171–180 of 186 posts
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Sorry, I meant the federal government should be using U-6.
They do use it. You can find U-6 mentioned in many federal government documents.
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Meritorcacy is the worst form of allocating resources except for all those other forms, I'd say. How else would you suggest doing it? A meritocracy at least gives people a way to strive to do better. A system in which one cannot raise his chances of success by improving himself is likely even worse than what we have.
One place to look is other countries, e.g. Germany. They have alternatives to the college/university track that enable people who don't fit that mold to still prosper. The way the U.S. is structured it's as if the only route to success is becoming a professional basketball player in the NBA. Oh, you don't happen to be extra-tall or able to shoot a basket? You must not be working hard enough.
There are definitely good non-college jobs in America, though fewer than there were fifty years ago. Many are trades - welder, carpenter, plumber. Are things similar in Germany?
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Well yeah, animals that can't hunt or fend for themselves are killed by predators or starve to death. Humans are animals. If I have a family, I will care for my kin before strangers who don't know any better or are too stupid to help themselves. At a certain scale, helping hopeless people starts to harm society. This is true regardless of your political persuasion. Republicans point to never ending handouts and democ…
Uhm, blatant Social-Darwinism is barely down-voted at HN now? That entire post is absolute garbage and bullshit and have no relation to history with the gem being this: "helping hopeless people starts to harm society". You do realize that we are all "useless" for the first 15-20 years? Not to mention the empirical evidence disproving that claim that you seemingly don't give a shit about; like other countries than the…
The GP comment was a bad one, but responding with a second bad one not only doesn't help, it breaks the site guidelines in an additional way: "Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead."
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Uhm, blatant Social-Darwinism is barely down-voted at HN now? That entire post is absolute garbage and bullshit and have no relation to history with the gem being this: "helping hopeless people starts to harm society". You do realize that we are all "useless" for the first 15-20 years? Not to mention the empirical evidence disproving that claim that you seemingly don't give a shit about; like other countries than the…
Would you please stop posting flamewar comments to HN? We've asked you this multiple times and you've not only continued to do it, you've done it more. If you continue breaking the site guidelines we're going to end up having to ban you. The GP comment was a bad one, but responding with a second bad one not only doesn't help, it breaks the site guidelines in an additional way: " Don't feed egregious comments by reply…
Furthermore I'm replying to comments that needs a response, not starting them. In fact, I'm unsure if I've ever started one.
Unfortunately however, HN provides a lot of comments that requires a response because they're either just vile, pure propaganda, or entirely false. And given the demographics of this site they are rarely, if ever, shunned if they just meet two criteria: they're somewhat articulate and they hold a good tone (bonus points if they contain links to vaguely associated "sources").
So you want to dog-whistle racism on HN without any particular reaction? Don't write something stupid and blatant, pick one of these options instead:
* "Well, your country is much more homogeneous."
* "Inequality is unfortunate but remember that IQ is very much determined by genes and that IQ is the strongest determining factor for future income so it is what it is."
etc etc.
I can't just ignore such bullshit, especially when it's left without any reaction.
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One place to look is other countries, e.g. Germany. They have alternatives to the college/university track that enable people who don't fit that mold to still prosper. The way the U.S. is structured it's as if the only route to success is becoming a professional basketball player in the NBA. Oh, you don't happen to be extra-tall or able to shoot a basket? You must not be working hard enough.
Interesting thoughts. How do they achieve this? And do you believe it will hold up to increasing automation? There are definitely good non-college jobs in America, though fewer than there were fifty years ago. Many are trades - welder, carpenter, plumber. Are things similar in Germany?
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/why-ger...
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I think this is missing the point. You can always point to people who have it worse off throughout all of history.
Any average metric where poor people were better off 100 years ago will do.
Of course "poverty" is subjective, but IMHO it's a disgrace that (working!) people struggle to make ends meet every month, and would definitely classify that as "poverty". That peasants 100 years ago had it worse is just irrelevant here, in my view.
I'm not entirely sure what the intention of your comment was, but by your reasoning we could relativise every war as "it's not as bad as WWII" or every pandemic as "it's not as bad as the black death", and that doesn't strike me as a helpful or constructive way to deal with the problems that exist in the here and now.
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They do use U6. They use hundreds of data points. U3 is "headline unemployment" because it's a middle ground indicator that has a consistent meaning. It's not possible to summarize the employment landscape in a single number.
I meant the federal government should use U-6 because it's closer to what most people think of as unemployment.
Click through all the links at the bottom of this report: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
Income and wealth disparity is the biggest problem in the US and it’s not given the attention it deserves. The republicans have no interest in addressing it, in fact they actively make it worse every chance they get. The Democrats want to address it but cannot focus. It’s what is causing these symptoms like trump in the country.
> The Democrats want to address it but cannot focus. What does that mean? Do they have ADHD?
And that leads to real political risks: no matter what they will be tarred with the brush of their most radical element, while the radicals feel that they aren't being listened to. As a sibling comment to yours put it, the party is "largely funded by the same people" as their opponents.
So they're unable to put forward a radical program, and seem to get little traction on incremental changes. That, I believe, manifests as what the OP thinks of as "unable to focus".
Doesn't matter. They have access to unprecedented levels of free pornography so they're too pacified to be a threat to the ruling class.
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I meant the federal government should use U-6 because it's closer to what most people think of as unemployment.
BLS is the federal government. Congress and the president have the entire data set produced by BLS. They also have state-level data and more. There are no statutes explicitly tied to U3. Click through all the links at the bottom of this report: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm