the press room didn't chant TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP and scream "i love you"
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11-13-2018, 05:41 PM
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#thereisnochoice.
Democratic socialist and Congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-CA) spent her first day in Washington, D.C. as an incoming freshman by joining climate protestors in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) office.
...
“We don’t have a choice. We have to get to one hundred percent renewable energy in 10 years. There is no other option,” Ocasio-Cortez added.
...
“We don’t have a choice. We have to get to one hundred percent renewable energy in 10 years. There is no other option,” Ocasio-Cortez added.
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11-13-2018, 06:56 PM
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Here's what puzzles me:
44 48 people so far have been confirmed killed in the blaze in California. That's more than the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, the Thousand Oaks shooting, and the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, combined.
And yet nobody is screaming for more fire-control laws.
@IB Nolan the [s] tag is also broken. Strikethrough shows up properly in the composition window around "44" in the first sentance, but does not render when the post is viewed normally.
And yet nobody is screaming for more fire-control laws.
@IB Nolan the [s] tag is also broken. Strikethrough shows up properly in the composition window around "44" in the first sentance, but does not render when the post is viewed normally.
Last edited by Joe Perez; 11-13-2018 at 10:52 PM. Reason: Updated death toll. Ignore the "44", IB hates us and wants us to die.
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11-13-2018, 07:01 PM
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Here's what puzzles me:
44 people so far have been confirmed killed in the blaze in California. That's more than the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, the Thousand Oaks shooting, and the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, combined.
And yet nobody is screaming for more fire-control laws.
44 people so far have been confirmed killed in the blaze in California. That's more than the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, the Thousand Oaks shooting, and the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, combined.
And yet nobody is screaming for more fire-control laws.
Maybe we put a little blame back on the people responsible for making sure these things don't happen.
Oh wait...
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11-13-2018, 08:07 PM
Boost Pope
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I was using sarcasm to address a serious issue.
Specifically, that we as a society seem awfully concerned and enraged about certain specific trigger-issues, while entirely ignoring other, much more common dangers.
In the news business, we have a maxim which is basically reduced to the following: You shouldn't be worried about the scary things you see on the news. The reason they're on the news in the first place is that they're uncommon and improbable. The scary things you should be worried about are the ones which are so common that they're not newsworthy.
As an example, to contrast a hot-button political issue against one which we seem to totally ignore:
37,133 motor-vehicle fatalities in the US in 2017, with appx 254 million vehicles. 1.45e-4 deaths per vehicle.
11,208 firearm homicides in the US in 2017, with appx 357 million firearms. 3.14e-5 deaths per firearm.
So you're five times more likely to be killed with a car than with a gun. And yet a large number of people people are passionately shouting for all guns to be banned, while buying cars left and right.
Same deal on the fire argument. There's no (or, very little) public outcry for improved fire-control measures. Much to the contrary, in fact, as Six pointed out, measures known to decrease the risk of, and limit the propagation of wildfires are strongly opposed by many of the same people.
It disturbs me, quote honestly, that We the People (eg: the electorate) seem to be so blindly selective in which issues we choose to be hysterically concerned about vs. those which we choose to ignore as inevitable or irrelevant.
Specifically, that we as a society seem awfully concerned and enraged about certain specific trigger-issues, while entirely ignoring other, much more common dangers.
In the news business, we have a maxim which is basically reduced to the following: You shouldn't be worried about the scary things you see on the news. The reason they're on the news in the first place is that they're uncommon and improbable. The scary things you should be worried about are the ones which are so common that they're not newsworthy.
As an example, to contrast a hot-button political issue against one which we seem to totally ignore:
37,133 motor-vehicle fatalities in the US in 2017, with appx 254 million vehicles. 1.45e-4 deaths per vehicle.
11,208 firearm homicides in the US in 2017, with appx 357 million firearms. 3.14e-5 deaths per firearm.
So you're five times more likely to be killed with a car than with a gun. And yet a large number of people people are passionately shouting for all guns to be banned, while buying cars left and right.
Same deal on the fire argument. There's no (or, very little) public outcry for improved fire-control measures. Much to the contrary, in fact, as Six pointed out, measures known to decrease the risk of, and limit the propagation of wildfires are strongly opposed by many of the same people.
It disturbs me, quote honestly, that We the People (eg: the electorate) seem to be so blindly selective in which issues we choose to be hysterically concerned about vs. those which we choose to ignore as inevitable or irrelevant.
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11-13-2018, 08:42 PM
It's known as risk normalization. As a human if you allow yourself to be worried about everything that might happen, you won't be able to function. To cope an individual determines which things they can live with by ignoring/downplaying because it is less likely to cause them grief. Of course this can end up becoming a major problem if a lot of these things line up at once (disasters like the Deepwater Horizon are examples). This is something of an oversimplification but you get the gist.
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11-13-2018, 09:56 PM
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But you can apply the same logic as in my last post to all of the leading causes of death in the US:
- Heart disease (and yet relatively few are calling for a ban on high-cholesterol foods)
- Chronic lower respiratory disease (and yet people are calling for an INCREASE in fine-particulate emissions by campaigning against nuclear power which, by the way, has the lowest rate of fatalities per unit of power generated, by more than an order of magnitude, over all other baseline power generation technologies, even including Chernobyl and Fukushima)
- Diabetes (see argument on heart disease)
- Cancer (see arguments for both heart disease and respiratory disease)
- Influenza (anti-vax much?)
- Drowning (no one is calling for stricter regulations on pools, spas and bathtubs),
- Being shot by a dog carrying a gun in its mouth while walking along a beach when it is suddenly startled by a hummingbird (ok, maybe the gun argument works here.)
- Etc.
Also,
@IB Nolan , bullet lists show as indented in the composition view, but fail to indent in the actual post. It's also ignoring the several carriage-returns (line-breaks) which I inserted before the[List] tag, in an attempt to make it look less-bad when viewed by the proletariat. And, as usual, it's also deleting the space between "the" and "[List]" in this last sentence, which I can't override since [noparse] doesn't work.
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11-14-2018, 09:14 AM
Boost Czar
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The US is a Nation of 330M People or about 5% of the World’s population and makes up 4.42% of worldwide gun deaths.
US citizens legally own 250-300M or about 42% of the ENTIRE world’s guns. Therefore using liberal logic, that actually makes the US responsible for about 42% of the world’s gun deaths.
Also:
There are 30,000 gun related deaths per year by firearms, and this number is not disputed. U.S. population 324,059,091 as of Wednesday, June 22, 2016. Do the math: 0.00925% of the population dies from gun related actions each year. Statistically speaking, this is insignificant! What is never told, however, is a breakdown of those 30,000 deaths, to put them in perspective as compared to other causes of death:
• 65% of those deaths are by suicide which would never be prevented by gun laws
• 15% are by law enforcement in the line of duty and justified
• 17% are through criminal activity, gang and drug related or mentally ill persons – gun violence
• 3% are accidental discharge deaths
So technically, "gun violence" is not 30,000 annually, but drops to 5,100. Still too many? Well, first, how are those deaths spanned across the nation?
• 480 homicides (9.4%) were in Chicago
• 344 homicides (6.7%) were in Baltimore
• 333 homicides (6.5%) were in Detroit
• 119 homicides (2.3%) were in Washington D.C. (a 54% increase over prior years)
So basically, 25% of all gun crime happens in just 4 cities. All 4 of those cities have strict gun laws, so it is not the lack of law that is the root cause.
This basically leaves 3,825 for the entire rest of the nation, or about 75 deaths per state. That is an average because some States have much higher rates than others. For example, California had 1,169 and Alabama had 1.
Now, who has the strictest gun laws by far? California, of course, but understand, so it is not guns causing this. It is a crime rate spawned by the number of criminal persons residing in those cities and states. So if all cities and states are not created equally, then there must be something other than the tool causing the gun deaths.
Are 5,100 deaths per year horrific? How about in comparison to other deaths? All death is sad and especially so when it is in the commission of a crime but that is the nature of crime. Robbery, death, and sexual assault are all done by criminals and thinking that criminals will obey laws is ludicrous. That's why they are criminals.
But what about other deaths each year?
• 40,000+ die from a drug overdose–Where's the excuse for that?
• 36,000 people die per year from the flu, far exceeding the criminal gun deaths
• 34,000 people die per year in traffic fatalities(exceeding gun deaths even if you include suicide)
Now it gets good:
• 200,000+ people die each year (and growing) from preventable medical errors. You are safer in Chicago than when you are in a hospital!
• 710,000 people die per year from heart disease. It’s time to stop the double cheeseburgers! So what is the point? If Obama and the anti-gun movement focused their attention on heart disease, even a 10% decrease in cardiac deaths would save twice the number of lives annually of all gun-related deaths (including suicide, law enforcement, etc.). A 10% reduction in medical errors would be 66% of the total gun deaths or 4 times the number of criminal homicides......Simple, easily preventable 10% reductions!
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