Attention: "alt right" is no longer politically correct

[Jolly_Penguin]

By treating them as individuals with traits, one of which may include "native", "woman", "living in yukon", or "living in BC". Those traits may, or may not as Loren is arguing, put them more at risk. We can study if and why any particular trait of an individual puts them more at risk and if so what can be done about it. It is very likely that not all people living in BC are more at risk than many individuals living elsewhere, and that not all people who are "native" are more at risk than many individuals who are not.

Meanwhile, more women are put at risk/peril. Brilliant solution.

Ah, I understand. Ready, fire, aim.

I don't understand. Focus on those who actually face danger rather than confusing things with race proxy is somehow imagined to put more women at risk?

 

[ruby sparks]

If treating them as individuals is the best way to achieve that goal, then they should be treated as individuals. If treating them as members of a group is the best way, then they should be treated as members of the group. Both approaches have merit.

Yes, and as in most things, we would likely be looking for 'the best combination', which I'm pretty sure you have in fact already implied.

 

[Arctish]

Lets get back to discussing the peril faced by Native women in Yukon and British Colombia. How do you, Jolly_Pengiun, propose dealing with that issue without considering the groups 'Natives', 'women', 'people living in Yukon', or 'people living in BC'?

Groups are an output, not an input.

The inputs are individuals with various traits. Construct all possible groupings of your input traits, run the correlations with what you are testing (in this case "murdered") and then cast out the ones that add nothing: In case of ties you cast out the more detailed option.

You're left with the factors that matter.

Note that if you fail to include a relevant factor you're likely to end up reaching a poor conclusion.

In this case there are two obvious factors to add: streetwalker and in poverty.

Given what I have read about these cases I would be surprised if "native" and "women" survive this test.

Of course you would.

To you, 'Native woman' means 'whore'. You think that's the strongest correlation. Only you use the term 'streeetwalker' instead of 'whore' because you think it's more polite.

I'm sure you'll be absolutely gobsmacked if it turns out the majority of them weren't prostituting themselves. I'm also sure you haven't even considered the possibility that some of them may have been murdered over a mining claim, or went missing while out picking berries because they were attacked by bears, or fell through the ice on the Yukon River while traveling to their grandma's house, or were strangled by an enraged ex-boyfriend because they were heading off to college without him, or had some other misfortune that had nothing to do with being 'streetwalkers'.

 

[Arctish]

Ah, I understand. Ready, fire, aim.

I don't understand. Focus on those who actually face danger rather than confusing things with race proxy is somehow imagined to put more women at risk?

You can't focus on those who actually face danger if you can't identify them, and you can't identify them if you refuse to admit that members of certain groups of people face greater danger than non-members.

Your approach of refusing to consider group identities leaves hundreds of Native women at risk of being murdered or going missing in the coming year. You'll never come to grips with the dangers they face because those dangers are only apparent when you consider the likelihood of bad outcomes for members of that group.

 

[Arctish]

If treating them as individuals is the best way to achieve that goal, then they should be treated as individuals. If treating them as members of a group is the best way, then they should be treated as members of the group. Both approaches have merit.

Yes, and as in most things, we would likely be looking for 'the best combination', which I'm pretty sure you have in fact already implied.

I've been trying to communicate that clearly but perhaps I've only succeeded in implying it.

Therefore, I explicitly declare my full support for looking for the 'best combination' of approaches, and I refuse to pre-emptively declare any option off-limits.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I understand the concept. I'd like to see if there is actual data or if this is just some thought experiment. If this is so "classic", one would think you'd be able to come up with a direct and relevant link. So far, nope.

- - - Updated - - -

Ah, I understand. Ready, fire, aim.

Written like a true misogynist.

You are admitting you don't know one of the standard examples--and thus you don't know much about statistics.

- - - Updated - - -

Ah, I understand. Ready, fire, aim.

I don't understand. Focus on those who actually face danger rather than confusing things with race proxy is somehow imagined to put more women at risk?

If you go put a bunch of effort into the wrong thing you do nothing to deal with the real problem.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Lets get back to discussing the peril faced by Native women in Yukon and British Colombia. How do you, Jolly_Pengiun, propose dealing with that issue without considering the groups 'Natives', 'women', 'people living in Yukon', or 'people living in BC'?

Groups are an output, not an input.

The inputs are individuals with various traits. Construct all possible groupings of your input traits, run the correlations with what you are testing (in this case "murdered") and then cast out the ones that add nothing: In case of ties you cast out the more detailed option.

You're left with the factors that matter.

Note that if you fail to include a relevant factor you're likely to end up reaching a poor conclusion.

In this case there are two obvious factors to add: streetwalker and in poverty.

Given what I have read about these cases I would be surprised if "native" and "women" survive this test.

Of course you would.

To you, 'Native woman' means 'whore'. You think that's the strongest correlation. Only you use the term 'streeetwalker' instead of 'whore' because you think it's more polite.

I'm sure you'll be absolutely gobsmacked if it turns out the majority of them weren't prostituting themselves. I'm also sure you haven't even considered the possibility that some of them may have been murdered over a mining claim, or went missing while out picking berries because they were attacked by bears, or fell through the ice on the Yukon River while traveling to their grandma's house, or were strangled by an enraged ex-boyfriend because they were heading off to college without him, or had some other misfortune that had nothing to do with being 'streetwalkers'.

You are so fixated on it being race that you're getting delusional about the discussion.

I'm not saying "native woman" = "whore". I'm saying an awful lot of the murders are of streetwalkers. That doesn't say all native women are whores, merely that many are. Which is not surprising--many of them don't have much of any other prospects. As usual, it's actually socioeconomic status.

 

[Arctish]

You are so fixated on it being race that you're getting delusional about the discussion.

I'm not saying "native woman" = "whore". I'm saying an awful lot of the murders are of streetwalkers. That doesn't say all native women are whores, merely that many are. Which is not surprising--many of them don't have much of any other prospects. As usual, it's actually socioeconomic status.

I'm saying you jumped to the conclusion that 'streetwalking' was sufficient explanation for the numbers of Native women going missing and being murdered in Yukon and British Columbia that you didn't even bother to read the links or investigate the issue any further.

Tell me, Loren, how many of those women have Canadian officials identified as 'streetwalkers'? Where is the evidence you found that gave you reason to talk about 'streetwalkers' rather than women who were murdered for unknown reasons?

 

[laughing dog]

You are admitting you don't know one of the standard examples--and thus you don't know much about statistics.

You have not substantiated your claim. I have gone through the 30+ statistics books I own, and not one mentions this "classic" example. But I find it fascinating that you felt the need to use some sort of example involving the rape of women.

Anyone who has learned or taught statistics knows the difference between causation and correlation. Anyone who knows statistics understands that correlation is a possible indication of causation. And anyone who is both intellectually honest and who knows statistics would not automatically dismiss correlation as an indication of causation.

 

[laughing dog]

You are so fixated on it being race that you're getting delusional about the discussion.

I'm not saying "native woman" = "whore". I'm saying an awful lot of the murders are of streetwalkers. That doesn't say all native women are whores, merely that many are. Which is not surprising--many of them don't have much of any other prospects. As usual, it's actually socioeconomic status.

I'm saying you jumped to the conclusion that 'streetwalking' was sufficient explanation for the numbers of Native women going missing and being murdered in Yukon and British Columbia that you didn't even bother to read the links or investigate the issue any further.

Tell me, Loren, how many of those women have Canadian officials identified as 'streetwalkers'? Where is the evidence you found that gave you reason to talk about 'streetwalkers' rather than women who were murdered for unknown reasons?

It must be that "streetwalking" is the only orthogonal explanation for this situation. It is a logical deduction for anyone who is unwilling to actually look at the facts.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

You can't focus on those who actually face danger if you can't identify them, and you can't identify them if you refuse to admit that members of certain groups of people face greater danger than non-members.

"members of certain groups" are not facing greater danger. Individuals with mixtures of particular traits when in particular circumstances are. Don't lose sight of individuality.

Your approach of refusing to consider group identities leaves hundreds of Native women at risk of being murdered or going missing in the coming year.

No, your approach of confusing groups for individuals leads you to waste attention and resources on people who don't need it and to leave out people who do.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

To you, 'Native woman' means 'whore'.

This again is the problem with addressing groups instead of individuals. Loren's claim, unfounded or not, that this is more linked to the trait of being a streetwalker than the trait of being native, does NOT contain a claim that "native women" means "whore". To insist that it does precludes any meaningful discussion with him over which traits and which combination of traits render people most at risk and which individuals are most in need.

 

[laughing dog]

To you, 'Native woman' means 'whore'.

This again is the problem with addressing groups instead of individuals. Loren's claim, unfounded or not, that this is more linked to the trait of being a streetwalker than the trait of being native, does NOT contain a claim that "native women" means "whore".

When the discussion is about the treatment of a group Native American women and someone claims that "streetwalker" explains the outcomes, then that person is equating that group of Native American women with streetwalkers.

To insist that it does precludes any meaningful discussion with him over which traits and which combination of traits render people most at risk and which individuals are most in need.

To be fair, a meaningful discussion is precluded with one is dealing with a very shallow "thinker" or someone who confuses poorly reasoned deductions with facts.

 

[bilby]

You are admitting you don't know one of the standard examples--and thus you don't know much about statistics.

"Ready, fire, aim" is not, as far as I can tell, a 'standard example' of anything in Statistics. rather, it is a well known example of the 'self improvement/business buzzword' nonsense that is rampant amongst MBAs and 'business wannabes'.

It is occasionally used to refer to the risk of launching a product into a market before it is ready; But mostly it refers to the exact opposite - the risk of not launching soon enough for fear that your product is not ready, as made famous in the book of that title, by Michael Masterson, in which he spends 375 pages expounding on a three word catchphrase, with the promise that simply by understanding it in his special and different way, you can make yourself a multimillionaire and successful entrepreneur.

Such books are endemic and highly popular with (and usually authored by) a certain kind of smug git who is convinced that his success (however small) was due to his incredible insights and talents, when in most cases, he was just lucky, and got his book published because the 99 people who followed the same path, but went bankrupt in short order, don't get asked to expound upon the secrets to their failure. If you too are incapable of grasping the concept of survivorship bias, then this stuff is for you - although the hard evidence suggests that the way to make a lot of money as a result of self-hep business guru literature is to be an author, not a reader, of this junk.

I have met many devotees of such tripe, who sincerely believed that the only reason that the wisdom such successful people have graciously allowed them to pay for has not made them billions is that they haven't applied it effectively enough. It's a cult.

Cultists often express incredulity that others have not read and understood these buzzwords and buzz-phrases (and the 'one concept stretched to hundreds of pages of pablum' books that they inspired); after all, they are standard examples.

I am thinking of writing a self-help book explaining in excruciating detail how simply buying lots of lottery tickets can make you an overnight millionaire. I shall be sure to include interviews with, and references to, a number of people who can attest to the effectiveness of this strategy from personal experience.

 

[Arctish]

You can't focus on those who actually face danger if you can't identify them, and you can't identify them if you refuse to admit that members of certain groups of people face greater danger than non-members.

"members of certain groups" are not facing greater danger. Individuals with mixtures of particular traits when in particular circumstances are.

I have no idea what hair you're trying to split or why you're trying to split it.

'Individuals with particular traits in particular circumstances' is a meaningless distinction unless you're doing some sort of comparison between those with certain traits and those without them, or those in certain circumstances and those not in them.

Do you know how the HIV/AIDS epidemic was first recognized? Doctors in California noticed an outbreak of an unusual lung infection among gay men. They reported their findings to the CDC, which published the information in a weekly report. Within a few days other doctors treating gay men for the same disease reported their cases to the CDC, too. Other doctors who noticed that gay men in their area had an elevated risk of developing a rare skin cancer thought the elevated risk of sarcoma might be related to the elevated risk of pneumonia and reported their cases to the CDC as well. News outlets picked up the story and began publishing articles about 'gay cancer'. That led to more tips from more doctors, which led researchers and CDC investigators to the discovery of the underlying cause of the outbreaks.

Suppose those doctors had employed your method of only thinking about individuals and denying group identities. That would have led to each doctor treating each patient as a singular case of illness. None of them would have seen the signs of an epidemic striking the gay population because none of them would have been looking at the big picture.

Your suggestion on how to approach the issue of Native women in Yukon and BC being murdered or going missing at an extraordinarily high rate has the exact same problem. If you treat each report as a singular case of misfortune, you'll never see the big picture and you'll never learn how to reduce the risk to those still living and accounted for.

Your approach of refusing to consider group identities leaves hundreds of Native women at risk of being murdered or going missing in the coming year.

No, your approach of confusing groups for individuals leads you to waste attention and resources on people who don't need it and to leave out people who do.

Can you give an example?

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

I have no idea what hair you're trying to split or why you're trying to split it.

That hair is called "prejudice"

People should be treated for who they are, individuals with a unique and wide array of traits, and not as interchangeable representatives of groups defined by single traits.

Suppose those doctors had employed your method of only thinking about individuals and denying group identities. That would have led to each doctor treating each patient as a singular case of illness. None of them would have seen the signs of an epidemic striking the gay population because none of them would have been looking at the big picture.

No. Under my method they would have done pretty much exactly what they did. Reporting on a trait in common between individuals and looking for other traits and combinations of traits to get to the core of the problem, which wasn't being gay. There was no epidemic striking the gay population. There was unsafe sex and the sharing of needles. That more gay men were affected than straight men was a correlation without causation. A chaste gay man was never at risk of getting AIDS. Irresponsible heterosexuals were. And the media treating gays as a group synonymous with AIDS only fed rightwingers in claiming that same sex affection means disease, and that gays, all gays, are degenerates.

You did something similar above when you took Loren's claim that streetwalking could be a explanatory trait for the murders you described to mean him saying first nations women are whores. He had to clarify that he did not say that all first nations women are whores. Pointing to the actual causes of AIDS, irresponsible unsafe sex and sharing of needles, isn't calling gays sexually irresponsible druggies either.

Your suggestion on how to approach the issue of Native women in Yukon and BC being murdered or going missing at an extraordinarily high rate has the exact same problem. If you treat each report as a singular case of misfortune, you'll never see the big picture and you'll never learn how to reduce the risk to those still living and accounted for.

I haven't suggested treating them as single cases of misfortune. I have suggested treating them as individuals. Their traits in common can and should be studied, as traits in common between individuals. As I've said repeatedly what we should NOT do is treat them as interchangeable representatives of groups defined by one trait. I asked if you disagreed, and to my surprise you said that you did, that sometimes we should treat them this way. I am still not certain you meant that even though you stated it clearly, because you seem to be indicating otherwise in other things you write.

Being native doesn't mean you are prey. Being black doesn't mean you are violent. Being a prostitute doesn't mean you are sex trafficked. Being Muslim doesn't mean you are a terrorist. Being Japanese doesn't mean you do martial arts. Treating people with traits in common as groups and then linking characteristics to those groups is how prejudice is formed. We need to instead see them for what they are, individuals, who have some traits in common.

No, your approach of confusing groups for individuals leads you to waste attention and resources on people who don't need it and to leave out people who do.

Can you give an example?

Driving While Black.

 

[SimpleDon]

Yes. I have long advocated this as a solution. We need to breed the concept of race away. Its harder for people to have racial bias when they themselves don't fit neatly into one of the race category boxes people make up.

Just as an additional, this is of course the way that gays forced their way into society. By coming out it was suddenly difficult to hate homosexuals when they are your neighbors and your children.

I do not believe that all conservatives treat blacks as individuals. Some do and some don't. Same with Liberals. Anybody who as the person you quote says "blacks deserve" anything, good or bad, isn't treating people as individuals. Same goes for "whites are this" or "asians are that".

Do you believe that the American citizens who were forced into interment camps at the start of World War II deserve something for the three years that they were in the camps? We paid them and their heirs $20,000 in 1980. That would be ~$60,000 today, ~$20,000 a year, for the insult, I doubt that their prodigy suffered any lasting damage from such a short term.

Since I wrote this I have tried think of any other time that conservatives do treat blacks as individuals rather than as a group. They don't treat them as individuals when when blacks are being disenfranchised by vote caging or voter id laws. They aren't treating them as individuals when painting them as criminal prone.

You have to agree that it is highly disingenuous that the political sector, the conservatives, who embraced legal racism for hundreds of years now are the loudest for getting rid of racism in such a strict sense only when there are the least attempts to help blacks. It is hard to believe that they have become so altruistic and that they aren't still responding to the fear of being overtaken if blacks are elevated in any minor way.

First, we need to acknowledge that conservatives of years ago are not the same people as conservatives today are.

But you are forgetting what conservatives are trying to preserve by continuing to push blacks back, 400 years of social status above blacks, far higher than they would be if blacks had had more equal status.

Again, we need to see them as individuals who share some but certainly not all opinions and ideologies. Second, getting people to speak against racism creates a sentiment or at least quotes by them that can be turned around to apply to all. When you speak against racism, you are a hypocrite if you are racist about it. That goes for the conservatives as much as it goes for the regressive left.

I don't have a great deal of respect for liberals. They have been unable for four decades to counter the conservatives' self-serving arguments as they try to give ever more of the nation's wealth to the already wealthy. Arguments largely devoid of any consistency or grounding in reality. It is so bad now that liberals and conservatives can't even agree on which facts are real.

But I still don't understand what people mean by the term "regressive left." Is it just a play on the words "progressive" and "regressive" or do you have some real meaning behind it? I am familiar with the "New Left" who go all of the way to accepting conservatives' neoliberal economic arguments. There is the old left of trade unionists and socialism. There is a crazy left that go too far by their stances against GMOs, nuclear power, capitalism, all things that they don't understand well enough or by embracing things like solar power saving the planet or their inexplicable fascination with passenger rail travel. There is a left of social democrats, that believes in using market capitalism to better the lives of the most number of people in society rather than what we do now, use the government to increase the wealth of the already wealthy, which as if you couldn't tell is the closest to my position.

Is my crazy left what you mean by the "regressive left." If so it is not very descriptive, my opinion of course.

These highly selective universities reserve the right to make up their student bodies any way that they want for any reason that they want.

Including racism. I see a problem with that.

These research universities are charged with bettering society. They view their student body as an important part of this. If they only accept the students by the criteria that you feel is most important, the test scores, the incoming freshman class will be filled with socially repressed asian women and Jewish men and women of European decent, because they score higher on the college prep tests. I suppose by this criteria you view these universities as not only racist but also anti-semitic.

Careful that you don't realize that these universities also admit large numbers of otherwise under qualified freshman based on their legacy status, because their parents or other relative went to the school. They do this to reward loyal alumni, who provide most of their funding. I suppose that you consider this to be classistam, if that is a thing. They also admit a large number of low income students, whose parents can't afford the tuition, students who may not obtain the scores that the socially repressed asians do.

My son went to medical school at Emory University here in Atlanta. Emory is the majority stockholder of a company called Coke Cola. The parents of their incoming freshman class on average earn much less than the parents of the University of Georgia freshman class. The reason is the scholarships paid for by the Coke.

As long as the concept of race has such a hold on our society the professional universities believe that each race deserves to have doctors, lawyers, etc. from their own race. This is not unreasonable. Remember that an extremely conservative Supreme Court found that this is justifiable

Yes, it is unreasonable. I don't care who from what ideology finds it reasonable. They are wrong and they are excusing racism.

and classism, anti-semitism, as we learned above. We have to add, nationalistic (these universities also limit the number of foreign students), provincial (these schools limit the number of students that they admit from the suburbs in favor of urban and rural students), sexist (males have a better chance of being accepted), and many more that I can't dredge from my memory now. You are really on to something here, I don't know if we have left anyone out. You are multiplying the horribly aggrieved by the minute. Could you possibly be realizing that you are wrong about this? That just maybe the universities themselves are better than you are picking admissions to their school

If a conservative refuses to be treated by a doctor because he is black, then that conservative if being racist. If a liberal insists on a black doctor, then they are also being racist. I have little sympathy for them and don't really mind them suffering the discomfort of being treated by their disliked race.

So this the end of putting up with the realities of racism until there is no race?

No one is being denied an education by these admission requirements. Not like blacks were denied an education in the era of legalized racism.

It isn't nearly as bad, no. Not even close. But it is bad. And yes, people are being denied due to their race, as the spots are limited. I have numerous Asian friends who were well above average on scores but lost the positions to others with lower scores because there are "too many Asians". If that isn't racist, I'm not sure what is. It isn't like they did deep background checks on the candidates. They just looked at the scores and then at the races. Perhaps Canada has gone further over the bend than the USA has, but I suspect it has happened there too.

The tests that you are talking about are college preparatory tests. In theory, the tests measure how prepared the student is to do college work. The schools establish the minimum test scores that they will accept. It is a floor under which they will not admit students, except for the legacies. Scoring higher on the test doesn't make one more qualified for admission, it only says that they are slightly better prepared to do college level work, which won't especially help them because the classes will proceed through the material based on the amount of preparation of the lower acceptable scores. Making above the minimum is just the first step in being admitted.

Scoring higher on the test doesn't mean that you are entitled to admission, the implication of what you said above. My son went to a very good, private college preparatory high school here in Atlanta. He wanted to go to Georgia Tech, which is probably one of the three best engineering research universities in the country. In the past the high school had more students accepted to Georgia Tech than any other high school. That stopped abruptly two years before my son graduated from high school, with fewer than half of the previous numbers of acceptances.

The reason is that the Georgia Legislature passed a law that the Georgia research universities couldn't take the quality of the high school of prospective students into account for admission. He wasn't accepted. I told him what you need to tell your friends, suck it up, if you really want to go there find a way, don't just whine about how unfair it is. He went to another university, got his phi beta kappa key, transferred in to Georgia Tech at the start of his junior year. He graduated with highest honors in chemical/biometric engineering, the people who design pharmaceutical production plants.

He took a bridge year after he graduated from Tech and worked cartooning on the computer for Turner Broadcasting's Williams St. division, who do their late night programs. He then went on to medical school as possibly the first professional cartoonist to go to medical school where he earned his MD and a PhD. He is now working on his own designing software tools for medical research, possibly one of a very few in the country with his unique set of skills.

I am very proud of my son for how he handled all of this. I never doubted him. If you can, teach your child how to fly, how to be a pilot. I taught both of my children and there is nothing else like it for teaching self-confidence, the need to pay attention to the details, to be disciplined, to plan, and above all, learning to rely on yourself. If you can't do this take them hiking and camping, teach them to rock climb and repel, to skydive or to mountain climb, to do something that they never in one hundred years thought that they could do.

Racism is still rampant in hiring in the private sector. This results in blacks being over represented in the public sector. And predictably, disingenuous conservatives see this as further evidence of inverse racism.

If people are being hired in the public sector because they are black, then yes, that is racism. And it doesn't in any way undo the racism in the private sector. The answer to racism is to route it out and to create empathy between people of different races, not to create more racism elsewhere, such as in the private sector, or in minority owned shops.

If they can't work in the private sector because of racism there is a larger number of blacks available to work in the public sector. It is a natural result of the racism in the private sector. Do you think that the public sector should reduce the number of blacks hired? How would that reduce the racism in either sector. It seems to me that it would increase the amount of racism.

Although my career I choose to work with women and minorities not because I was a racist but because they were normally over qualified for the work that they were doing. By your strict definition of racism I was guilty of not only being a raging reverse(?) racist but a reverse(?) misogynist too.

Racism is still rampant in education. Blacks are still over represented in the underprivileged. The schools that serve the underprivileged are poorly supported, a result of the uneven funding created by the reliance on property taxes. The solution is a more even funding of the schools, but this is opposed because it would mean sending our money to help others, a strict redline of redistribution for conservatives. The intentional redistribution of money is required in a capitalistic system where the system over rewards capital and rentiers and under rewards labor and invention.

The property tax for funding idea is a bad one. End that. Have equal public funding for all. No need to involve race in that. It will help more black people than white people, but it will do so in a non-racist way.

The idea that this should be ignored results in large degree of pain to the poor and disproportionately then to blacks. This is racism from specious economics, fully supported by the grateful sponsors and beneficiaries of movement conservatism, the already wealthy. The redistribution of wealth from the poor and the middle class to the already wealthy, supported by conservatives largely because of its appeal to their residual racism and sexism. How else can you explain the singular most striking racial imbalance in this support, the large number of white middle and lower class men who support the wealthy against the men's own economic interests?

Again, this is addressing class as much as or more so than race. If they are using class as a racial proxy to sneak in their racism against black people by abusing the poor overall, then champion the poor overall. This is the reverse of the same racial proxy argument we hear from the regressive left, who want to help the black because the black are equated with the poor. Helping the poor is the answer to both of these proxy failures of logic.

As for why white middle and lower class men support conservatives who want to screw them over against their own interests, you'll have to ask those people. I have asked a few, and usually the answer is that they care more about other social issues, religion, abortion, guns, military jingoism, etc. Some of them have racism mixed into that, as we saw with some Trump supporters last election, but that is far from the complete picture.

Are there any other reasons for this level of support for laissez faire economics among white middle class and poor men?

Again, you'll have to ask them. I suspect that yes, there are many. I'm so far on the other end of that though that I can't even pretend to speak for them.

What I don't support is the national basic income. It will always be derided by the right as welfare (or an entitlement) even if everyone receives it. You don't have to look any further than long time the Republican targets of Medicare and Social Security to see the truth of this.

So, some people will oppose it. That doesn't make it a bad idea. We need to convince them and bring them on board. Again, as I noted above, "conservatives" are not a hive mind who all agree with one another, as much as they may appear that way to us liberals (and yes, they often do!). There will no doubt be cries of "Socialism!" and scare tactics used, but eventually we'll get used to it and own't want to give it up, just how Conservatives in Canada don't want to lose universal health care.

Most people would see most or all of their national income taken away in the higher taxes needed to pay for it.

I disagree with that. A large chunk sure, taxes will go up, but it won't take all of everyone's money. There are a number of ways to fund it, and one is the end of inheritance as I noted in previous posts above. Heavy sales and consumption tax is another. Setting mandated wages employers must pay, rather than having the government put in UBI, puts the load entirely on employers, as those who automate or run businesses requiring fewer workers, and the idle rich, don't pay their fair share.

You didn't respond to my complaint that the UBI is a subsidy for low wages. What the government subsidizes we get more of. No matter how much money you dispense in universal basic income, as long as employers have the upper hand in wage negotiations, which they have now and will continue to have as long as the government puts its weight on the side of the employers against the workers, then we will always have low wages. The load has to be put on the employers by taking away the current barriers to collective action by the workers. Until then the employers will just let the wages that they pay decline to the point that the UBI plus the wages is equal to the wages that they paid before the UBI.

This is an externality. It is a cost that should be put on to the employers that they must pay their employees a decent wage, without relying on the rest of society to make up the deficiency of the wages; welfare, food stamps, subsidized health care, etc.

We impose all kinds of externalities on to employers. Employers have run a safe workplace, they can't hire children, they must limit the workweek to 40 hours, they have to clean up most but not all of the pollution they produce, they products have be safe and do what they claim that it does, etc. What could be more basic than requiring the employer to pay a decent wage that reflects the contribution of labor to the success of the company?

This drives me nuts about liberals. They first turn to the government to correct problems that we should making the responsibility of the people who cause the problem. Wages are too low because workers don't have enough bargaining power to negotiate wages, in large part because the wealthy succeeded in the government hobbling the unions, pass an UBI. The insurance companies conspired with the private, for profit hospitals to let medical costs climb 10% a year, pass ObamaCare. Let the government do it but lordy don't threaten the profits!

I have no intention of mandating wages. I was pretty specific about what I would do instead of the UBI. Except for raising the minimum wage I would avoid direct government action on wages. (The minimum wage workers are long over due for an increase.) I would boost the negotiating power of workers through collective bargaining, support for the unions. Corporations set their wage structure in a monopoly setting by the government. I would put the workers on an even footing with the shareholders to claim a share of the profits of the company.

The rest of your post was an interesting read about economics but rather off topic to the current conversation. Maybe a good starting point for a new separate thread?

It is hard for me to host a thread, I am disabled and can't type on a keyboard. But I will try again.

Ultimately politics is all about the economy. The very concept of race was created to justify enslaving people to provide a source of cheap labor.

Governments were formed originally to regulate the economy and specifically to decide who got what of the rewards of the economy. The rich understand this, they didn't have anywhere near the profits when the government was actively supporting the unions. That is why they want control of the government, to use it to increase their share as a class of the rewards produced by the economy.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

To you, 'Native woman' means 'whore'.

This again is the problem with addressing groups instead of individuals. Loren's claim, unfounded or not, that this is more linked to the trait of being a streetwalker than the trait of being native, does NOT contain a claim that "native women" means "whore". To insist that it does precludes any meaningful discussion with him over which traits and which combination of traits render people most at risk and which individuals are most in need.

The thing is, if it's streetwalking rather than race it's not an example of the racism they are so desperate to find evidence of.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

When the discussion is about the treatment of a group Native American women and someone claims that "streetwalker" explains the outcomes, then that person is equating that group of Native American women with streetwalkers.

No. I am saying they are disproportionately streetwalkers, not that they all are. This is due to poverty, no reason to think racism.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Suppose those doctors had employed your method of only thinking about individuals and denying group identities. That would have led to each doctor treating each patient as a singular case of illness. None of them would have seen the signs of an epidemic striking the gay population because none of them would have been looking at the big picture.

You are not understanding the distinction between traits and groups. It's basically the same concept but from opposite sides of the picture.

We are saying you have individuals with traits A, B & C.

You are looking at them as members of group A--fine if A is the right answer but this will lead you seriously astray if it turns out to be B. Your viewpoint causes tunnel vision.

Even when you identify groups with a risk that doesn't mean all members of the group have that risk. A monogamous gay couple is at no more risk than a monogamous straight couple. The primary risk factor is casual sex.