MIT economist believes U.S. is shifting to be more similar to developing nations • Hacker News Board

Re: MIT economist believes U.S. is shifting to be more similar to developing nations

#241

Post by sqeaky » Mon, May 22, 2017, 5:28 PM UTC

naasking wrote: post #237

sqeaky wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about ignore how report works and fixing the gerrymandering? I don't know how, but lets presume there is some way to fix gerrymandering so that a legislators constituency was a statistically fair representation of their region/state. Then the extreme views would be canceled out and the best way to win a primary would be to win a primary would be to appeal to the moderates.

I agree, gerrymandering is also a big problem. John Oliver did a good segment about the justification behind bizarrely drawn districts, which kind of makes sense, so the real problem is leaving this power in the hands of the people who have an incentive to abuse it for their own benefit.

Fair elections are supposed to the check on abuse. If constituents fairly re-elect people who line their own pockets, presumably that is what they want.

No amount of fair or unfair reporting will sway the minds of left wing or wing right loyalist entrenched in their view that their team is correct. A mix of opinions is required to get a different result on a given issue in a Democracy.

I don't know of any fair way to do it and I see the potential for abuse, but it makes want a poll test of some kind. No voting without critical thinking and a basic understanding of the issues you are voting on. But that can't work without abuse in anything like our current system. Fixing districts and voting methods is probably the best we can do until we see what problems that raises.

Re: MIT economist believes U.S. is shifting to be more similar to developing nations

#242

Post by blackguardx » Mon, May 22, 2017, 5:30 PM UTC

nandemo wrote: post #236

blackguardx wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US Census says the US has a literacy rate of 86%. This is a controversial metric, though. The CIA factbook defines literacy as having completed 5 years of schooling. By that definition, the US is at 97.9% literacy. Better than your 95% number, but not Nordic country levels. Also, shantytowns aren't really allowed to exist in the US. They are becoming more common in progressive cities like San Francisco and Seattl…

> Better than your 95% number, but not Nordic country levels. People were talking about the US being "third world", you're clearly moving goalposts. > Also, shantytowns aren't really allowed to exist in the US. ... so? You're essentially saying that the US government doesn't allow poverty to exist. Virtually all of the US lower class lives in places with a proper roof, proper running water and electricity. Might not…

There are no goalposts. I'm just trying to add nuance to the discussion.

Also, governmental assistance varies wildly in the US. I was part of the reduced price school lunch program, but my family never received raw cash like is often conjured up by the term "governmental assistance."

Re: MIT economist believes U.S. is shifting to be more similar to developing nations

#243

Post by zild3d » Mon, May 22, 2017, 5:48 PM UTC

nandemo wrote: post #181

CuriouslyC wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen places in Mississippi, Arkansas and West Virginia that looked every bit as third world as rural Philippines/Vietnam. What the US lacks is urban poverty in the form of shantytowns. This is because unlike most third world nations, we quickly raze them when and find excuses to incarcerate the people who live there. If we were more permissive, we'd certainly have them too.

That's such BS. Have you actually lived in a developing country? If you're American and you care about poverty -- as in relative poverty -- in your country and you want to do something about it, more power to you. It's not like someone being much poorer elsewhere prevents you from caring about a problem in your country. But please don't trivialize abject poverty by implying that the American working class have it as…

>In those countries, the literacy rate is around 95%. Imagine 5% of people around you are illiterate.

That's high! 95% literacy rate isn't really worth mentioning when many countries are in the 30-40% range

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_...

Re: MIT economist believes U.S. is shifting to be more similar to developing nations

#244

Post by gnaritas » Mon, May 22, 2017, 5:50 PM UTC

naasking wrote: post #235

gnaritas wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like I said, mandate factual reporting standards and the news agencies will do the research for the people. You can't mandate factual reporting and still call it a free press as those enforcing the "fact" standards now control the press. You seem to think that you can't lie with facts, but it's quite easy, watch fox news they do it all day long. Free press and free speech mean just that; free and that includes lyin…

> You can't mandate factual reporting and still call it a free press as those enforcing the "fact" standards now control the press. You seem to think that you can't lie with facts, but it's quite easy, watch fox news they do it all day long They're often quite non-factual actually. And you can't call it "press" unless it's factual, free or not. You can't just ignore one factor in favour of the other. Furthermore, you…

I sympathize with your goal, but you can't legally enforce journalistic ethics. And yes of course Fox is often non-factual, my point was one can be misleading with nothing but the truth and they demonstrate that constantly, stopping them from lying isn't going to stop them from misleading their audience.

The solution to bad speech isn't to ban it, it's just for others to put out better news. However, people don't seek out real news, they seek out confirmation of their existing beliefs so no amount of fair and accurate fact based reporting is going to change that, they'll still seek out whatever organization offers them confirmation of their biases whether it's called news or not. Fox is popular because it lies. The audience doesn't want real news; they want to believe what they believe and have it confirmed, nothing more.

Re: MIT economist believes U.S. is shifting to be more similar to developing nations

#245

Post by estebank » Mon, May 22, 2017, 5:50 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #180

foldr wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The water used to get turned off for a few hours quite often when I lived in a project in DC. I mean, it was never a serious health issue, but utilities aren't as reliable for poor people in the US as you might think.

This may be the case, and be a serious problem, while still coming nowhere close to validating the comparison made upthread to the third world, where toilets are effectively a luxury.

I guess it depends on where the "third world" stops being third world (beyond the original definition of "any nation that isn't aligned with either NATO or URSS"). If third world is used as "developing nations", not every country that would fall under that label is necessarily a failed state. Not all Latin American countries are Venezuela, and not every county in California is San Mateo. In LA and SF I've seen huge amount of people in homeless encampments, to the point where family from Latin America pointed it out, and where European family and friends were completely horrified.

I completely understand your point, and a rich person in the US is in a better situation than in other countries, but I wouldn't say that the poorest among the population US are _that_ much better than in other countries. My guess is that the people pushing for the view "parts of US == third world country" might be looking at the top of the list for those countries, while you and others that seem against this comparison are looking at either the average or lower half of countries considered third world.

I personally found it horrifying to see a Lamborghini waiting for the traffic light to change while a legless homeless veteran coughing up blood was on that intersection asking for food. Worst part of it though, is that once you live in that environment, very quickly it fades in the background and turns into "just the way things are". Poor people in this country have access to more goods than poor people in other countries, that's true, that doesn't mean that services are up to the task for them.

Re: MIT economist believes U.S. is shifting to be more similar to developing nations

#246

Post by throwasehasdwi » Mon, May 22, 2017, 6:02 PM UTC

sqeaky wrote: post #193

throwasehasdwi wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They might look terrible but the utilities work. Biggest differentiator in 3rd world is poverty AND non functioning government. The water, sewer, and electricity work well enough to be relied upon even in the poorest most remote parts of the US. This is not so in any 3rd world country

I am curious about the state of water in Flint, do you know the current status? Do you know how long families had non-potable tap water, even if it is drinkable now? EDIT - Please reply if you don't like my comment. Just downvotes do not tell me anything. Also, please consider that I just asked questions, I made no statements and I did it that way because I actually seek answers. If the water in Flint is perfectly fi…

Lead levels are only elevated in certain areas. Getting clean water might be as easy as your neighbor's hose. Flint authorities weren't treating the water properly and it corroded the pipes in some areas. Lead levels were expected to drop as soon as treatment resumed but it spooked everyone bad enough that it doesn't matter if the water is safe, they want new pipes. Lead pipes are not unusual at all in older cities and nobody else has this problem.

I don't see how a single small city whose water supply was tainted by incompetence of local water utilities is representative of the US as a whole. 99.99% of us have access to drinkable water.

Re: MIT economist believes U.S. is shifting to be more similar to developing nations

#247

Post by BoiledCabbage » Mon, May 22, 2017, 6:03 PM UTC

nightski wrote: post #191

accountyaccount wrote: post #166

I definitely support paying more taxes to improve the infrastructure/rural areas of the country, but I also start to think that maybe the country is just too big. Are there any countries that are nearly this large that have a consistent quality of infrastructure for everyone? I live in a large city and it seems that even we have trouble maintaining up our roads/bridges/grid/telecom systems and we pay a lot of state t…

It's amusing there is so much misinformation on rural America on HN. You'd think it was mostly 3rd world by reading most of the comments on this post. I come from ND, which is an extremely sparsely populated state. However, don't let the rural nature fool you - per capita tax revenue was one of the highest in the nation. It's filled with rich farmers making more than many engineers here on HN. Most of the income come…

That's not a very good analogy. If you're going to compare ND and it's oil boom, then you need to contrast it with somewhere like Saudi Arabia which has very little economically except for it's oil production.

Or more accurately compare any of the non-oil related rural areas in the country. Or any of the particularly poor rural areas of the black or white southern US.

Re: MIT economist believes U.S. is shifting to be more similar to developing nations

#248

Post by jstewartmobile » Mon, May 22, 2017, 6:05 PM UTC

wtbob wrote: post #88

jstewartmobile wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our problem is the rural/urban split, and how the rural areas have a much more powerful per-person sway over policy and election outcomes. Two senators per state is pretty kick-ass if you live in North Dakota.

Our problem is the cities, and how they have many more people. Representation in proportion to population is pretty kick-ass if you live in New York. It's a little less kick-ass if you live in North Dakota, and wonder why a few coastal congressmen are able to pass laws which interfere with your lifestyle. More seriously, our problem is a metastasised federal government. Very little should actually be a federal issue…

I wasn't really trying to get into the whole liberal/conservative/size-of-government debate.

My experience with most rural towns is that it's like entering a time machine to 1985. When those places set the agenda, we are going to be "behind" when it comes to the metrics economists use (regardless of how relevant or misleading those metrics may be).

When it comes to letting places go their own way (like sanctuary cities, medical marijuana, gay marriage, etc.), I totally agree with you!

Re: MIT economist believes U.S. is shifting to be more similar to developing nations

#249

Post by BoiledCabbage » Mon, May 22, 2017, 6:09 PM UTC

arjie wrote: post #199

bigeasy wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather than setting up your own straw man, why not respond to some of the arguments made in the article? > In the developing countries Lewis studied, people try to move from the low-wage sector to the affluent sector by transplanting from rural areas to the city to get a job. Occasionally it works; often it doesn’t. Temin says that today in the U.S., the ticket out is education, which is difficult for two reasons: yo…

A bit harsh, that accusation, especially when I can't find any of your quoted sentences in the linked article. For what it's worth, I was talking about this following excerpt: > In the Lewis model of a dual economy, much of the low-wage sector has little influence over public policy. Check. The high-income sector will keep wages down in the other sector to provide cheap labor for its businesses. Check. Social control…

> Social issues are used to keep the low-wage sector from challenging the policies favored by the high-income sector.

Yet change two words and suddenly things align again. Particularly if you take high-wage sector to be that demographic of the republican party. (Obviously this isn't exclusive to the republican party, but what's present in the party matches the form in developing countries).

Another way to look at the thesis is this: The republican party's politics and functioning/platform execution matches that of a developing country. While they aren't they only party, their views/framework have been taking over American politics since Clinton's triangulation of the 90s (and arguably since Reagan's arrival in the 80s).

Re: MIT economist believes U.S. is shifting to be more similar to developing nations

#250

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 22, 2017, 6:56 PM UTC

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #247

nightski wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amusing there is so much misinformation on rural America on HN. You'd think it was mostly 3rd world by reading most of the comments on this post. I come from ND, which is an extremely sparsely populated state. However, don't let the rural nature fool you - per capita tax revenue was one of the highest in the nation. It's filled with rich farmers making more than many engineers here on HN. Most of the income come…

That's not a very good analogy. If you're going to compare ND and it's oil boom, then you need to contrast it with somewhere like Saudi Arabia which has very little economically except for it's oil production. Or more accurately compare any of the non-oil related rural areas in the country. Or any of the particularly poor rural areas of the black or white southern US.

[deleted]