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Associated Press reports:
While 41 percent of Republicans of all ages believe immigrants face a lot of discrimination in the United States, the percentage increases to 60 percent among Republicans between 18 and 29 years old, the survey found. That's a stark contrast to GOP voters 65 and older — only a third of that group says immigrants experience discrimination.
Researchers also found that 74 percent of young whites believe that immigrants are targeted for discrimination a lot, compared to 57 percent of white Americans of all ages. However, among Republicans, only for the youngest group, between 18 and 29, is that view in the majority. Even 30-to-39-year-old Republicans are evenly split, 48 percent to 48 percent, on whether immigrants undergo a lot of discrimination.
[...] "Closed-minded Republicans need to expand their perspective to see how immigrants are helping us all create a better America. I believe that this will change with the younger generation of Republicans," Kromsky said.
[...] According to the PRRI poll, 64 percent of all Americans, regardless of political affiliation and age, believe that immigrants in the U.S. illegally should have a path to citizenship if certain conditions are met; only 16 percent say they should be deported. Among Republicans of all ages, support for a path to citizenship is lower, at 55 percent. But when only Republicans between the ages of 18 to 29 are accounted for, that number rises to 62 percent.
[...] The age gap among Republicans also surfaces on gay rights: 54 percent of Republicans between 18 and 29 believe that gay and lesbian couples should marry, while half as many Republicans older than 65 agree. Younger GOP supporters are more closely aligned with the majority of Americans than their older counterparts: Overall, 58 percent of Americans support gay marriage. However, they are far from the average among young people of all political leanings: 74 percent of them support gay marriage.
From the same source, comes news on a class-action suit challenging a once-secret government program that delayed immigration and citizenship applications by Muslims; a suit that was okayed by a judge in Seattle:
U.S. District Judge Richard Jones in Seattle on Wednesday denied the Justice Department's request to dismiss the lawsuit, which was filed in February by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project.
The lawsuit claims the government since 2008 has used the Controlled Application Review and Resolution Program to blacklist thousands of applications for asylum, legal permanent residency or citizenship as national security concerns.
The program imposes criteria on the applications that go far beyond what Congress has authorized, including holding up some applications if the applicants donated to Muslim charities or traveled [sic] to Muslim-majority countries, the complaint alleges.
The program was not publicly discovered until 2012, when an immigration officer discussed it during testimony in a different lawsuit. Immigrant rights advocates then filed Freedom of Information Act lawsuits to force U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to turn over more information about it, the lawsuit said.
In addition to challenging the program, the lawsuit seeks to block any other "extreme vetting" that President Donald Trump's administration might impose as an updated version of it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Tuesday June 27 2017, @03:20AM (12 children)
Oh, wow. Glass half full, right?
Where do you draw that line? As long as there's still one individual that can be called middle class, we have nothing to worry?
You lost 11% of that class and gained only 7% in the upper class - net lost of 4% at the first sight.
Except that those extra 4% not only don't contribute to your taxation base, but also:
1. suck your social services - so an increased pressure on social services of 8%
2. can't consume higher value goods - too expensive for them - so 4% of that market lost. No, I'm not speaking about Ferrari cars, I'm speaking about fresh vegetables and the like - the one that would keep alive some other (possibly middle-class) farmers.
Meanwhile those 7% promoted into upper class? Won't consume more in quantity, just more expensive. Lately (for quite a while actually), more expensive goods doesn't translate in more jobs being created, just (a bit) more taxes paid - and this only if they haven't jumped high enough to afford an accountant able to arrange for a double-Irish-with-a-Dutch-sandwich.
4% lost from your taxation base doesn't seem that much to you? Well, continue the fight then, you haven't yet won, the middle class is still alive and kicking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday June 27 2017, @05:15AM (11 children)
Why don't you read the study? They define stuff.
I'll note at this point that the narrative has changed. We've gone from "You know, the former middle class which used to be the backbone of American society? Here's a hint for you: it is not immigration that killed them." to "4% is a big number, right?"
And why is that consideration worth considering? This is a typical failure mode of demand-driven economics. Here, you completely ignore a huge economic improvement in a portion of the US's population - because they aren't consuming sufficiently more. I believe a fair number of people here think that materialism isn't the best thing ever. You might even be one of them. I wonder how they would feel about an economic outlook that is obsessively materialistic?
Given that a) I don't see a taxation maximization as the purpose of societies, and b) you just blew off the 7% who now pay higher taxes, I don't see the point of your argument.
My point here is not to portray the recent US as the most perfect society ever, but to point out one of the many illusions about the state of the society, namely, the purely fantasy conversion of the US's middle class into poor people. When we actually look at real statistics, we see that almost twice as many people ended up wealthier than poorer and the effects are rather modest even when we look over a period of 35 years. That's just a poor fit to the narrative. Reality should get with the program.
Rather than wondering why our impression of the world is so much worse than the reality, we see here a typical response - something negative has to be found, no matter how minor it may be. This goes beyond cynicism - it's hypochondria. Maybe that sniffle really is a bad case of lung cancer. Maybe that rash you've been OCD scratching for the past 40 years is plutonium poisoning. Maybe your society is about to die of something horrible. You're bound to be right sooner or later. Ok, later.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday June 27 2017, @05:33AM (10 children)
Thanks to the data you posted. If you think of me as someone that can't assimilate information, maybe it's time to reconsider?
Because I believe that US society in average didn't benefit from the evolution. You are not better prepared to face this world than before, you aren't a more harmonious society, and for sure it's a place that is less fun to live in (read "lower life quality in average") than it was, for instance, 5-8 years ago.
You cannibalized 11% of your society quality of life only to raise 7% of it.
I am for sure one of them. The reasons I mentioned taxes:
1. because I know you as a person who gets economy (more than it gets "intangible" things, like fun)
2. to suggest that the govt will have difficulties in keeping the promises it made in the past (yes, I see Trump reneging deals made by his predecessors)
Yes, I got that message, thanks for the information.
No, I still don't think a higher polarization (income inequality in amplitude) with a flatter middle representation makes a society better. Do you?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 27 2017, @12:45PM (9 children)
I don't think so. Your narrative immediately went to the worst thing you could pry loose from that information.
Even if we accepted your interpretation, that's cannibalize 4% to raise 7%. And speaking of "fun" in government policy is doing it wrong [xkcd.com].
I never thought that the US federal government could (much less sincerely intended to) honor the most extravagant of the promises it has made. Nor am I interested in getting taxed more just so we can learn why I believe that.
Yea, we should have flipped the lever to "more better" 40 years ago. This isn't an argument over what is better, but rather an argument over what choices we can make to improve things. It's also be better if we had 10,000 year life spans and post-scarcity standards for everything. But we don't have an obvious way to get there from here in a short while.
Here, globalization would have affected us no matter what we did. The world saw a huge amount of cheap, low skilled labor come online. It'd have affected us, no matter what approach we took (even isolationism). It isn't good enough to say 4% of the population being poorest is bad. You have to have a better approach with a better outcome. I don't think you have that.
Bottom line: you need to have rational expectations of what a society can deliver and a good enough view of what the society currently delivers.
My view is that the US has done remarkably well economically despite trying circumstances. Let's make a valiant attempt to get back on subject. Recall that this whole thread started with:
One obvious thing is that immigration means more local jobs unlike automation and outsourcing. We also ignore the benefits of ambitious immigrants (such as a current SN favorite, Elon Musk, immigrant from the rape culture of South Africa, who is in the process of revolutionizing space travel) who can create a lot of jobs rather than just merely eat food. This poor poster has even a worse grasp of what's going on in the US as well as expectations that are even less based on reality.
Or maybe not. Second and third generation immigrants tend to be very American no matter their source.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday June 27 2017, @07:51PM (8 children)
Oh, sure, I can change the narrative but of course I'm not going to change the mindset.
Nothing personal, I'm always testing the theories put forward against "what's the worse that can happen" and I accept my theories may be flawed too.
How come only 4%? The numbers are: 11% economically crippled, can't stand without social support, 7% better off.
Because it's specifically about the US fed govt which can't be trusted? Or is it that you don't believe a higher income redistribution by taxation can work if done honestly?
Or you should have not castrated Roosevelt's second new deal from 80 years earlier? Which was implemented in a remarkable short time.
Look at other societies that delivered to their citizens in spite of globalism and economic crisis, like the Scandinavian ones.
Isn't it remarkable how Iceland watered down the crisis after cleaning its banking system (instead of shifting the burden on tax payers) and applying capital control?
It on 13th place in the Human Development Index [wikipedia.org](is it rational enough for a metric?)
At what cost, though?
I tend to agree on this one, for slightly other reasons (somehow "faith-based" rather that rational. Something on the line of "Status-quo and perfection kills. Challenging a system just enough by increasing the chances of different outcomes will make that system more flexible/adaptable". Call it an "unverified crazy theory of moderate chaos injection")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 27 2017, @09:44PM (7 children)
The numbers are 4% more below middle class and 7% more above middle class. There is no 11% economically crippled even if you believe that moving below middle class qualifies.
While the US government is pretty bad at dealing with any sort of redistribution scheme, I also don't believe that income redistribution is very useful. It doesn't do that much for anyone (a society with such an honest government can feed, clothe, and shelter its citizens without a lot of government intervention - and that's pretty much all you'd need a scheme for) and it takes away from the vital activities that governments do, like emergency services, national defense, etc.
I think the only problem with that "castration" was its lack of thoroughness. The FCC and a number of other government agencies are still around. US labor laws are still screwed up. Social Security is still set to implode. And maybe the haste with which those systems were set up is an indication of the poor quality of planning and foresight that went into them?
The US is at 5th place on that same index for the given year (2014)! I withhold judgment on whether the HDI is rational enough or not. It seems to be based on things which tend to be better in larger quantities (life span, education, and GDP per capita), but I notice the presence of a inequality-adjusted HDI which definitely doesn't meet the standard of rationality (they haven't even established that more inequality is worse!). But the high ranking of the US on what you apparently consider an important metric should be yet another to rethink some of your positions. The US with its lack of comprehensive social programs is still holding its own against these other systems. That means the US is doing something right. Perhaps we ought to figure that out?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday June 27 2017, @11:30PM (6 children)
An as good hypothesis as mine (mine being: Reaganomics screwed the pouch).
A pity that social is not suitable for double blind experimentation (so we can agree to disagree).
In regards with Roosevelt new deal agencies, there are still a lot (more than FCC, labor laws and social security) around [wikipedia.org]. What's no longer around is the progressive taxation to pay for them.
Mind you, social programs aren't necessary a sign of fiscal irresponsibility - Roosevelt managed to keep the finances in check [wikipedia.org] before WWII, Reagan blew them away [macrotrends.net]
I haven't chose the Iceland example at random: GFC saw their entire country financial system busted, their currency fell 80%, they narrowly avoided sovereign bankruptcy.
Yet Ireland managed to surpass US in the same period.
Then come with a proposal of "Quality of life" metric - just don't link it exclusively with GDP/capita, that's not "quality of life" (at most, it's a "potential"- whether or not this potential is realized in "Quality of life" depends on how the society is structured).
Then use the non-inequality-adjusted.
As for "more inequality is worse": if placing this question in the context of "Quality of life", what your feeling of guts say?
Take an extreme example - e.g. would you like a "corporatism feudalism" type of society (no state, all economy driven, with social barriers for transiting between "have-nots" to "haves" - no free education, no social security, inventions/progress in technology are accessible only with non-trivial investment, no non-violent exit from the "have-not" class).
In my book, this qualify as worse: the corporate overlords have little incentive to push technology and science further.
If you agree, there's the case (I need only one) that allows me to state: "there exist conditions in which income inequality is detrimental to society" and we can continue bickering on where we draw the line between "good/detrimental" in regards with income inequality.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 28 2017, @05:19AM (5 children)
It's almost like we'll have to resort to something other than merely asserting things, eh? I'll note that FDR had a second recession later in his reign (1936-1937) which only ended with the advent of the Second World War which resulted in the ending of a lot of FDR policies (which got in the way of winning a war). Reagan instead started a sustained period of economic growth that lasted through 1990 and then resumed again in 1992 and lasted till 2000.
Surpass at what? US ranked higher at the time, let us note. And they didn't avoid sovereign bankruptcy ("their currency fell 80%" is an 80% default on ISK-valued loan payments among other things). And why would the things you listed reduce HDI?
So do you want to abandon demand-side economics or not? I'm getting mixed signals here.
Take an extreme straw man, let us note. This is a lot like the Laffer curve argument. Perfect equality means the ones with merit aren't getting rewarded. Perfect inequality means a ton of people are kept down regardless of merit. But in between allows for some interesting flexibility and dynamics. And I haven't claimed that more inequality is always better, just that the opposite assumption at the core of the inequality metric that more inequality is always worse is unfounded.
There isn't a point to your side in this thread. You started with an assertion about the death of the middle class that was blatantly false. Rather than learn, you came up with a ridiculous argument based on the growth of the lower than middle classes while brushing off that almost twice as many became wealthier than middle class (and that all this has happened over a rather long 35 year period, indicating the US is holding up well to the economic changes of the past half century).
Now, we're seeing some ridiculous straw men. Just because I happen to believe that more income/wealth inequality is not necessarily a bad thing, doesn't mean that I think some ridiculous extreme about corporate feudalism.
My point behind all this is that if we're not perceiving what's actually happening, then how can we be right about the solutions?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday June 28 2017, @06:45AM (3 children)
Which WWII saw an increase in the maximal tax rate from 75% for incomes over $5mil to 90% for incomes over $200,000 (if my reading is correct [wikipedia.org]).
Seems like tax increases were necessary for winning the war, right? If it worked during crisis, why wouldn't it work during normal times? (no, I'm not totally serious raising this question, you can let is slide away).
Have a look over the next years - 2015 and 2016 Iceland's HDI is higher than USA's.
Because a weak ISK means implicitly less trust into Iceland economy's ability to generate enough to maintain a strong/stable currency.
As such, the GDP (which is still part of HDI) as measured in a reference currency is likely to be impacted. Am I wrong?
Can you show me who actually offered loans valued in ISK to Icelandic banks/govt?
I can't believe ISK has such a large circulation (monetary mass) and acceptance on the financial market that someone would think to use ISK as a reference in valuing loans.
The position of "Any loans that US took is USD on Australian market were defaulted by 50% when USD failed from almost 2AUD/USD before 2009 to 0.95AUD/USD in 2009" sounds closer to plausibility than "ISK-valued loans" (even if I wouldn't use this model).
I proposed HDI as a rational metric for "quality of life" with the hope you'll agree and we can continue to use values in this metric as a comparison.
You didn't quite agree with it, not outright rejected it, so I invited you to propose another, one which you will consider a good enough metric for the "quality of life".
Is it clearer now?
With the emphasized, we can close this part (it was meant only to act as an extreme scenario in a "thought experiment" to put into evidence that there's a point where inequality is detrimental. As you seem to agree, there's no longer a need for the artifice).
Ah, thanks for the reference to Laffer curve. I knew about it a while ago, but I forgot the name.
Ah, hmmm... Well, at least we can find what's currently not working.
And far from my mind to propose solutions: at most, I can suggest things that seemed to work in other geographies and/or times.
Thanks for the correction. Now I know it is not dead yet.
I still don't get you arithmetic: I'm seeing 11% being worse and 7% getting better. To me, it still sounds like "I damaged some 11 to make other 7 better".
Either:
a. you accept that you lost 4% in your bottom line (and have 7% lost compensated by the 7% better) - profit=-4; *or*
b. accept that you get 7% better (income) while sacrificing 11% (expense).
The position of "I got 7% better (income) while sacrificing only 4% (negative profit)" simply doesn't make sense to my mind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 28 2017, @01:10PM (2 children)
Maximal tax rates are relevant only if you pay those rates. Another thing that was ended was FDR-sponsored oligopolies.
You aren't. Once again, there were five cohorts treated by the study, the "middle class" in the middle and two lower classes and two upper classes. The lower classes went from 25% to 29%. That's an increase of 4% not 11%. The middle class as defined by the study shrunk from 61% to 50%, an 11% drop. And the upper classes grew from 14% to 21%, a 7% increase. So of the 11% drop in middle class number, almost two thirds of the shift was to upper class instead. Also it's worth noting that the class divisions are relative to the median income with the high side of the ranking being really high. You're below middle class, if you earn less than 67% of median income, but to get into higher classes, you have to earn over 200% of median income, meaning people have to earn a lot more in order to be moving to upperclasses while people who move into lower classes don't have to earn that much less in order to do so.
While it is an interesting metric, I notice that it overemphasizes small changes in longevity while downplaying similar-sized changes in GDP per capita (which of course does downplay the US approach to some degree). The education metric is just something I'm not comfortable with at all. There are parts that obviously necessary to quality of life, such as literacy rate. But other parts (like amount of higher education), aren't necessarily improvements (unfortunately, the US is exploring a variety of ways to make education negative value IMHO). If everyone is spending a huge portion of their lives in formal education, that indicates something is wrong. Currently, one spends on average about a quarter to fifth of their lives merely reaching some basic college education.
Hmmm, I guess what I think would be interesting here, using the three subjects of this metric. Longevity is obviously important, but I would use a logarithmic scale - small changes in longevity just aren't that valuable no matter what the dying man may feel about the issue. For a measure of education and economic well-being, I'd use a combination of measures of people who pass minimal thresholds of education and economic attainment (literacy rates and poverty rate) and an estimate of the marginal improvement to be gained from engaging in an hour of education or work at a fixed level of education or hours worked per week - for example, if someone has graduated from high school or equivalent, what is the value to them economically of an hour of college-level education at the rate they would pay for it? What's the average wage paid for an hour of work (maybe measured by quintile as well to get a better idea of the work traction of various groups at various levels of income)? I'll note these are viewpoints where the US doesn't tend to shine (with both higher college costs and more hours worked per week, that should deflate US figures).
My idea here is that quality of life can be crudely measured by how long you live and by how much effort you need to put into living. Higher marginal value to your efforts indicate that you need less effort to just live and more effort can more readily translate into improving your lot in life should that be something you want.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday June 28 2017, @11:32PM (1 child)
Pedantry, I admit:
a. " 75% for incomes over $5mil" meant exactly one individual - JD Rockefeller. I assume "90% for incomes over $200,000" included a lot more other (not in the "middle-class class")
b. FDR-sponsored oligopolies were replaced by it will become not much later the military-industrial complex. Sponsored by the tax-payer, "on the expense of the future" (i.e. the govt borrowing like crazy).
And the above is almost pedantry because one can't judge crisis time solutions using the metric of the normal life ("almost" - because one doesn't need a war to slide into a "crisis like" situation).
You are right. Thanks.
Depends on what you chase:
a. if "life just for the life itself" is the value that you chose, then GDP and education are means and longevity becomes the purpose.
b. if "life for the purpose of productivity" is the value you chose, then GDP is the purpose and longevity is a (limited) mean, education a more direct one.
c. if "scientific/technological progress" is the value you choose, then GDP and longevity are means (with longevity having a smaller effectiveness).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 30 2017, @12:14AM
JD Rockefeller never paid those rates prior to his death in 1937. His wealth was in trusts which wouldn't have seen those marginal tax rates no matter how high the income was. And similarly, any other high income person could use similar instruments to avoid the 90% marginal tax rate. One of the things that the Reagan era did was greatly reduce the tax loophole industry. It is still out there, but there's not the same obsession to avoid taxes (and the same corresponding degree of inefficiencies introduced in the US economy merely to dodge taxes) as there used to be.
The military-industrial complex didn't reach its current level of oligopoly formation until the consolidation of the military industries around the end of the Cold War in the mid to late 1980s. So even though it was a serious problem as early as 1961, when Eisenhower made his speech about the twin threats of the military-industrial complex and the domination of research by government, it didn't reach the current level of unhealthiness for decades.
The follies of the military-industrial complex also seems to me to be a demonstration that such things hold back economies which supports my earlier argument.
Well, we can look at what people actually "chase". Of the three, b. seems most pursued with a large number of people working hard to increase their wealth and prosperity (also economic immigration is either the largest or second largest reason for immigration, competing with fleeing really bad situations like war zones). a. doesn't really happen until people are reaching the end of their lives when suddenly death doesn't look so good and the common struggle against the inevitable begins. Before that, you see people smoking and boozing, eating hearty rather than allegedly healthy, and so on. They could make changes decades earlier to improve their odds, but apparently those changes aren't worth the modest effort and cost. And as to scientific/technological progress, that's the arena of experts - who typically care about such progress far more than the layperson. My point here is that we've pretty much decided economic aspects are the most important.
You can of course change the weightings however you'd like. I'll note relevant to my comment above, that increasing life span from 85 years to 145 years would double the life expectancy index (1.00 to 2.00). To double the GDP index (from 1.00 to 2.00 again), starting at $40,000 per capita would require a GDP of $16 million per capita (no take backs for inflation). That's way in post-scarcity territory. Sorry, living 60 more years isn't equivalent to a society 400 times as wealthy. The education index is linear as well, but capped by 100% participation. You can't double that index, unless you have really low adult literacy rates to start with (for example, 0% college educated and 75% adult literacy shifting to 100% college educated and literate would double that index from 0.5 to the absolute maximum of 1.00). It should be a warning to us that the index, which is in the real world most heavily valued by people making their own decisions, is extremely nerfed compared to the others.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday June 28 2017, @10:17AM
khallow! Stop! You are in over your head! c0lo just knows more than you do! Best to stop before you reveal what an ideologue you are, but, oh, it may be too late for that already. Well, I was here, trying to help you! Tarbaby, bro!