Viewing profile — jirdperson

EDIT: Correction/clarification - The average American grocery clerk makes $22,646/year, gross, which comes out to about $1,532/month after taxes.

I agree that simply blaming the wealthy isn't the solution to these problems, but your perspective regarding the plight of the American poor seems a bit rosy to me. > We do provide…

> However, nothing about its existence implies anything about police brutality. As I read it, the article didn't seem to be implying that the existence of "excited delirium" itself…

Does the problem really lie in those people, themselves, or in the circumstances that led to their labor being worth so little?

This makes a lot of sense to me. Why do you need a gun to write someone a speeding ticket?

You should read the article. In short, she didn't actually ignore the court's order to meet her academic obligations. A law could be harsh, but fair, sure. However, an excessively …

> There is no "Probably". Either I'm missing something or you must be confused. It's extremely unlikely that a young teenager would be sent to "prison" in the US for the crimes tha…

> the probation conditions are part of the sentence and the reason why she wasn't incarcerated in the first place. In this case, I think that she wasn't incarcerated in the first p…

> As well, a person is free not to agree to the terms, and just do their time. In a case like this, there's no "time" to do. It's not as if this girl narrowly avoided incarceration…

Really? Probably not, if you're talking about her actual offenses and not simply "assault" and "theft" in the abstract. Her age, coupled with the relatively minor nature of her spe…

If I agreed with your assessment, I wouldn't have taken the time to write my comment in the first place.

> If you've been put away for committing crimes, and the conditions for staying free... Abstraction is often useful, but its application here seems reductionist to the point of bei…

I did read the article (I’m not sure what you mean by “it is terribly biased”). I don’t think anyone here is questioning the logical chain of events that led to this girl’s incarce…

> at what point do you just let youth engage in certain behavior without consequences? Uh, what? That's what you have to say about incarcerating a teenager with ADHD amidst an unpr…

I certainly don’t think that. What “ideas” that Bari Weiss presents in this essay does your conversational counterpoint here fail to engage? And why is the context of her hypocrisy…

Unless the response to, or impact of, Covid-19 leads to exogenous circumstances (e.g. massive global economic depression, unprecedented levels of global political coordination resu…

I was trying to be as even-handed as possible, but I'm not sure the cynical reaction isn't the right one. The reliance on rhetoric, as you point out, seems unnecessary for a topic …

I mean, just look at the massive variety of human cultures that have existed since the dawn of civilization.

I just found my mostly typed-out comment from yesterday in a forgotten tab and figured that I might as well finish and submit it, but it looks like you already made a lot of the sa…

This is an excerpt from Michael Shellenberger's latest book, which I haven't read and can't assess based on the linked content alone. As for that content... Shellenberger's central…

> This is literally true though. It's true that black Americans are overrepresented among violent criminals, but it's not true that the reason this isn't widely reported (at least …

> I agree that being locked up once surely makes going straight harder (because employers are wary) and going crooked easier (as you now have more contacts). It's not just a questi…

Save yourself a click - the author (Heather MacDonald) appears to be trying to create controversy by playing dumb. To summarize - MacDonald cited, in speech and writing, a 2019 stu…

What makes you think that? I haven’t read the book, but the Wikipedia article didn’t really elaborate on its economic content.

What percentage of people in solitary confinement do you think this describes? In any case, it sounds like your hypothetical prisoner should be in a psych unit.