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Class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech
Candidates at job interviews expect to be evaluated on their experience, conduct, and ideas, but a new study by Yale researchers provides evidence that interviewees are judged based on their social status seconds after they start to speak.
The study, to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, demonstrates that people can accurately assess a stranger's socioeconomic position -- defined by their income, education, and occupation status -- based on brief speech patterns and shows that these snap perceptions influence hiring managers in ways that favor job applicants from higher social classes.
"Our study shows that even during the briefest interactions, a person's speech patterns shape the way people perceive them, including assessing their competence and fitness for a job," said Michael Kraus, assistant professor of organizational behavior at the Yale School of Management. "While most hiring managers would deny that a job candidate's social class matters, in reality, the socioeconomic position of an applicant or their parents is being assessed within the first seconds they speak -- a circumstance that limits economic mobility and perpetuates inequality."
[...] "We rarely talk explicitly about social class, and yet, people with hiring experience infer competence and fitness based on socioeconomic position estimated from a few second of an applicant's speech," Kraus said. "If we want to move to a more equitable society, then we must contend with these ingrained psychological processes that drive our early impressions of others. Despite what these hiring tendencies may suggest, talent is not found solely among those born to rich or well-educated families. Policies that actively recruit candidates from all levels of status in society are best positioned to match opportunities to the people best suited for them."
Journal Reference:
Michael W. Kraus et al. Evidence for the reproduction of social class in brief speech[$]. PNAS, 2019 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1900500116
(Score: 1, Troll) by opinionated_science on Friday October 25 2019, @03:32PM (3 children)
Literally "Hello" will do it...
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @03:39PM (1 child)
I call it the "Viewing Room." It's a juxtaposition wherein your rectal interface is completely transparent, allowing passersby to casually observe the contents of your rectum in order to gain a full understanding of the ramifications therein. Thus serves the nature of the room. The very existence of this serves as evidence of a Creator.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @05:31PM
The sexually frustrated shitposter is back! Hi weirdo!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @08:54PM
So which do you hire?
a) Hello
b) G'day mate
c) Top o' the morning to ye
d) Howdy partner
e) Yo dog
f) Ohio
g) Knee-how-maw
h) Numm-us-day
i) Salaam
Why don't we all just use beautiful words? ...The best words! Then all our conversations (and phone calls) will be perfect.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Afty on Friday October 25 2019, @03:36PM (59 children)
Someone who can communicate well, speak clearly and has good pronunciation and elocution is almost certainly going to be a better candidate for a job, than someone who who has a limited vocabulary, poor speech patterns or a strong accent.
This may or not be "class bias" but would be an entirely expected outcome of any such study. I'm not even sure why anyone would be surprised, or want to change it?
Many people learn to speak better to improve their career options, many immigrants try to lose their accents for the same reason. Why is this is a surprise, or a bad thing? Someone who communicates clearly and concisely and has good elocution and speech patterns with little to no accent has desirable communications skills. All else being equal, they'll be a better employee than someone without those skills. Furthermore, the ability to learn those skills may indicate a general ability (or willingness) to learn.
I've certainly come across people with very thick accents working in customer service who refused to try to learn to speak without an accent (why should I? It's my culture... etc.) and then wonder why they're not getting better jobs. Hint: It's because you're choosing to provide a worse service to customers than someone more humble and flexible.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @03:43PM (4 children)
No, this bias just gives psychopaths who want to game the system an advantage over others. Speaking skills are usually not the main skills required for the job, so this proves once again that meritocracy is nothing but a myth. It doesn't matter that you can do the job very well, because the employer doesn't like what you're wearing, your specific speech pattern, or some other irrelevant characteristic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @04:03PM
It's true - if you are OK to look at and speak the right way, the world is your oyster. Until you and people like you destroy all the oysters through incompetence. Look at British politicians for examples.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday October 25 2019, @11:13PM (2 children)
Speak for yourself. I got a good technology job because I could speak eloquently, now those assholes want me to do people things like schmoozing and other people bullshit I have no patience for, rather than what I want to do, which is more technical work with less people bullshit. Perhaps I shpuld speak in ebonics during my next interview and let the relative whiteness of my skin cola balance it out so I can do fucking work rather than dance and schmooze for the crowd like a fucking zoo animal. Any psychopaths out there want my job?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @01:25AM (1 child)
Learn Gullah [wikipedia.org]. You could be buddies with Clarence Thomas.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday October 26 2019, @01:53AM
I'd rather learn Gullah so I can get some good Cajun/Creole food in these parts, especially a jerk chicken with the same flavor but without all the fucking sugar. If those could tone down the sweetness a bit, they'd have a mainstream alternative to Chink food that is still uniquely American. Well, Jamaican. But Jamaican can be a good progressive gimmick compared to the ubiquitous sweet Chinese crap.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 25 2019, @03:52PM (22 children)
Actually, I think citations are needed for that. Separate citations for different classes of jobs. Say, maybe, a shop foreman in an auto shop, vs a public relations guy at a huge corporation, vs a spokesman for a political party, vs a factory production worker, vs a factory robotics technician, vs a barber/hair dresser.
What I see here, is the ages old "good ole boy's" club. If you talk like me, then I'll presume that you share my values, and I'll give you a break. If you talk like a New Yorker, well, sorry Bubba, but we can't use you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mX2AyjVrrck [youtube.com]
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @04:00PM (4 children)
What the fuck's wrong with you lately Runway? You have re-joined reality. What traumatic event occurred that reset the Fox brain - we need to repeat it with others.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 25 2019, @04:35PM (3 children)
I'm the same old asocial asshole. Your perception of me varies with the time of the month, the seasons, whether you've been laid recently, and the zodiac. Don't ask ME to explain stuff to YOU. BTW - one more time: I'm not a Fox News watcher. No television, remember?
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @05:33PM
By "same old asocial asshole" he means emotionally reactive right qing nutjob that sometimes gets clobbered over the head by reality hard enough to disrupt the brainwashing.
Or a shill playing a persona and shifting with the winds.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Saturday October 26 2019, @10:33PM (1 child)
Last I checked, viewing the foxnews.com website did not require a television or a video subscription.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 26 2019, @10:41PM
It does, however, require "watching".
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @04:05PM (16 children)
As I mention below (in a root level reply), the study itself (see sci hub [wikipedia.org] for access) is a sufficient citation. It acknowledges that the most readily and accurately determined characteristic of individuals, based on their speech patterns, was their educational attainment. Even here in text, consider what you can infer about me based on a few sentences of text that could be written, at least in theory, by anybody in this world. Educational attainment and general intelligence level for one. And from that you can also probably guess reasonably accurately all of the stuff that let's "researchers" create click bait - my race, my age range, my socioeconomic class, etc. All that from 120 words.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @04:22PM (2 children)
is your use of commas in your sentences.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @04:36PM (1 child)
and his use of apostrophes . . . *chuckle*
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @02:46AM
Though he did, like you, start a sentence with an "and". Which is supposedly against the grammar rules, but I'm glad to see others doing that, because I do it too.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 25 2019, @04:44PM (12 children)
I thought I went to lengths to demonstrate that the person who sits in a college classroom, learning how to conjugate verbs, etc, may NOT be the best candidate for the job.
IRL, some damned fool from a college manages to land a manager position. Once his ass is embedded behind the desk, he does his best to surround himself with like-minded people. People who speak like him, people who laugh at the same inane jokes that he finds funny, people who share his life's experience, as much as possible.
For that reason, we see many experienced people prevented from advancing within the heirarchy, while pimply kids who know nothing are given high paying jobs for which they are not qualified.
What would you think of an "engineer" who can't even draw up a rough drawing, let alone an actual blueprint? This "engineer" walks into a shop, and verbally describes some hare-brained idea, then walks away, expecting the toolmaker to produce something by tomorrow morning. But, the kid knows when to laugh for the boss, and he knows when not to laugh. And, the toolmaker who laughs AT the boss? He'll never get a raise, let alone a promotion.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @05:54PM (11 children)
If companies hire poorly qualified people for dumb reasons and I'm more qualified than they are then I have huge incentive to start my own company and hire all of these overqualified people that never get jobs. I will drive all my competitors out of business just like that since my company will have more skills than them.
These arguments that companies hire all the wrong people and keep getting away with it and hire based on other factors other than merits don't make sense because if you are oh so much more qualified than everyone else and you know how to identify talent so much better than they do no one is stopping you from starting your own business and outcompeting those that refused to hire you.
Unless you want to argue that the government creates anti-competitive laws that restrict competition in favor of those less qualified and increases barriers to entry. I agree that there are many instances of this. Point to those specific laws and we can discuss the merits of each individually. Then the problem here lies within the laws, not so much with hiring practices, and it is those laws that need to be discussed.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 25 2019, @06:06PM (10 children)
I call bullshit on that. One doesn't just start up a company, and overnight challenge a multi-national multi-billion dollar company, no matter how much talent you can corner.
If you've never seen a freaking half-wit supervising highly talented people, then either A: you haven't been paying attention or B: you are the half-wit. Nepotism is alive and well in the corporate world, among other counter-productive practices.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @06:28PM (9 children)
I agree, it does happen, but I do think it's exaggerated because if it happens to such an extreme degree then someone will hire all this underutilized / unutilized talent and outcompete their competitors.
Big companies got big by doing something right, hiring the right talent. Sure they have the first mover advantage that can help them rest on their laurels to some extent but, short of regulatory capture (which is an important issue that needs to be discussed and if the problem is regulatory capture it's the regulatory capture that needs to be discussed), if they rest on their laurels too much the competition will take them out of business.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 25 2019, @06:45PM (4 children)
Regulatory capture. I'm not sure if you'll count "intellectual property" as regulatory. But, it's a real hurdle, in the Western world. Not so much in China, though. It's impossible for me to start producing the stuff my company produces, without a lot of years tied up in court. Walmart, however, is producing a competing product in China, using Chinese labor, and thumbing their nose at the concept of intellectual property, with the assistance of the Chinese government.
And, I am serious as a heart attack here. We lost our Walmart contracts, only to watch Walmart start stocking their shelves with nearly identical products bearing the Walmart brand, produced in China.
You are perfectly right, in that big corporations got big by doing something right. In today's world, those things that they did right more than a hundred years ago may not be right today. Those things that they did thirty years ago, may not even be right today.
Meanwhile, we have these strange new mutant creatures, called "MBA" who have changed everything that those companies DID do right thirty, or fifty, or a hundred and fifty years ago. Today, the dumbest of people who hold a degree are deemed smarter than any fool who failed to get a degree.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @07:25PM (2 children)
I absolutely count intellectual property as regulator capture and a topic worth discussing with respect to a meritocracy.
(Score: 2) by exaeta on Friday October 25 2019, @08:18PM (1 child)
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 2) by exaeta on Friday October 25 2019, @08:22PM
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @08:13PM
Also worth discussing are non-compete clauses and regulations surrounding them. The focus should be on anything that prevents a competitor from outcompeting a company that employs poor hiring practices.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @12:25AM (3 children)
The problem lies more in different domains of competency than in the complete lack of it. The 'halfwits in management' are generally very good at schmoozing, selling shit and office politics. The tech people regard that as irrelevant bullshit and keep complaining about the immoral idiots in charge. The managers in turn regard the techs as blunt, unsocial, politically naive fools.
They are both right within their respective domains.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @01:01AM (2 children)
The managers aren't right if they don't know how to manage tech workers properly, which they so often don't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @01:22AM (1 child)
And you demonstrate that you don't understand evolution. The first job of a manager is to survive at any cost.
Managing subordinates well might be useful, but if you can pin failures on rivals, then managing badly might be even more useful. The typical tech view of "let's get the job done" is often in conflict with the manager's desire to protect his position, and grow his empire. If he can pin a failure on his boss it can result in a promotion. If he can pin it on a subordinate, it holds down a potential rival. If he can't blame a rival, then techs make useful scapegoats. Getting the job done is a side effect of the ecosystem in which he swims.
The tragedy of the commons applies to the management landscape too, he will enhance his personal position at the expense of the company right up until the commons collapses (company goes bankrupt), and beyond.
Techs often don't understand this, and when they do, they find the whole system morally repugnant.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @08:54AM
Even at the cost of the organization, yes. But in turn, we must strip their lives away from them at any cost.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Thexalon on Friday October 25 2019, @05:02PM (6 children)
They're actually looking for signs of class. And sometimes race, immigration status, and cultural background.
Take, for instance, people whose profession is communication, and that somebody is at or near the top of their field. Now imagine what would happen if you walked into a job interview and using the communication style and dialect of Dr. Dre or George Carlin. Both of those guys were excellent communicators who put together words in memorable ways and expressed their thoughts clearly and effectively, but don't tell me you'd get hired for a corporate gig talking like they do.
You seem to be making the mistake of thinking "Matching the language of the rich and powerful" = "communication skills". The "posh dialect" of whatever culture you're in isn't "better", it's just different. As a very simple example of this, can you explain to me why "Where are you?" is more correct than "Where you at?". And if you're thinking "Well, the second question is missing a verb", you're ignoring the fact that the verb "to be" means basically nothing, the dialect of English where "Where you at?" developed has never required pointless verbs like that, both sentences have identical meaning and express that meaning clearly and concisely, and the main reason you decided that one was right and one was wrong was that some people you've never met simply declared that it was so to match their own prejudices.
These biases show up in really stupid ways. For instance, the word "shit" is considered "vulgar" or a "swear" or a "bad word" because it's an Anglo-Saxon term and the ruling class of England for a long time was French-speaking so French-based terms for the same substance like "manure" had to be used in polite society. And because of that, in 2019 the FCC will fine people who say "shit" on television even though it's a word that everybody above the age of 4 or so knows and clearly communicates, and the only reason it's a "bad word" is because uptight people from centuries ago said it was.
Another non-language sign of social class they're looking for in many jobs is indications that you are accustomed to wearing business attire such as a tie on a regular basis.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @07:27PM (2 children)
There's a very simple reason. Let's use this text as an example. I'd like to express my disagreement with you in the hope of persuading you to my point of view. Why I am typing the words I am here now instead of, for instance, choose to use netspeak: lol u no wat i mean? It's because I have the intelligence to know that you know absolutely nothing about me. And so you are going to be judging me, and the merit of view, based not only on what I say but also how I say it.
I'm the exact same person whether I show up to an interview in slacks and a polo, or my gym shorts and my "No Money, No Honey" tank-top. What I choose to wear, or how I choose to speak, or what I choose to say is dependent upon the impression I'm aiming to make. I'd fully agree with your point of view if we were back in the times where language was intentionally used as a pseudo secret hand-shake that separated the peasantry from the nobility. But in modern times there is no secret. It's up to you. In my case I grew up in a very poor and very urban area with a mostly absent single parent. And I was full-on wigger because I thought that's who I wanted to be. Fortunately, I changed my mind alongside my speech and appearance.
The ability to adapt to different circumstance in different ways is key to success at practically anything. Social interactions are just one facet of this. Richard Stallman is now mostly known as an eccentric freak. But actually much of what he says makes an immense amount of sense, and he's quite a brilliant guy. If he had directed some of his brilliance towards the consideration of how his words or appearance play into the reception of what he says, it's very possible he could have meaningfully changed the world with Free software. On the other end of the spectrum consider Elon Musk. Another very brilliant guy, but in this case one who also [usually...] puts a substantial degree of consideration into his appearance and words. And he went from 'nothing' (in so much as having a few hundred million dollars can be considered nothing) to the man who revolutionized space for our entire species and will likely be the primary driving force behind the initial colonization of Mars. Literally one man substantially changed the direction of a species of 7.7 billion.
This isn't to suggest one should be fake, but rather to consider that in this land of 7.7 billion people don't have time to learn your life story before judging you. And so if you're in a situation you need to make an impression, then an impression you should make. If somebody shows up to an interview in a tank-top then that interview is over. They may be the eccentric genius who just loves expressing himself in quirky ways, but 99.999% of the time they're just an idiot - and nobody has enough time to waste on 1 in 100k shots.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @07:53PM
I own a business, and if someone doesn't show up in a tank top, then I will think less of them. Sure, they might actually be a genius, but 99.999% of the time they're just an idiot.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Saturday October 26 2019, @07:19PM
Yoda? Is that you?
--
I want to grow my own food, but I can't find pizza seeds.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Arik on Friday October 25 2019, @07:55PM
Because "where are you?" is the common phrase you'll find most often in English literature, across many countries and many centuries, all the way back to Shakespeare; and "where you at?" is not.
It's really as simple as that. If you're speaking to a room full of literate adults drawn from all around the world, representing every nation or local area that speaks a form of English as their mothertongue, and you say 'where are you?' they're all likely to understand you. If you say 'where you at?' in the same room, I expect most of them will understand that as well, but it's more likely to cause some confusion.
"missing a verb"
That's not it, we do that all the time. No verb, no problem. There are a lot of silly grammarian rules that never made any sense and still make none. What is this if not a preposition, that I end my sentence with?
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 25 2019, @07:59PM (1 child)
Then the proper form would be "Where you?" not "Where you at?" since the word "at" is redundant as well.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday October 25 2019, @10:04PM
No, the "at" isn't entirely redundant: "Where you at?" versus "Where you going?"
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday October 25 2019, @05:42PM (14 children)
The problem TFA is talking about is that given 2 candidates who meet the above criteria, there will still be discrimination based on the interviewer's perception of the applicant's social class as inferred from speech patterns and word choice.
(Score: 3, Touché) by BK on Friday October 25 2019, @06:37PM (13 children)
The problem with TFA is that it presumes that the purpose of discrimination based on speech pattern and word choice IS INTENDED TO BE discrimination based on social class. The 'study' was structured to create what may well be a false correlation. Someone may simply want to hire people who they can understand. Possibly.
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 25 2019, @06:58PM (11 children)
And, I'm told that doing so is racist. In fact, doing so can be, and sometimes is, racist. When telling someone where my home is, I say something like, "I live at (insert street address here)". Many, or even most, black people say "I stays (street address)". Just one example of many, of the way black people speak differently from me. So, you're saying it's alright that I would never hire a black person, justifying it with "He doesn't talk like me."
Different situation - I'm advertising for workers, I get a hundred responses, fifteen of whom DO NOT SPEAK ENGLISH. I am inclined, pretty strongly, to reject applicants who don't speak English. But, I don't get to make those decisions, I'm just a worker. Suddenly, I'm working beside people who don't speak English. That is a genuine nuisance, but if I say anything, I'm "racist" and in violation of some fuckwit's policy. So, I work with these people, and we accomodate each other as much as possible. When we run into a serious problem we call for a translator.
If so-called management can impose that situation on me, and all of my coworkers, then how in fuck do you justify their desire to work with "people who they can understand"?
I hope that you can see the obvious hypocrisy.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1) by Arik on Friday October 25 2019, @07:39PM (10 children)
Let me snip this down a bit more, there are a few key phrases.
You go from:
"Many, or even most, black people say"
to
"black people speak differently from me."
and on even further to
"So, you're saying it's alright that I would never hire a black person"
What you've lost along the way is the fact that this is a statistical correlation, not an inherent property. And that's an important distinction, much too important to elide in the course of three sentences like that.
Even if we agree that it's completely acceptable to never hire someone who speaks differently from you (which we don't btw) that wouldn't mean it's ok to never hire a black person. Because not all black people speak differently than you do. No matter what dialect you speak, there's a black person somewhere that either speaks it natively or can mimic it effectively. So your syllogism fails.
The other question isn't so easy or clean cut though. On the one hand, there's a legitimate interest in hiring someone that you can communicate with easily, that your customers can communicate with easily. And unfamiliar dialects can impair that. On the other hand, I think it's harmful, offensive even, to discriminate against someone because they have a different dialect than you do. We have many many dialects in this country, no one is 'better' than another. English is a language with a particularly large range of dialects, and the way we have managed to avoid splintering into multiple languages so far is by giving the *literary* language a unifying role. So no matter what your natural dialect is, when you are trying to communicate with someone who speaks another, you both modulate your speech more closely to the written form, and that works wonders. As long as you're both literate.
I'm afraid literacy is actually decreasing however :(
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 25 2019, @07:57PM (9 children)
I built those phrases that you keyed on, intentionally. I scaled up from some, to a more inclusive term, to "nevery hire a black person". Parent poster's justification of hiring people they understand easily scales right along with what I answered with. And, when you cut all the bullshit away, you're left with the very same classism/racism - you have plausible deniability to go with your prejudices.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1) by Arik on Friday October 25 2019, @08:11PM (7 children)
I kind of agree.
It's not 'the very same' because it's clearly different. But it's a subset of what you're starting with - so it's an improvement. A large part of the previous problem, by far the largest part, is now gone.
I'm parsing that last phrase to mean that you're able to deceive *yourself* at that point. You're not being consciously prejudiced. You're simply making errors of judgement, because you're not sophisticated enough to avoid them.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 26 2019, @02:29AM (6 children)
I believe that a lot of people do deceive themselves. Watch a few re-runs of Archie Bunker. Archie doesn't realize what a bigot he is. Archie thinks he's a helluva nice guy, just because he hasn't taken the Meathead apart, and flushed the parts down the toilet. His attitude toward black people is even worse of course.
And, there are other people who outright HATE blacks, and don't even try to convince themselves otherwise.
Both of those people can use that plausible deniability for their own benefit.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday October 26 2019, @03:29AM (5 children)
I think the character was a little more complicated than just being a bigot, though. That was what made him so powerful - that and being beamed into our homes back in the day when there was only 1 or 2 alternatives.
"Archie thinks he's a helluva nice guy, just because he hasn't taken the Meathead apart, and flushed the parts down the toilet. His attitude toward black people is even worse of course."
In a lot of ways he /is/ a helluva nice guy. He loves his wife, he loves his daughter, he works hard to provide for them and you know he'd die to protect them. And despite his horrible unexamined prejudices, he's even a decent neighbor to the Jeffersons, for the most part.
The best parts of that show were always the moments where he manages to transcend his prejudice.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 26 2019, @04:05AM (4 children)
The single best part of that show, was that it helped some of us to understand the world around us. I already knew that some of my acquaintances, and some of my family, were prejudiced. Archie and company helped me, and millions of others, to understand how and why they were so prejudiced. And, as you point out, it helped to understand that just because some asshole was prejudiced, he/she wasn't necessarily a lost cause, or even a monster. Archie Bunker, The Jeffersons, and maybe the Cosby show helped some of us to understand that "different" wasn't "wrong" or "unequal".
Today's SJW's really need to look back to those shows, evaluate and analyze them, and look at what they accomplished. Then they need to emulate what those shows accomplished, instead of trying to tear down the white man, tear down the establishment, and undermine America itself. Those three shows did as much or more than today's SJW movements to rectify real prejudice. With today's resources, those shows could be improved on by orders of magnitude.
But, alas, SJW's don't WANT racism to go away. Instead, they capitalize on racism. That is the whole reason for identity politics - they want to "get even" and to dominate the hetero white Christian male.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 26 2019, @04:08AM (3 children)
Oh yeah - Red Fox - what was his character's name? And Lamont. They went a good way toward dispelling stupid ideas about the black race. "I'm coming, Ethel!" That old man could manipulate his son to do just about anything with that stupid trick.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1) by Arik on Saturday October 26 2019, @04:36AM (1 child)
Fred Sanford.
Red Fox was a great comedian on his own right, outside that show, as well.
But yeah, it had a huge impact on a lot of us.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 26 2019, @04:51AM
Yeah, Sanford & Son. And, yes, Foxx was a fine comedian outside of the show.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1) by Arik on Saturday October 26 2019, @04:40AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redd_Foxx
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXhwQDIbvUg
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @12:43AM
Communication is important. One of the worst guys to work with was the same color and class as me, but he had a bad habit of mumbling. Every single sentence would start off with two or three words you could understand then trail of into indistinct murmuring. Everybody who worked with him called him mumbles and he was constantly asked to repeat himself, often three or four times. He was mostly sidelined onto jobs he could do on his own, just because two-way communication with him was so difficult.
He was not a stupid guy in other ways, he just had a bad speech habit and refused to overcome it
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday October 25 2019, @07:03PM
I'm not talking about candidates who sound like they're sucking on marbles. Agreed that any such study needs to control for not only intelligibility but for pleasantness of conversation (many won't enjoy someone who routinely drops the F bomb in a professional environment), but if I understand correctly, given two people of equal pleasantness and intelligibility, there is a bias towards the one who seems based on speech patterns to be of higher social status.
(Score: 4, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 25 2019, @05:59PM (8 children)
This depends almost entirely on the job. We recently gladly saw off an excellent communicator, personable, friendly, active in the community - super easy to understand - and couldn't engineer his way out of a wet paper bag. If the job was being a nice guy, he had that down in spades, we needed something different.
We've got a couple of those who have been around for decades - good contributors.
But, you're right, all else being equal, the good communicator does the better job. Thing is: at an interview, you're mostly only able to (accurately) evaluate their communication skills, so... since you've got one dimension you can accurately assess, and other - usually more valuable - dimensions which you have relatively little reliable information about, how do you decide?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by Jay on Friday October 25 2019, @08:15PM (7 children)
In addition the interview is after you've weeded out a lot of the total garbage candidates, and often is where you decide who you're actually going to hire. At that point, provided your selection process isn't completely garbage, the candidates should be moderately close to each other in ability.
It makes some real sense that given equal candidates you'd end up hiring the better communicator, as they'd be able to better communicate their skills and why they'd be a good fit.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 25 2019, @09:17PM (6 children)
Big corporation: guaranteed worthless early selection process, followed up with heavy PC bias in the remainder of the process.
In the smaller companies, I'd administer an actual programming test as part of the interview process. No time limit, no pressure, simple skeleton program pre-written, just demonstrate that you know how to iterate a loop and calculate a value through the sin() function. Not allowed to do that in big corp.
Fun part of the results of administering that test 100+ times over the years: 90+ outright fails, just couldn't do it at all. Ended up hiring a couple of fails anyway, one did well in a non-programming role, the other... pretty much worthless all around. Even more interesting to me was: among the passes, fully half demonstrated the technical ability but an inability to follow simple directions:
the test called for drawing a sine wave that linearly decayed from 90% to 10% of the screen, 10 cycles from left to right.
Almost half of the candidates who could generate the code, for some reason got stuck on drawing an exponentially decaying sine wave, even when provided with a sketch of the linearly decaying wave with a straight line envelope on it. Too much engineering school telling them how a decaying oscillator behaves and not enough: FOLLOWING THE SIMPLE DIRECTIONS GIVEN. Two or three of them even pushed back when I mentioned: the directions call for a linear decay, like shown in the picture, do you think you could do that?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @12:53AM (5 children)
a = const
b = const
For i = 0 to 9
For j = 0 to 359
Plot (a*(j+(i*360), b*sin (j((10- i)/10))
Next j
Next i
a and b are scale factors to make the axes come out where you want them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @12:59AM (2 children)
oops.
Plot ((a*(j+(i*360))), (b*sin (j*((10- i)/10))))
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday October 26 2019, @02:54AM (1 child)
Actually, looking at your code, it appears like you'll have a stepwise decay on the sine wave, which would be unique in my experience of answers. The test is "live" on a machine where you can test and debug your solution, like a real working situation.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @04:17AM
That was my intent based on your spec, but I don't think it would have worked. Parentheses and divisor in the wrong place.
Also mine was 100% decrease over 10 cycles. You called for 80% (90% to 10% range over 10 cycles)
Fencepost count makes it 80/9% stepwise decrease per cycle:
For i = 0 to 9
For j = 0 to 359
Plot ((a*(j+(i*360))), (b*((90- (i*80/9))/100)* sin j ))
Next j
Next i
Do I get the job? :)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday October 26 2019, @02:51AM (1 child)
Yep, that's a pass. Now... C++ graphics programmers with 10+ years experience on their resumes have at least:
3x refused to even attempt the test
7x attempted the test and quit in various states of frustration
Never, and I mean never, passed. Younger kids, less experience, different experience, and people with less imposing resumes - they did better. The old guys were probably beefing up the resume to match the job description.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 27 2019, @01:18PM
That's the magic of college degrees for you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @03:41PM
Alternatively, and I know this is controversial in modern social sciences, but correlation is not causation. The paper itself states:
In other words, that paper readily acknowledges that you can discern somebody's educational attainment with a high degree of certainty based on small samples of their speech. Everything else being equal, you're going to trend towards hiring more educated applicants even for positions where such is unnecessary -- hence, the college degree barista meme. And so all this study revealed was that people prefer to hire more educated individuals for jobs. Shocker. Now let's write a 7200 word paper on it, and spin it into being some sort of social bias so we can get published. Science!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @03:51PM
This [dialectsarchive.com] is the source they used to get their voice samples. Really neat site to listen to different accents from around the world.
Now I can tell the difference between a Hebei accent and a Jiangsu accent! Hah! Of course not, but it's really interesting to imagine that to a Chinese ear these might sound as distinct as a Bawstoon twang or a Sudddern Drawl.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Friday October 25 2019, @03:59PM (7 children)
Nb: relevant data is social mobility
https://www.epi.org/publication/usa-lags-peer-countries-mobility/ [epi.org]
US ranks 5th worst for social mobility, quite closely to the UK, out of list of 17 developed nations.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @04:32PM (6 children)
I have a simple question for you. Would you expect the wealth equality within nations to be higher in those with a greater standard deviation, or a lower standard deviation* in IQ scores? Isn't it then somewhat expected, even in a perfect meritocracy, for their to be increasing income inequality alongside increasing diversity? We should even be able to test this theory now. Sweden is rapidly becoming much less homogeneous and so their distribution of IQs is going to shift similarly rapidly. If I'm correct we'd expect to see increasing income inequality within one of the most egalitarian and liberally embracing nations in the world.
Indeed in looking up the data (and I suppose you'll just have to trust I didn't know this before hand - for what it's worth I swear I did not) Sweden's income inequality growth between "between 1985 and the early 2010s was the largest among all OECD countries, increasing by one third." [source] [wikipedia.org] We should expect to see that number creep higher, a hyper-generous welfare state notwithstanding. Indeed I think future data should be even more informative since I'd readily acknowledge that even if I was wrong, you'd probably see a boost in at least short-term inequality due to the fact that most migrants are dirt poor and uneducated. That said, Sweden's generous welfare state does offer some substantial mitigation against this.
But ultimately I would hypothesize that even with substantial wealth redistribution you would never see anything like wealth equality in diverse nations since those on the higher end of distributions would always skirt away from those on the lower, once an equilibrium is reached. So you end up having to distribute more to reach a new equilibrium and the process once again repeats itself. E.g. - see in the United States how poverty is not meaningfully changing over the decades even though we now are spending tens of billions of dollars on programs that not that long ago did not even exist. Lots of money, but no real change. If people were all mostly equal and all they needed was a helping hand and fair shake to help them get things in order, then these programs ought be having a much more positive impact than they have.
----
* - This is a bit of a poorly phrased question since IQ is itself is measured as a relativistic measure with 100 always being the mean and with 15 always being the standard deviation. All an IQ of 115 means is that you score better than 84% of other people in the sample - it's meaningless in a vacuum. But I think the meaning of my question is clear enough. E.g. - would the nation with 5 5 5 5 5 IQ have greater, lesser, or the same income inequality as a nation with IQs of 1 1 1 9 9.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 25 2019, @07:10PM (2 children)
Perhaps that is true, for some arbitrary definition of "poverty". The facts, however, indicate that few if any children go to bed hungry in the United States today. I have actually read of a couple cases where children died of malnutrition or starvation, in recent years. But, those children also suffered pretty horrible physical abuse before they died. That is, those children were starved to death by hateful parents and/or guardians.
If you can identify some town, county, or city in the US that regularly buries people starved to death, then I'll have to reconsider this post. Unless you can offer such citations, then I'll insist that the US is extremely wealthy, and that our poor has little to complain of. I've been in cities in this world, where the desparate jump into the dumpsters to get at the food that we threw away. I don't see that in the US. Here, dumpster divers are after retail store discards, like computers and computer components that didn't sell, or last year's fashions that didn't sell.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @08:44PM (1 child)
Sure, but all nations are improving. Holding our system up to the worst possible places on Earth for those in poverty and calling it a success makes a failure pretty much impossible. The modern food stamp program didn't even exist until the mid 60s. Suffice to say we weren't having carts drive by asking folks to bring out their dead then either.
But maybe the big boys are where things get really interesting. Medicare/medicaid/social security are absolutely huge programs. Our spending on those programs alone is going to be hitting $2.8 trillion in 2020. That spending is more than the GDP of all but 5 countries. For instance it's more than the entire GDP of the United Kingdom! I mean think about what that means. With our spending on just those 3 programs, you have the entire sum of all money generated in a year in the entirety of the United Kingdom - England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
If you go back in time just several decades and told people that we'd be spending more on our social programs than the entire GDP of the United Kingdom, which is a quite well developed region in its own right. What would they expect the standard of living for the poor to be like? Probably something somewhat nicer than 'well, they don't immediately jump into a dumpster when I throw out my food'! I'm not even saying these programs are bad (definitely not saying they're good either - but that's another topic). But rather that you're never going to have lasting equality when people are not identical. And the more diverse a people you have, the more inequality you're going to have.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 26 2019, @02:38AM
And, that is the ultimate answer to socialists.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday October 25 2019, @08:55PM (2 children)
Your question is a fine one, but note I posted data on social mobility, i.e. social correlation between parents and children. I didn't post social equality, i.e. income parity within the same generation.
The point is, one hindrance to social mobility is that people who grow up with a poor person's accent can't get a good job because of their accent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @04:29PM (1 child)
It's the same story:
- In a perfect meritocracy where all group distributions are identical, social mobility is going to be essentially a crap shoot. Since all group aggregates are equal, whoever advances would essentially be random and so social mobility would be high.
- In a perfect meritocracy where group distributions differ, it's no longer a crap shoot. Because now one group would have substantially higher rates of social mobility than other groups due to differing aggregate distributions. Lower performing groups would have more difficulty moving up, and be more likely to move back down in the uncommon cases where they did manage to move up. By contrast groups with more favorable distributions would be moving up much more frequently and be more likely to stay up. And this would be a persistent effect through generations which would begin to show a reduced social mobility.
And indeed this is exactly the case in America. Different groups have somewhat radically different rates [priceonomics.com] of social mobility. It only gave the typical black and white comparison, but you will find the identical thing regardless of which group you look at. For those who have higher aggregate IQ distributions, you find higher social mobility. For those with lower IQ distributions, you find lower social mobility. Of course the difficulty is trying to discern between environmental effects and different relative distributions of merit (by whatever metric you want - IQ being the easiest). But I think one interesting datum, mentioned in that article, is that groups with less favorable distributions not only have more difficulty 'lifting themselves up' but also tend to fall back down disproportionately often once they reach the highest economic tiers of society. In today's world of normalized usury and insurance for everything, going from rich to not-rich is 100% the fault of the individual.
I think if more folks considered this we could actually start achieving greater an overall more egalitarian and fair society. Instead people worship a provably false tabula rasa ideology that, in my opinion, does nothing but hurt the folks adherents tend to think they're helping.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday October 28 2019, @09:12AM
This is a fine argument, and was the one put forward by the British nobility for many generations (I am a Brit). When the system was broken down by the collapse of empire and the Labour movement in early 20th century, it turned out that the influence of genetic factors was rather overstated.
> going from rich to not-rich is 100% the fault of the individual.
It's an interesting argument. I wonder if the social science types have ever looked at negative mobility (i.e. losing money) separately to positive mobility (i.e. gaining money).
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @04:20PM
Study shows wife beaters tend to lie. When asked "why do you beat your wife?" 95.122987% of wife beaters denied.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @05:05PM (1 child)
Often class distinctions are wrongly categorized as race. The typical study uses near-identical resumes, some with normal names and some with stereotypically black names.
Black people can have normal names. Most likely they do, if they aren't from the ghetto. Maybe businesses just don't want ghetto values and behavior. Maybe they are fine with upperclass black people.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @05:15PM
Dat be wot you FINKIN', but dat not be da TROOF, you raciss cracka!
I be all like educate-it an shit, but ma ak-sint be hole-in me back like a mutha.
For real for real.
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Friday October 25 2019, @05:07PM (19 children)
Isn't it more accurate to say that candidates are being judged more directly by their level of education than by their social class? If Donald Trump came to you for a job interview (high class, near zero education) would you hire him?
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday October 25 2019, @05:51PM (4 children)
Personally, no, but a simple look at his "employment" history suggests that he gets "hired" a lot in spite of obvious signs that he is under-educated and otherwise under-qualified.
It took many years for most banks to come to the realization that he is a bad risk for a loan.
(Score: 2) by Entropy on Friday October 25 2019, @09:49PM (3 children)
The guy has made billions. Do you really think he couldn't make you money?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by sjames on Friday October 25 2019, @10:32PM (2 children)
Based on history, HE would make money and I would end up holding the bag.
Based on analysis, he has consistently under-performed, it's just that he started on 3rd base.
(Score: 2) by Entropy on Sunday October 27 2019, @09:56PM (1 child)
That's a lovely theory, and it's certainly a popular one these days. But if someone's education is so lacking that they can't express themselves in a normal manner the odds that they might be lacking in other ways is quite high. Hispanics often come over with 0 English language skill but the next generation has absolute mastery of English. Are there other groups that have been here for many generations, yet can't seem to master English? I suppose that's somehow not their fault, though.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday October 28 2019, @12:45AM
I think you replied to the wrong post, I'm going to need some context here.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mhajicek on Friday October 25 2019, @06:00PM (2 children)
Being from a wealthy family does not make one high class.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Friday October 25 2019, @07:42PM
I mean high socioeconomic class as described in TFA, of course. If you mean high class in the more cultured sense of the term, I agree that Trump is a bad example.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @02:46AM
And likewise, you being a worthless wretch doesn't grant you any sort of nobility.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 25 2019, @06:01PM
I'd say it's less about social level, or education, than it is "culutral fit" - sameness with the existing organization, particularly from the hiring manager's perspective.
You don't get hired into a chain smoking, foul mouthed, stinking construction crew by displaying your Harvard pedigree and Boston accent, even if you do have the physical attributes and knowledge necessary to do the job and do it well.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @06:49PM (9 children)
He did interview with me for his current job, and I voted to hire him. I wouldn't want to take him away from his duties, since he is doing the best of anybody elected after 1904.
You have funny standards for "near zero education". University of Pennsylvania is Ivy League, and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (where Trump went) is highly respected. It is the world's oldest collegiate school of business, and it has produced the highest number of billionaires in the US.
It also depends on the job. I wouldn't hire him as a dentist, firefighter, violinist, or masseuse. He'd make a decent stock broker, baseball coach, general contractor, branding expert, salesman, funeral director, school principal, or negotiator.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @07:47PM (6 children)
By what criteria?
War? Those troops he supposedly withdrew from Syria were going to be sent to Iraq instead. He could withdraw from the entire middle east if he wanted, but he won't, because he's not anti-war like he tries to claim. Oh, and Trump vetoed a bill that would have ended the US's support of Saudi Arabia's genocide in Yemen.
Health care? Millions of people have lost health insurance under Trump, and I sure don't see him supporting a universal healthcare system, which works much better for every other first world country and would be cheaper.
Trade? He correctly scrapped the TPP, but now is inserting provisions of it into the NAFTA renegotiation, which isn't actually otherwise all that different from NAFTA anyway.
Taxes? The rich are now paying a lower effective tax rate than many working people. That's socialism for the rich, and a benefit to no one but them. If ordinary people received any tax cut at all, it was extremely small. Oh, and this isn't helping with the debt or deficit, either, which Trump claimed to care about.
Net neutrality? He's definitely worse here than the Democrats. We don't need to give the already-monopolistic ISPs even more power over our communications than they already have, and yet that's exactly what Trump did.
Draining the swamp? If you think that appointing a bunch of Goldman Sachs goons and other corrupt establishment figures into his administration qualifies as draining the swamp, then I guess he's doing a great job. How about Saudi Arabia funneling massive amounts of money into his hotels, and then him vetoing the bill that would have ended the US's support of Saudi Arabia's genocide in Yemen? That's not suspicious at all.
The economy? Half of the country makes $30,000 a year or less and wouldn't have enough money for a $400 emergency. The vast majority of the country couldn't handle a $1,000 emergency. Real wages have barely changed at all. It's mostly the rich who benefit from the stock markets (when they're up), and thanks to Trump's tax cuts for the mega-rich, that's even more true now.
On some issues, Trump is little different from past administrations. On other issues, Trump takes the negative aspects of past administrations to an entirely different level. It's difficult to find significant issues that he's actually better on, and easy to find ones that he is worse on. I know partisan hacks will try to dismiss some of these points by pointing out that they were done by previous presidents as well, but that only means that Trump is just as bad or worse on those issues, not that it's okay.
Gee, I wonder how Donald Trump, who had a rich daddy, got into those virtue-signaling schools for the rich. It's almost like we don't live in a meritocracy or something, and that networking with the elites is more important than how intelligent or skillful you are. Nah, couldn't be. Trump is an anti-establishment figure who merely wants to drain the swamp, after all.
Producing billionaires is not necessarily a good thing at all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @08:43PM (5 children)
If you're going to have troops abroad, they should be there in overwhelming numbers for safety. Scattering them about the world makes them easy pickings. It's better to have 10 million in 1 country than it is to have 8 million spread across 8 countries. (that is, 1 million in each of the 8 countries) Moving all troops from Syria to Iraq is thus an improvement.
We don't want a government monopoly on healthcare, so no complaints there. Being promised free care is useless if the wait time exceeds your expected lifespan, and it is useless if the government turns you down because treatment isn't considered cost-effective for a person of your age.
On trade, he's the only one willing to stand up to China.
If a person paying 10 million in taxes gets a 2 million tax cut and a person paying 10 thousand in taxes gets a 3 thousand tax cut, who got the bigger tax cut? Consider that cutting 2 million from the taxes of a person paying only 10 thousand would be absurd (goes negative) and that cutting only 3 thousand from the taxes of a person paying 10 million would be effectively no tax cut at all.
Nobody was supporting any form of Net Neutrality for end users. It would be nice! We could get Alex Jones back on youtube. The battle between Netflix and Comcast isn't terribly interesting to the end users.
Draining the swamp means getting rid of people like John Brennan, a communist muslim who ran our CIA. (no kidding, OMG WTF)
Yeman isn't our shithole to give a fuck about.
Trump isn't responsible for bad financial education. The lack of emergency funds at least tells us that people aren't worried that they could starve.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @09:02PM
An improvement would be getting all of our troops out of the middle east. Obama shuffled troops around as well.
As opposed to what, corporate death panels, tens of thousands of people dying every year from preventable medical issues, higher costs, more paperwork for doctors, more inefficiencies, lower quality care for the average person, and millions of outright uninsured people? That's what our current system gets us. And we still have waiting times comparable to other countries, thanks to private insurance companies. The statistics show that other first world countries which have universal healthcare systems outperform us in just about every way when it comes to the average person.
In an utterly disastrous way that is hurting farmers and many other people, yes. Vastly weakening our imaginary property laws would at least yield some improvement, but this trade war is a waste of time.
The rich paying a lower effective tax rate than many working people is disgusting. The people who need more money the least are the ones who disproportionately benefited from these tax cuts.
You're trying to change the topic. ISPs need to conform to net neutrality, or we'll end up with situations like Comcast throttling torrenting again, among other disastrous decisions.
Draining the swamp means getting rid of all corruption, including Goldman Sachs goons, regulatory capture, and so on. Instead, Trump is happily participating in the corruption. So much for being anti-establishment.
Cool, then we shouldn't be giving Saudi Arabia money. The bill that Trump vetoed would have ended that.
If people are having trouble saving up such meager amounts of money, maybe the economy isn't as great for ordinary people as the corporate media would have us believe.
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Friday October 25 2019, @11:29PM (3 children)
“If you're going to have troops abroad, they should be there in overwhelming numbers for safety. Scattering them about the world makes them easy pickings. It's better to have 10 million in 1 country than it is to have 8 million spread across 8 countries. (that is, 1 million in each of the 8 countries) Moving all troops from Syria to Iraq is thus an improvement.”
This analysis completely ignores the grave strategic implications to Turkey of attacking US forces. It is universally accepted that Turkey would never cross the Syrian border without the withdrawal of troops and the assent of the Trump Administration— let alone actually attack US troops. If you’re going to defend Administration policy, you need to show that the cost of maintaining roughly 1000 US troops in Northern Syria is much larger than the value of the reputation that the US has with all of its allies, along with regional stability and other related US strategic interests. Suffice to say that even most Republicans in Congress thought it was an extremely bad play.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @09:09AM (2 children)
Yeah, but they're rabid warmongers, so of course they're going to object to even minor changes in troop levels. Let's not allow the military industrial complex to frame the discussion. The military industrial complex would have preferred to continue Vietnam, after all, because it's always in favor of war. Except for Iraq and Afghanistan, all of the wars are undeclared by Congress and thus unconstitutional; that's reason enough to leave. As for Iraq and Afghanistan, we have long since lost our original (which was poor in the first place) reasons to stay, so we should withdraw from there as well. If someone argues that we should stay in any of these places, I like to ask them to define "victory" for me, then give me a concrete timeline for when we'll be able to leave, and finally tell me how they'll get the notoriously corrupt military industrial complex to follow their little plan. If they can't do that, then they're effectively saying that we should stay in these wars forever, because a war without a definition of victory will be made into an endless one.
We should withdraw all of our troops from the middle east. Our presence in the vast majority of places serves as a destabilizing one, as it's not hard to imagine how droning innocent people might radicalize people against us. For the remaining areas, we still have no business being there, since we weren't attacked.
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Sunday October 27 2019, @01:11PM (1 child)
I share your distrust of the MIC, but your original critique was entirely different and purely tactical in nature.
I don’t have the answer to what the right strategic moves are, but surely going from roughly 1000 to zero is not a minor change in troop levels relative to sensitive region from which they are withdrawn. And whether or not as C-in-C you are suspicious of the MIC, JCS should be consulted and not surprised by a move agreed to with a foreign head of state.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 27 2019, @01:20PM
But we have no right to be in most of these countries, and no reason to be in any of them. We're actually making the problems worse by killing innocent people and using wars as a means of profit. It's not our place to protect these "sensitive" regions, even assuming we could protect them, which we can't.
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Friday October 25 2019, @07:59PM (1 child)
I wasn't talking about his current job, and I don't really think campaigning and debating is the same as interviewing.
I'll concede, though, that it really does depend a lot on the job you're interviewing for. Salesman seems like an especially good fit.
As far as his education level is concerned, graduating from an Ivy League school is hardly a guarantee of an educated man, particularly when the man comes from a family of wealth and influence. Trump has only to open his mouth to prove that he is an exception to that guarantee.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @10:06PM
Trump also doesn't have to impress anyone.
He's the rich boss. It's not uncommon for people like that to show coarseness almost as a show of their power.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @06:12PM
Typically anyone granted an interview meets all of my requirements and would be a good hire, making the point of the interview to see how they think on their feet, handle themselves under pressure, and interact with my current staff. If I have two candidates equal in every way but has any accent (southern drawl, boston, foreign) vs a normal english speaker from the west coast, I will choose the person from the west coast. Nothing worse than a brilliant engineer who cant communicate well and errors are caused because of it, or having someone working customer service that cant relay information well requiring a manager to get involved where one should not be necessary.
Only exception is people with speech issues outside their control, like studderers and such. I'll often give them preference because I want to.
(Score: 2) by legont on Friday October 25 2019, @07:42PM (1 child)
I've read somewhere that the whole English pronunciation vs. spelling difficulty was designed to separate people educated at right places. The price for it is that American children spend twice more time learning to write than most aliens and can't do it anyway. Any attempt to fix this should start with radical language rebuild.
Note that say before the revolution Russian had the same, while limited, mechanism to separate commoners from rulers and the first thing Lenin did was to reform the spelling.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @10:48PM
Esperanto for social justice!