A comment from a Canadian on Saturday's column in the NY Times by Nicholas Kristoff, "How Do We Stop the Parade of Gun Deaths?"
All these Americans must die so the gun fetishists can have their 20 guns each and their assault weapons and pretend to be navy seals. So the gun industry can keep their profits rolling selling guns and ammunition. (Almost 40 M guns were sold in America last year.) Because a minority of citizens in the US can control what the country does -- the Democrats in the US Senate represent 41,549,808 more people than do the Republicans, even though the seats are split 50-50. "Republican Senators Haven’t Represented a Majority of Voters Since 1996." Journalist and columnist Eric Black writes
Few, if any, other “democracies” have anything this undemocratic built into their systems.... the arguably least democratic feature of the Constitution, is the only thing in the whole document that can never be amended.
77 comments:
That letter mentions items that liberals consider important. Consider the examples a conservative would provide of being a better American
-- treating people the same, regardless of ethnicity
-- preventing illegal immigration and other illegal acts
-- dealing with the National Debt and the enormous deficit
-- supporting civil liberties, including Freedom of Speech and the Right to Bear Arms
-- encouraging loving, two-parent families for every child.
By these standards, Democrats, from President Biden on down, don't measure up.
Cheers
David in Cal
A better America for whom?
If you are a well-off WASP this approach makes it a better America for you and your class.
For everyone else it becomes a worse America.
EM - I don't agree.
-- Illegal immigration is good for well-off businessmen. It keeps wage levels low. That's why the Business wing of the Republican Party opposed Trump. Illegal immigration is very bad for black Americans, especially black youths, because illegal immigrants take away entry level jobs.
-- Crime is a bigger problem for blacks than for well-off WASPs, because blacks are disproportionately the victims of crime, and by a big margin.
-- Black children are more often lacking in loving two parent families than Asian or Caucasian children.
-- the right to bear arms is particularly important for self defense for blacks and others living in high-crime neighborhoods.
-- If and when the national debt causes some economic disaster, the harm will fall on all, just as the Great Depression did.
Cheers
DiC: "Illegal immigration is very bad for black Americans, especially black youths, because illegal immigrants take away entry level jobs."
I guess you've decided their place in your society.
This is another thing that annoys me about your better America.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-56629013
What kind of country allows a company to make its profit and leave its mess behind for the emergency services and the Federal government to clear up?
You do realise that this is a clean up that your taxes are paying for.
The phosphate company took its profit and left you to pay the cost.
EM, there are 1,317 "Superfund" sites in the US where taxpayers pay to clean up sh*t corporations have left behind.
https://time.com/4695109/superfund-sites-toxic-waste-locations/
Serious sh*t.
>> -- the right to bear arms is particularly important for self defense for blacks and others living in high-crime neighborhoods. <<
Is that really working out in inner cities in Chicago, LA, Baltimore, NY, or just continually making it all worse, all more of a war zone?
David wrote:
"-- treating people the same, regardless of ethnicity
-- preventing illegal immigration and other illegal acts
-- dealing with the National Debt and the enormous deficit
-- supporting civil liberties, including Freedom of Speech and the Right to Bear Arms
-- encouraging loving, two-parent families for every child."
David, liberals agree with all these things except the widespread availability of guns.
Except conservatives don't believe in dealing with the national debt or deficit.
"Except conservatives don't believe in dealing with the national debt or deficit."
A pox on both your houses for this one. I don't think it will be pretty when it all comes crashing down under the weight of the debt.
I don't think the economy will come crashing down because of debt. We'll just keep carrying it. It's not expensive to carry, only about 2% of GDP over the last 20 years, and inflation and economic growth will eat away at it over time.
Besides, as Paul Krugman points out, almost all of it is money we owe ourselves, and the Fed can always print money to cover the govt's debt obligations if necessary. That's different than the debt of EU countries, where no country can print euros. That's what got Greece, Spain etc in trouble.
David - I am shocked by your comment, because it's so different from my view of reality. I do agree with you and Layzej that today's conservative politicians don't believe in dealing with the national debt or deficit. On the other points, your statements illustrate how your news and my news are so very different. In my news,
-- Many liberals favor treating different racers differently. E.g., affirmative action in college admission, separate dorms for minorities, giving money to blacks https://oaklandside.org/2021/03/25/oakland-black-student-reparations-school-closures/
black preference on vaccinations
https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/09/health-experts-want-to-prioritize-people-of-color-for-covid19-vaccine-but-how-should-it-be-done/
-- liberals encourage more illegal immigration: E.g., sanctuary cities and states. Biden discontinuing Trump's wall.
-- not all liberals have abandoned Freedom of Speech, but speech restrictions on supposedly offensive speech are popular with liberals, especially on college campuses. Restrictions on conservative media are also popular. I was saddened when my own Democratic Congresswoman, who I respect, came out if favor of such restrictions.
https://eshoo.house.gov/sites/eshoo.house.gov/files/Eshoo-McNerney-TV-Misinfo%20Letters-2.22.21.pdf
-- Conservatives at least talk about the importance of maintaining two-parent families and discouraging single motherhood.
Cheers
"the Fed can always print money to cover the govt's debt obligations if necessary."
Deficit-to-GDP ratio was 17.9% in 2020. That was a bad year, but bad years happen. Debt is consistently over 100% of GDP.
Whether you print money, or increase debt, either way you are borrowing from your children. If they are lucky, they can pass the debt on to their children. There must be a limit to how much can be borrowed before it all comes crashing down. I'm sure we'll know that limit when we reach it.
Dick Cheney is reported to have said "Ronald Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter."
If neither party cares about the deficit, it seems certain that the limit will be reached.
David, conservatives only talk about families, they do absolutely nothing for them. Democrats create and increase aid to children, mothers, establish health care, want to expand health care, increase the minimum wage, want strong unions, and on and on -- all of these are pro-family measures. As would be a universal basic income.
Free speech?? Like Mitch McConnell and other Republicans now telling corporations to shut up and know their place instead of taking a position on Georgia voting laws? Free speech like Colin Kapernick kneeling? Like the Dixie Chicks talking about GW Bush?
"Restrictions on conservative media?" Where?
Not all liberals are in favor of hate speech laws, BTW.
What's wrong with reparations to blacks if it's democratically determined? Do you deny that whites benefited ENORMOUSLY from slavery and from racism and the suppression of blacks since? That blacks still lead inferior lives, on average, compared to whites?
What's wrong with black preferences on vaccinations? The data clearly show they are being vaccinated at lower rates. This harms them. What's wrong with trying to ensure they get equal treatment? Would you prefer they continue to receive unequal treatment?
Layzej said...
>> There must be a limit to how much can be borrowed before it all comes crashing down. <<
Why?
Governments aren't people. They aren't subject to the same economic rules as people.
I started seriously following the news at the start of the Reagan administration. Since then everyone has constantly said the deficit and debt was a big problem that was going to blow up in our face. Yet it never has. So maybe there is no limit, or it's much much higher than we think.
Here an economist from my graduate school alma mater, Stony Brook University, explains her new theory that we're thinking about government debt all wrong:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/09/opinion/us-deficit-coronavirus.html
If you can't read the link, Google "Stephanie Kelton" and you'll get a lot of info. My understanding is that her idea, MMF, is becoming popular with some economics. I'm not going to read her books because when I read economics books like that each sentence makes sense to me, and usually each paragraph, but when I finish the book I have no idea what it all meant.
Anyway. Maybe it will all come crashing down. But if it gets close, I bet the big money men of the country will somehow patch it before then, like they did in 2008-09.
What's wrong with black preferences on vaccinations? You're treating black people as if they were all part of a single organism. In reality, they're individuals.
Do I deny that whites benefited from slavery and racism and suppression of black votes? It depends on which whites you're talking. Of course some white people benefited from slavery a long time ago, l but those people are long dead, so they can't pay reparations. Similarly, no living black person was ever a slave. Did I benefit from slavery? Was my late cousin Blanche harmed by slavery? Not at all.
Government mandated racial preferences are banned by the Constitution. The Supreme Court has allowed them in certain specific cases.
Giving preferences based on race is one more way of emphasizing race. It also increases racial animosity. Blacks today already benefit from affirmative action. I was once ordered to hire black person for a position as Assistant Actuary. Should Whites and Asians be given reparations?
Another aspect I hate is treating race as a person's most important characteristic. That's not necessarily so. And, we shouldn't try to make it more the case. I stand with MLK who wanted a world where the content of one's character was more important than the color of one's skin.
I apologize, because this comment is kind of disjointed. However, I a posting it rather than wait to try to improve its clarity.
cheers
David, only white people say that “Giving preferences based on race is one more way of emphasizing race.”
David, once you start thinking about where money comes from and how it is created in the first place things start getting wierd. It's really just a very big illusion. We pretent these numbers mean anything, that a piece of paper with funny printing can be exchanged for stuff that we need, and as long as everyone keep that belief things work out. Lose the belief and money loses its value, which happens now and then in countries that get hyperinflation.
Thomas, yes. On the other hand, basing money on something like gold means the value of what you have in the bank changes every time a miner brings a chunk of gold out of a mine in South Africa.
Gold is also a kind of fiction. After the apocalypse, you can have all the gold bars you want, but it's more likely I will value a can of beans higher.
David -- Your comment is unsupported. It implies that non-whites are too dense to see this obvious point. It's probably false. Don't forget that some race preferences work against some non-whites. E.g., my friend George's Korean-American son-in-law is part of a lawsuit regarding anti-Asian prejudice in college admissions.
Cheers
A British £5 note says on its front " I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of Five Pounds. "
It is signed by the Chief Cashier of the Bank of England.
It is an IOU.
It is imaginary money whose value depends on a shared fantasy which works as long as we all believe in it.
I suppose it's better than barter.
David, whites never complain when they get preferences based on race.
David, you wrote, "Don't forget that some race preferences work against some non-whites."
Almost ALL race preferences work against non-whites.
It's just that most of these preferences are invisible to white people and they take them for granted.
David wrote:
"Did I benefit from slavery? ... Not at all."
Yes, I think that you and I, as whites, did benefit from slavery.
As just one example, our grandfathers likely went to better schools than did the grandfathers of today's black Americans. (I'm speaking here on average.) They received better educations. They weren't discriminated in hiring as were blacks then. Or even our father's generations. So our grandfathers' families did better than did the families of blacks' in general, so white families were healthier, more educated, etc. These features still show up in all kinds of statistics of white vs blacks today, in education, health, income, housing, everywhere.
Discrimination, especially the intense discrimination against blacks that happened in the US before about 1970, does not vanish overnight.
David - prejudice may not vanish overnight, but discrimination can. Discrimination agasint blacks is illegal, of course. OTOH I have seen a number of examples of major discrimination in favor of blacks.
--My sister left her job with the Social Security Administration when she had children. After the children were older, she was unable to return to her job, because blacks were given preference.
-- I once had a Yale student as a summer employee in the actuarial department. He was far below the competence one would expect from a math major at Yale. It was obvious that he had been accepted through affirmative actions, that is, discrimination in his favor.
-- I once was order to hire a minority. When I hired a Chinese-American women, my boss chewed me out. By "hire a minority", he meant "hire a black". However, not a single black person applied.
Cheers
"We pretent these numbers mean anything, that a piece of paper with funny printing can be exchanged for stuff that we need, and as long as everyone keep that belief things work out."
Neil Stevenson has a book where King Louis recalled all the coins and exchanged them for ones of half the weight but (by the will of Le Roi) the same value. He then was able to keep the other half to fund his wars.
Fool proof :)
"Free speech like Colin Kapernick kneeling"
+1
David wrote:
"Discrimination agasint blacks is illegal, of course."
Oh yes, of course, and that's been so effective, hasn't it?
"OTOH I have seen a number of examples of major discrimination in favor of blacks."
Like all conservatives, you're very good at counting up discrimination in favor of blacks, but very bad at counting up discrimination in favor of whites.
David - I'm a lot older than you, so I've seen huge amounts of discrimination against blacks. However, I haven't personally experienced or seen much in more recent years, since it was made illegal. I listed 3 personal anecdotes, things I directly experienced or had knowledge of, illustrating discrimination in favor of blacks. Instead of playing the race card, how about describing some incidents of relatively recent discrimination against blacks that you personally experienced or had knowledge of.
Cheers
Layzej, rulers forging their own currency, usually by mixing the silver with less valuable metals, go back to at least Rome. That why you have Gresham's law stating that "bad money drives out good", since people held on to the best coins and tried to barter for the crappy ones.
One of Newton's less appreciated works is that he managed to standardize british currency so a penny was worth a penny, regardless of which coin you had. I think
Neal Stephenson wrote about that too in one of his books.
Hey DiC,
Watch Amber Ruffin explain the ongoing impacts of red-lining: https://twitter.com/i/status/1355501013990428673
There is also systemic disenfranchisement: "In 2018, Black and Latino voters waited 11 minutes and white voters 9 minutes, on average. But as the percentage of nonwhite voters in a precinct increased, so did wait times – from 5 minutes in districts that were 90% white or more, to 32 minutes in districts that were 90% nonwhite or more."
David, come on, I don't have to recount personal knowledge of discrimination against blacks to know that discrimination against blacks exists in America. That's ridiculous. I also don't personally know anyone who's died of COVID.
But I did go on a date last Saturday with a banker here in Salem who is black (and also an immigrant with an accent) who told me about the rise in hate filled remarks she's received, on the job and off, since Trump was elected, some even from clients she's worked with for years (and still works with).
Thomas, I didn't really understand the meaning of that phrase (Gresham's Law). Thanks.
David -- Conservatives are receiving an increase in hate-filled remarks. E.g., you just implied that I and all conservatives are racist. That was in your comment a few comments ago, at 4:03PM. Layzej's link provided another example: Amber Ruffin referred to Trump as "this idiot."
Layzej - Regarding Amber Ruffin: Yes, there was total red-lining back in the 1930's, but red-lining has been illegal for 52 years. I'll give you a personal example. Under the Nixon Administration, the federal government recommended reforms in state workers compensation laws. As a young actuary, it was my job to estimate the cost impact of the benefit changes. I needed a mortality table to measure the change in death benefits. I was told to use the White table, rather than the All races table. This obviously made no sense, as black people die from work accidents, too. This illustrates the thinking that existed in 1969.
David -- The following comment is about thinking, not politics. Today's world has a lot of partisanship. One can find any number of intelligent speakers who can make strong case for their side. Layzej came up with Ruffin to show one side of the debate. I could find others who would effectively make the counter-argument. So, how should we decide what reality is? Most people choose to believe the side they prefer. And, they follow news presented by people who share their belief.
That's why I consider it valuable to look for as many examples with which I'm personally familiar. I just don't trust any commentator to give an unbiased analysis.
Cheers
David, where specifically did I imply that you, and/or all conservatives, are racist? I've specifically been trying to avoid that....
David - this was the comment I was referring to:
Like all conservatives, you're very good at counting up discrimination in favor of blacks, but very bad at counting up discrimination in favor of whites.
Cheers
DiC: "Yes, there was total red-lining back in the 1930's, but red-lining has been illegal for 52 years."
You need to watch the video to understand how red-lining is still impacting the black community in the USA.
(Layzej: You may also find this article by Brad Plumer interesting in how redlining made black communities more susceptible to heat waves: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/24/climate/racism-redlining-cities-global-warming.html )
I'm going to bring this up here even though it's off-topic to this thread, because otherwise it will get lost below:
EM wrote in another thread:
If you do the numbers, we committed to 1.5C ten years ago and the current CO2 level commits us to 1.7C once the lags work through. In ten years time we'll be committed to 2C under any likely scenario.
What numbers or paper are you referring to?
If one is going to make effective policy, it's necessary to take into account committed warming. The paper by Ricke & Caldeira (2014) says that the temperature peaks 10 years after the emission and basically adds another 0.2 C of warming or so. However, the more recent paper by Dessler and crowd (2020), which includes the pattern effect, says we are already committed to about 2.3C although the time scale might be many decades. (By the way, good video by Dessler explaining their results here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlolDdnSHCE)
The quote above falls somewhere in the middle --- where does it come from?
JoeT
My own calculations.I like using back-of-the-envelope calculations to check the professionals.
I use the CO2 forcing equation ∆F=5.35ln(C/Co), for climate sensitivity the IPCC midrange estimate of 3.0.To calculate the change in temperature ∆T use the forcing constant, 3.7W/m^2/C.
We are 1.2C above the 1880 temperature and 280ppm CO2.
To achieve that the equation predicts you would need 370ppm.
5.35ln(370/280)3/3.7 = 1.2C.
We passed 370ppm in 2000, which was 20 years ago. That's the lag.
Now for the future. Current CO2 is 418ppm, leading to a temperature of
5.35ln(418/280)3/3.7 = 1.7C
That will emerge in 20 years time, sometime in the 2040s.
To reach 2C requires 445ppm.
5.3ln(445/280)3/3.7 =2.0C
At 2ppm/year we will reach 445ppm CO2 in another 13 years, 2034. Add in the lag and 2C will arrive around 2054.
These figures are probably conservative. When you add in the effects of permafrost and clathrates melt, everything will probably happen earlier.
Oh yes. 1.5C requires 395ppm
5.35ln(395/280)3/3.7=1.5C.
We passed 395ppm in 2013 and can expect to see 1.5C around 2033.
Layzej - I forced myself to watch the entire presentation. She is charming and well-spoken, but no at all accurate. There are a huge number of incorrect, false, or biased statements in her presentation. If I had it in written form, I might be willing to take the time to point out the errors one line at a time. However, I don't want to start criticizing based on the video, because I'll miss too many errors.
Cheers
Hey EM, thanks a lot! I'm a big fan of back-of-the-envelope estimates.
I noticed that Michael Mann seems to take a more optimistic view, siding with the Caldeira paper. If Dessler et. al. are right, we're in for a whole lot of hurt.
Joey
Caldeira is projecting 0.2C/decade.
I am projecting 0.24C/decade.
Dessler is higher.
We are currently close to 0.2C and accelerating.
Interesting times.🤒
EM, I used to think one could use radiative forcing for temperature change calculations, and have done so on this blog years ago, but then I learned you can't, you have to use energy imbalance.
For one thing, there are other RFs besides CO2, especially a large negative RF from aerosols.
Also, RFs are calculated and measured at the tropopause, not the surface or TOA.
The energy imbalance is mostly the heat gain of the ocean, plus a bit, which is now about 0.7 W/m2. (See Greg Johnson's work, he's at NOAA I think. Or NASA.) See what delta-T you get for that.
David, I don't think I know you well enough to know if you're a racist, though from what I know I doubt you are since I know you to be a thoughtful and educated and open person.
But I think counting up instances of discrimination against whites borderlines on a racist thing to do. It has become popular among some conservatives recently (some, not all, sorry, I was wrong about that) perhaps because they think it gives them cover for their own discrimination, or at least claims of their discrimination....
David - Reality is essential when trying to solve a problem. Many Democratic programs (supposedly) aimed at helping blacks have been ineffective or counter-productive. IMO racism is NOT the main problem holding blacks back. IMO people who claim that a major prtoblem is widespread racism or White Supremacy are disserving black Americans.
The term "racist" has lost most of its meaning. When I was young, racists were people who acted to hold blacks back. People who fought for segregation in schools and elsewhere. Today, many blacks and many self-described anti-racists support various types of racial segregation. Many of them support affirmative action in college admissions, despite evidence that this approach hurts blacks more than it helps them, due to the mismatch problem. I know of no actuarial or physics formula for measuring someone's degree of racism, by today's standards.
So, I won't call Democrats "racists". Instead, I will assert that President Trump's policies were better overall for black Americans than President Biden's policies.
Cheers
David Appell
"The energy imbalance is mostly the heat gain of the ocean, plus a bit, which is now about 0.7 W/m2. (See Greg Johnson's work, he's at NOAA I think. Or NASA.) See what delta-T you get for that. "
I've used that 0.7W/m^2 to calculate various things. It is straightforward to calculate that Earth is taking up 3*10^21 joules/year.
I then worked out the average annual temperature rise of the bulk ocean and used that to calculate that thermal expansion is raising sea level by 1.4mm/year.
What I haven't worked out yet is a back-of-the-envelope calculation to convert the energy imbalance into an annual rise in global average temperature. Any suggestions?
EM: "Caldeira is projecting 0.2C/decade. I am projecting 0.24C/decade."
BEST and RSS already show a 30 year linear trend of 0.22C and 0.25C per decade: https://woodfortrees.org/data/best/last:360/trend/plot/rss/last:360/trend
This helps a little.
https://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/2016/earths-energy-imbalance/#:~
Unfortunately not much. The best I can do is note that under RCP8.5 the 0.7W/m^2 energy imbalance increases surface temperatures by 4C/century.
Not satisfactory. I'm just correlating with no physical basis.
EM, I don't think there is a simple way to convert energy imbalance to change in surface temperature. That's why big climate models are needed.
However, there is the climate-carbon response function I've often used on this blog:
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature08047
dT/dC = 1.0-2.1 degC/TtC
where C is carbon emitted, and the last group of symbols is trillion tonnes of carbon emitted. This is the *transient* warming, not the ultimate, full warming, but that's what you've been calculating anyway. Here's some interesting little manipulation involving RF:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transient_climate_response_to_cumulative_carbon_emissions
Here's the relevant graph I found on somebody's blog:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jDy9w33GfvE/Vcgx312HJ2I/AAAAAAAAFRo/gfj7q1bBg3c/s320/cumulativeemissions.jpg
The world is (was) emitting about 11 GtC/yr, so dT = 0.11-0.23 C/decade
Not especially helpful. Just a rule of thumb. (Take the high end.)
That last equation should be dT/dt, not simply dT.
The "d's" are deltas, of course.
David Appell.
Thanks.
I remember teaching science pupils to use calculators, and how prone they were to decimal point errors. They needed to check that their answers were at least approximately correct. I told them "Don't use the calculator until you know the answer" (which produced some puzzled looks) and went on to suggest using an approximate mental calculation first.
Thus 9347×113/505 = 2091 and 10000*100/500 =2000.
Like any good sceptic I like to check for myself rather than just accepting what I'm told. We can't duplicate the expert analyses, but we amateurs can at least check that their answers are reasonable.
EM, John Wheeler took your maxim one step further - don't start a calculation until you know the answer.
This Wheeler?
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-epa-nominee-wheeler-says-climate-change-not-the-greatest-crisis
No, sorry, I thought perhaps I should have explained -- John Wheeler, physicist extraordinaire, great teacher and graduate advisor of Richard Feynman (and many others):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Archibald_Wheeler
That got me intrigued. After some research I now know how to build a hydrogen bomb👺.
David wrote:
"Instead, I will assert that President Trump's policies were better overall for black Americans than President Biden's policies."
How about we see if blacks themselves agree?
They voted for Biden by 87%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election#Black_voters
David - this article says more or less what I wanted to say in response to your comment about things racist conservatives say. Please read it before reading the rest of my comment.
https://thechicagothinker.com/not-all-crimes-matter-to-the-mainstream-media/
IMO not only do liberal media bias their coverage as described in the article, they also bias their coverage to mask black deficiencies, like the fact that ON AVERAGE, black students lag white students by 3 to 4 years, and Asians are a year ahead of whites.
Here's where it leads: People like you are implicitly told that one ought to follow this bias in their own conversation, on pain of being tarred as a racist. You assert that Conservatives may talk this way to cover up their own racism. Why should we need an excuse to say true things? It's liberal who dissemble by ignoring these things.
Cheers
David, some conservatives focus on a few instances of discrimination against whites while ignoring the vastly greater, overwhelmingly greater discrimination against blacks. So it looks shallow and self-serving.
David, there is lots of coverage of the Uber Eats driver in the MSM, in WaPo, MSN, Newsweek, and many more. Check next time.
https://www.bing.com/news/search?q=Mohammad+Anwar&FORM=HDRSC6
Thanks for your responses, David. I sincerely appreciate your reponses, although I disagree with them.
You say there are "vastly greater, overwhelmingly greater discrimination against blacks" than against whites. Of course this was historically the case, but what's your proof that its true today? Many of those who share your belief would say that inequality of outcome proves discrimination. I do not share that belief.
Addressing the amount of Uber Eats coverage is a way of ignoring the main contention. IMO the media bias described in the article is just enormous.
Cheers
David, are you seriously wondering why a mass shooting in Atlanta where a man goes from massage parlor to massage parlor killing Asian women gets more attention than the Uber Eats driver killing?
I'm not interested in debating that.
Nor do I feel any need to prove to you that black discrimination in American is vastly greater than white discrimination. The question is insulting and you're a fucking racist for asking it.
You used to be a nice guy, David, but Trumpism has really warped you.
David -
I enjoy debating with people on the web because their responses strengthen my understanding and force me to think more carefully about things. Of course, I realize that opinions virtually never change. However, you're obviously very smart and you're a scientist, which means thinking in an open-minded, objective, fact-based manner. I might be wrong about the relative amount of discrimination against various races today, but I don't think it's improper to ask the question and try to answer it based on facts. Rejecting the question by calling it "racist" reminds me of those who rejected the theory of relativity, calling it "Jewish science".
Cheers
Rejecting the question by calling it "racist" reminds me of those who rejected the theory of relativity, calling it "Jewish science".
This is seriously delusional. If Samuel Johnson were alive he might say that the last refuge of a scoundrel is comparing yourself to Einstein.
I, for one, am sick of reading Trumpist propaganda here.
David, I won't be goaded into such a discussion.
The first refuge of someone who lacks facts is the ad hominem attack.
Cheers
Surely this is easily settled.
If the USA is not racist then skin colour would be irrelevant. Black and white should have equal % employment and equal average pay. They should have equal life expectancies, equal access to healthcare and an equal % would be billionaires. They should queue for the same time to vote and have an equal probability of being shot by the police.
Any data?
EM - your comment assumes that blacks are equal to whites and Asians in every respect. But, the reality is that blacks lag Asians by 4 to 5 years in school, on average. The black crime rate is a multiple of the white and Asian crime rates. A larger percentage of black children are not raised by their parents in 2-parent families. A serious analysis must include these and other relevant social factors.
I would add that wrongly blaming racism for the differences you point to does significant harm to black Americans. The wrong diagnosis leads to ineffective cures. To improve black Americans' lot, we need to solve the real sources of the problems.
Cheers
David in Cal
Genetically there are no races. All 8 billion of us are part of the same gene pool.
All the differences you describe are cultural and racism has moulded the cultures.
David in Cal
This is what you should be aiming for in your treatment of those with greater malaria and skin cancer resistance; equity not equality.
https://skepticalscience.com/fair-or-no-climate-policy.html
EM - Yes, I agree that the differences are cultural.
IMO It's just too glib to say that racism molded the culture. Did anti-white racism cause Asians to outdo whites? Why are Mormons so successful, despite a history of anti-Mormon bigotry? Did anti-gentile racism cause Jews to outdo gentiles? Why do Nigerian immigrants do so much better than many other African immigrants? I don't believe anyone has definitive answers to the question of how a culture forms. Clearly, much more is involved
than just racism.
However, none of this invalidates my prior comment. It's just wrong to assume that racism is the only cause of difference between races or between any groups of human beings.
Cheers
P.S. Thomas Sowell has done extensive research on culture. One of his findings is that culture tends to persist. E.g. he points out that Chinese immigrants and their descendants in various countries continue to maintain the culture of Chinese people in China.
David in Cal
"One of his findings is that culture tends to persist. E.g. he points out that Chinese immigrants and their descendants in various countries continue to maintain the culture of Chinese people in China."
That explains why they work so hard in school. China has had a functioning bureaucracy for 3000 years, with entrance by competitive examination. That embeds a respect for education very deep into a culture.The
Now consider the blacks. They were uprooted from their culture and kept as slaves. They were not educated, treated as subhumans and assumed to be less intelligent than the whites. Many whites still assume that. They were, and are, discriminated against in the job market. That does not send them the message that it is worthwhile to get a good education.
EM -- Your theory is plausible, but it's just a guess. Another theory is that certain government programs had the effect promoting 1 parent families. A related guess is that certain government programs had the effect of making blacks less self-sufficient and more reliant on government. There's no way to prove whether any of these guesses is correct. We can't re-run history.
But, why does it matter? Regardless of how we got here, you and I and most Americans share the goal of fixing the situation. I think it's counter-productive to focus on how we arrived at this situation. Instead we should focus what approaches work, which ones don't work, and which ones are counter-productive.
Cheers
"A related guess is that certain government programs had the effect of..."
Yeah. Redlining. It concentrated wealth among people of a certain colour.
Layzej - I am mystified by your comment. The federal government banned redlining 53 years ago
the Fair Housing Act of 1968 was passed to fight the practice. According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, "The Fair Housing Act makes it unlawful to discriminate in the terms, conditions, or privileges of sale of a dwelling because of race or national origin.
You need to watch the video to understand how red-lining is still impacting the black community in the USA.
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